House of Lords

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Thursday, 9 December 2010.

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

Children: Adoption

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:05

Asked by

[Lord Northbourne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to shorten the time taken to approve adoptions, particularly adoptions of infants.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government have established an adoption advisory group to provide expert advice on removing barriers and delays to adoption. We have also written to local authorities to ask them to do everything possible to increase the number of children appropriately placed for adoption and to improve the speed with which decisions are made. The family justice review is currently considering what changes are needed to the family justice system, including the reduction in delays.

[Lord Northbourne]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for that very encouraging reply. I am sure he is aware that every day that a young child bonds with a person who is not going to be his or her principal carer is to the disadvantage of that child. Has the noble Lord or the department thought about—and, if not, I ask him to put it to the committee he described—the concurrent planning scheme devised by the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children fairly recently, whereby the person who fosters the child is the person who ultimately will adopt it, so that the child has the minimum of chopping and changing in those precious early years?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will certainly take that point back. I know that there are arguments in favour of concurrent planning. I am also aware, though, that people say that it is not necessarily a panacea for the problems that the noble Lord describes. As part of the broader point about discussions with the department, my honourable friend Mr Loughton, the Minister responsible for adoption, is extremely keen to make progress on this matter and has asked me whether, perhaps through the noble Lord, we could organise a meeting with all Peers who are interested in adoption, perhaps early in the new year, to get the benefit of views from this House and to help us try to drive this policy forward.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Will the Minister ensure that there is a neuroscientist who specialises in babies’ brain development on the committee to which he referred? Is he aware of the great importance of keeping stress away from babies during the very early years, because otherwise the brain does not develop normally and the child has all kinds of problems later in life? A scientist of that nature would understand the urgency of the matter.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will look into who is on the advisory group. I am afraid that I cannot remember the membership. I will also be sure to relay my noble friend’s important point back to the responsible Minister.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the adoption legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament in January 2007, which contained many new measures designed to speed up the adoption process in the interests of children? Will the Government ensure that there is good co-ordination between the different jurisdictions in the United Kingdom to ensure that no bureaucratic obstacles are put in the way of adoption as a result of the devolution of adoption legislation in Scotland, Northern Ireland or elsewhere?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that point, which is well made. It seems to me that one of the issues we have with adoption generally is the great disparity in England between different local authority areas. We know that some local authorities are able to place 100 per cent of children within 12 months. Another local authority that I am aware of can place 38 per cent within that period. There are huge differences, and I think that extending the principle on a broader level, which the noble Lord argues for, is certainly worth reflecting on.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former judge who tried adoption cases over many years. I expect that the Minister is aware of the importance in contested adoption cases—which nearly all these cases are—of having social workers and CAFCASS welfare officers as guardians. What will the Government do to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of experienced social workers, and CAFCASS officers in particular, to look after children who are placed for adoption?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the noble and learned Baroness about the importance of having a sufficiency of well-trained social workers. In an earlier discussion in this House, there was broad agreement on the importance of making sure that there is a good supply. The crucial role that they play in this process is not always fully appreciated. More generally, in terms of the court system, in parallel with the other initiatives that my honourable friend is taking, a review of the family justice system is under way that must also look into these important issues and get the balance right—I know that this is a concern of my noble friend Lady Knight—between privacy and transparency, so that we know what is going on.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, will the Minister affirm the conviction that every child matters? In that context, will he tell us how he will ensure, in the light of the encouragement to local authorities at a time when ring-fencing is being lifted, that there is good support for voluntary adoption agencies, not least those run by Anglican and Roman Catholic dioceses?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the point made by the right reverend Prelate about the importance of voluntary adoption agencies. One issue around the timeliness of adoption—this point lies behind the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—is that some local authorities appear to have been slightly resistant to using voluntary adoption agencies. In part, there has been an issue over the perceived greater expense of these agencies. However, research shows that when you take all the figures into account, including overhead costs, voluntary adoption agencies are no more expensive than local authority provision.

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

My Lords, will my noble friend assure the House that the rights of parents who strongly object to having their child adopted are clearly heard, and that they are allowed to speak in their own defence in a court of law?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

It is absolutely the case. With all these difficult issues, the paramount point is to protect the rights of the child. I completely agree with my noble friend that one should make sure that parents, too, have every opportunity and right to make their views known. As part of the review of the family justice system, the point that my noble friend makes will be borne very much in mind.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the noble Lord talked about the necessity of having well trained social workers. Does he think that the review being undertaken might look at the curriculum for social work training to see whether any changes or developments need to be made?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will need to follow up on that point. I will come back to the noble Lord, if I may.

Economy: Growth

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:13

Asked by

[Lord Roberts of Conwy]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage economic growth.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)]

My Lords, the Government are taking steps to encourage economic growth by providing stability for business through firm action to tackle the deficit, to make markets more dynamic through reform of the competition regime and corporate governance, and to focus the Government’s activities on providing the conditions for private sector growth. We will ensure that strong, sustainable growth is fairly shared through local enterprise partnerships and through our new strategy for skills.

[Lord Roberts of Conwy]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. Can she confirm that manufacturing industry is currently expanding at the fastest rate for 16 years and that employment in manufacturing is increasing at the fastest rate for 18 years? Are there other sectors in which the Government anticipate stronger growth?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend Lord Roberts makes a very fine point and, yes, of course, I can support the facts that he has read out. Last week’s report that the purchasing managers index for manufacturing rose to 58 in November is absolutely right. The most recent Office for National Statistics data show that manufacturing output in the three months to October 2010 was more than 1 per cent higher than in the previous three months and 5 per cent higher than in the same period a year ago. That growth is evident in the innovative SME Brompton Bicycles, for example, which has grown in recent years from producing 5,000 bikes a year to 30,000 this year.

[Lord Soley]

Bearing in mind that there is already growth in the economy from the actions of the previous Government following the international recession, and as I have pointed out many times before, that Britain is the sixth largest manufacturing country in the world and we are at the cutting edge of aerospace, sub-sea platforms and other areas, how can the Minister guarantee that the defence cuts affecting the aerospace industry and the 80 per cent cut in the university grant will not put our manufacturing sector at severe risk in the future?

[Baroness Wilcox]

We are looking across the whole of the manufacturing sector and, in the next few days, we shall bring out a manufacturing strategy to ensure that we are taking our country forward in all areas and at all levels. Of course, the previous Government had some great successes—they should have done; they were in power long enough.

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, when does the Minister think that we will stop our slide down the manufacturing table? I know our output is up but, if she checks the numbers, I think she will find that we are not in fact in sixth position, but in seventh position. I checked that again this morning. The OECD numbers show that we are some 9 per cent behind France, which is in sixth position, and we are 20 per cent behind Italy, which is in fifth position. I am encouraged by what is happening, but I ask the Minister to assure us that this slide will be stopped. Brazil and Korea are snapping at our heels and we will soon be in ninth position unless we do something about it.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, obviously, we are delighted with any signs of growth and of going forward. The figures read out by the noble Lord are not encouraging, but that does not mean to say that we do not have to try to do the best we can. We know, for example, that advanced manufacturing growth is very important for us, and a review will be out very soon. We are reviewing all the areas in which we can find any growth at all, and I am sure that the noble Lord, fine engineer that he is, will help us in any way he can to encourage us in areas from which he thinks growth will come.

[Lord Razzall]

My Lords, in her Answer to her noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy, the Minister indicated that the establishment of local enterprise partnerships was a key driver for economic growth. Is she satisfied with the progress in the establishment of those local enterprise partnerships, which, as she will know, is a subject that is dear to the heart of the Liberal Democrat party?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The formation of 24 local enterprise partnerships is a landmark move that will see business and civic leaders work together to create the conditions for growth in their communities. This is, as we know, a real power shift away from central government and quangos towards local communities and the businesses that really understand the local barriers to growth. We have 24 partnerships already and we are working very hard to ensure that the others will come online as quickly as possible. We are quite confident that this will take things forward in a way that the RDAs never did.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness know why the Chancellor withdrew his proposed White Paper on the Government’s policy on growth?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The Secretary of State in July spoke of developing our strategy in the autumn with a view to publishing a White Paper—or a paper. As we know, the status of a paper is determined by its content. The proposals in the paper did not require legislation. Therefore it was not a White Paper.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Does my noble friend not accept that improving the nation’s skills is absolutely crucial to the Government’s growth targets? Will she accept that the paper that was published last week, the strategy document Skills for Sustainable Growth, with its emphasis on part-time training, distance learning and adult training, points an extremely valuable way forward and should be supported?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend is quite right; it does point us in the right direction for the new skills that we will require. We will encourage skills right across the piece and I think today of all days is one when we can talk about all sorts of ways of educating and bringing our people forward. Skills will be a great part of that.

European Single Market

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:21

Tabled by

[Lord Tomlinson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the British Chamber of Commerce’s eight-point plan for the European single market.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Tomlinson and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for asking the Question. I am sorry—we are all sorry, I am sure—that the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is not well enough to be here today. We wish him better.

The Government welcome the publication of the British Chambers of Commerce, Eight Ways to Make the Single Market Work. This is a valuable contribution to the debate on the single market, and it identifies a number of matters that should be prioritised as part of the single market Act. The Government will submit a response to the Commission’s consultation on the Act in the new year.

[Lord Rosser]

I thank the Minister for that response and for her kind wishes to my noble friend Lord Tomlinson. While to complete the single market and to make it work better are a priority for the British Chambers of Commerce, and for the Government, does the Minister acknowledge that to do so will mean additional, not lower, contributions to the EU budget, including additional contributions from the British Government?

[Baroness Wilcox]

We are at too early a stage to be able to answer questions of finance in this way. In the single market we have at our disposal an unparalleled resource that can provide a framework within which entrepreneurs and businesses can thrive. Therefore we must focus ruthlessly on the relaunch of the single market and ensure that it operates at its full capacity. Then, I think, it will be worth every penny.

[Lord Dykes]

Has my noble friend seen the latest pamphlets from Business for New Europe—I declare an interest as a strong supporter—in which it repeatedly shows the huge return to this country from the increasing success of the European single market? It is based, incidentally, on the excellent European principle of qualified majority voting. Will the Minister ensure that the Government are well informed on these matters and repeat endlessly to the British public—in view of the attitude of the British press—that the returns from the single market for British exporters and so on are gigantic in comparison with any budget contributions?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, yes, it is right. We do an enormous amount of business in the European Union. It is very good for us and we want to make sure that it works even better. There are areas which we are not quite so happy about; we would like to see a freer market right across the European Union so that some of the barriers that stand in the way of our businesses are removed, as they should be for any other country in the European Union. It is supposed to be a free market, and the more freely we can move our goods around, the better.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, will the Minister, in all these discussions, concentrate on practical measures to develop trade and the market itself, and resist all measures to superimpose superstructural concepts on variously divergent economies that do not derive directly from the growth of those economies themselves? Does not the present plight of the euro show the folly of forcing upon divergent economies a similar form of currency that is at odds with the natural strength of the individual economies?

[Baroness Wilcox]

I think I will not comment on the euro today. The noble Lord is absolutely right; we must encourage wherever we can to make the market work as well as possible. To go back to the original Question, which, if I may remind your Lordships, was about our response to the British Chambers of Commerce eight-point plan for the European single market, there are things there that we would be very keen to support. We need to talk about creating effective digital single markets and all the other things like that that can make the market work better. We have enough problems at the moment, and anything positive that we can say is a good idea.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am sorry that my noble friend does not want to talk about the euro today, because one reason why we have a very satisfactory export performance to the eurozone is that we are not in it. Sterling has depreciated against the euro, making life much easier for our exporters. Is she not very glad that we have not joined the eurozone?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The United Kingdom is not a member of the euro at the moment, and I see no time in future when we are likely to ask to join.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, given the divergent views on Europe in the coalition Government, does the Minister agree with the British Chambers of Commerce that Governments find it difficult to agree the harmonising measures that are essential to making the single market work? What harmonising measures will the Government support?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The coalition is working extremely well. There are certainly good points in the plan. Spreading the word is one recommendation in the report. We agree with that. SMEs having a level playing field? We agree with that. Proposals being SME-proofed so that the legals do not work against them? We agree with that. The liberalisation of services? Excellent. Moving architects backwards and forwards? We should be able to do that. Creating a digital single market? We want to do that. A single market in energy and freedom of movement there? We want that. Freezes on new laws that cost jobs? We will have to discuss that. Rebalancing the EU budgets towards growth? That is exactly what the report was about. It is an excellent report and we are very happy to support most of it.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, contrary to the impression conveyed by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, that the British Chambers of Commerce are asking for a vast extension in the budget, is my noble friend aware that the BCC’s memorandum to the House of Lords states precisely:

“The Post-2013 budget should be set at not more than 1% of GDP”?

I cannot see how that statement in the document is consistent with the impression conveyed by the noble Lord.

[Baroness Wilcox]

My Lords, I said that we agreed with most of the things in the document, but there are some on which we are still reflecting.

Houses of Parliament: Access during Demonstrations

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Question

11:28

Asked by

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that access to the Houses of Parliament is maintained during the holding of demonstrations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The policing of demonstrations in central London is an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has to balance the right to peaceful protest with the rights of wider communities. Part of that balance includes ensuring that Members of this House and the other place, their staff and the public who wish to lobby their MPs are able to get in and out of Parliament in order to carry out their democratic functions in public life.

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that the very first action of every Parliament every year is to pass an order in Parliament directing the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to ensure access for all Members of Parliament to Parliament and that,

“no obstruction shall be permitted to hinder the passage of the Lords or Members”,

to cite Erskine May? Is my noble friend aware that during a recent demo, a number of Peers—and, for all I know, MPs—were denied entry by the police for several hours? Is it not a breach of the constitution that Members of Parliament should be prevented from speaking or voting in these Houses?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we could spend a long time discussing the British constitution. I remind the House that the sessional order that has been agreed by this House since the 18th century does not, in effect, apply beyond the boundaries of the Palace of Westminster and, in some ways, it may indeed arouse unreasonable expectations. There have been occasions when people have been unable to access the Houses of Parliament by car during recent demonstrations. There was one occasion, I am informed, when a number of additional police from outer boroughs who were reinforcing our local policemen did not recognise the parliamentary passes of Members of either House. That has now been corrected. The police have to balance the democratic right to protest with maintaining access to Parliament. On the whole, I think that all around the House we would accept that the police maintain that balance very well.

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, when talking about the sessional order, the Minister said that it aroused “unreasonable expectations”. Is he really saying that it is an unreasonable expectation that Members of Parliament and Peers should get to this House?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise. I should perhaps have said “unrealistic expectations”. There are circumstances in which it may be difficult to maintain access by car. We cherish the right to demonstrate. It is part of an open society. We would not like to have the same circumstances for maintaining order around this House as the Chinese Government maintain on occasion in Tiananmen Square. These are delicate issues. We ask the police to maintain order and to maintain access. As Members will know, when there are large demonstrations, the authorities provide us with information about which entrances will be kept open and where there may be difficulty, and I am sure that Members of this House follow their orders as well as they can.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, what is the basis for the noble Lord’s statement that the sessional order applies only as far as the boundaries of the building? That is an absurd statement. It is not getting into the building once you are at the boundary; it is getting to the boundary. What is the basis for that extremely dangerous statement?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the sessional order is a very traditional thing. I am told that the House of Commons no longer produces a sessional order. We negotiate with the Metropolitan Police Authority on how best to maintain access to the House from the surrounding streets. The statement that,

“during the Session of Parliament … no obstruction be permitted to hinder the passage of the Lords to and from this House”,

is a statement of intent. The police do their best in the circumstances, and the number of occasions on which it has not been possible to enter this House by car or on foot has been very limited, I am assured.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, notwithstanding that, does the Minister understand that the demonstration before last I was refused access from Westminster Bridge into Parliament Square on the grounds that the policemen had been told that only MPs were allowed access? Despite showing my pass, they refused utterly to accept that the House of Lords is part of Parliament. [Laughter.] It was quite funny, but it is quite serious. It took 20 minutes to get the policeman to phone a superior officer to let me through. The sessional order quite specifically refers to the House of Lords. Will the Minister draw the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to this so that all officers are properly briefed?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Yeoman Usher is in his place. I am sure he has taken that fully on board and that it will be immediately communicated to the police.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, my noble friend suggested that we have to balance the right of access to this House and the House of Commons with the right to demonstrate. In what conceivable way does access by Members of Parliament and Peers to their respective Houses interfere in any way with the right to demonstrate?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, sheer pressure of numbers on occasion creates difficulties for access to this House. I am sure that the noble Lord, like me, has taken part in many public demonstrations in the past, although it is possible that he was not with me on the demonstration against the Iraq war in which some 2 million of us attempted to walk past Parliament and get as far as Hyde Park. I have to say that the Liberal Democrat contingent never managed to get to Hyde Park because there were so many people there. It is a very important part of our democratic life that we maintain the right to protest. Indeed, I am sure that noble Lords on the coalition Benches will know the coalition agreement off by heart. Among other things, it states:

“We will restore rights to non-violent protest”,

and that is what we are doing.

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, some Members of the House may find the Minister’s reply slightly less than satisfactory. Is he aware that, in getting to Parliament by road last week, many Members were unnecessarily diverted for an extra hour when access to the House would have been quite easy and completely safe, and neither the demonstrations nor our ability to vote in the proceedings of Parliament would have been disrupted? Perhaps a little more understanding from the police is needed, as well as sometimes politeness, to help us on our way in to the House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was not aware of that. Again, that will be fed back as well as we can. We have been trying to send noble Lords information as far in advance as possible if it is likely that Carriage Gates are to be blocked and to advise them whether there will be access in and out through Black Rod’s Garden Entrance or whether they would do better to attempt to come over Lambeth Bridge, for example, than Westminster Bridge. We are doing our best in these circumstances.

Our police do very well to maintain access to this House. Nevertheless, it is part of the principle of our democratic life that we should invite people in as often as possible. This is supposed to be an open democracy and an open society. We ask the police to do a difficult job in maintaining that balance.

Business of the House

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Timing of Debates

11:36

Tabled by

[Lord Strathclyde]

That the debates on the motions in the names of Lord Pendry and Baroness Thornton set down for today shall each be limited to two and a half hours.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde I beg to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Motion agreed.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Republic of Indonesia) Order 2010

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Codes A, B and D) Order 2010

Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 (Designation of Participating Countries) (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Order 2010

Export Control (Amendment) (No. 3) Order

Motion to Refer to Grand Committee

11:36

Tabled by

[Lord Strathclyde]

That the orders be referred to a Grand Committee.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, and with the leave of the House, I beg to move the next four Motions standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Motion agreed.

Sport: Health and Well-being of Children and Young People

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Debate

11:37

Moved By

[Lord Pendry]

To call attention to the role of sport in the health and wellbeing of children and young people; and to move for papers.

[Lord Pendry]

My Lords, this is a timely debate. By now, the House will be under no illusion that feeling is running high in the sporting world on the issue of the run-down of money for school sport in this country. Last Wednesday, in the other place, it was clear from the Opposition Benches and from some Members from the coalition Benches that there are grave doubts about the wisdom of these sad proposals of the Government. Clearly, the Secretary of State has little or no knowledge of the importance of sport. I hope that he and this Government will reflect on the damage that they will cause if they go ahead with these ill thought through, unfair and disruptive measures. As my honourable friend in another place, Andy Burnham, so eloquently pointed out, Mr Gove has never cared much for sport. As a schoolboy, his school report suggested that he was not one for the playing fields. It now appears that, in government, he plans to impose his feelings on the children of today.

Let me take obesity rates as a starting point. The Government’s own Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has expressed his grave doubts over obesity, particularly in young people. As I stated in a previous debate, that is a concern that I undoubtedly share. In fact, the National Health Service information centre report on obesity published last year states that 30 per cent of girls between the ages of two and 15 and 31 per cent of boys of the same age are classed as overweight. Furthermore, 16 per cent of the girls and 17 per cent of the boys are obese. Such worrying figures directly cost the NHS some £500 million per year, with a further £2 billion in costs to the wider economy. The worst projection of recent trends suggests that 75 per cent of the population will be suffering from the ill effects of excess weight within the next 15 years. Surely if we are serious about tackling these crippling statistics, one of the key initiatives must be school sport, yet by removing opportunities for young people to partake in regular sport, these problems will only worsen rather than improve. Sport offers young people a focus and a discipline to help them develop as individuals within communities.

The proposed Government measures run counter to the pledge that we would have a legacy following the 2012 London Olympic Games. It is clear that school sport partnerships must play a central role in such an aspiration. After all, as the noble Lord, Lord Coe, said at the time that we won the bid for the Games at Singapore,

“Give London the Games and we will inspire millions of young people to choose sport”.

In view of the Government’s approach to sporting provision, I doubt that he could make that promise today.

Since the announcement that the Government are to slash the budget for school sport partnerships from £162 million to £10 million, the response from head teachers, schoolchildren and some of the country’s leading sports stars has been little short of overwhelming in its condemnation. In a letter to the Prime Minister, 80 of the country’s top athletes, including Tessa Sanderson, Denise Lewis and James DeGale, expressed their support for SSPs. However, it is not only our elite athletes who are protesting. I would like to refer to a young lady who has contacted me after discovering that the SSP in her area will no longer be funded. Her name is Debbie Foote. She is 17 years of age and chair of the national young ambassador steering group, which is a group of young people who aim to inspire their peers to choose sport and take up a healthy, active lifestyle through the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games. I quote from a message that she sent to me:

“Through the support of my SSP, I have been able to fulfill my journey with fantastic opportunities and experiences, such as organising world record skipping and hooping events and delivering presentations and workshops to various sporting bodies. I have developed skills such as confidence, time management, leadership, teamwork, communication and responsibility that have provided me with clear aims and a pathway; they have set me up for the rest of my life. I fully believe that these skills have supported my academic development (achieving 11A Stars at G.C.S.E. and 4 A grades at AS level)”.

Indeed, Debbie goes on to say:

“I don’t want other young people to miss out on these experiences and miss out on the chance to fulfill their potential. I believe the SSPs to be so much more than just sport; they enable the development of young people, encouraging them to see beyond themselves to think about the welfare of their peers and inspire them in turn to be the best they can be. This surely only provides hope for the ‘Big Society’ the coalition government wishes to create”.

If the big society is to mean anything at all, surely it must encompass the aims of the school sport partnerships.

With the support of the Youth Sport Trust, the school sport partnerships have delivered on every participation target set for young people. Not only that, the SSPs provide a model that is highly regarded across the world. As was pointed out in the debate in the other place, the Australian sports commissioner has asked how this country could possibly dismantle a “world-leading” school sports system. At the same time, the chief executive of the Canadian Olympic Committee has personally written to the Secretary of State to ask how we can take such steps backwards so close to a home Olympics. It should also be pointed out that New Zealand has expressed its support and is, indeed, eager to learn from our programme. The respect of the programme from other countries has been earned, due to the positive changes in school sport.

When referring to youth sport in this country and, indeed, worldwide, both Houses would agree that the leading voice on the issue over the years has been the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Loughborough. No doubt she will speak for herself in this debate but I wish to place on record my appreciation, which I know is shared by thousands of sportsmen and women, for her tireless support for sport in this country, in particular her devotion to school and youth sport.

I also want to bring to the attention of the House the value of school sport partnerships, not only within schools but across the wider community. The impact can be seen from the number of children taking part, which has risen dramatically. From 2006 to 2009, a further 600,000 young people have taken part in extra-curricular activities. All of that has been further helped by the increased support of the national governing bodies countrywide. Even the LTA is, at long last, on board and is now making a substantial investment in tennis in schools by providing free equipment and by training teachers in more than 8,000 state schools since the start of 2009.

An example of the excellent work being done comes from the Lancaster area, where James McNally is a tennis coach. Two years ago, he quit his office job and began coaching full time. Since then, he has received the full support of his SSP and provides hundreds of local children with the opportunity to play tennis. It is his legitimate fear that, because of the proposed budget cuts in schools, he will no longer be able to work and those hundreds of children will lose their opportunity to play tennis.

Another young lady, Laura Cummings, who is the competitions manager for Tameside schools sports partnership, informs me that 10 years ago, while attending a mainstream school where she was a high academic achiever, she was discouraged by teachers—even her head teacher—from taking PE in order to concentrate on more academic subjects so that she could pursue a career in medicine, science or business. Fortunately, she believed strongly in what sport had to offer the world and she achieved great academic grades at both school and college. She achieved five A* grades at GCSE level and four A grades at A-level before going on to study sports science at Loughborough University. Her story gives a true reflection of the way in which the great majority of teachers view sport, which is a view that will dramatically return if the Secretary of State is left to undo all the hard work that school sport partnerships have achieved.

In answer to the Secretary of State’s belief that sport should be at the discretion of head teachers—many of whom, although by no means all, care not a jot about sport and will encourage pure academic achievement alone by dispersing the allocation of funds to non-sporting events—Laura Cummings would testify that Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council has a very enterprising approach to sport. The council is rightly considered to be one of the best in the country for sporting provision. The New Charter Academy schools sports partnership in Tameside should be congratulated on its approach to sport within its boundaries. Laura Cummings informs me that, since 2005, there has been: a 28 per cent increase in the number of pupils accessing high-quality inter-school competition; a 24 per cent increase in the number of pupils accessing high-quality intra-school competition; a 20 per cent increase in the amount of primary curriculum time allocated to PE and sport; a 9 per cent increase in the number of pupils participating in community clubs; an 8 per cent increase in the number of pupils actively engaged in leadership opportunities; and more than 750 teachers and school support staff accessing accredited PE training courses.

The Secretary of State’s statement that school sport partnerships have not been successful in increasing the number of competitive opportunities for pupils is a complete nonsense. The introduction of SSPs in Tameside has proved that. It has 9,732 pupils with inter-school competition and 4,906 pupils with intra-school competition. All this was achieved since the new charter for school sport partnership was set up. If this represents the opportunities from a single partnership, imagine how great the impact has been through 450 school sport partnerships. For instance, in Greater Manchester alone last year, more than 40,000 competitive opportunities were provided by competition managers and the school sport partnerships network in priority national governing body sports.

The Government have shown that they do not understand, or perhaps even care, about the importance of sport and its enormous value and fun. Sport has been one of the defining features of my life. It has helped me to reach this place. It has shaped my life in a way that I could never have imagined when I laced up my first pair of football boots or first stepped into the boxing ring. With a single stroke of a pen, the Government have set out to deprive future generations of that same chance. The Prime Minister has requested the Secretary of State to rethink; if he does not rethink, he should be moved on.

11:52

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for initiating the debate. His dedication to sport and what it offers is widely acknowledged. I have seen him many times at the Conservative Party conference championing the cause of sport.

We all recognise the great number of benefits that sport provides children and young people—and, let us not forget, those who are somewhat older too. Participating in sport not only gives young people the opportunity to expend the abundance of energy they have, but also plays a major role in developing key skills needed for future life. Learning how to be part of a team, self-discipline, how to experience winning and losing, dealing with challenges and setting goals are only some of the many skills acquired through participating in sport.

For these reasons, I welcome the Government’s proposals that there should be an emphasis on competitive sport within schools. I also agree that school leaders should be trusted to make decisions about school sports. As the Secretary of State has said, with giving schools this new freedom he expects that every school will maintain, as a minimum, the current levels of provision for PE and sport each week for every pupil.

We should remember that not all children are academic; some are talented in other directions. With these new freedoms, school leaders can use sport as a principal way of getting children and young people outdoors, which can have a positive role in improving children’s physical, mental and behavioural well-being. An increasing amount of research confirms this. We have one of the finest outdoor environments in the world and families, community groups and schools can capitalise on the thousands of acres of publicly available land that we have in this country for outdoor sport. Sport in the countryside, such as walking, cycling, fishing and riding, I am told, can burn up 380 calories per hour. Better to burn these calories there than in the high street.

There are many other outdoor sports projects which provide the benefits that I have just outlined. However, I draw your Lordships’ attention to Fishing for Schools, an outdoor educational sports programme about which I have some knowledge. Fishing for Schools is a project run by the Countryside Alliance Foundation, a charity set up in 2007. I declare an indirect interest as a board member of the Countryside Alliance. The aim of Fishing for Schools is to teach children the skills of fishing and, in doing so, allow them to explore and enjoy other areas within the natural world. The project offers short courses for children between the ages of 14 and 16, often those with special educational needs and often those based in urban schools. Fishing for Schools not only gives young people the opportunity to fish and learn a sport for life, but also helps to teach them life skills that will serve them well in later years. The programme is taught by one of the country’s finest fishermen, Charles Jardine, and over the past year more than 400 youngsters of varying abilities have benefited from it. Fishing for Schools has received positive and uplifting feedback from teachers, students and people in the media who have experienced the programme at first hand.

Robson Green, actor and presenter of channel Five's “Extreme Fishing” programme, congratulated the foundation because, as he put it:

“Fishing for Schools really can make a difference".

Likewise, a teacher noted that, after completing the Fishing for Schools course, a pupil, had improved in confidence, was more motivated in school and talked endlessly about what he had learned. He had been suffering from bullying and was in trouble, but since participating in the course he had worked hard, been positive, behaved well and was a more mature and sensible young man.

However, the best advocates for Fishing for Schools are the children who participate. On one recent course an autistic child was so engaged by Charles Jardine’s demonstration that he talked to him about what he had experienced. This was the first time he had ever spoken to anyone outside his family. I believe that such a successful outcome speaks for itself.

Often when we talk and think about the impact of sport, we focus on major sports and how they can be supported, and how future sports stars and Olympians can be trained. This is of course very important not only for those participating but also for national morale. Taking part in a range of sporting activities, which enhance the lives of young people, increase their self-esteem and provide a sense of purpose, has an enormous role to play in a child's development. We should do all that we can to create a climate and the opportunities in which regular participation in sports is encouraged and promoted. In this computer age, should we not see sport as a subject? We should regret profoundly, over many years, the sale of playing fields. In addition, should we not see the academic and physical education of young people as a partnership, as we all seek to do the best that we can for the next generation?

11:58

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Pendry on securing this debate. I think it is very timely, particularly because this week, for the first time in history, we have seen children demonstrating for the right to participate in sport. This is a fantastic thing to see.

I also declare an interest. My sister-in-law, Leslie Shepherd, is a school sports co-ordinator in the north-east, so I have a personal insight which I would like to bring to the debate today. I would like to register my concern about two key issues and ask the Minister two questions which I think are important.

First, I am deeply concerned about the process that the Government have adopted in deciding to cut support for the school sport partnerships. The school sport partnerships are populated by people who are literally the most solution-focused and dynamic I have come across. Therefore, can the Minister explain why the Youth Sport Trust and the school sport partnerships were not given the opportunity to develop proposals that would address the concerns expressed by the Secretary of State for Education in his now notorious letter of 20 October; namely, that he wanted to see more competitive sport and less red tape? Why was there not an opportunity there? To abolish the partnerships and the dedicated fund, and only then to think about what to do about the gap left behind and about what the impact on the Olympic legacy might be, seems reckless to me. It seems irresponsible and really quite destructive.

The right honourable Andy Burnham, the shadow Secretary of State for Education in the other place, has recognised that if he were in government he would have had to have brought about cuts to school sports, but he has also been responsible and clear in saying that he would have worked hard to conserve the infrastructure and expertise that enable school sport networks and partnerships to be created and to thrive.

My second concern is the perhaps rather naive idea on the part of the Government that the enormous investment in and commitment to the school sports infrastructure could be replaced by the creation of a schools Olympiad. There has been for some time a national school sport competition, and I do not think that it is an either/or situation. It is the school sport partnerships that are bringing the Olympic message to schools throughout England, and it is they that have been working tirelessly to embed an Olympic legacy in the hearts, the minds and, yes, the healthy bodies of our young people.

I have been privileged to see at first hand the work undertaken by one such partnership and its school sports co-ordinator over the past 18 months to bring together her community to create the Redcar and Cleveland Olympics, culminating, it was hoped, in the national sports week in 2012. The plan was for all PE staff and the school sport partnership to run a programme of competitions after school, involving all the usual sports that the Secretary of State wanted to see—rugby, football, netball, hockey; you name it, they were going about making it happen. They wanted to have this programme of competitions over the whole academic year, and it was to be launched in September 2011 as the Redcar and Cleveland school Olympiad.

There was to be a proper pilot beforehand to iron out any glitches. Events would have been run in partnership with local clubs, something that we have all argued is a good thing, with the support of national governing bodies, which again is something that we have all been arguing is an important development to ensure that the transition from school to lifelong sport can be made. There would have been a strong sense of competition but an ethos of building participation too. The results of all the interschool matches were to be added to a medal table, and then in national school sports week there would be the big event. The year’s activity would have culminated in a county-wide week-long Olympiad, starting with a torch procession running through the streets of Redcar and Cleveland, with an opening ceremony in each school and FE college and then a day of interschool competitions for each year, with each school providing a minimum of 50 pupils. Tees Valley Leisure facilities were to be provided, and all the venues were to be made available by the local authority. The extended schools programme was adding £10,000 of funding to cover all the transport, something that can be very difficult to co-ordinate, giving head teachers confidence that their investment of their teachers’ time would be well spent. There was a real buzz about the idea of the Olympiad. There was interest from local business and, importantly, endorsement from the London 2012 Inspire programme, so that all those participating would know that the London Olympics was their Olympics too even though they lived in the north-east.

To make this Olympiad happen, though, there needed to be someone to drive it forward, with the know-how to catalyse a network of contacts in all the schools around the county as well as all the volunteers who run the clubs—remember, they do their day jobs too—and the sports development people in the local authority. There needed to be someone who could garner the support of national sporting bodies and local businesses and, of course, who could win the confidence of those important head teachers. That person was a school sports co-ordinator, working in a school sport partnership that is soon to become extinct. The whole project now hangs in the balance.

The Redcar and Cleveland school Olympiad might be symbolic of the future of school sport around the country. While the Government prevaricate about what to do about school sport, momentum is being lost. My second question is therefore: can the Minister explain what the Government will do to ensure that the work of school sports co-ordinators continues? These are the people on the front line who make the competitions—which the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, says are so important—happen.

12:05

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I have been talking about sport in your Lordships’ House for a long time and have a great deal of baggage about it. However, one thing I am convinced about is that we should not worry too much about the name of a group that delivers any sport. If we have to get rid of the existing structure, the name of the structure does not matter. It is what is done on the ground that is important. If the good legacy that is currently there is to be kept, do not worry about the next change. The questions that my noble friend must start answering today are how we are going to preserve what has been good, and how we build on it.

Let us face facts. School is only a part of this process. It may not be the best part of the process. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, put his finger squarely on this: schools are academic institutions, primarily judged by academic results. This is why things have slipped in the past. There is a messy history of unintended consequences for activity in education. We need to hear how that is guarded against and structured into any new set up. We need to ensure that we use school-time sport to build up a foundation for what goes on. It is easy to forget that the important thing about child sport is that it prepares people for an active life later on, and helps that step to become much easier. It also helps to improve the links between the amateur sports clubs, which are the main driving force for physical activity and sport in this country.

We are not currently in a nirvana; we are just stepping away from one. We may be in a place that is better than it was, but it could be better. We must look at, go through and try to keep the best, and enhance where it is going.

One thing that the coalition has spoken about is that the clubs are always being held back by red tape to an extent, but also by insensitive and inappropriate bits of regulation: CRB checks that are not transferable, and the weight of regulations for bars which would be more appropriate for nightclubs. If we can ensure that they are freed up, we can then being them in and ask them to do some of what has not been done, or even to replace some of the work that has been done. It is another model. It is not that what has gone before is bad, or wholly good. It is simply another way of delivering the same stuff.

The real complaint is that we have not heard enough about how we set up something new. If we can hear about that, I will become much less worried. There will be winners and losers with any change. It is about ensuring that we have an idea of what is to be done. We have not quite heard that yet, and I encourage my noble friend to start telling us about this today if we are to move on and build on the legacy of the past few years.

The Olympics has fundamentally changed the tone of the sporting debate in this country. We take it seriously now. Anybody who has been involved in it knows that there was a sea change when we decided that the political class would combine together to take sport seriously. We have worked in the fact that the White Paper on public health refers to sport and exercise. Previous ones have, too. It interrelates with everything else we do. It is almost impossible to deliver in many other aspects if we ignore exercise, health and sport. Establishing patterns with the young is a very important part. I have a set few minutes in any speech about punching through the Chinese walls in Whitehall; we will take it as read this time. Unless we can have some idea about how we get all parts to come and talk together, what will happen with school sport? This ties in with the rest of the things here. We have now established that aspirin may be a good drug. However, exercise is the wonder drug for public health. We know that. How will we tie everything in? How will we establish these patterns of behaviour? How will we encourage those who do it voluntarily?

Publicly funded outside bodies are a way of delivering some of these changes; they are not the only way. Some people will say that I put too much emphasis on clubs. Sometimes the school is the only delivery mechanism available for people at certain ages. This is probably true. However, we must bear in mind the continuation and flow through. What happens at school age is the start, not the end, of the process. However, if you mess up the base—the foundation—the rest of it will be more difficult.

12:12

[Lord Brookman]

My Lords, I add my support to my noble friend Lord Pendry, someone who, by the way—many of you will not know—has spent all his political life dealing, both in the other place as a Minister and here in this House, promoting sport both in general and as a basic requirement for the wellbeing of children and young people. My noble friend Lord Pendry is exemplary in this respect. Sport is vital in this country. We all know about it, about the test victory the other week and how brilliant that was and about how disappointed we all were when we did not get the World Cup. Is not sport in schools—for children and young people—of utmost importance to us all?

My noble friend Lord Pendry mentioned the debate last week in another place, which I thought was brilliantly handled by Andy Burnham, MP for Leigh. Together with many other MPs, he congratulated the Youth Sport Trust and school sport partnerships as being responsible for achieving major advances in youth sport over the last decade. This is a fact that cannot be hidden. The advancement has been quite remarkable because of those two organisations. However, the coalition Government defeated the Motion that was put before the other place overwhelmingly—which has not been mentioned yet. It seems to me that the Government want to end what they refer to as ringfenced funding and allow schools to decide how best to teach and develop young people. The enormous amount of money that has been cut has been mentioned. People are worried about it.

There are some 450 school sport partnerships in being, covering every school in the country. My reading of that situation is that they have been a very strong success story. In this respect they should continue to fulfil the job of ensuring our children and future generations enjoy sport and, as a consequence, have a healthier lifestyle facing them. I sincerely hope that the Prime Minister means it when he states that he will reflect on the Government’s approach to school sport. Leaving school sport partnerships to further build on their success would be welcomed in this House and across the country.

12:14

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I am involved in many areas of sport in the UK: Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, Sports Leaders UK, UK Athletics, LOCOG and International Inspiration. I have previously sat on the Sports Council for Wales, Sport England and UK Sport, and have also worked as a development officer in the late 1990s.

There are many ways in which we can engage young people, whether it be through participating in sport, sports leadership, coaching or officiating. However, it is also important to remember that this should be done both inside and outside school. It is easy to equate sporting opportunity for young people with schools as this is where their friends are, the facilities and the trained people to deliver. School also provides a pragmatic way of focusing resources to have a real impact, but we should not forget parents, governing bodies and non-sporting organisations such as youth groups which can help play their part. Part of the difficulty is that we may all have different ideas of what sport means. Many may not have had a great experience of school sport. Who can remember undertaking cross-country runs in gym knickers or being picked last for the school team? However, this should not affect what is happening now. We all have a responsibility to ensure that our next generation of young people, and ourselves, are fit, healthy and happy. I readily accept that competitive sport is not for all. The size of the Paralympics GB team is around 300. Even if we consider the talent pyramid beneath that, hundreds of thousands of children are outside that and need our support.

There are three areas that we need to look at to encourage young people to reach their potential: participation, whether that is in the form of playing, dancing and enjoying the outdoors and the joys and benefits that being active can bring; experiencing competition and endeavouring to win, but with a sense of balance; or competitive sport and striving to be selected for the team. This is where high-profile events such as the Olympics and Paralympics can inspire people. However, we also have to recognise that the issues are complicated; there is not one solution. Whether you are a boy or a girl, where you live, whether you are disabled and parental income all have an impact on what you can do. Where are we now? We know that female drop-off in sport starts earlier than male drop-off and is more dramatic. By 16, girls are half as likely as boys to meet recommended levels of exercise. Girls think that sports traditionally played by boys, such as rugby and football, are seen by society to be more important than sports played by girls. The Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation has reported that 80 per cent of women do not do enough exercise beyond school to be considered healthy.

From recent data from the Department for Education’s PE and Sport Survey 2009-10, we know that those children in rural areas are more likely to participate in at least three hours of PE and school sport than those in urban areas. The highest performing schools tend to have fewer pupils who are eligible for free school meals, although this is changing rapidly. In the lowest performing schools there is a higher proportion of pupils with special educational needs. What are the risks of not getting this right? We need only look to the USA—I recognise that the numbers are different, but possibly not the percentages—to see what we can expect in the future unless we radically change what we do.

The following data are from the Get Set survey. Up to September 2009, $2 billion had been eliminated from after-school sports programmes. A study of Los Angeles county showed that school communities with more extra-curricular sport activities had drastically lower crime rates than those with fewer programmes. The ratio was 1:18. The cost of losing one child to a life of crime is estimated to be between $1.4 million and $1.7 million. Some 9 million young adults are too overweight to join the military, according to an April 2010 report from retired officers, Mission Readiness. That represents 27 per cent of all Americans aged 17 to 24. The US military spends $60 million annually on recruiting and training replacements for first-term enlistees discharged due to weight problems. One in three young Americans are overweight, obese, or at risk of becoming so, and the obesity epidemic costs $147 billion annually in extra healthcare. In the UK, obesity costs the NHS £8.2 billion a year, and that figure could rise to £46 billion in 2050.

Evidence suggests that spending money now on sports helps to save money later. For example, the cost-benefit analysis of typical after-school programmes for at-risk children shows that each dollar invested returns between $8.92 and $12.90, which is 1,000 per cent return on average.

Participation in sports can also be correlated with positive lifelong indicators of health and of academic and social success. However, I am done with the gloom—on the positive side, there are significant data from the UK to show that young people who participate in sport are more confident, better able to learn, more physically developed and build friendships. I do not believe it is a coincidence that the specialist sports colleges have been show to be the fastest improving, if you judge by academic measures such as GCSE pass rates.

For a few examples: in the school sport partnership where I live in the north-east of England, they offer basketball, cricket, dance programmes, street Latin, early morning pilates, fencing, cycling proficiency, quicksticks—a version of hockey—artistic gymnastics, yoga, judo and Thai boxing. The list could go on and on. It is a far cry from hockey in winter and athletics in summer. For many, it is the first club they belong to, and so much better than a gang.

Sports Leaders UK expect to train 180,000 sports leaders in 2010/11, who will be trained in schools, FE colleges, higher education institutions and youth and community settings. In the next three years, this will lead to over a million hours of volunteer-led sports activity. Just a few miles from here in Newham, Fight for Peace is an international non-profit organisation that started in the favelas of Rio and then came to London, which provides real alternatives for children and youth in disadvantaged communities, dealing with crime, drug dealing and organised armed violence by using sport and education. I could list so many more organisations that change young people’s lives by using sport.

What do we need for the future? In my time, I have sat through many Sports Council reorganisations, various changes in policies and land-grabbing, and I ask that we do not throw out all the good work that has been done to see what still needs to be done. In sport, there is bureaucracy and political culture which needs to be worked on. I believe we need still to work more with primary school PE teachers, many of whom are not trained as PE or sports specialists, who need assistance in running physical activity sessions. We need to keep working with secondary school teachers, and also engage in more sports leadership. We also know that there is a gap in provision for disabled children.

However, we also need to think more widely. Some projects I have seen internationally engage with the mums, teaching them how to play so that they then encourage their daughters and allow them to carry on participating. We in sport need to be much better at putting the case for why sport is important, because it does make a difference, and the figures are there. This is challenging and there are no easy fixes, but improvements will not happen on their own. There is a need to provide a sustainable physical education structure in schools, and support ideas of what to do outside that will benefit children, parents and society. Surely this should be part of our Olympic and Paralympic legacy. Our children deserve it.

12:22

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My noble friend Lord Pendry—and a very good friend too—has done this House a real service by raising this issue today.

My remarks have been preceded by a fascinating and informative speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, whose prowess we much admire. We are very glad that we can count her among our number. I am also glad that this debate is being wound up by my noble friend Lady Billingham and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, both of whom I count among my friends today.

The coalition Government have a remarkable proclivity to say one thing and do another. That is exemplified by their approach to the forthcoming Olympics and Paralympics. Young people have always been at the heart of the Labour Party’s thinking, and that is absolutely true regarding the preparation for the Olympics. It is particularly disappointing that the Government have declined to put themselves squarely behind the imaginative ideas that have guided the Labour Party towards its thinking about the Olympics. I say that not as a case of sour grapes, or of political hostility for the sake of it. Indeed, I would have been among the first to have applauded the Government had they reached a more positive conclusion regarding young people and the Olympics. Labour in government tried manfully to apply more hopeful criteria. More young people than ever were becoming eligible through sport in our schools to enjoy sporting facilities that for too long had been virtually the sole property of private schools.

Our constructive approach began to work. Unbelievably, it has been replaced by what I can only call an ideological and verbal dexterity, and little else. However, there emerged indications of public displeasure—even anger—about the approach of the Government, and stubborn governmental minds began, albeit slowly, to change. It is not too late to hope that this process will have an abiding effect on the Government. The £162 million cut in the school sport partnership programme, the SSPP, together with cuts designed to hit the specialist sports colleges, could end up in the dustbin of failed policies.

Why inflict unnecessary damage in the first place? It is never too late to have a change of heart. The alternative of sticking to the Government’s ideas is too grim to contemplate, particularly at this juncture. To think that existing schools’ budgets could fund sport is wholly impracticable, as is uncertainty concerning implementation. To muse, as has been the habit of the coalition, that specialist colleges can choose to pay for their specialism out of the big pot that they receive from the dedicated schools grant is simply illusory.

The Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, has certainly changed his mind. When in opposition, he supported the Labour Government’s ideas; but in government, he does the exact opposite. Innumerable opponents of the coalition, who are in no way limited to the Labour Party, have fulminated against this damaging reversal. On 22 April this year—not long ago—Hugh Robertson said:

“There has never been a more important time for school sport, and the Olympic legacy must have school sport at its heart”.

He was right then, and it is right now that we should pursue that policy.

12:28

[The Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the subject of sport in schools is currently an emotive one and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for initiating this debate, which is important for every pupil who aspires to sports of any kind. We are at a crossroads.

It is not just desirable but vital that sport flourishes in schools where it prevails, and is developed where little or none exists. The arguments in favour of the additional benefits of sport, beyond nurturing sporting skills, have been well rehearsed; sport encourages healthy competition and promotes teamwork and camaraderie as a life skill. There are, of course, strong links to health—from increasing pupil self-esteem to decreasing obesity rates—with the potential for a reduction in demand over the long term for the NHS.

I start with the reality—the premise that I support the Government in their necessary strategy to dig deep to repay the huge debts inherited from the previous Government. Let us not forget that the CSR highlighted the protection of the schools budget, which will increase in real terms at a rate of 0.1 per cent per year. The network of school sport partnerships, led by the Youth Sport Trust, has been achieved—but at a substantial cost. The infrastructure includes 450 partnership development managers, 225 competition managers, 11 regional development managers and three national development managers, who work alongside the members of the governing body for each sport. There is undoubtedly some bureaucracy here, as exemplified in the school sport partnerships’ “self-review tool”, which contains 115 boxes to tick. This is clipboard management, as opposed to time spent on coaching, training and inspiring sport on the pitch or track, or in the pool.

This may explain why £2.4 billion was spent on school sports between 2003 and 2010, but there was only a 20 per cent take-up on average in competitive sports. There has been considerable variation around the country, as the statistics demonstrate. There are 1,280 secondary schools—one-third of the total—in which no pupils take part in regular competitive sport within the school, let alone with other schools, yet there are 320 schools where all pupils regularly take part. There has to be improvement, better value for money and greater consistency. However, it is less wise to cancel the budget over such a short timescale. I hope to hear that the Government will have a rethink. It is unrealistic to expect all schools to source funds for school sport out of the protected schools budget. The only guarantee is that the 6 million pupils who currently play no competitive sport will continue not to do so.

Where there are successful partnerships, it is unwise at best, and foolhardy at worst, to endanger the infrastructures that have been set up with up to 200,000 volunteers. Some may wither and die. Many people are dedicated to improving sport in schools, and they should be applauded. Where there has been a 100 per cent take-up, there is no doubt that it has been the result of extraordinary efforts by the schools and their teachers, and the communities, including parents.

Maximum continuing encouragement must be given to all primary and secondary schools to play sport, especially in poor areas where facilities are minimal and obesity rates are high. Surely it is better to argue that funding will be withdrawn or substantially reduced, if necessary over an agreed timescale and with a three-year time limit, to take account of different local sports infrastructures and funding, in order to allow time for schools and communities to review their partnership structures and finances. As outlined by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education, this process should be led by the heads of schools, but what if they are unwilling to prioritise this, or they say that they are not able or are not going to allocate funds? What steps are being taken to advise and incentivise head teachers to ensure that in future they commence, maintain or improve school sports activities? For example, should the Government adopt a fund-matching scheme, with every pound found for sport by a school outside its budget being matched by government, or perhaps with a different ratio?

In agreeing with the granting of greater autonomy to head teachers, I believe that there will be a requirement actively to manage them through the process to approach philanthropists and local businesses to support school sports. The role of parents in sport should not be underestimated as an obvious source of practical help, both in helping to supervise sports where their own children are involved and in effecting introductions for help in schools through their work or communities. I am aware that in the poorest areas this is much less likely to happen, and schools may be reduced to receiving help sourced only from local businesses or benefactors. There is also the question of whether there are playing fields in the first place.

Schools in which sport is prevalent are more likely to attract high-quality teachers. Sport is known to improve behaviour in the classroom, with teachers in these schools seeking involvement in sports coaching. Funding for sports may have to continue well beyond the spring of 2011 in areas where there is a danger of networks of volunteers built up over the past decade ceasing to exist.

There has been much debate, in particular resulting from the CSR, about legacies left to our children and grandchildren. We would have much to answer for if the “Interests” section of the CVs of our young read “going to the cinema” or “seeing my friends” rather than “cricket”, “rugby”, “football”, “captained my team” or, even better, “represented my country at the Olympics”. We must do more.

12:35

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, I will speak about one particular sport that has in the past and will in future benefit the health and well-being of our young people. I speak of cycling. My family and I have cycled for years. We took our children on cycling holidays and we now cycle with our grandchildren. Cycling has certainly grown in popularity and esteem among young people, particularly in the past couple of years, because success at the Beijing Olympics has made it cool.

My wife and I have become heroes to our grandchildren, because in 2010 we will have ridden more miles by bike than we have driven in our car—albeit with a little electrical pedal assistance. Knowing his generosity of spirit, I am sure that my noble friend will not mind my joining the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, in mentioning sport for older people in his debate about sport for young people. I am sure that the Minister, too, will be delighted to hear about it: after all, her leader and deputy leader are cyclists.

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, mentioned box ticking. Cycling ticks all the boxes in the coalition agreement—and I mean all. Does it save the planet? Yes—tick. Getting people out of their cars and on to their bikes to travel long and short journeys reduces pollution by particulates. It also reduces congestion. Both these reductions improve air quality, which we urgently need to do because in some parts of Britain it has fallen below EU minimum standards, and this makes us liable to hefty fines. Are noble Lords aware that some streets are being washed with a mixture of salt and vinegar to remove particulates that each year cause several thousand premature deaths?

By the next box is the question: does cycling improve health? Yes—tick. The Government's recent paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, is full of support for the idea that exercise such as cycling helps reduce obesity, heart disease and related illnesses. My noble friend Lord Pendry gave us the numbers. Consequently, it improves longevity and well-being. The beauty of cycling is that it has an attraction all of its own. It certainly does not need the stealthy techniques of behavioural science to get us on our bikes. Perhaps this is what is meant by the paper when it states:

“Reframing the concept of exercise as a fun and positive game taps into salience, while rewards and the social aspect strongly incentivise a change in behaviour”.

Perhaps the Minister can translate that; obviously, the Prime Minister's behavioural insight team is at work. Frankly, it seems pretty feeble when compared with the practical work done during the past 10 years, some of which was described by my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis, in such schemes as the school sport partnerships programme, described by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. These schemes get children doing two or more hours of sport a week. I hope that the Minister will listen to the arguments of my noble friend Lord Pendry, and all other noble Lords who have spoken, about why that work should continue, and forget the gobbledegook, which I find rather sinister.

By the next box is the question: is it good for the economy? The answer is yes. Cycling is growing not only as a sport but as a form of non-polluting tourism that helps rural economies. Cycle tourism attracts investment from the private sector, from local authorities and from European structural funds. It helps to create welcome employment in many rural areas. The C2C route has certainly encouraged tourism in the north Pennines, as any noble Lord who has done that route will confirm. Only today, during Question Time, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, quoted, as an example of an important piece of growth in the economy, the rise in the manufacture of bikes in this country.

Cycling also attracts high-tech investment, not only in new materials for lighter and better bikes but in the batteries for electrically-assisted bikes. Battery technology is a huge growth area in the green economy, and there is a growing market in lithium ion batteries and metal hydride batteries, which are being developed and produced in Britain not just for bicycles but mainly for the many applications where batteries replace carbon fuel.

The question by the next box is: is there a government body that supports and organises all this excellent work? There was. Cycling England has an annual budget of £60 million, which is match-funded by local authorities. It is the government body that is largely responsible for promoting and facilitating cycle use in this country. The first six towns and cities in which it has concentrated on improving cycling showed an average 27 per cent increase in cycling. It has also helped to attract structural funds from Europe and from cycle manufacturers.

The next question asks: has it been abolished? Yes, tick, even though its administrative budget was less than £200,000 a year because some of the work was done by enthusiastic volunteers. Presumably, in the name of political correctness and ideology there will be no more ring-fenced central grants for cycling in England, except for a small amount for cycle training. Meanwhile, its work is on hold and the European structural funds are still in Brussels.

I look forward to hearing the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, chair of the Youth Sport Trust. As a taster, perhaps I may quote from her letter of 29 October to the Minister’s right honourable friend Michael Gove, the letter to which my noble friend Lady Morgan referred. It says that the trust:

“is also committed to ensuring that those young people who do not enjoy team sports are provided with opportunities to engage in an activity that they can pursue throughout their lifetime. This investment in young people's wellbeing, as well as their sporting prowess, is essential to a healthy nation and a vibrant economy”.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I ask the Minister to please tick one more box for us, the box marked, “Made a mistake, will think again”.

12:43

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I am honoured to be taking part in this important debate, as it concentrates on two issues close to my heart: children and sport. Both, if nurtured, will bring joy and happiness to the world. Many people in our society realise that world-class athletes would never have discovered their talents if they had not been introduced to sport at an early age, especially by sports specialists. As sports men and women become younger and younger and achieve international success, children have to begin participating in sport at as early an age as possible if we are to remain world-class competitors.

This is happening in some parts of our society, but not for all children and young people. Not a day goes by without a mention of the dangers of childhood obesity, as already mentioned by noble Lords on all sides of the House, and of the long-term effects of the lack of exercise on the nation's health, with the resulting impact on healthcare resources. There are other benefits, apart from the benefits to the health and well-being of the nation as a result of sporting participation. For some, sport is an ideal way of harnessing the energy which they may otherwise use less productively, as it brings discipline into their unstructured lives. For children and young people, sport is without doubt a pathway to confidence and self-belief. It gives them a chance to excel and to achieve success. For many of them, participation in sport can open up new horizons and lead to personal development beyond their wildest dreams.

One of our greatest Olympians, Sir Steve Redgrave, often relates the story of how he got into rowing through the enthusiasm of the head of English at his comprehensive school. His wife, Ann, got into the sport of rowing through Charing Cross medical school, where she was chosen because she was tall. She was sitting in the canteen and they picked her. Those are two chance encounters that have had a tremendous impact on both Ann and Steve but have also benefited the entire nation. However, we cannot leave to chance the involvement of children in sport, and the issue is getting the ones not normally enthused or excited by sporting activity to get active.

It remains a fact that many children, for a variety of physical, social and cultural reasons, are unable to participate in sporting activities, and we must make extra efforts in these areas to find ways of giving them the obvious physical and psychological benefits of sport. For example, the inclusion of Muslim girls in physical education has to be sensitive to the needs of the diverse Muslim population. A school in the West Midlands realised that it had to encourage Muslim parents to allow their daughters to take part in PE because many of them were nervous or had reservations about their daughters participating, especially after school. So the school decided to change its PE curriculum to reflect the needs and concerns of parents and their children and offered opportunities to explore cultural diversity, community participation and well-being.

To raise parents' awareness of the importance of PE and school sport, a health and fitness club was set up for mothers during the school day and, later on, children were invited to join them. At the same time parents were consulted on changes to the PE curriculum, highlighting the emphasis on developing learners' skills in communication, listening, problem solving, co-operation and teamwork through PE. Almost all the girls now attend PE lessons regularly, and many also participate in out-of-hours clubs, summer schools and family fun days. By welcoming the challenge of providing PE and school sport that is appropriate for the school's cultural context, it has succeeded in achieving marked improvements in learners' motivation, commitment and enjoyment.

In the past the PE curriculum was prescriptive and weighted towards games activities, but now many schools have had a radical rethink of their curriculum. Pupils now experience a range of activities such as strategies and tactics, creative movement and health, fitness and well-being. The aim is to give children and young people the expertise, knowledge and skills to enable them to make informed decisions in their lives. Teachers have noticed the impact that this has had because students are now learning skills and strategies that help them to achieve in all subjects. They tackle new tasks with greater confidence and they feel empowered. That has been proven over and over again.

We all know that team sports can help children and young people to develop a range of skills as they have to work independently as well as being good team players, which can help them to develop excellent leadership skills when organising and motivating others. It also helps them to develop physical competence and performance to outwit opponents when competing. It goes without saying that sporting activities and exercises help children and young people to improve and strengthen their muscles, develop a deeper understanding of the physiological effects of exercising and develop confidence in order to communicate more effectively, giving them a great sense of achievement.

On a personal note, at school I always loved sporting activities that helped me to excel in others areas of my life. As I took my love for sporting activities into my adult life, which includes running marathons, I have gained huge health benefits by keeping a steady weight and low cholesterol levels, and reducing the risk of high blood pressure and the likelihood of having a stroke, as well as developing skills of endurance and perseverance. This proves to me that childhood lasts a lifetime. What we expose our children to today will stay with them for ever, and that includes a healthy sporting lifestyle, supplied with passion and understanding of their needs and abilities.

I ask my noble friend the Minister what measures are being put in place to ensure today's children will experience the joy and health benefits of sporting activities which they can take with them into adulthood.

12:51

[Lord Hoyle]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Pendry on introducing the debate. There is no doubt about his expertise and knowledge of sport, not only in schools but outside them. It is unfortunate—he would have been the best sports Minister we have ever had. I would have liked to have seen him in that position, and I am sorry he never had it.

The noble Lord, Lord Brookman, was modest in what he said. He could have told us that he was one of the best cricketers in Wales when he was younger, purely because of his experience in school. He could join in sport at school—and he did so.

I declare an interest in that I am president of Warrington Wolves rugby club—

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Hoyle]

Thank you. We have an education department that sends people with expertise to schools and we send our players, which helps to develop the interest of schools in sport generally. It is not just about rugby league; it is about other sports as well.

Everyone who has spoken today, whatever view they have taken, has agreed on one thing: school sport is absolutely essential to all of us. It is good for the health of children and it is good in reducing obesity, about which we talked earlier. Nothing is better than engaging in school sports. That is the way to have healthy children with healthy bodies, and it gives them an interest as well. As the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, said, when we won the Olympics in Singapore, we undertook to inspire young people through sport. I think that is essential.

How have we gone about it? One way was setting up the school sport partnerships in 2000. We should look at what was done and it is right to ask how the Government are going to replace what was done then. They used collaboration between secondary and primary schools—with the secondary school as a hub for the primary school. This meant that you were looking not only at one school but at an area where people could develop their sports activities—not only the school within its curriculum, but the curricula of all the other primary schools in the area.

That led to quite a number of things occurring. In primary schools, it not only encouraged those who loved sport, it was also to encourage children who disliked sport—as my noble friend Lord Haskel indicated in the boxes he was ticking—so they engaged in physical activity. It has been highly successful in that respect, because by doing it in this way, having one school as a hub and covering an area, it enabled a wide variety of sports to be offered. My noble friend Lord Haskel referred to the fact that not only did it offer traditional sports—and he made a plea for cycling—but also other activities, because of the school sport partnerships. Fishing was referred to earlier, also archery, golf, riding and basketball, and that enables more children to participate in different sports. It has been a success story. So I cannot understand why it is being abandoned. It also brought in leadership within the school and leadership within the primary school, with older children being able to encourage younger children to participate—obviously with the supervision of teachers.

As a result, the school sport partnerships have a wide appeal and are working. On 21 November, an editorial in the Observer said of the school sport partnerships system, “it works”. It said that since it became operational,

“the number of children involved in inter-school competitions has increased”—

and I want to emphasise this—

“has increased by 1.63 million; the number involved in competition within schools”.

The Government say they are going to have such competition, but this has already increased by 1.15 million, so success is there. The editorial goes on to say,

“the proportion of children in state schools fulfilling the curriculum requirement of at least two hours’ PE per week increased from 25% to 95%”.

So it has increased from 25 per cent in 2001 when we introduced the school sport partnerships to 95 per cent now. Surely, whichever way you look at that, it is a success story. That is why I cannot understand the Government taking the attitude they are. Unfortunately, while 93 per cent of children are in state schools, this has largely been looked at by Ministers who have had private education. That is the unfortunate aspect of it. I do not think they understand what they are going to destroy, particularly the Secretary of State for Education whose achievements—or lack of achievements—were described by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, earlier.

There have been some protests of course. I understand the Secretary of State for Health was quite upset about what is happening. The Deputy Prime Minister was asked if all the coalition had been involved in taking this decision. I am not sure they were. I want to ask the Minister one pertinent question: the decision has been taken, but has the Secretary of State for Education visited a school sport partnership? My understanding is that he has not visited to see it on the ground, and that is one of the difficulties that we face.

The abolition of the school sport partnerships—which I have described as a success—is a decision that has been taken hastily, is ill-thought-out, and will put the progress that has been made in school sport back a decade.

[Lord Judd]

Does my noble friend agree that in his remarks about the experience of Ministers in the private sector of education—and I am a product of the private sector of education—sport is regarded as absolutely essential to character-building and that many children were preferred because of their sporting abilities as distinct from their academic abilities? If we want to emulate in the state system what is best in the private sector, then we should be determined to see that sport is given the pride of place it should have.

[Lord Hoyle]

I could not agree more with my noble friend. Although he had a private education, he is looking at the wider field. If we are to develop our sports stars of the future and to give people who have not had an interest to take an interest in some sport, we must continue with the school sport partnerships. I thank my noble friend for his support.

12:59

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, first, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Pendry for initiating this debate. As we have heard, he has a notable record as a tireless campaigner for many years on sports issues, and he has today again illustrated how passionately he is committed to that cause.

There are good reasons why this issue is topical today. For me, it is not least because it raises important questions about joined-up government. In fairness, I acknowledge that the previous Government came rather late to that concept, but latterly their track record on co-ordinating action to improve child health was good. We now appear to have gone backwards. Joined-up thinking, co-ordination and partnership are out. Autonomy, independence and individualism are in. That has far-reaching implications for the universal provision of sport and exercise in schools, which underpinned the previous Government's success in this area.

That, of course, brings us to Michael Gove's announcement. Like some of my noble friends, I am interested to know how much liaison there was with his ministerial colleagues in other departments in advance of his decision to downgrade the compulsory features of sports facilities in schools. Did he, for example, consult the Minister for Sport, who described the Youth Sport Trust in 2005 as “a fantastic organisation”, and who argued earlier this year that it would be wrong to dismantle 13 years of hard work carried out by the school sport partnerships? Did he consult the Minister for Public Health, whose recent White Paper identified that,

“children need access to high quality physical education”,

backed by a requirement to provide PE in all maintained schools?

Did he consult the Secretary of State for Health, who is faced with growing statistics of childhood obesity, with the UK now having the highest levels in Europe, and with the associated epidemic of childhood diabetes and cardiovascular disease? Did he consult the Prime Minister, who personally announced that in future the nation's whole progress will be measured by happiness and well-being standards as well as economic indices? Where was the joined-up government thinking on the health and well-being of children, and how is it being rolled out into specific departmental action plans?

Like my noble friend Lord Pendry, I read the debate on school sports held in the other place last week. I was amused by my right honourable friend Andy Burnham's suggestion that Michael Gove's attack on the current sports regime might be some kind of revenge for some unpleasant memories of his sporting experience at school. I am sure that that is not the case, but it raises the question of what his motives really are. Michael Gove's views on the curriculum are well known. He wants to see children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England and the great works of literature, but he also shares the previous Government's ambition to drive up academic standards.

If he had taken a more holistic view of children's education, he would know that exercise has been shown to improve children's exam results and their concentration in lessons. A study in the journal Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology earlier this year reported that children who take vigorous exercise every day boost their mental age by an average of 10 months. In addition, a report from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in 2009 found that physical activity has a motivational impact on children,

“increasing their self-esteem and general wellbeing”,

and helping them,

“to develop essential social skills such as concentration, self discipline, cooperation and an awareness of the need to think of things and people other than themselves”.

Even in Michael Gove's new favourite country, Finland, which has improved academic performance impressively, regular breaks for exercise and a nutritious, free school meal are interspersed with intensive teaching on a daily, universal basis. So even if we shared his narrow objective of raising academic achievement, the evidence clearly shows that regular daily exercise is part of the solution.

I understand that Michael Gove's educational conservatism extends to the type of sport that is played in school. Apparently, there is not enough Rugby Union, netball, hockey and gymnastics. I do not know about other noble Lords, but I do not have one good memory of my experience on the hockey field of Whitchurch High School. In fact, it came close to putting me off sport for life. Surely, the first step in developing a good sport policy is to find sports which people can enjoy. That was the point captured by the NICE guidelines, which the Library kindly supplied for this debate. They identified the need to ensure that physical activity is healthy, fun and enjoyable and tailored to the child's development and physical ability. That is precisely what the school sport partnerships were achieving. They expanded the choice of sports available and made them enjoyable and accessible, with the result that, between 2002 and 2010, the proportion of young people doing at least two or more hours of sport per week rose from 25 per cent to 90 per cent.

We all want children to do well at school and be happy and motivated, but we cannot ignore our wider responsibility to head off the growing threat to children's well-being which comes through the rise in obesity. In the UK, about 27 per cent of children are now overweight. That is partly the result of poor diet, but it is also the result of lack of exercise. It is not enough to say that parents should take responsibility for that, as they themselves are often the problem. The strongest predictor of being obese is having an obese parent of the same sex. A report by the University of Glasgow found that parents wildly overestimated the amount of exercise that their children were undertaking. If we are serious about protecting young people from the ill-health that arises from obesity, we need more opportunities for sport and exercise in schools and after-school clubs, not fewer. We need a programme that appeals to all, not just the elite sportsmen, and we need guarantees that every child in this country will have access to a minimum national provision.

Finally, we need a robust system to measure whether we are being successful in raising the standards of child health. It is not much to ask, and I hope that the Minister can reassure me that, on reflection, it is the model that the Government intend to adopt.

13:07

[Baroness Campbell of Loughborough]

My Lords, I add my congratulations and thanks to my noble friend Lord Pendry on securing this debate and on his personal tribute, which was greatly appreciated. The timing of this debate is very important, given the release of the White Papers on public health and education.

I believe that sport is one of the most powerful tools we have to shape young people's lives. It is a cross-cutting tool that can deliver health improvements, educational achievement, community cohesion and great moments of sporting inspiration. Over recent weeks, school sport has been the subject of much debate. I will therefore focus my contribution on how the delivery of sport in schools is crucial if we are to impact on the health and well-being of our young people.

First, I must declare my interests. I am chair of the Youth Sport Trust, an independent charity established in 1994 by Sir John Beckwith with the support of Duncan Goodhew. Our mission: to build a brighter future for young people through physical education and sport and to return school sport to the heart of school life. With the support of the Youth Sport Trust, the first 11 specialist sports colleges were established in 1996 under the previous Conservative Administration. We now support 522 sports colleges and academies, including 40 special schools. The inclusion of all young people has been a central tenet of our work from the outset: something for everyone. Those 522 schools have become beacons of good practice, acting as important centres for research and innovation in health, physical education and school sport.

In 2000, the first school sport co-ordinators were funded. It was agreed to use sports colleges as the hubs and to appoint part-time school sport co-ordinators in the surrounding secondary schools. These families, developed by the Youth Sport Trust, became known as school sport partnerships, and government funding to establish and support those partnerships went directly to the hub school. None of this funding went through the Youth Sport Trust, and it was never administered by the trust then or now. There are now 450 school sport partnerships that include all primary, secondary and special schools in England. It is the only strategy of its kind to embrace every school in the country.

The context of my contribution today stems from the current debate on the future funding of school sport partnerships. Emotions are running very high, but that is because young people, head teachers, parents and sports men and women care so deeply about this issue and have seen the steady and remarkable progress made in the past 10 years. School sport partnerships are a unique nationwide delivery system providing national governing bodies of sport and commercial partners as well as government initiatives in health, Change 4 Life clubs, transport, Bikeability, education and sport with an efficient and cost-effective way of delivering their programmes to every school and child in the country. Each school sport partnership has been built around local needs and shaped by head teachers to drive whole-school improvement, to support young people to develop active lifestyles and to provide opportunities for young people to participate, perform, excel and lead in sport.

I am conscious that we have heard many statistics, but I make no apology for sharing again from the independent national PE and school sport survey some of the evidence that shows the impact of these partnerships on young people. Sports colleges are the fastest improving academically of all specialisms, which totally dismisses the notion of sport being a distraction from educational achievement. The work we have done with BSkyB on behaviour change has produced outstanding results, retrieving many young people from school exclusion and crime. Participation in two hours of physical education and sport a week has risen from an estimated 25 per cent in 2003 to over 90 per cent now, which is surely an enormous contribution to the future health of this nation. The range of sports available to young people has been expanded giving greater choice for all young people no matter what their ability, disability or interest. Three-quarters of a million young people have taken part in leadership and volunteering programmes enhancing their self-worth and self-esteem. Schools have doubled the number of links with sports clubs, which is an important part of linking school and community. We now have 49 per cent of five to 16 year-olds taking part in some form of inter-school sport competition and 78 per cent of them taking part in intra-school sport, or house sport as it is often known.

These increases in participation and competition have been achieved because of a collaborative network of outstanding sport professionals who share expertise and dedicate thousands of hours to their work. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to every single one of them. They have not only met every target set for them by government but have exceeded them all. They have made a life-changing difference for a whole generation of young people, and whatever happens now they should be proud of their legacy and we should loudly praise their efforts.

Talking of legacy, let us not forget that we made a promise to the world in Singapore. When we won the right to host the London Olympics, we said that we would inspire young people around the world to choose sport. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are nearly upon us and surely there can be no greater opportunity to inspire and motivate young people to take up an active lifestyle or to pursue their own dreams of one day becoming a champion than right now. However, for that to be possible, we need to retain a network of people dedicated to creating the right kind of opportunities. What will happen if we lose these people? There is no doubt that many secondary schools, with their specialist physical education teachers, will continue to provide a number of extracurricular opportunities, but the great range of options that we have heard about today will be more limited, time to recruit, train and deploy coaches will be reduced, school club links will become more random and the number of opportunities to compete will decline. However, the biggest impact will be felt in our primary and special needs schools where there are only a few specialist physical education teachers and where general classroom teachers have very limited training in physical education and sport. Without the energy, expertise and professionalism of the school sport co-ordinators, we will see a reversal of the progress made in the past 10 years. If we are truly going to affect the health and well-being of our young people, we must ensure that their first opportunity to play sport within a school environment is positive and that we develop physical literacy with the same zeal and vigour that we pursue academic literacy.

Finally, I want to make a point about international comparators. As well as being chair of the Youth Sport Trust, I am also chair of UK Sport, which is responsible for driving our high-performance system and for investing government and lottery money in our Olympic and Paralympic sports. This is a world where international comparison is the ultimate test. In the past few years, the Youth Sport Trust has been privileged enough to be invited to work with colleagues in Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, the 17 developing countries presently involved in International Inspiration—the London 2012 international legacy programme—and others. While there is no podium in PE and school sport, I suggest that if there were, we would, by common consent, be gold medallists.

I fully appreciate the present economic challenges that we are all facing, but I ask the Government to re-examine the independent data that unequivocally verify the incredible progress that has been made by schools across this country and to seek to preserve the very best of this world-leading system for the future health and well-being of our next generation.

13:16

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, has secured this debate. We are, I know, all grateful to him for his persistence in pursuing issues of sport and well-being. I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, who has done so much for youth sport and whom I thank for her wise words today. I, too, read last week's debate in another place on sport, and I was amazed at the Government's perception of what sport is about, which almost all noble Lords have referred to. For me, sport means an enjoyment of physical exercise and encouraging young people—and older people, too—to do some form of physical activity. Many examples have been given today.

I am not against competitive sport. On the contrary, I used to love participating in it. I have good memories of hockey and lots of other games. I love watching competitive sport, but competing is not the whole story. The letter written by the noble Baroness to Michael Gove has been quoted today. She emphasised opportunities to engage in activity that people can pursue throughout their lifetime. I want to go beyond the arguments about sport and physical health and to look at how sport can benefit general well-being throughout life, which has been referred to by other noble Lords.

An American professor at Harvard, Dr John Ratey, has explored the connection between the brain's performance and exercise. He maintains that even moderate exercise will enhance memory, combat stress and affect hormonal function. For example, after a fitness programme was introduced in an Illinois school district, test scores soared and the district came the world’s first in science and sixth in mathematics. Exercise counteracts stress by increasing blood flow to the brain and creating protective neurochemicals. Exercise raises endorphin levels, is more effective than anti-depressants and can ward off memory loss. Research indicates that women who exercise decrease their chances of dementia by 50 per cent. Exercise can combat addiction and attention deficit disorder. Dr Ratey has shown that exercise is particularly important for women in each stage of the life cycle because it tones down the negative consequences of hormonal changes. Clearly, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has benefited from that, and my noble friend Lady Billingham may have done so, too. I do not know how much encouraging physical activity has saved the NHS, but the saving must be worth millions.

Such research—and there is plenty—shows that one of the fundamental experiences that we should be giving to children is exercise, not so that they can think about how much good it is doing them but so that they can enjoy it. The research to which I referred is talking not about competitive sport but about exercise. In its latest report card on child well-being in rich nations, UNICEF—in which I must declare an interest as a trustee—does not talk about competitive sport as affecting well-being; it, too, talks about exercise. The Central Council for Physical Recreation has recently changed its name to the Sport and Recreation Alliance to reflect a better idea of what it does. One of its divisions is movement, dance and outdoor pursuits. Exercise such as dance, yoga, pilates, walking, cycling, swimming and fishing can start in childhood and still benefit people well into old age. Exercise can benefit those who have an illness or a disability if they are given the opportunity to take part in appropriate forums. It is essential to get children moving and not just competing.

Chance to shine is an example of an imaginative and inclusive approach to sport for young people and is supported by the English Cricket Board. The campaign involves encouraging participation in cricket in inner-city schools where there is often limited access to playing fields. It is hugely popular with pupils and staff. More than 4,000 schools are involved already and the millionth child participated this summer. It involves boys and girls of all abilities. A case study from that initiative illustrates some of my earlier points about the effect of sport on well-being. A boy, Paul, aged 11, had changed primary school 10 times and had been expelled from the last two schools that he attended. Both his parents were in prison and several foster placements had been tried without success. Paul had episodes of violent and verbally abusive behaviour, but through chance to shine he discovered a talent for sport. He got in the school team and his behaviour improved dramatically. His school attendance is now 100 per cent. That is one of many success stories. Of course, it is not simply playing cricket that has done this for Paul, but cricket was the beginning. He gained one-to-one support, learnt to be in a team, learnt self control and gained confidence and aspirations. The Labour Government matched 50 per cent of the expenditure of the chance to shine campaign. What will be the future funding for this excellent initiative? We can all be proud of the England team’s fine performance in the recent test match—I hope that no Australians are present today—and of the building blocks of this participation in cricket.

The issue of girls in sport was also mentioned earlier. We certainly need to keep working on encouraging girls to take up sport.

I hope that the Minister will sympathise with the concerns that I expressed earlier. Sport is important as an enjoyable activity. To enjoy it, a wide offering of activity is needed, not just competitive games. As a spin-off to enjoyment, sport has beneficial physical, emotional and intellectual impacts. All those are more likely to be effective if participation in sport is started early and built into growing up. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurances about sport funding, not just for chance to shine but for a wide variety of sport.

13:23

[Baroness Billingham]

My Lords, we are indeed indebted to my noble friend Lord Pendry for securing this debate. We all know that his involvement in sport is acknowledged to be second to none. But even he could not have foreseen that sport would be headline news this week—all over the media—with an unprecedented number of leader columns and serious articles. Perhaps I may also take the opportunity to congratulate all speakers today. This has been a wide-ranging debate with many interesting contributions. I will acknowledge as many as I can, but I regret that time may prevent me from going into much detail. In this excellent debate, we have had many contributions from new Members. To those who had not spoken in debates on sport previously, welcome to the House of Lords sports club.

In his opening speech, my noble friend Lord Pendry referred to the Government’s unfair and destructive proposals. He laid out a comprehensive view of the place of sport in society. He costed the removal of school sports—evidence for which we are very grateful. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, the second speaker, is a new voice in this Chamber and he is most welcome in our sports debate. He introduced a subject which we have not discussed previously in sport, which I welcome. I hope that he will continue to take an interest in the wider areas of sport as well.

I thank my noble friend Lady Morgan for a wonderful and passionate speech, and for giving us at first hand her experience in Redcar and Cleveland. That was extremely interesting because we saw how the lives of people in that area were influenced. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is an old pro in these debates. We always welcome his contribution. He is the most powerful supporter of clubs, which I am too. What he said was a timely reminder that when we look at schools, we must remind ourselves of the links between schools, clubs and the wider community, and how they can be bound together and reinforce each other.

I also thank my noble friend Lord Brookman who lent his support and drew on his experience. What can I say about the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson? How fortunate we are to have her in this House. Her peerless knowledge and influence are sensational. She said that we must make our sporting case much more powerful if we are to be heard.

The contributions have ranged widely and show the concern that many Members feel on numerous occasions. I was very grateful for the contribution of my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis who challenged the Government. He said that they say one thing and do another. I say, “Hear, hear”. He contends that the cuts will cause unnecessary damage. He used his experience within the Labour Party. That task was not easy because sport was never at the head of the agenda when the Labour Party came into power. It certainly improved subsequently.

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, took me by surprise. I had expected a speech full of cuts and the necessity for following the Gove pattern, but there was not a bit of it. I am wondering whether you would like to join us on this side.

[Lord Hoyle]

Be careful.

[Baroness Billingham]

What the noble Viscount said was absolutely in tune with our views about how important sport is across the piece and how schools must keep PE in their curriculum.

Let me turn the clock back five years to the granting of the 2012 Olympic Games to London, which has transformed the debate and the place that sport takes in our national life. The focus is intense and the scrutiny forensic. Will we ever forget the final days of the bid with Tony Blair, Seb Coe, David Beckham and Tessa Jowell at the helm? We were proud of them. We were even prouder of the schoolchildren who took centre stage in persuading the judges that ours was the best prepared and the best focused bid for the future—our children, our legacy.

We pledged to use the Games to stimulate Britain into a rejuvenated sporting nation. Let us keep that vision in our mind’s eye—those eager, excited children hearing the promise of a new sporting age. For five years, politicians kept their word. The building of the Olympic Village became hailed as an outstanding cross-party success and enterprise. How often we heard the mantra, “on time and on budget”. The promise to the children was translated into a transformation of school sport. All parties pressed ahead. We shared a vision of sport and exercise becoming a powerful weapon against the threat of obesity. Two hours per week of physical education became a standard in all state schools and the “Kelly hours” offered a prospect of extra-curricular activities before and after school, and at lunch time. Given the lack of qualified PE specialists, especially in primary schools, the school sports partnerships were formed, and the transformation has been stunning.

I shall go back to some of the other contributions to the debate. My noble friend Lord Haskel was fascinating on the benefits of cycling, and I can vouch for that. As I was walking back from my tennis club in Thorpeness, having just been thrashed yet again by Christine Truman, someone flashed past me on the Thorpeness road. Who was it but my noble friend Lord Haskel? I have witnessed him cycling at speed as he disappeared down towards the Mere in Thorpeness. He was right to tell us that cycling is a sport that we can pursue for the whole of our lifetimes. I play tennis on a daily basis and while I am much slower, by no means am I any less competitive.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and welcome her again to the House—we ought to get some Members’ badges. She suggested that sport must be introduced at the earliest possible age and quoted the benefits of sport to us as a nation, and as a pathway to confidence and success. I liked her theme of a childhood that lasts a lifetime. That is something I want to take away with me. My noble friend Lord Hoyle is always an active member in these debates. He reminded us of how the Olympic Games can inspire us as a nation and he praised the skilled collaborations made by the SSPs, particularly in enabling primary schools to offer a much wider range of sports. He asked if the Secretary of State had visited a school where school sports partnerships were in evidence, and if not, why not? That is a good question.

We now find ourselves in the grip of Michael Gove’s maelstrom. What has possessed him to put all the outstanding achievements of the past years in jeopardy? Surely it cannot be, as was mentioned earlier, some sort of “Gove’s vengeance” brought about by unhappy memories of his unsporting schooldays. He must know about the correlation between sport and a healthy, happier nation, for which other speakers have made the case. My noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch raised the issue of joined-up government and how sport and exercise are being put under threat. What liaison did Michael Gove undertake before his announcements? Critically, my noble friend also reminded us of the success of sports schools and colleges in examination results, which is a matter of fact and on the record.

I come to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. How fortunate we have been to hear at first hand from her the contribution that school sports partnerships have made to our sporting children. Her speech is one that I am sure we will take away to read again. It was too detailed for me to go through it now, but I certainly want to use it in the future in support of arguments reflecting the views expressed in the House today. We know about the cost to the NHS and the economy of an inactive lifestyle, and the value of introducing sport and recreation to young people. It gives them a head start for the rest of their lives. My noble friend Lady Massey is a wonderful ambassador for the organisation A Chance to Shine and shared an interesting success story that came from that project.

As a nation, we have long accepted the role of sport as a way to social inclusion. Would we rather see young people kicking a football around or kicking the back door in? For those of us lucky enough to have enjoyed sport all our lives, can we ever forget the exhilaration of acquiring sporting skills, not always at the highest level, but being part of a team or mastering individual skills in a multitude of sports that we can play all our lives? I agree with David Cameron that sport brings happiness, and that is a factor which should be measured and valued within our society.

Against all this, it is inconceivable that the Secretary of State should perform such vandalism and rob our children of their sporting right. It is unforgivable and it is divisive because only state schools will be affected. The independent schools will go on regardless, enjoying a vast range of sports in impeccable facilities with fully qualified sports staff. Are we really in this shambles together? I think not.

This has been an excellent debate and I thank everyone who has taken part. I hope that there will be a rethink—we have had a promise that the Government are going to look at this again, but I am not sure whether that is going to be fulfilled. Let us hope that the message from this Chamber, which has been very powerful in this debate, will help towards making No. 10 think again because there is overwhelming opposition to this cut from so many sources. The positive links between the health and well-being of our children and young people through their involvement in sport is well known. We must not allow their sporting legacy to be jeopardised.

13:35

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for tabling a debate on this important subject, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, on a masterly winding-up speech from the Labour Benches. We have heard from a star-studded cast of speakers who have reflected both expertise and achievement in sport. We have had confirmation of the strong health benefits associated with children being active and playing more sport. These are widely accepted and relate to the physical and mental health benefits for those involved. As we know, sport reduces the risk of ill health and improves health-related quality of life; it improves life chances and focuses energy; it helps to tackle obesity and contributes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle; and, if we are being mercenary, it can generate substantial savings for the taxpayer in terms of avoiding health costs. We have heard tremendous arguments about these issues from all around the House.

In 2004, the Chief Medical Officer recommended that children and young people should participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every day to help realise these health benefits, and we wholeheartedly support that recommendation. This is highlighted through the Change4Life campaign and remains the standard that children and young people should strive to achieve, supported by schools and their parents.

It is right to say that school sport is not in a bad position in England. There have been significant increases in the amount of organised physical activity young people undertake in recent years, and we celebrate that. I give due credit to the previous Government for the role they played in encouraging increases in the levels of activity and sporting participation among children over the past decade. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Loughborough, whose dedication to and passion for sport through her stewardship of UK Sport and the Youth Sport Trust has brought many benefits to this country, in the form both of medals at the elite level and of participation in schools. She made a most valuable contribution to this debate.

Yet it is true to say that the proportion of young people taking part in wider physical activity and competitive sport, especially regular competition between schools, remains relatively low. Only one in five children participates at this level, which means that many progress through their school days lacking experience of the thrill of competition and the chance to develop their physical and social confidence through winning and losing. In short, to,

“meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same”,

by learning how to be a good winner and a good loser.

The coalition Government want to increase everyday physical activity and sport, with a particular focus on competitive sport for all. At the heart of our ambition is a traditional belief—that competitive sport, when well taught and appropriate to “age and stage”, brings out the best in everyone, be they the Olympian or Paralympian of tomorrow, or the child who wants to keep fit and have fun learning new sports and games. Competitive sport has obvious physical benefits, but can also improve mental agility, develop team-working and co-ordination, build moral character and give a sense of personal development and achievement. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, say in opening the debate that sport should be fun, a thought that was picked up by my noble friend Lord Gardiner, my noble friend Lady Benjamin with her examples of diversity and creativity in providing sports that meet the needs and skills of all children, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who referred to the importance of variety in sport—it does not all have to be hockey or lacrosse—and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, as well as other noble Lords.

The previous Government’s strategy for school sport relied on a centrally determined infrastructure within schools, and various national top-down programmes. We applaud the progress that was made under the last Government, but we are looking to do better by encouraging schools to put sport and competitive sport at the top of their agendas. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, put it so clearly, we want to preserve what is good. My noble friend Lord Younger also clarified where some funds could be better spent.

We are proposing removing central programmes and ring-fenced funding and national targets, and in their place providing freedom of choice and putting schools in charge. The overall schools budget will increase by £3.6 billion over this spending period, with head teachers able to take their own decisions about how to spend budgets. What is clear is that head teachers can continue to work in partnership with other schools, if they wish, and where school sport partnerships have been successful we see no need why they should not remain in place. However, we believe that school communities are most likely to be successful when they have certain elements of freedom to take ownership and responsibility for what they are doing.

The noble Lords, Lord Pendry and Lord Brookman, referred to the value of the school sports partnership. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, in his opening remarks described eloquently the many activities of the SSPs in Tameside and Manchester but, as the Secretary of State has confirmed, those partnerships can continue if that is locally determined.

We understand the concerns about removal of ring-fenced grant to schools. This is one of the difficult decisions the Government have needed to consider in managing their finances properly so that the deficit is reduced, school budgets are protected and the pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils is introduced. Of course, that pupil premium can extend to PE and to sport. Let me also be clear, however, that we fully recognise the efforts of schools, parents and coaches—including all those who worked in SSPs to increase participation—and I assure noble Lords that further discussions are ongoing on these issues. Again, I heard with great interest what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was saying about the importance of the co-ordinators in these activities.

We very much hope that schools will choose to invest in sport. Among the incentives will be a voluntary new Olympic and Paralympic-style competition. We are working closely with Sport England and the Olympic family to develop that competition. What is 100 per cent clear is that this is not about an elitist agenda; we do not want to see competition simplistically confined or packaged for only the most talented or sporty children. We want there to be second teams, third teams, even fourth teams and more, so that every child has the opportunity to participate in physical activity and to experience regular competitive sport against other schools and be able to benefit from all that competitive sport can bring to a young person’s development. We certainly wish to see the networks of volunteers continue to support that.

A package of locally determined events will ensure that annual school sports days are the culmination of regular competitive activity within schools; that more leagues are set up allowing regular competition between schools; that the most talented individuals and teams are given the platform to progress to county-level events; and that young elite performers have the chance to be selected to represent their schools at the first annual competition in the Olympic stadium in London 2012.

We recognise the need to attract those children not already engaged in sport, which is why over £5 million of funding is being used to set up over 3,000 after-school Change4Life sports clubs on school and further education college sites across the country, as already mentioned in this debate. These clubs will be in a range of seven Olympic and Paralympic sports, harnessing the inspiration of London 2012. This will pay for the equipment and qualified coaches helping to engage around 100,000 children aged between 13 and 19 who do not currently take part in sport, with a specific emphasis on using young volunteers to lead these sessions. All 3,000 clubs will be established by April 2011 and this complements other investment for youth sport which will strengthen links between schools and community clubs and increase the number of children participating in sport outside the curriculum and beyond the school gates, themes which have been picked up already.

We believe that the model of these clubs means that they will be sustained beyond 2011. By developing agreements and partnerships between schools, local authorities and community clubs we foresee these clubs becoming embedded within local areas, and I certainly pay tribute to the work of sportspeople who and organisations that support these. I shall briefly mention cricket later but I think also of the Lawn Tennis Association, which provides free equipment and training in schools; there are many other sports where the sportspeople and organisations voluntarily do this to encourage young people.

We need a mass shift in current activity levels, creating opportunities to change the physical and cultural landscapes to build an environment that supports people in more active lifestyles. Therefore, in addition to continuing the best elements of school sports provision and boosting competitive school sport we are enhancing the sporting infrastructure in communities across the country. As a result of our reforms to the National Lottery, for instance, we are investing £135 million in grass-roots sport through Places People Play. This was launched last month and will deliver a real legacy of sporting participation from London 2012. It includes £80 million for local and iconic facilities, with £10 million to protect playing fields, which are such key assets in this area, and £2 million for a new programme supported by the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association to recruit, train and deploy 40,000 sports leaders across the country by 2013.

As well as enhancing provision we are determined to support volunteers, practitioners and clubs—the lifeblood of grass-roots sports—by removing the barriers preventing them delivering more sporting opportunities, so that they can attract and retain more people into their sport, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Addington. It is why the Minister for Sport and the Olympics has tasked the Central Council of Physical Recreation with reviewing the red tape that prevents so much good activity, and this review will complement the coalition Government’s reviews into the vetting and barring scheme, the criminal records regime and health and safety.

The public health White Paper, launched last week, set out our plans to ring-fence the public health budget so that it is used to tackle the key causes of preventable ill health, rather than being raided to solve NHS deficits, as happened once or twice under Labour. Physical inactivity is one of those preventable causes of ill health and the White Paper sets key ways of addressing this in children and young people, including updating guidelines on physical activity, the broadening of the Change4Life programme, and ongoing funding for Bikeability cycle training, which works towards every child being offered high-quality instruction on how to ride safely and confidently by the end of year 6 of school. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, for his contribution and his support for cycling; we just need to take care that he avoids colliding with the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, as she is on her way back from the tennis courts.

At the national level we are working with all sections of society through our public health responsibility deal to drive improvements in healthy living, with a specific network to take forward new partnerships aimed at reducing inactivity. The Department for Education will shortly be in a position to announce what additional funding it will make available to support school sport in line with its new approach.

I would like to pick up some of the other points mentioned in this very wide-ranging debate. My noble friend Lord Gardiner made welcome comments on the positive impact of Fishing for Schools and the evidence that physical activity and sport can provide health benefits and engage hard-to-reach groups, including those with certain disabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked why the Youth Sport Trust was not consulted in the decision to cut. Throughout this debate we have heard that there are effectively three government departments involved in this: the Department for Education, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Health. In fact the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has met the Youth Sport Trust on many occasions and consults the Secretary of State for Education. I understand that a meeting is shortly to take place with the Secretary of State for Education.

The Government recognise the excellent continuing work done by the school sports co-ordinators and this should, in future, be a core part of school PE teachers’ roles, so we hope it will be fundamentally incorporated within schools. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned the links with clubs and reducing red tape, which I have already referred to, and of course the role of the clubs has featured at various stages throughout this debate; their importance in generating enthusiasm and access for young people cannot be underestimated.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, gave an inspirational speech; she is indeed a role model in this area and enhances greatly the debates in this House on these subjects. She mentioned a variety of subjects, including linking sport to the reductions in crime. That issue has not been picked up directly, although the increase in sociability and young people feeling that they can contribute actively to society has featured in a number of speeches today. I entirely agree with her that the increase in the number of sports available in schools is a positive development. As we develop our new Olympic/Paralympic-style competition in schools, we will ensure that it includes a wide variety of school sports formats to attract all young people.

The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, referred to the importance of ring-fencing the legacy from London 2012. The Government are firmly committed to delivering a real legacy from 2012; we are right behind that.

My noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie asked about the schools’ transition to sport. We will consider what further support can be given to help schools manage the transition to the new schools-led approach and, indeed, develop new incentives for heads to prioritise sport. The fear that heads might decide not to use the money for sport will be monitored.

In the other aspect of his input on cycling, the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, referred to its positive benefits. Indeed, the Department of Health White Paper mentions the Bikeability cycle training scheme and the £560 million local sustainable transport fund, which includes active travel and will have an impact on cycling.

My noble friend Lady Benjamin spoke on the issue of high-quality PE and sport. We will consult on this and the role of PE will feature in the forthcoming curriculum review.

The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, asked whether Michael Gove had visited a school sport partnership. I am given to understand that he visited one prior to taking up his appointment in government; I am not aware that he has visited one since. However, I believe that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has been in touch with such partnerships.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked whether the Education Secretary had consulted colleagues. Discussions between Ministers within all three departments took place in advance of the announcement and I understand that the government departments for health, education and sport are in further discussions even as we speak about what further support will be made available. We expect an announcement on the legacy later this month, and certainly before Christmas. I hope that gives some reassurance to noble Lords—and obviously I expect to come back to the Dispatch Box if it does not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, referred to the progress made and to the risks of the cuts. We agree that significant progress was made under the previous Government. Of course, the decisions we have taken have been driven partly by the economic position and by our determination to put schools in charge of their own budgets.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned cricket and the Chance to Shine programme. Yes, it will receive £7.2 million of funding from government over 2009-13, and sport as a whole will benefit from the revisions to the lottery shares through investment into many national governing bodies of sport after the Olympics portion of the lottery budget comes to its completion in 2012.

I have a feeling that there are other points in the debate which I have not picked up. Pressure of time will not allow me to go into more detail but I shall certainly read the debate with great interest. It has been a valuable and thought-provoking debate containing some inspirational contributions. I hope noble Lords will find that the stubborn government mind has listening and problem-solving characteristics too. I know we share a common aim on all sides of the Chamber, and the coalition Government are committed to implementing the best policies to ensure the well-being of children and young people. Again, I thank most sincerely the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for securing the debate and all noble Lords who have taken part today.

13:54

[Lord Pendry]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this important debate. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who set the tone that was followed by so many other speakers.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made another powerful contribution; there would be no debate in this House on sport if he did not do so. This is not to the detriment of the Minister, but it is baffling to many of us why, with his knowledge of sport, the noble Lord does not have a place on the Front Bench.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Massey, Lady Benjamin, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Campbell, all mentioned that sport was not only about team sports. It comes in various forms, all of which are incorporated in the school sport partnership and all of which are growing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, again shone with her vast knowledge of sport and I thank her. We are also indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, for her usual major contribution from the Front Bench.

The Minister had a difficult task—bless her—following the stance taken by the Government, but she batted very well and I am sure that they will be proud of her in the other place for doing so.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, ticked all the boxes that made cycling such an important sport but he missed an obvious one—the use of a bike for a particular Minister, the Secretary of State for Education. He should certainly get on a bike and pedal away from his current job. That would be the best tick of all. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.

Local Authority Grants: Impact of Cuts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Debate

13:57

Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

To call attention to the impact of cuts in grants to local authorities on the provision of social care and other public services; and to move for papers.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, the reason why my noble friend Lord Beecham and I were keen to have this debate in your Lordships’ House was to underline the importance of considering social care and local government together in the context of what is happening and what is proposed in the NHS. That is why I am opening this debate and why my noble friend, with his reputation, knowledge and experience of local government, will close it.

We believe that joined-up thinking about social care for adults, the disabled and children is vital in the coming period, and I invite the Government to follow our example and ensure that that is what they do. I would like, for example, to see the Minister joined on these Benches by her noble friend Lord Howe in the next year or so as we debate these issues together.

Apart from anything else, it is quite clear from the way in which the rest of the world views these matters—be they individual citizens or the many organisations that support people—that it does not see social care, welfare benefits and the National Health Service as separate matters. The only way to look at what is happening on the ground is through the experience of individual citizens, and that is what I will do today. I have recruited an elderly gentleman with COPD—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—to help me with this. It is a condition with which I am familiar, but I could as easily have chosen a younger person or someone with an illness such as stroke, a rheumatic condition or a variety of disabilities and conditions.

In the case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the relationship with the GP is crucial, providing, as they do, attention and monitoring, to say nothing of ensuring the supply of oxygen and the drugs that are needed. Indeed, the GP is responsible—he is the gatekeeper—for recommending rehabilitation and exercise classes that are provided at present by the PCT and will help to keep our gentleman fit. This will help him to manage his condition and thus not be admitted to the local hospital unnecessarily. He may need adaptations to his home—for example, a walk-in shower—provided by social services, and needs-assessed benefits to enable him to stay in his own home for as long as possible. He might have a personal budget at some point, to be managed as part of his care package; and he may benefit from that personalisation and choice in his services. This is a complex but perfectly manageable condition. The successful outcomes achieved, and indeed the cost-effectiveness if this person can be kept both from emergency admissions to hospital and from admittance into a care home for as many years as possible, benefit the whole of his community.

The agencies involved are the NHS, the local authority social services and the DWP, among others. I know that we need to take account of his carers, his family, his friends, his community, his church, his voluntary organisations. Indeed, we know that millions of carers are vital to these people’s well-being and health. This person may well have family to provide support, succour and comfort for him. He may have friends and neighbours who look out for him, and he may have help from organisations such as Breathe Easy and Age UK, which know what challenges he may face and what information he may need; or he may not have any of those things.

We know that there are more and more of these kinds of people living in our community with these kinds of conditions. They are living longer because of improved healthcare, and they will need more support to continue living in the community. We know that demography and improved healthcare are the drivers of the size of this issue. The figures are as follows. By 2026, the number of over-65s will have risen from 8 million to 12.5 million; and it is projected that 1.4 million more older people will have potential care needs in the next 20 years. Unless we tackle the needs of our ageing population adequately, escalating care costs will cripple our economy. In a way, they will finish off the job that the banks started.

This is an issue of which we are all too aware. We were particularly all too aware of it towards the end of the last Labour Administration. That is why we worked hard to try to get cross-party, and indeed national, discussion and agreement on how as a nation we should tackle the huge demographic challenge that we face. We did not succeed, and I am not going to try to score points today about why that happened, and about who walked from the table and why. However, the current situation makes the results and the outputs of the current Dilnot commission very important indeed, and there is an onus on the Government to try to succeed and to build a consensus on the way forward. There is a need to involve all the stakeholders—I am sorry about that word, but I could not think of another one. All the interested parties, including the opposition parties, need to be involved in this national debate as we move forward.

Returning to my example, right now we need to consider which of the different elements that will keep our elderly gentleman at home and safe are at risk in the climate of perpetual revolution in almost every one of the areas that I have mentioned. Furthermore, we need to consider what might be done about that. I shall summarise the White Papers, Bills and other measures that are being put forward by the Government at the moment, and then consider how they might impact on our fictional elderly man. We know that the NHS White Paper will abolish the PCT that takes the strategic view of the care of pulmonary conditions in his town and that the local foundation trust has been working with it because of the need to keep people out of hospital. We know that the strategic health authority employs the pulmonary specialist, and that the PCT employs the pulmonary nurse. These bodies provide the funding for the rehabilitation and exercise classes. Although these classes do not cost much money, we do not know where it will come from in two or three years’ time.

It has taken several years to get to this point of co-ordination in this local area and to get the pooled funding in place, and we know that the PCT is now addressing the preventive health implications of this work. By the way, the rehabilitation and exercise classes take place in the community centre built and supported by the local authority; this centre might also be at risk.

We know that public health will go to the local authorities in the next year or so, and we on these Benches broadly support that initiative and the ring-fenced budget. We also know that a localism Bill is about to be launched in another place very soon. As I have said, we know that the Dilnot commission is to report and will result in a White Paper next year. We know that the health Bill will be with us in the new year when it emerges from Oliver Letwin's clutches, and will be introduced in another place.

Then we have the CSR and the funding cuts for local authorities. The spending review set out real-terms reductions of 28 per cent in local authority budgets over the next four years. This compares with the overall cuts of 8.3 per cent across all government departments. Local authority core funding from the DCLG reduces from £28.5 billion in 2010 to £26.1 billion in 2011, £24.4 billion in 2012, £24.2 billion in 2013, and £22.9 billion in 2014-15.

The impact on social care is already happening. From anecdote and report, we know that some local authority social services departments are already making support available only to those who score “critical” on the social care assessments. This is rationing through eligibility criteria. Returning to our elderly man, this could mean that, because he is mobile and independent, he will not receive the funding for the shower unit in his home. The attendant risks of falls and poor hygiene go with this. He may not receive the help that he needs to keep his home clean.

This is the reality of the problems facing the provision of social care for the foreseeable future. There are those who already believe that social care is in crisis. I recommend that noble Lords look at the blogs on the Age UK website. They are most instructive if one has any doubts about the level of anxiety that there is at large. In the case of my new-found elderly friend, as good as the GP supporting him might be, it is very unlikely that his commissioning contract will allow for the level of strategic planning necessary for many long-term conditions. I would therefore be very concerned about the transition of his care pathway for the next year or so. Even if it takes a year, at best, to sort out the necessary co-ordination of support for our COPD sufferer, he may well have deteriorated in that time. I would like to think that some thought has gone into precisely this kind of care pathway issue and the risks that the proposed changes pose.

Can the Minister confirm that she and her noble friends are undertaking this kind of exercise? If they are—and I really hope they are—would she care to inform the House how the Government will help to mitigate this transition to GP fundholding, the abolition of PCTs and SHAs, the cuts in social care, the changes to welfare, housing benefit regulations, which may place extra burdens on the local authority budget, and the introduction of the public health agenda? Does she acknowledge that slowing down a bit might actually help to mitigate the transition issues and might make a huge difference to citizens of all kinds?

In the middle of these changes it is entirely possible that our friend with COPD will deteriorate significantly and require hospitalisation with the attendant costs. We know that that happens to people with long-term conditions if there is a break in their support, their exercise or the information they receive and if their housing is disrupted. Where is the mantra, “No decision about me without me”, in this paradigm?

In many ways the Government have already—if inadequately—acknowledged these pressures by setting aside £2 billion to help local councils pay for social care. Of the £2 billion, £1 billion has come from the NHS budget, and the other £1 billion will be spread over four years of the spending review. The Local Government Association estimates that the extra resources are nowhere near enough to meet the rising demand for social care. The rise in costs could be as much as £6 billion by 2014-15. How will the Government help to meet this funding gap?

In a settled state of health and social care, such additional funding would be welcome. The fact that it comes from the NHS and local government budgets would be absolutely the right way forward. However, an extra £2 billion seen in the context of a wider 28 per cent reduction in local government funding can only lead us to the conclusion that adult social care will still face a serious challenge in funding because of increased demand.

However, cash alone is not the answer. Adult care and support goes way beyond the Department of Health and is bigger than council social services. We know that it must be linked to other council services, public sector partners, voluntary and community organisations and individuals. There needs to be an increasing emphasis on offering personalised solutions, giving individuals control of their funding and how it is spent. Councils have been striving to do that, and that approach is even more important.

However, and I looked at this with interest, I read on the ConservativeHome website a contribution from a member of the Conservatives’ flagship authority, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, urging 100 cuts in council services and demanding that there be cuts in care to looked-after children, that staff spending on older people and the disabled be reduced, and that youth services be slashed. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Beecham will have something to say about that. Hammersmith and Fulham is a case in point; not content to wait and see whether the big society can step in and look after the disabled or the young or the under-fives, it is in fact already closing down these facilities willy-nilly. I would like the Minister’s view on that website and on those 100 proposed cuts.

These cuts are too deep and too quick, and they are putting front-line services at risk. Combined with the proposals for the NHS, this is a time of great risk for those in the greatest need and with the greatest vulnerability in our communities. We have interesting times ahead, in the Chinese sense.

I apologise for not having gone into some detail about children’s services or indeed services for the disabled. I also regret that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, is not with us today and that we did not talk about portability. These are all serious issues, and I am sure they will be covered in this debate by other noble Lords. I close by thanking my imaginary elderly friend for his help in trying to explain what I think may lie ahead, and I look forward to the contributions from noble Lords who will speak today and from the Minister in answering this debate. I beg to move.

14:11

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in this debate and to follow the noble Baroness, who has presented a reasoned case and some interesting ways of looking at the issues that we face on personal care.

The noble Baroness mentioned the sums and the budgets being cut too quickly and too deeply. There are many Members of this House who are extremely well placed to speak on the important matters of personal care, but it may be helpful if I place this debate in some kind of context. It is not the case that the Government somehow arrive at the Dispatch Box and dream up that the budgets ought to be cut by 28 per cent in real terms over four years. There is a context to it. We inherited the worst budget deficit in the G20, while overall government borrowing had increased by £400 billion over the past few years and continues to rise. The total debt that needed to be serviced is costing £120 million per day. There was significant unease on the international financial markets about the state of the public finances and we were on the verge of being downgraded by the rating agencies, which would have sent interest rates soaring, as we have seen in Ireland, and would have hit millions of homeowners and businesses. That is why we have proposed to get the deficit under control over the next four years.

In fairness to the party opposite, it too had recognised that this was a major problem. That is why, before the election, while it was still in government, it proposed £52 billion of cuts, but it kept us guessing as to where those would fall. Interestingly, though, the Pre-Budget Report showed that the cuts would be front-end-loaded, with £14 billion of cuts falling in 2011-12.

There is a second point of context that flows out of that, and it needs to be made. Once you decide that you need to reduce overall spending and the case is made—I think that that is generally agreed—you then need to ask: where are you going to apply the cuts? The answer for this Government, which I totally support, was that they wanted to protect spending on health, welfare and school budgets, as well as, importantly, to increase the overseas aid budget. Again in fairness to the party opposite, it too had said that it wanted to protect health and schools budgets and maintain overseas aid spending.

My point is that if you agree that there is a problem at a macro level, which both sides agreed on, and you agree that there is a need to make substantial cuts—whether that is £52 billion, £65 billion or £72 billion is a matter for debate—then you need to decide that the axe has to fall somewhere. Someone needs to feel the pain. There is no painless alternative to this. So the Government are proposing to reduce resources spending to local government by 28 per cent in real terms. As someone who is proud to be a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I do not underestimate for one second the pain that that will cause in town halls up and down the country, but again that needs to be set in context. Indeed, if you were to take even the most generous estimates of what the effect would have been of a cut in the overall budget of £52 billion while ring-fencing those important areas that we have talked about, had the Opposition been in power, then the figure probably would have been not 28 per cent but between 20 per cent and 25 per cent. It is worth placing on record that that is the context in which we are having this debate.

Because of those realities, it is also not true that the reality of the spending settlement and the expected reductions in local government grants by 28 per cent somehow came as a shock. It has been forecast over the past two years at least, and many local authorities have already been preparing for that and making adjustments in their spending.

What the Government are proposing is not so much an exercise in arithmetic, of trying to make the budget balance. Rather, they are trying to reinvent the whole way in which we deliver services at a local government level, and that involves a massive devolution of power to local communities and to individuals. Some of the examples that were given there about personal care fit very much into the whole area of Total Place, of place-based spending. Rather than having multiple bodies all spending money, organising and operating in the same places, it is right to bring them together, introducing efficiencies and improving the service at the same time. The previous Government started that process, albeit 12 years into their 13 years, and this Government are saying, “Listen, we want to build upon that”.

We have also said that there are too many silos of funds from which people have to draw. The Government have proposed that in 2011-12 they free up some £7 billion of currently ring-fenced funding. Seeing the number of grants that need to be applied for reduced from 90 to 10 will mean a massive increase in power for local authorities and local communities. It will also mean a massive reduction in bureaucracy.

The same applies to other targets that were there—for example, the comprehensive performance assessment regime and the corporate governance inspection regime, which would issue hundreds of targets that local government had to follow and track down. My favourite target was the one that required local authorities to count how many park benches had arms on them. For some reason, that was important to Whitehall. We are saying, “Listen, this is ridiculous”. We want local government to concentrate on what it does best, which is delivering high quality local services. What has been proposed by this Government, while we recognise that it is tough, is an opportunity to reinvent the way that local services are delivered in our communities so that all will benefit.

14:19

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I am hugely tempted to take on the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and discuss the role of the global economy in the position in which we now find ourselves. I will resist that temptation. Perhaps we may do so over a drink at some point; I shall look forward to that.

Instead, disappointingly, I shall restrict my comments to the impact of cuts in local government funding on social care. My noble friend Lady Thornton has set out the context very clearly. I will focus specifically on the effect of the decision to front-load these cuts. The Government have made a choice to do that, and they must take responsibility for the consequences.

Within children’s services, the effect is that councils are increasingly going to focus only on delivering those services which statutorily they must. What will that mean in practice? In children’s services, it will mean focusing on child protection and meeting their obligations to looked-after children. That will be tough enough, but what about other services? Councils may wish to invest in family support services for children at risk but they have to make cuts fast. The risks of not investing in those services are obvious, but when cuts must be made now it is very difficult to choose to do that.

The risks of not investing in things like that are fairly obvious. There must be a danger that children will end up in care in future years who could have been diverted from that pathway had funds been made available for preventive services at an early stage. As well as it being a false economy, many Members of this House will be aware of the outcomes for children in care. The price that will be paid is considerable for some vulnerable young people.

Those noble Lords who attended the last meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children, as I did, will have heard a moving story from a charity called Family Action about a Building Bridges project, which supports families whose parents are using mental health services and where the children are at risk or on the register, and maybe there are school attendance problems. One of the independent evaluations of this service showed that it works, and that the small cost of £3,500 saves local authorities more than £100,000 over two years. A similar story comes from Action for Children, another big children’s charity, whose East Dunbartonshire Family Service was evaluated as saving the state £2.64 for every £1 spent on preventing children going into care. However, these and many other services are at risk.

I am sure that many noble Lords have heard, as I have, repeated accounts of non-statutory services under threat, and that play provision is under threat all over the country, even though those kinds of services are mostly used by the most vulnerable families. I hear that most councils are now saying that they will not fund any mainstream youth work anymore. That is really significant. While I am grateful that the voluntary sector and the church, which provides much of the youth work in this country, will carry on doing that, it does not seem right that the state should be withdrawing from mainstream youth work. I hear from charities of cuts in provision for disabled children and of eye-watering cuts being considered in fostering and adoption. The potential damage is serious.

The noble Lord, Lord Bates, makes a serious point. Is it inevitable, or is it just special pleading? It is not inevitable. What these stories highlight is the need to give local authorities the breathing space to evaluate their cost drivers and to consider the impact of cuts, not just cut the things in front of them when they can do so immediately. I have talked recently to the senior officer of one authority, who had begun planning well ahead, as the noble Lord, Lord Bates, urged. In fact, the authority would not have cut things fast enough, even though it would have reshaped services, been more efficient and cut real costs and not simply spending. It now has to abandon all of that and move to immediate cuts to meet this timetable.

Briefly, on the impact on adult social care, I have always been concerned that when we talk about the importance of the freedom of councils to choose how to spend their money, we do not delude ourselves as to what choice they have in practice. Adult social care is, I understand, the single biggest discretionary area of spending by councils on services they deliver. If they have to cut back so quickly on the scale that we are discussing, they have no choice but to cut back on adult social care.

My noble friend Lady Thornton mentioned the raising of thresholds. That is an obvious thing to do. I read in Community Care magazine last week that Birmingham Council is becoming the first in the country to restrict formal council-funded care to people with critical personal needs. That is a very high threshold, as anyone who has worked in this field will understand. There is a real danger that the only people who will get any adult social care provided by their council are those with severe, multiple, complex conditions. Everybody else will be left to find it and fund it themselves. That is not a space we want to be in.

Finally, I will say a word about carers. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, who, as noble Lords will know, has been a long-time champion of carers, regrets that she cannot be here for the debate today. In her absence, however, I want to flag up the important contribution made by 6 million carers who save our country some £87 billion a year. Any future approach to social care needs to ensure that carers carry on being supported. I hope that the Commission for Social Care Inspection will make the contribution of carers an important part of its recommendations. I also urge the Government to look quickly at reviewing financial support for carers, including how future funding for respite care can be provided in the absence of ring-fencing.

What is to be done? Since spending on social care is such a big slice of local government spending, we are now seeing a disproportionate amount of the cuts in spending generally being carried by local government. Inevitably, a disproportionate chunk of that will be borne by social care. That means that vulnerable people who use social care services are picking up an unfair and disproportionate degree of the pain of the Government’s deficit reduction strategy. We need to look carefully at which individuals will actually be paying the price for those. They are those who use children’s services, those who use adult social services, children who are in need and children who live in care. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

I am not simply asking for special pleading. I ask the Minister to do two things. First, will she please urge her colleagues to rethink the timescales and consider giving local authorities the space to be able to plan these steps more carefully? Secondly, will she please tell the House today what steps the Government can take to protect the investment in early intervention services of the kind I have described, much of it delivered by voluntary organisations, much of it successful, much of it saving the state money and much of it protecting lives? I urge her not simply to talk about spending on early intervention, since that will not be ring-fenced and will simply come out of the same pot. How does the Government’s strategy for ensuring that local services are delivered enable us to be confident that early intervention services for some of the most vulnerable people can be protected?

14:26

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I declare an interest as both a councillor and a member of the executive in the London Borough of Sutton, which is now celebrating its 25th year of continuous Liberal Democrat administration.

The following is more a confession than a declaration. When I was first elected as a councillor, back in 1974, the then Conservative leader in local government, who happened also to be a Sutton councillor, said to me, “There are really only two parties. One is the local government party; the other is the central government party”. For the past 36 years, I have clearly been firmly in the local government party. Then, slightly to my surprise, I now find myself closely associated with the central government party as well. Some might say that that is a challenge, but I intend to regard it as an opportunity.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for this debate, and for the way in which she introduced it. Normally, we should congratulate her at this stage. I feel more inclined to commiserate with her. I am sure she understandably expected, when she tabled this debate, that by now we would know what the provisional grant settlement was going to be, and probably have before us the long-awaited, much heralded decentralisation and localism Bill. Instead, the Bill is at the printers and we will have it tomorrow, not today. The settlement is clearly settled but, for reasons in another place, we will not actually know how it is settled until next Monday. That is a little unfortunate.

In the few minutes I have, I will concentrate not on speculating about what we might find out on Monday, or what we might discover in the Bill that we have not already heard about, but, rather, on the things that we do know. Those of us in local government and, I am sure, elsewhere, have known for a long time that the coming years were going to be very difficult regardless of who had won the general election. Sometimes that is forgotten. Many local authorities, certainly my own, were planning well before the general election for hard times to come, even if we were not able to quantify them. Before the election, my own authority set up what we are calling the smarter services Sutton review, to review all our services with a view not simply to slashing budgets but to transforming services and looking at what we do, how we do it, with whom we do it, and what we need no longer do because it is neither possible nor appropriate. All of that was known. Sensible local authorities of all political persuasions will have been planning for it. What was not expected was the extent to which the CSR would be front-loaded, with by far the heaviest cuts coming in the first two years.

I know that there is no way that that will now change. It is well beyond the powers not just of the Minister but of the department that she represents. That is a given, whether we like it or not. However, I plead that the Government look at the effects of that in trying to achieve what I hope we all want to achieve— not simply a slashing of budgets but radical reform, coupled with the new freedoms that local government will get but will not have in the years when the greatest cuts are before us.

It is always difficult. Some local authorities may be in the now fortunate position of having sufficient reserves to enable them to ease the burden and produce both the savings and reformation over a period of time. However, local authorities in that position are few and far between and, frankly, until now, have been subject to much criticism for having overly large reserves. Most local authorities, including my own, have long since lost what anyone would consider superfluous reserves and are not in the position to be able to use such funding to ease the burden of the cuts. My plea to Government, and to the DCLG in particular, is to continue to explore ways of working with local government so that we can phase the introduction of these cuts over two or perhaps three years to achieve the same result in the end that the Government want to achieve but being able to do so by truly transforming services and not simply slashing budgets, which I fear is what might happen.

The particular focus of this debate is social care and that has been very well described. My noble friends on this Bench will concentrate on it. The additional funding for social care is very welcome. I am pleased to see it not least because it is being introduced by a Minister who was once my deputy leader on Sutton council. There is a real danger that that additional funding—welcome though it is—will be more than overtaken by the cuts that local government have to make. Now that local authorities are no longer directly responsible for schools funding, for those authorities with this responsibility, adult social services make up by far the largest part of the budget. It is inconceivable that local authorities will be able to make the savings that they will have to make and reform the services in the way that they have to without being able to avoid adversely affecting adult social services. We want to avoid losing all the very welcome benefits that come from the additional social care funding because of the actions that are taken.

More immediate is the very real threat to voluntary sector funding. It is a great temptation—which I very much hope that all local authorities will resist—to make quick and, to some, apparently easy savings by cutting grants to the voluntary sector. Some would suggest that, in the past, central government have sometimes done that to local government. However, in my new role I would not dream of suggesting any such thing.

I hope that the Government will now look at how they can work with local government to try to ease the passage of this so that what lies before us is not simply seen as a threat to local government services. It would be idle to pretend that there are no threats to local government services—of course there are. However, there is a very real opportunity for the local government party and the central government party to work together to use this opportunity to transform the services that we provide.

14:33

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, in his letter to local authorities, following the comprehensive spending review, the director-general of social care at the Department of Health wrote that local authorities had,

“enough funding available both to protect people's access to services and deliver new approaches to improve quality and outcomes”.

The additional £2 billion that the Government were putting into social care by 2014-15 would, he said,

“make it possible to protect people’s access to care, without tightening eligibility”.

He even went so far as to say that this is a highly positive settlement for social care, providing sufficient resources to protect people’s access to care and avoiding further restrictions to services. But at other points, he had the grace to admit that the settlement would be challenging. Perhaps one can be forgiven for thinking that this was nearer the mark.

There are some things to welcome. The £1 billion of extra funding coming from the health service should help to speed up the integration of health and social services at the local level, which seems to have taken for ever. Up to £300 million of this can be spent each year on reablement to help avoid the need for social care. The disabled facilities grant is to be protected, though it will no longer be ring-fenced, so what will happen to it is anybody’s guess. The challenging settlement should stimulate innovation in the delivery of services.

The negative side of the ledger is even more compelling. The CSR has treated local government particularly harshly. Central government funding of local authorities, as we have heard, is to decrease by 28 per cent in real terms over the next four years, down from £28.5 billion in 2010-11 to £22.9 billion in 2014-15, a reduction of £5.6 billion. This compares with cuts of 8.3 per cent across departmental budgets generally. This helps to put the extra £2 billion for social care into context. Cuts to housing, family support, transport and leisure will all have a wider impact on the care and support environment. The settlement presupposes efficiency savings of 3 per cent a year, but in adult social care alone, savings totalling nearly a billion pounds have been made over the past three years already, while eligibility thresholds have remained relatively unchanged.

In these circumstances the Local Government Association puts it mildly when it says that the front-loading of the funding reduction, coupled with the fact that adult social care has important links to other council services such as housing, leisure and transport means care and support faces a period of real challenge. This is all against a background in which social care is pretty much in crisis already. While expenditure on adult social care has increased over the past decade, it has not seen anything like the increase seen in health and education. This has led to a situation in which social services are falling further and further behind. An ageing population means that pressure on services can only get worse. A survey in community care recently showed that two-thirds of councils were already only providing social care to people in either critical or substantial need. It found that this figure would be 80 per cent by next year and that people are already predicting that future cuts would lead to many councils raising their thresholds to critical only.

As for the additional £2 billion, there are concerns about whether all of this will find its way to social care. The sums to be channelled via the NHS should get through as long as they are clearly identifiable locally and are the subject of specific local agreement. The other £1 billion is another matter. This half of the new social care funding is not ring-fenced. It is not difficult to imagine hard-pressed councillors and chief executives diverting it to help plug the gap in other equally cash-strapped areas.

Your Lordships would not expect me to close without saying something about the situation of blind and partially sighted people, who graphically illustrate the condition of social care provision today. Unless they have other disabilities, people living with sight loss are unlikely to receive much—if anything at all—in the way of help because their needs are likely to be assessed as only moderate or low. I invite your Lordships to pause and think about that for a moment because it has always struck me as absolutely extraordinary. It means that many people simply lose their independence for want of the appropriate rehabilitation and support.

The Department of Health stresses the importance of personalised support. Almost everybody agrees about that but personalised support which you cannot access because you do not meet the criteria of eligibility for help is no support at all. A fully personalised social care system can perfectly well continue to exclude from eligibility most blind and partially sighted people. In the context of personalisation, I should also like to say a word about the question of choice. There is evidence from the individual budget evaluation research that elderly people in particular were often worried that direct payments would impose unwanted burdens on them where their right to choose had not been properly explained. The Department of Health’s policy, as reflected in its vision statement, now seems to have changed to saying that personal budgets should preferably be delivered as direct payments. These positions are not necessarily incompatible. It would be possible for local authorities to express a preference for direct payments while still offering personal budget recipients a genuine choice, but it is easy to see how inappropriate pressure might develop, especially if it transpires that local authorities can make significant staff savings via direct payments.

The Government believe their social care settlement to be adequate. We shall see. However, it is absolutely essential to monitor what happens closely. I strongly urge the Government to be prepared to take corrective action if familiar problems of adequacy and access persist or, indeed, get worse.

14:41

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for enabling us to discuss this major concern about the direction that spending cuts will take within the policies of our local authorities. I want to concentrate on the effect that they have on partnership between those authorities and the voluntary sector, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred. As a former resident of the borough of Sutton, I was grateful to hear the insights into the policies of that borough. I hope that the St Helier estate, on which I used to work, will not be disadvantaged by any of those policies.

The partnership between local authorities and the voluntary sector has been set up with much patience over many years. I should like the Minister to address ways in which that can be preserved and defended in a culture where ring-fencing is removed but cuts are compulsory. That double whammy is what is causing such a sense of threat to those in the voluntary sector who are concerned with social care. The removal of ring-fencing advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, would often be very much welcomed as placing responsibility for local activity locally, which is where it belongs. The difficulties arise where that occurs in the context of substantial cuts. The unintended threat to social care provided through the voluntary sector then becomes substantial.

St Luke’s CARES is a church-sponsored community provider in south Leeds that has worked with the local authority over the years to provide caring services, including—but not only—services for young people. There is a real need to build up community relationships in the areas where the charity works, including in multi-ethnic areas such as Holbeck and Beeston, where there has been a determination to rebuild trust—not least following the links of that area with the 7/7 bombings, of which we have been so painfully reminded over the past few weeks. Those who use the services of St Luke’s CARES fear for the future of its work, not because of ill will on the part of the local authority but because painful choices need to be made.

Noble Lords have spoken of the danger that those organisations that contribute to the whole of the working of society, or of a particular area within society, tend to be ignored because of a right emphasis on the most critical cases. Leeds is among the local authorities with the largest percentage cut in grant, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government figures—more than 7 per cent in year one. My fear is that, because of the attempt rightly to maintain direct services to the community, the partnerships that in Leeds form so vibrant a potential part of our society will be squeezed, with the result that, almost inevitably, those who are most deprived will suffer most. I think of the Belle Isle estate in Leeds, which has a flourishing family centre that provides a one-stop shop for social care for many local people in the area. The danger is that not only will such resources for people be withdrawn but the building into which both voluntary and local authority funding has gone will be underused and wasted.

In the context of partnership, I highlight the threat to services for children and young people. Local authorities have an impressive record in working with the voluntary sector to provide for the needs of many in disadvantaged areas who might not otherwise receive the encouragement that they need. I have read with interest the report of the debate in your Lordships' House last week on philanthropy, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, in which a warning was given—not least in the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle—that philanthropy cannot replace the work of local authorities. Although philanthropy is extremely welcome, and often extremely generous, its effect on the issues that we face can often be erratic. National organisations such as Barnardo’s or the Children’s Society are fearful simply because much of their work is crucial to the lives of young people but does not hit the headlines or always attract public sympathy. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, spoke powerfully of the ways in which so much of that work with deprived young people who are not at school or are in contact with the criminal justice system will tend to be ignored in that situation. Many who work for the national voluntary organisations fear not just for their jobs but for that careful, painstaking work that has been built up over the years.

I welcome the aim of greater collaboration between voluntary and statutory organisations, which is an important part of the coalition Government’s proposals. We will the ends; we must also will the means. Local authority services, many of which are delivered by such partnerships, are among the most precious contributions to society. I hope that the Minister will affirm the continuing need for cuts to be borne by those most able to bear them, and not by those who already suffer in our society.

14:48

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I shall confine my remarks to what I might regard as my special subject, which is social care of the elderly. As a society, we have walked into a black hole. The black hole was originally caused essentially by demographics—the increasing number of elderly people—and by the fact that older people are not living in good health for longer, as the period of ill health at the end of life is at best constant and is perhaps getting worse.

The symptoms of the black hole into which we have walked—the black hole being the gap between service provision and need—are legion. The symptoms include, for example, the virtual elimination of local authority help for those with moderate or medium care needs simply in order that local authorities can keep those with the greatest care needs going. The symptoms are also to be found in the patchy and often very low standards of residential care at home. I hear tales of carers turning up hours late, with breakfast being served at lunchtime or lunch being served at breakfast time—a very fine “Panorama” programme exposed some of that—often because flexible services that meet people’s needs cannot be provided as cheaply as a service in which people rush around doing what they can when they can fit it in.

Another symptom can be found in the appallingly low wages paid to people who work in the social care sector, which unfortunately means that people do not have the right incentives to improve their skills. Another can be found in the state of residential homes that have a large number of local authority clients because of the continual downward pressure on the fees that local authorities will pay for people in those homes—often made up, incidentally, by charging more for people who have to pay for themselves.

In one part of the kingdom—in Scotland—the Scottish Government have decided to dig that hole very much deeper by providing free care to everybody. The result is that the real cost of care has doubled in real terms in five years. The governing party in Scotland has decided not to say what it will to do about that until after the next Scottish elections, because the policy will have to be abandoned.

One consequence of that black hole is that our old people are suffering—I use that word advisedly—at a time of their life when their suffering should be minimised. Another consequence—I know that the Treasury is the only department that matters in many of these things—is that we will incur far greater costs in future. The long-term result of not providing low-level care to people to enable to them to stay in their homes will be that they will stagger on until the moment at which, at much greater cost, they have to be admitted to residential care, where they will need to remain at huge public expense for the remainder of their lives. That is not only a bad policy for older people but a short-sighted policy on the part of Government.

Faced with that black hole, the Government produced an extra £2 billion for social care in the comprehensive spending review. Anything extra is not unwelcome in the present situation, but I have the gravest reservations about whether that extra money will mean much, given that £1 billion of it is to come from the National Health Service. I hope that that will come about, but I have noticed, for example, that consultant surgeons are terribly good at explaining why they need the money to do operations tomorrow and why money cannot be made available for social care that might stretch months into the future. Money does not always end up where it is intended, particularly given that we will have a frozen NHS budget in the years ahead. The scramble for cash and the use of the power of individuals and institutions within the health service to get cash will be most intense. Who will ensure that social services get their £1 billion share?

As for the extra money for local authorities, that is smoke and mirrors. The Government say that they will slash local government expenditure to a degree unimaginable in previous experience. They aim to do that because they can see easily that they cannot cut their expenditure, so they look to somebody else to make the cuts. Their chosen victims are local authorities, which to my mind have been amazingly calm in the circumstances. Given this great slashing, although the Government say that there will be an extra £1 billion, there will not be an extra £1 billion at all. Instead, the social services budget will be slashed by £1 billion less than would have been the case. That really is, I would almost say, Gordon Brown arithmetic at its worst—although I would not like to offend my own side in any way. None of us can tell whether an extra £1 billion is being given to local government for social care, because none of us knows what would have been given to local government without the apparent extra £1 billion. That is smoke and mirrors.

My third point, which has already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low, concerns the letter from David Behan, who is the director-general of social care. David Behan is a very good man who cares deeply about these things—so I do not know whether he drafted the letter—but, honestly, to describe the settlement as highly positive is really to bend words. What should we regard as slightly negative? Would spending need to be eliminated altogether and our old people thrown onto the streets to fare as best they could? I think that a little more honesty would have been genuinely welcome. Another feature of his letter that I want to highlight is the suggestion that significant efficiency savings would be needed. It is not easy to make efficiency savings in social services, because you cannot bathe people more quickly, hoist them more quickly or force food into their mouths more quickly without spoiling those services. To a very large extent, significant efficiency savings cannot be made in social care services, so the effect—unless the Government have a change of heart—on our services over the years to come will be quite frightful.

14:56

[Baroness Barker]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for the elegant way in which she introduced this debate on a subject that, as she and the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, know, is one that I care about quite a lot. I also declare an interest as the owner of a consultancy that works with voluntary organisations called Third Sector Business.

Let us not forget that the system of social care was unsustainable and in need of radical reform back in the 1980s, when Mrs Thatcher appointed Sir Roy Griffiths to produce Community Care: Agenda for Action. It was unsustainable and in need of radical reform when, in 1997, Tony Blair appointed, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, to produce their report on long-term care, which was then studiously ignored by the Labour Government for the 13 years that they were in office. Here we are now, at the point where our system of social care is unsustainable, not working and unaffordable. We are having to address those questions not, as the Labour Government were, with a significant amount of cash to throw at it, but in the most difficult of economic circumstances. That is the backdrop of events as discussions are going on. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is again wrong—against that backdrop, an extra £1 billion is actually something to be very pleased about.

I want to explain the perfect storm that is enveloping local organisations. At the moment they are dealing with the imposition of the 2010 tendering regulations, which means that there is a huge change in the way in which their services are bought and commissioned by local authorities. The personalisation agenda, which the noble Lord, Lord Low, spoke about, is being rolled out. It is a model of commissioning services that was developed largely for adults with disabilities, people who for the most part have conditions that do not change. It is being rolled out to a far greater number of older people, most of whom need care at a point of crisis, and whose needs change quite a lot and substantially. It is being carried out at a time when the three big clients that those organisations have had are either disappearing or are changing completely. Most of those organisations were funded either by their local authorities or by PCTs, and they are having, in a very short space of time, to completely change what they do and how they do it. Most of them are not big administrative organisations that can suddenly summon in an awful lot of help from major international companies and get them to come in and sort out their systems. They are very small organisations that are having to change very, very quickly.

The NHS is changing too. It is not uncommon for local organisations to carry out their business with partners in the NHS and local authorities where there have been no permanent senior managers making decisions for the past three years. It is extraordinarily difficult to come to any conclusion about what you should do strategically in that situation.

It is also not that simple to bring about change as quickly in voluntary organisations as it is in others. In a commercial company, if your economic outlook is bleak, you simply get out your accounts and forecasts and you study them to determine what you will do. In a voluntary organisation, you have to start from the point of saying to people who you have never charged for services that their services are going to have to be charged for. You have to go through a period of angst with people before you can get them to the point where they can begin to look at what will be a sustainable future. Behind that, local authorities are also beginning to get to grips with new ways of accounting, some of which are very good. The Total Neighbourhood and Total Place accounting systems are extremely good, but are very new.

In the midst of all that, there are organisations that are seeking to continue what they do now, much of which is unfunded but immensely valuable, and trying to make sense of a system in which they can, on a sustainable basis, meet the needs of a growing population—a population which has needs that we are all aware of. The number of people with dementia is set to increase exponentially.

It is against that backdrop that I want to ask the Government, who are right to have a radical approach to social care, whether they will do three things. First, will they give us more detail about the transformation fund? It is way too small. I am not clear on whether the fund will be available for only a year, but I suggest to the Minister that it needs to be available for two years, if it is to be effective. Will the Government specify what the fund is intended to do? Secondly, will the Government look at the capacity and willingness of GPs to commission social care? That will be an extremely important point for the future. I have not yet seen evidence of GPs being familiar with how one commissions social care services and refers people to services which have to be paid for. Many GPs refer people to services, but those services are usually free, and I doubt that that will happen.

Thirdly, will the Government look in particular at the one service—hospital discharge—in which there ought by now to be sound joint working? There is none. We have never had a model of hospital discharge which works properly for the NHS, properly for social services departments which want to do well by people, and, above all, properly for people who are coming out of acute care and who may need longer-term care. If we can do that at a time when the NHS will be judged by a new quality-and-outcomes framework, which does not just reward acute hospitals for the number of high-tech operations they perform but rewards them for the health outcomes that they achieve for a population, we will then be in a position to start to build a system of social care which is sustainable and meets long-term needs.

15:03

[Baroness Hollins]

My Lords, perhaps I may first say how much I welcome this debate, and I have listened with great interest to the contributions.

In June, the Government stated their commitment to creating fairness in society, and dignity and respect for disabled people. It is against this backdrop that we are participating in today’s debate. We have already heard about the extent of the savings required by the comprehensive spending review, and I will not repeat them. However, there is no doubt that even with efficiency gains and other savings, cuts of this magnitude and over this timescale will pose a significant challenge to many of the services used by disabled people.

For too long, social care services have been the Cinderella of local government—underfunded, under-resourced and under-valued; and the important role that social care can play in helping to transform peoples’ lives is too often misunderstood. Many people who are disabled rely on social care services to live their lives and gain some independence. It might be a few hours’ help for them to go shopping, assistance in the home to help with domestic tasks such as cleaning, or even support in going to the cinema. All these examples and more demonstrate the importance of delivering effective social care and the huge difference that it can make to the quality of individual lives. Crucially, this support often allows disabled people to access other services such as education, health and transport.

I must disclose an interest here, because two of my adult children are disabled people who are in receipt of social care.

The pressures on social care services have not suddenly developed as a direct consequence of the CSR; if only that were the case. For many years now, local authorities have wrestled with increasing demands on their services, partly, as we have heard, as a consequence of demographic change and an increasingly elderly population. Local authorities have already rationed resources in an attempt to manage a range of competing demands.

There are 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom with a learning disability and I will focus my remaining remarks on their needs, to illustrate how one group of disabled people and their families may be put at risk by the proposed spending cuts. With respect to demographic change, we know that there are about 170,000 people with a learning disability who live with parents or carers who are over 70. As time goes on, both they and their carers will need support from social services in order to live their lives with dignity and respect. In addition to a high number of older carers, the number of people with complex needs is also increasing; and this combined with longer life expectancy means that demand for social care services is increasing and will be needed for longer. The number of people with a learning disability who need services has also been increasing by between 3.5 per cent and 5 per cent per year—much faster than anticipated.

These challenges and others have led councils to tighten their eligibility criteria to make a greater use of charging, and to reduce services. In recent years, most local authorities of all political persuasions and none have decided to reduce the services they provide to only those with “critical” or “substantial” needs, in an attempt to balance the books. Following the latest pressures on resources, those few local authorities which still provide social care services to those regarded as having only “moderate” needs are in the process of consultation about removing the remaining services.

It is in response to long-standing pressures on the social care system that the Learning Disability Coalition, or LDC, was established in 2007 in an attempt to address these concerns and to lobby the Government for change. My noble friend Lord Rix, who cannot be here today, would want to speak about the LDC as president of Mencap, because the LDC is a coalition of 14 member organisations such as Mencap, People First and Turning Point, and was set up to make the case for better social care services. The LDC argues that people with a learning disability are entitled to have the same choices and life chances as everyone else, as indeed is laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, in order to make these choices, we need a social care system that is fit for purpose and helps to empower people.

It is for this reason that I welcomed the announcement in the CSR that an additional £2 billion would be allocated for social care over the next four years, some being to support joint work between health and social care. However, as part of the coalition Government’s commitment to localism, we know that the additional funds to local authorities will not be ring-fenced. What guarantees will we have that GP consortia will spend the additional NHS funds as intended? There are no guarantees that the extra money will end up being spent as the Government intend it should be. What sanctions will the Government have if GP consortia do not do so?

Recent evidence from the King’s Fund shows that an increase in spending on social care for a person actually decreases the amount which needs to be spent on their healthcare. Short-term cuts in social care today can lead to long-term consequences tomorrow.

Failure to provide support to people with a learning disability can increase the risk of social exclusion and offending behaviour, and can lead to health problems, particularly mental illness. This can lead to expensive acute intervention when a person reaches crisis point. Sadly, some specialist psychological help that is available to other citizens, for example through the improving access to psychological therapy programme, is not being made routinely available to people with learning disabilities, and thus the stitch in time that might be expected to ameliorate relationship and lifestyle difficulties is not provided for them.

The personalisation approach is to be welcomed, but there are more challenges inherent in implementing it for this group. People with a learning disability are some of the most vulnerable in society, and are less able to advocate for themselves to ensure the fairness that this Government are committed to achieving. Does the Minister agree that whatever reductions in social care budgets are made in the future, people with learning disabilities must not be made to bear an unfair share of the cuts?

15:10

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing the debate, and with it the opportunity to highlight the consequences of cuts in local authority funding for disabled people's essential support services. As other noble Lords have mentioned, there was a glimmer of light amid the cuts announced in the comprehensive spending review; namely, the extra funding for social care. However, as we have heard, we soon realised that the amount would be barely enough to sustain the current levels of spending, let alone to keep up with the increasing numbers of older people who require care and support to keep them going. It was even more worrying when it was made plain that the money would not be ring-fenced.

As we have heard, the Local Government Association has warned of a multimillion-pound shortfall in its adult social care budget. What safeguards will the coalition Government put in place to ensure that the money goes to the people for whom it is intended and does not disappear into the local authority budget? The fear is not unfounded, as local authorities can take their resources into account when determining the needs of a disabled person. As a result, in many places only the most profoundly disabled people qualify for help, which is means-tested.

There are other perverse consequences of the Government's measures. One of the most glaring is the removal of the DLA mobility component from people who live in state-funded residential care. It will cost local authorities money once their mobility needs are assessed. The money must come from the social care budget, so the council will have to further tighten the eligibility criteria, leaving more disabled and older people to fend for themselves, draining their means and exhausting their family members. Did the Government take this into account when they decided to remove the DLA mobility component? The decision was based on wrong assumptions, and it is telling that disabled people were not involved in making it.

Another measure is the closure of the ILF to new applicants, with the resulting expectation that local authorities will take up the slack. In practice, local authorities are prepared to fund their part of a care package, which would have been matched with ILF funding, but they are not prepared to increase it to take account of the closure of the ILF to new applicants. For example, a disabled man in his 30s living in Buckinghamshire would have received a care package of around £600 a week had the ILF still been open to new applications. Buckinghamshire County Council has decided that it is unable to increase its funding beyond £340 a week—a long way short of what the man would have received with ILF as well. As a result, he now has to manage without night-time care.

Disabled people are facing cuts of 20 to 30 per cent. This was covered by the BBC in its excellent “You and Yours” programme last week. People are being reassessed for personal budgets and finding that the amount they will receive is much less than they have been getting. For example, a disabled couple in Lambeth had their care package cut by 20 per cent from £6,025 per month to £4,900.

No doubt there is money to be saved by reducing the bureaucracy and duplication that comes with state interference, and with creative ways to help people become active citizens who will take responsibility for their own lives and communities. That is where the value lies in giving local people more control. They can identify where money is wasted—for example, on the many assessments that people have to go through because different departments in a council are involved and cannot work together on a single assessment. We hope that the right to control will change that practice. The bureaucracy that some councils have built around direct payments and personal budgets is mind-blowing. However, money that is invested in an accessible infrastructure—in lifetime homes and neighbourhoods, for instance—will earn itself back as councils have to make less separate provision for disabled people. Will this happen when local councils are looking for cuts in the short term?

In my own borough, the so-called Conservative flagship council of Hammersmith and Fulham states that it has “listened” to its residents in delivering year-on-year council tax cuts of 3 per cent through “efficiencies”. However, it did not spell out the consequences of the cuts. As we have heard, Hammersmith and Fulham embarked on its own comprehensive spending review long before the coalition Government did, and no doubt will set about implementing a further 26 per cent of cuts with gusto, and all in the name of efficiency.

Who is feeling the impact of this enthusiasm for efficiency? It is isolated old people, people with learning difficulties and disabled people generally—in other words, the poorest residents of Hammersmith and Fulham. The borough has redefined eligibility for homecare and has reduced shopping services, telling 89 year-olds that if they can phone the council, they can order their shopping themselves by phone. The council has nearly halved the take-up of the meals on wheels service. Because of cuts to borough funding, the local Age Concern has had to close down services, including a lunch club and its vital toenail-cutting service—a simple but essential key to continued mobility for older people. The local user-led disabled people's organisation, HAFAD—I declare an interest as its vice-chair—has lost funding for its welfare benefits service at a time when it is essential that disabled people, who are terrified about the benefits that they might lose and who are the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, should be helped by the benefits that they need. All this is also happening before the rollout of the implications of the CSR.

Giving local councils more autonomy and local people more control should mean money flowing to services that meet the needs of local people, but we must ensure that it is not only those with money and clout whose needs are met. What about those people who are isolated by poverty and struggle unseen? In most areas their interests are voiced by the small, voluntary organisations and, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, they are the first to go to the wall when cuts are made. I ask the Minister what steps the Government will take to support these vulnerable local user-led organisations whose existence is vital in providing a voice to older and disabled people in their locality so that they can continue to provide essential information, advice and advocacy for people who need care and support.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on a matter which my noble friend Lady Thornton has helpfully trailed, and that is portability. Sadly, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who has raised the matter so eloquently in the House, is not able to be here today. Portability is being able to choose the locality where you live. Currently many disabled and older people are prevented from moving to another postcode because they cannot be sure that they will keep the care and support that they have qualified for. It means that they cannot move to get further education or to have a better chance of a job, nor can they move nearer their families, move away from an abusive relationship, or move out of residential care into the community. What an unbelievable waste of human and economic capital that is.

My time is running out but I wonder if, in all this gloom, the Minister would be willing to provide a small glimmer of hope by agreeing to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and other interested Peers to discuss the issue of portability. The fear is that once the localism Bill gets to us, it may be too late. I hope she can give that commitment.

15:19

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

At the beginning of November, in a debate on the comprehensive spending review, I raised a number of issues relating to the part of the announcement that affects local government. None of those has yet been answered, and I hope that some of the representations that have been made in recent weeks may have an effect when the announcement is made, as I understand it will be on Monday.

The issues related, first, to the scale of the cuts, and we have heard more about that this afternoon. Secondly, they related to the front-loading of those cuts, which is a cause of quite a number of serious problems particularly for the redundancy costs of local authorities. Thirdly, I raised the issue of the abolition of the working neighbourhoods fund, at £0.5 billion—of our local authorities, Birmingham was much the highest, losing some £37 million. That budget enabled money to be paid to voluntary organisations across some 65 council areas where deprivation rates are highest. In particular, the working neighbourhoods fund was used, and is still used, for welfare to work initiatives, one of the core agenda items of this coalition Government. Fourthly, I raised the issue of place-based budgeting because the Local Government Association has estimated savings from £20 billion a year if we can bring the public sector more closely together—sharing services, overheads and so on. In that debate, I urged us to have a much faster delivery of place-based budgeting simply because, if you delay two more years before rollout from the pilot that is taking place, the impact will be delivery that is too slow.

Since the beginning of November, two matters have become starkly clearer. First, the £200 million capitalisation powers that have been set out in the CSR were identified as being completely inadequate. The LGA now estimates costs of some £1.5 billion over the next 18 months, caused by the front-loading impact of the revenue cut. Secondly, it became clear that the working neighbourhoods funds simply could not be abolished if the Government are to fulfil, first, their fairness agenda and, secondly, their welfare to work agenda. Allowance for that has to be built into the overall grant baseline of the councils that receive it, otherwise there would be a massive shift of government grant from poorer to richer areas of England. We await the grant settlement announcement; we do not know the outcome. The other place debated the issues around the CSR and the grant announcement earlier this week, and I noted the comments of the Secretary of State, who said that:

“I and my ministerial team are doing everything possible to ensure that local government has a fair and sustainable settlement”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/12/10; col. 50.]

That is one that protects the most vulnerable communities and spreads the impact in a manageable way.

I look forward to seeing the detail at the beginning of next week. It sounds as though there is some movement and some understanding of the problems that the CSR has created. If there is no shift, there will be many more announcements of the kind made by Birmingham recently, which announced a few days ago that, over the next four years, it will have to cut some £200,000 from its budget every day of the week in order to deliver the Government’s spending clampdown.

The pressures faced by councils and public services are very grim. We have heard many individual examples of those. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, talked about the £1 billion extra on social care for adults. That extra £1 billion for local government and the extra £1 billion for the NHS are very important. However, the LGA estimates that local authorities currently spend £14.4 billion a year on adult social care, and that could rise by 2015 to some £20 billion. The issue is pretty stark.

Secondly, we welcome the transfer of public health responsibilities to local government, but the proposed ring-fencing of that budget could perpetuate patterns of spending that currently see 96 per cent of spending on treating illness, and less than 4 per cent spent on keeping people well. We have to address that prevention agenda much more keenly than we currently do.

Thirdly, I am looking for much greater collaborative working now between local authorities and the National Health Service. In terms of joint planning, budgeting, prevention and reablement, particularly for people leaving hospital who need to regain their independence quickly, these things matter very much. It is essential that the NHS reforms—when they take place—reduce management and administration costs but eliminate in particular financial incentives to keep people in hospital, and increase the financial support for prevention and reablement. The Local Government Association has put forward a five-point plan to deal with the current problems. It covers reducing the impact of front-loading, increasing capitalisation limits and accounting for missing grants. I hope that some of those will be announced more clearly at the beginning of next week.

Fourthly, there is the power to raise more income from local sources, particularly from things such as licensing fees; and, fifthly, there is a need to avoid unfair grant distribution.

We have to reduce the impact of front-loading, because sharing services, the big society approach to service delivery, will take time and money, as we have heard. Indeed, fire authorities have not had front-loaded cuts because they have convinced government that they need more time and money. It is also very important that capitalisation limits can be raised, with perhaps 140,000 jobs likely to be lost in local government.

I hope that in the consultation period after Monday, a number of things will happen. First, I hope that there will be an impact assessment on the voluntary sector and the delivery of the big society vision. Secondly, I hope that there will be an impact assessment on poverty, particularly child poverty. Thirdly, I hope that there will be a clear statement on individual councils’ revenue budget to ensure that we are not redistributing from poorer to richer areas, and that no council suffers a disproportionate drop in income, thereby requiring a higher rate of redundancy funded out of their revenues.

We need to know more about the role of business rates, because I understand from the debate in the other place on Monday night that the Government are heading for a surplus on business rates, and that needs to be addressed. There may well be a problem for some councils in setting a legal budget this year unless capitalisation limits are raised, otherwise councils are going to be forced to fund them from revenue, not from capital, and that is a very serious problem that must be addressed.

15:27

[Lord Adebowale]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her debate. It is timely, and, sadly, it is a subject that we will return to often in the next five years. Even without knowing the local government settlement and the contents of the localism Bill, it is important for us to understand what is happening on the ground and the impact that this is having on individuals who are not in this House.

While listening to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, I was a little alarmed. While I understand his explanation for the cuts, my concern is that the challenge for government is not just to make cuts. If we wanted to get the Budget back into balance, there are much faster and more brutal ways of doing it than what is currently happening. The real challenge for government is to make the cuts—if we have to make them—in a way that retains public services and fairness. I did not hear enough about that. I wanted to invite him to sit down with many of us in the not-for-profit sector to look at how we might transform and deliver services. That is the critical issue. To talk about pain to others, when we ourselves are not in pain, is simply not good enough.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and others mentioned Total Place and community budgeting, and I should note that from Turning Point’s perspective—I declare my interest as chief executive of that organisation—I have yet to find Total Place budgeting having an impact on service redesign or delivery. It is important that we understand the difference between theory and practice.

I want to talk about an individual, because only by understanding what happens to individuals can we understand the impact of some of the things that we debate so eloquently in this House. I want to talk about George. That is not his real name, and I have been asked not to identify the local authority that provides the services to him—which in itself tells you something. George is severely autistic. He lives in a residential centre. He attends a day centre for a few hours a day and has done so for several years. He has a good relationship with the people at the day centre, and attending it is vital to his routine and well-being. He and his residential service were recently told that the day centre that he attends is reducing its staff numbers and will no longer be able to provide the support that he needs. The local authority suggested that his residential service provide the staff to accompany him, but it does not have sufficient funding to do so.

George was given three weeks’ notice that he would no longer be able to attend the centre, and the effect on him has been, frankly, devastating. As a direct result of that disruption, his behaviour has become problematic—so problematic that his support staff have been forced to administer medication. The money saved by cutting staff at the day centre will be negligible, particularly when the same local authority will almost certainly need to provide additional funding to support him in other ways, including the costs incurred by providing expensive medication to modify his behaviour. It is also possible that he may have to be hospitalised. We know from work done by the Nuffield Centre that hospitalisation drives up social care costs rather than reduces them.

Examples such as George, of which there are many thousands, throw doubt on the Government's contention that we are all in this together, because George is not. Local authorities are facing cuts to capital funding of the equivalent of 45 per cent in the CSR period, compared with 29 per cent over the public sector as a whole, according to the Local Government Association's figures. Local authorities are having to make cuts now. They have started to make cuts, as exemplified by George, and, from next October, people such as George will no longer be eligible for the mobility component of the disability living allowance—which, again, while saving a relatively small amount of money for local authorities, will remove a vital source of freedom and independence for individuals such as George, thus driving up the expense.

Cuts to social care are already happening. As we have heard, the Local Government Association has warned that from 2011, many local authorities will raise eligibility criteria. We know from work done by the Audit Commission, of which I am the last remaining member—take a good look; a member of an endangered species stands before you—that local authorities have three default behaviours when faced with cuts. The first is to increase eligibility criteria; the second is to make cuts. The last thing they do is transform services. The kind of cuts that most local authorities will have to make will simply not respond to that default behaviour, and it will cost us. Through my work as chief executive of Turning Point, I have seen local authorities form many innovative social enterprises that provide effective and often preventive services, which also get cut at times such as these. There is a resistance to innovation in many local authorities that goes unchallenged, so it is not just for central government; there is a challenge for local government as well. Many short-sighted decisions operate on a false economy, causing greater harm and cost in the long term.

There is another way. Some local authorities are going much deeper by restructuring services quickly and providing innovative ways in which to engage individuals and their communities in the redesign and delivery of services. Unfortunately, there are not enough of them, and the speed of the cuts is outpacing their ability to make changes. I ask the Government three things. First, what modelling have they done on the likely impact of cuts and raising eligibility criteria on social care and health spending? Secondly, what incentives can be put in place to encourage local authorities to innovate and work in partnership with the not-for-profit sector and the private sector in service redesign, rather than slash and burn? Thirdly, what monitoring do the Government intend to put in place to inform us all of the impact of cuts on the vulnerable, in order to ensure fairness?

15:35

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing and introducing this debate. It could not be more timely or on a more important subject. Local authorities will suffer an overall reduction of 26 per cent in their revenue funding over a period of five years, which averages about 7.25 per cent a year. They will also suffer a reduction in capital expenditure of 30 per cent. I do not think that cuts of this magnitude are warranted by our economic situation. They seem to be driven by factors other than what the economy requires. They form part of an economic strategy that is likely to do us a lot of damage in years to come.

However, these cuts are being made, and I want to start with that. What are the likely consequences of these cuts? The Government say that savings can be made, and I agree. They can be made by removing all traces of waste, maximising efficiency and productivity, sharing departments or curbing excessive senior pay, but these actions have their limits and can take us only so far. Therefore, sooner or later, jobs will have to go and services will have to be cut. The question for us is: who will bear the brunt of these job losses and reductions in services?

The Home Secretary has said that there is a real risk that the cuts will affect women, ethnic minorities and other groups disproportionately. The IFS has said that the poor will be disproportionately hit more than others. Cuts therefore need an equality audit. After some confusion and hesitation, the Government seem to have realised that they have an obligation under the law and therefore some kind of equality audit is being done in relation to women but, so far as I know, no such assessment or audit has been done in relation to ethnic minorities, and I wish to know why. There are people, such as my good friends Professor Michael Keith of Oxford University and Professor Modood of Bristol, who have been doing some counting on how these cuts will affect ethnic minorities. The picture that emerges is grim and I want to share it with the House. There are four levels.

First, cuts in government employment will affect just under 500,000 people and about 100,000 jobs will go in local authorities, which is one in 10. Ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the public sector, and therefore they will be the first to suffer. Given the fact that few of them are in senior positions and the sad reality of racism in certain sections of our society, they will obviously be made to bear the brunt of services that have to be cut. Cuts in police funds are also likely to affect ethnic minorities more than other groups. I am particularly concerned about police community support officers, who enjoy the support of the local community, are drawn from local communities, predominantly from ethnic minorities, and do most valuable work.

The second area that worries me is social housing. Seventeen per cent of the white community, 41 per cent of the Afro-Caribbean community and 47 per cent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis depend on social housing. Ethnic minorities will therefore bear the brunt of cuts in housing benefit. These cuts are more likely to affect larger households where ethnic minorities are more represented. There is therefore a real danger of residential segregation or what the Mayor of London called “ethnic cleansing”. That is exactly what happened in Chicago under Reagan when he followed similar policies.

Thirdly, the Government say that they will protect education and health, but the question is: how are resources going to be distributed and used in those areas? Primary education and the special educational needs of ethnic minorities will certainly suffer and although the NHS budget is ring-fenced in real terms, job losses will occur and many services will be cut, particularly in relation to ethnic minorities, such as mental health or translation for those who cannot speak English. Let us remember that ethnic minorities make up 11.4 per cent of the NHS workforce. Few of them are in managerial positions and therefore are likely to be the first to bear the brunt.

Finally, I turn to the voluntary sector. In the past two years, there has been an increase of around 80 per cent in the demand for services from ethnic minority voluntary service organisations. But their resources are limited and cannot cope with the increase in demand. Some 42 per cent of ethnic minority charities have an income of less than £10,000 and rely on public sector funding. Some 49 per cent of their budget comes from central government; 26 per cent comes from local government; and 16 per cent from the health authorities. When these budgets and grants are cut, ethnic minority organisations will suffer most.

I want to raise a larger cultural or philosophical problem, which is of great importance. As the state shrinks and offloads its functions to other organisations in the name of the big society, things of a peculiar kind begin to happen. As the state retreats there will be vast gaps, which will have to be filled. Who will fill those gaps? We are told by the Prime Minister that the big society will fill the gap, but the big society is an abstraction. It consists of a number of institutions, some of which are better organised than others. Therefore, there is a real danger that religious organisations, especially churches, will step in to fill the vacuum left by the state. This has happened and continues to happen in the United States.

Churches are better organised. They have large sums of money available to them and have networks of voluntary workers. As the voluntary sector suffers the squeeze, churches will step in as they are already beginning to do. I am particularly worried not just in relation to the white population or the Christian community, but equally worried in relation to the Muslims because many of them are in need. They are the most unemployed and the most alienated. They would want to turn to mosques or mosque-related charities to help them with the problems that the state has offloaded on them. I shudder to think of where, as a consequence of this, the mosque and mosque-related charities will get their money.

Finally, I have three questions. First, will the Government undertake an equality audit in relation to ethnic minorities? Secondly, will they continue to monitor the situation periodically for the next four years? Thirdly, will they ensure that the voluntary sector is well funded and does not fall into the hands of religious organisations of this or that kind?

15:42

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for calling this important and timely debate. I am honoured to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, who recently spoke about the need for our society to be one in which everyone feels that they could belong. He warned of the dangers of alienation and isolation, which he has just repeated. Yet the latest UNICEF report on child welfare in developed nations again places us towards the bottom of the table. It highlights that, in particular, we have a long tail of child poverty. Many of our children in poverty are more deeply impoverished than those of our peer nations. They are more deeply alienated and isolated.

Perhaps I may refer to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and talk about the efficiencies that still might be made by local authorities. I read with interest the Philip Green report on efficiencies that could be made across government by using its size and volume to commission services in a much more efficient and effective way. I welcome what the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Borough of Westminster are doing in terms of sharing services. At this critical time, I very much encourage that motion towards those new efficiencies. The right honourable Iain Duncan Smith and the honourable Graham Allen have worked together in establishing the importance of early intervention in breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. They highlight the huge cost to our society now and in the future for failing our most vulnerable children and families. I pay tribute to all the parties for their commitment to this endeavour.

We are in a dark time. We need only look to Eire to see the risks we face and the need for retrenchment, so we must take this opportunity to focus our resources on the essentials and to innovate. As my noble friend Lord Adebowale said, we need to redesign our services and delivery. If we can take a breath and step back, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, we must do that because many families and young people are going to lose out under the current arrangements. I hope that the Government will listen to the words of my noble friend Lord Low, and that they will monitor carefully the impact of these cuts on the most vulnerable.

I wish to consider how we can do this for the Sure Start children’s centres. Will the Minister consider giving guidance to local authorities on how to keep the essentials of children’s centres alive at this time and how to make them as financially independent as possible? I would welcome the opportunity to discuss the matter outwith the Chamber, given her vast knowledge of local authority affairs and her responsibilities in this area.

Recently I visited the Melcombe Primary Children’s Centre in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and I was impressed and moved by what I saw. On Tuesday I received an e-mail from the manager, Joan Murphy, which says:

“This is just to keep you updated. As you are aware, the funding for children’s centres will not be ring-fenced next year. We have received information from Hammersmith and Fulham borough informing us that:

1. The local authority will not be funding any centres under the new arrangements and

2. No funding expectation should be assumed.

We are therefore extremely concerned about our future”.

I also received a letter from one of the mothers I met at the centre. She is a Thai woman and I will read her words verbatim except for making occasional amendments for the sake of clarity:

“I want to say that I am one person in the children’s centre. Every time that I go to children’s centre I see people and family enjoying friends and family, and then when I come back, everyone has very nice smile. I want to see my daughter come back again. I stay very far. Need to take two bus and come back two bus. Long way to go, but I happy to go this class because everybody very good people in there and very good parent in there. I mum and very happy to take daughter place very clean lots of toy and very good children. Somebody I know tried to go to another centre near their house and then they came back again because they say in this centre good students and quiet … We have very big trouble before but Adrienne help me a lot”—

the family welfare officer. She continues:

“And then when I want my help sometime they come to my house for helping. I mean like we need to come to them to help but they come to my family … Staff help me and tell me and always smile and this very nice”.

She goes on to say that:

“Another one parent she have problem with her baby who die soon but council not give her no stair. She need to carry baby go upstair downstair every day. She quite old lady. I not understand but Adrienne try to help her”.

This refers to another parent, an elderly lady with a child suffering from muscular dystrophy for whom no appropriate housing could be found. She had to carry her child up and down the stairs.

I want to make the point that it is crucial to social cohesion that these centres continue to exist. They offer a place for parents on the edge of society to gather together in order to do improving things with their children and meet other parents, thus easing their sense of isolation. Without that these parents can easily become depressed. They lose their joy in life and in their children, and the vital attachment which we all recognise, particularly in the earliest years between parent and child, can be undermined.

Not all children’s centres are excellent. Melcombe Primary Children’s Centre certainly seems excellent to me and I hope with all my heart that something can be done to save its services. Meeting with the chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation yesterday, I heard some helpful suggestions on how children’s centres can be made more self-supporting and effective. They can adopt a Robin Hood approach, asking parents to pay for services at different rates according to their means. They can make use of charities such as Home-Start to provide services for families. They can adopt the reserve grandparents model from Denmark and become multigenerational centres while saving money. They can make use of time-banking or become largely independent social enterprises. They can indeed be at the very heart of delivering the big society.

I ask the Minister as a matter of urgency to consider whether guidance can be given to councils on the essentials of what needs to be saved and how children’s centres can become more self-supporting. I ask her whether a kite-mark might be developed to be given to local authorities that adopt best practice in this area, as has proved very effective for universities in improving support for care leavers. I ask her whether more could be done to encourage philanthropy and to encourage businesses to consider corporate social responsibility in this area. I look forward to her response.

15:50

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, may I speak in the gap? I apologise for this but due to an error on my part my name was not added to the list. I declare interests non-pecuniary with connections with the Scouts and the youth service in Lancashire. I concentrate my remarks on a belief that the severity and speed of the cuts in local government are unjustified and dangerous. I accept the need for cuts; my background in local government over 27 years tells me it’s not unusual, as the song says. However, the severity and depth is awful.

I am worried about the implications for the voluntary sector, whether it is for the youth service or victims of domestic violence. It is no good those in government or at any local level saying that we must protect the voluntary sector—the voluntary sector is voluntary in terms of local government, so much of the money is spoken for. I regret that we do not have the information on the RSG today but I know that there is evidence that local government is going to suffer massively.

Perhaps I could slightly challenge my noble friend Lord Parekh, because on the day that the Prime Minister spelled out the implications of the big society I was speaking to a Republican mayor from a small town in Texas. He said: “You know, this is not new. Ronald Reagan tried this. My local church is by and large a very wealthy community”; he was a pastor at the local church. He said: “We were only too willing to help. But then we discovered that to replace the public spending, 200 people in a local church community had to raise $500,000 a year—merely to stand still”. This was far below a level in which they could build up and implement improvements in local services.

I am deeply concerned about where we are heading. We have all sorts of local initiatives working well with people who are heavily committed to working in partnership, whether it is with the churches, Physically Handicapped and Able Bodied youth centres or victims of domestic violence. It takes years to build up the commitment, whether it is finding the churchwarden who will run the local church youth group, or finding the people who will help with the multicultural, multi-faith, multiracial youth group in my home town of Preston. Whatever it is, it takes years to develop this level of community activity and I am deeply worried that people are really crying in the wind if they think these services can be protected—but perhaps the Minister will be able to assure us that she will take back the message that we in local government ask not to be spared, but for equal treatment at the right speed.

15:54

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I congratulate not only my noble friend for introducing the debate but all those who participated in what has been a very thoughtful exploration of the issues which are faced up and down the country. In doing so I declare interests as—like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a member of Newcastle City Council, and in my case also a president of Age UK Newcastle and vice-president of Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service.

Those few noble Lords who were present two weeks ago may have had the dubious pleasure of hearing me address the House and refer to Engels. Today I want to begin by demonstrating the breadth of my exploration of 19th-century political philosophy by quoting another luminary, Karl Marx, who famously proclaimed that history repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. I hasten to assure your Lordships that the modern Labour Party owes more to Marks and Spencer than to Marx and Engels, but I invite you to join me on a journey back into the past and to return to 1979, likened on a couple of occasions in a debate in another place the other day, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred, to “Life on Mars”. I noticed rather surprisingly that Mr Pickles did not add the word “bars” to that phrase.

Nevertheless, as an exercise it is worth repeating because in 1979, as some noble Lords will recall, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, as he now is, campaigned on a platform of setting local government free and within six weeks announced the first round of financial penalties on overspending councils—of which, I confess, my council was deemed to be one—and, incidentally, then set off a chain of cuts and capping which went on for several years. At the same time, the new Government also increased VAT, although by considerably more than the present Government propose to do in a few weeks’ time.

So there is a sense of déjà vu—except for this: the cuts will be much worse this time. They are preceded by extensive cuts in June of this year; they embody 36 per cent cuts in formula funding and, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, 45 per cent cuts in capital, which will have significant implications for both the private and voluntary sectors. I invite the Minister to indicate what estimate the Government have made about job losses in those sectors.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on being the only Conservative Back-Bencher to speak in the debate; on being virtually the only one present during it; on coming from the north-east; and, like the Minister, although praying in aid the deficit—the standard mantra we hear from the government Benches these days—on not claiming, at least on this occasion, that the deficit arose solely because of the extravagance and expenditure of the Labour Government. Perhaps he recalls—as no one else on the Benches opposite seems to do—that the Conservative Party pledged itself to spend exactly the same amount of money at least until November 2008.

The noble Lord need not take it from me that there are serious issues here. I can refer him to the Liberal Democrat leader of Newcastle City Council pro tem, Councillor Faulkner, who warned the Deputy Prime Minister that the city cannot take another spending blow similar to the one made over the summer. He did that two months ago and then last week, in endorsing the approach of the north-east councils, he said:

“We believe the Government has been very slow to open its eyes about the impact on local government and in particular of not taking account of deprivation”.

He went on to say:

“It is going to be the most challenging four years that we have ever faced”.

An anonymous council—even in these days of WikiLeaks one has to respect some degree of anonymity—has decided that it will be making substantial cuts in its back-office services and £12.5 million-worth of cuts in children and young people’s services, £4.5 million in adult social care and £2.5 million in housing front-line jobs, exactly fulfilling the warning of the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, chair of the LGA, that this would follow.

I would like now to deploy another 19th-century writer—this time it is not a political writer but the novelist Charles Dickens—in looking at the Government’s approach. We are being led through great expectations to a bleak house and eventually, of course, to hard times. In the context of local government we are being led by Mr Pickles, who brings all the qualities of that blunt northerner Wackford Squeers, together with some of the qualities of Mr Bumble, in his approach to this local government settlement. He was the first Secretary of State to settle, offering up the biggest cut of any department except Defra in percentage terms but actually seven times more in cash terms—the £5.6 billion to which people have referred—and heavily front-loaded, as others, including the noble Lord, Lord Tope, have said. He has so far refused to authorise capitalisation of redundancy costs, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I again ask the Minister to say how, if capitalisation cannot take place, the redundancies can be funded without affecting front-line services.

Faced with criticism from all sides politically in local government, particularly with regard to the effect of the cuts on the areas which are the most disadvantaged, the Minister who was first to settle is now scurrying around to be the last to extract concessions from the Treasury to mitigate the damage that would otherwise occur. To invoke Dickens again, he is a sort of Oliver Twist manqué. Oliver Twist asked for more, but he did not first of all offer half his dinner up in the workhouse as a sacrifice. However, in addition to that, Mr Pickles has engaged in some diversionary activity. He has used a smokescreen to virtually accuse councils of sitting on £10 billion of reserves, as if they were casually lying around. He ought to know that, of that amount, some £6 billion is earmarked; it cannot be used other than for authorised purposes—for example, pensions reserves, major repairs or capital. Capital cannot be used, of course, for revenue purposes unless specifically authorised, hence the request to authorise capitalisation to deal with redundancy payments. In fact, only £3 billion out of £68 billion of revenue is in unallocated reserves. In addition to that, some is in school reserves, and it is not evenly spread about.

An additional diversionary tactic was a rather squalid attack on the chief executive of the Local Government Association and his salary, and indeed on other chief executives promoted by the Secretary of State and the Minister for Housing. It was the same Secretary of State who appointed the chief executive of Doncaster Council at a salary significantly more than that of the Prime Minister. I agree with him that joint services should be brought to bear. There are savings to be made of that kind, but they will not be made overnight. Therefore there is a need to avoid front-loading, and to give the local authorities and others time to develop that approach. That includes, of course, Total Place, although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that progress so far is slow, and it is disappointing that there are only 18 pilots.

Obviously it is good that £2 billion less will be cut from social care than would otherwise be the case. However, it must be borne in mind, first, that the Local Government Association’s prognosis is that a 4 per cent increase year on year is required because of demographic trends. The Government appear only to accept something like 1.4 per cent. Secondly, the deployment of the National Health Service proportion has to be agreed with the National Health Service. It is not simply to be transferred. In any case, it looks very much as though the £2 billion surplus in the non-domestic rate accumulation will be applied effectively to pay for this; but that is money that ought properly to be in local government in the first place. Therefore it is a little much to claim the credit for that. There are issues that arise here. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services says that the £2 billion over the next four years is good news, but only in a settled state—and, of course, we have not got a settled state, given rising demand and rising costs.

There are then some further questions for the Minister. First, is there an estimate of what is going to happen on eligibility criteria and of how many authorities at the end of the day will be extending assistance to those other than the most critical? That question was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. Secondly, what would be the impact on third-sector providers of social care? Thirdly, in view of the capital restrictions, what estimate has been made of the potential reduction in aids and adaptations? Several of your Lordships speaking in this debate have referred to the need to recognise that social care does not stand alone, a point made by my noble friend Lady Thornton and the noble Lord, Lord Low. A whole range of services are clearly connected with social care—housing, schools, transport, leisure and culture. All are relevant to adult services, not just for the elderly but for younger adults who may suffer from a disability.

In summary, it seems that the new localism is more about localising blame than localising opportunity and genuine decision-making. If I can congratulate the Government on anything, it is that they are going one better than Karl Marx, because on this occasion history is repeating itself at one and the same time as both tragedy and farce.

16:05

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinarily interesting couple of hours. I was just thinking to myself as I was sitting here that I was sorry that I was not Freddy Howe, because we could perhaps have done a two-headed job on this. I am going to have to try to stand in on those aspects of the debate concerning health as well as deal with local government.

I shall start from where noble Lords would expect me to start. Everything that we are talking about today takes place against a background of a very difficult economic situation. I am not going to level cheap shots about that; I have done that several times, but I will not today. We have to accept that, whichever Government had come in, there would have had to have been immediate reductions in expenditure. I know that if the Labour Party had got in, it would immediately have had to make, and had expected to make, reductions of anything up to £50 billion at once. We know that that is in the Treasury reports.

Where we are starting from, probably, is how you deal with that deficit and where you lay the main difficulties. I have to say to noble Lords opposite that if local government does not bear it, somebody else is going to have to. We are all in this now—someone said that we are in this together—to try to sort out the best way out that we can. This Government believe that the best way of dealing not only with the deficit but with the future way of managing services and taking people’s lives forward is to bring in what we are calling “localism”, which is to devolve absolutely everything that we can from the centre to the local. Many people have said it before—many Governments have said it, and I am going to say it again—but this time it will happen. When noble Lords see the decentralisation and localism Bill, they will understand that everything—the decisions that affect all our lives—will go from the centre and be dealt with by the local. Local authorities will work with local social enterprise, local and voluntary organisations, other local public bodies and the health service to put their services into place and to have access to all the money that would have been at the centre—certainly in terms of local government money. This is a huge transference of funds and responsibilities.

To many of the questions that I have been asked today, which will be in Hansard for people to look at, the answer is: do not look back to central government for the answers because they will not be there. They will have to come from local government, from relationships with local government and the working from there on how the money will be spent and under what conditions. That is a big responsibility that is being handed down.

We started with the thoughtful and measured introduction by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on adult social care and the future of health services. The issues of PCTs and GP fundholding take me back; we have all been here before. I start with adult social care. The £1 billion is not ring-fenced but is down and intended to be used for adult social care. Everybody appreciates that there are huge problems building up: demography, the elderly and the need for all the services, which the noble Baroness pointed out. The expectation is that money will be passed round social care from the health service and spent accordingly. A health Bill is due, where I am sure some of the matters that the noble Baroness raised will come up.

On the question of GP commissioning and what they will have to do, shadow GP commissioning will be set up to look into most of the systems and matters that the noble Baroness raised. PCTs are already developing good commissioning practice, on which they will capitalise. I read the other day that GP commissioner pilots are being set up that will work out what they have to do. Shadow bodies will be introduced as soon as possible to help test the new system. We are allowing three years to consult on the reforms and put them into practice, which means that there will be time to ensure that any problems in the system—the relationship that the GPs will take the responsibility for—can be ironed out. The White Paper will include all these.

The noble Baroness and other noble Lords raised the eligibility criteria for various aspects of services, some of which are as important—such as home cleaning—but perhaps less recognised than others. Support for day centres, residential care and care in the home will all be in the hands of the local authorities. I know that they already have to make decisions on criteria but they will also make the decisions that follow up on that. Inevitably, we are now looking not just to the reduction to funds going forward. Everybody has been working under considerable constraints for some time. So quite a lot of the changes that people have been talking about and the restrictions have been around for longer than this Government.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bates for his stringent and stirring words in defence of the budget reductions. He said much of what I would want to say. We have to make the reductions but there are better ways of doing things. There are opportunities that will come out of this. The noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, asked about social enterprises. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked what co-operation and what other means of looking at services—such as social enterprises— would be used. This is all again part and parcel of managing a budget and being sure that you get reductions and efficiencies of service and that you use everybody’s skills. Social enterprises are a fabulous way of dealing with the social services requirements and the needs of people. We expect to see more of those over the next few years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, talked about the cuts to adult social care. With the extra £1 billion, we think that there should not be cuts. Local councils do not solely rely on government grants. They have council tax as well. The noble Lord opposite was a bit withering about reserves. Some councils have reserves and would be able to use some of those.

While the settlement is clearly challenging, we do not think that there should be a huge impact on adult social care given the £1 billion in the local government settlement and another £1 billion earmarked through the NHS budget for spending from next year onwards. With a strong focus on efficiency and co-operative working with others, we believe that adult social care should continue to be a top priority of local authorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred to front loading, as did other speakers. I know that there has been a lot of concern about the front loading of the grant reductions. That is a matter for the spending announcement which will be made in the next few weeks. If front loading occurs, it is because we need to deal with the deficit as soon as we can and get that under control. If we can cope with that, it will make everything much easier as we go forward.

Noble Lords asked many questions in their excellent speeches. I accept immediately that reductions in social care and health services constitute a sensitive area for many people. Many noble Lords are involved in the services and in voluntary organisations and I understand their anxieties. Some of the questions can be answered at this stage and some cannot. I have been asked to give assurances. The best that I can do in that regard is to look carefully at the questions that have been asked and ensure that proper replies are given to them.

Noble Lords discussed whether philanthropy could be the answer to some of these problems. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds mentioned that. He is very concerned about children and young people and the need for organisations to do more for them. Everybody wants to be able to do more but under the circumstances people may have to rationalise what they are doing and try to ensure that they provide as good a service as they can.

One recognises immediately what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and others have said about the patchiness of services and the low standards of care at home. However, these sort of questions have been raised over a number of years and it is disappointing that they have still not been addressed. I do not think that maintaining standards, and people’s view of standards, should be totally governed by finance. Everybody has a part to play in ensuring that the resources that we have are used to good effect and that people looking after older or elderly people do so to the best of their ability. As to the state of residential care in old people’s homes, I agree that some homes offer better care than others.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has a lot of experience and I listen to her very carefully when she speaks. I understand that more details about the £100 million in transformational funding will be available. It is £100 million over 2010-11 and 2011-12, so it is £100 million over the two years. She asked about the capacity and willingness of GPs to commission social care. Our understanding is that GPs are going to be told that this is what is expected of them. They are going to be required to commission and provide the services that everybody needs. That, again, will have to be tested out under the transitional arrangements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, asked whether we could meet to discuss portability and I would be happy to arrange for that to happen. I know that matter is being looked at and so we will arrange to do that. The noble Baroness also asked about DLA removal. There are currently two mismatched systems for assessing the needs of disabled people and I think the measures are being looked at. The two systems do carry the potential for duplication and so that needs to be assessed.

A number of questions were asked about modelling of what is going to happen as a result of the reductions. I do not think there will be central modelling, but I will of course take back the concern that some care should be taken to see what the effects are on the services and the way they are run.

It has been an extremely interesting debate and has raised a whole host of issues, some of which I have dealt with, some of which I have not; some I hope I have dealt with adequately in some way. Nonetheless, the debate was well brought and I am glad we have had it. Two people were mentioned. One is George, who we need to know about; the other is the elderly gentleman with COPD mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, who I believe will be looked after properly.

16:23

[Baroness Thornton]

I start by thanking the Minister and all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The noble Baroness’s first remark—that she wished she had had the noble Earl, Lord Howe, with her—is exactly right, because this did need both the local government and the health perspective to make it a rounded debate. I regard this as the start of the discussion about social care. We need to think about how we have these debates so that we can have the full range of government response that is required. This timing was perfect because we have identified in your Lordships’ House today the questions that need to be asked and that we need to keep asking about these issues. We have had several themes. We have had what I suspect is, from the coalition’s point of view, a lobby. The noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Shipley, are in there lobbying on the front-loading issue, backed up by my noble friend Lord Beecham. We have had individual stories, which are a very important way of addressing issues that cut across so many government departments. Unless you consider George’s story, the stories that the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, described, and the issues for people with learning disabilities or whatever they are, you cannot test whether these systems are working, how they are evolving and how they are changing.

My noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Wilkins talked about children and the disabled. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, gave a very moving account of the Sure Start centres in Hammersmith and Fulham. It will be a terrible tragedy if they are closed, as it looks like they might be.

We talked, as this House always does, about the partnership with the voluntary sector. The right reverend Prelate, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, and my noble friend Lady Farrington emphasised the extremely important role of the voluntary sector. However, as the right reverend Prelate said, it is not a substitute for properly funded public services.

Then we talked about who pays and fairness. The noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, and my noble friend Lord Parekh raised these issues. I have to say that I was disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and the Minister basically said—I paraphrase—“Well, actually, tough, because this is tough”. The noble Baroness also used the words, “We are all in this now”. Actually, we are not all in this now. Some of us are not in this, but the vulnerable, the poor, the disabled and the children are, and it is a grave problem. Some big questions were also raised by my noble friend Lord Lipsey.

We have raised many questions that still need to be answered. The Government are abrogating wholesale their responsibility towards some of the disabled, the elderly and the vulnerable in this country. We need to keep doing our job. We need to keep asking these questions, because that is what we are here for. I thank noble Lords and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion withdrawn.

Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2010

Thursday 9th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

16:26

Moved By

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That the draft order laid before the House on 25 October be approved. 6th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)]

My Lords, the draft order consolidates the rules for the conduct of the Scottish Parliament elections and ensures that the accepted recommendations from the Gould report will apply for the May 2011 election. The draft order has been available to electoral administrators and political parties since it was laid in Parliament on 25 October, more than six months ahead of the 2011 election. Indeed, an earlier version of the draft order was circulated to electoral administrators in April and to political parties in June. Most of us in this House who are still here will recall that more than 180,000 votes were lost due to rejected ballot papers in the 2007 Scottish parliamentary and local government elections. It was agreed across the parties that that is totally unacceptable in a modern democracy and, understandably, there was widespread public outrage at the time.

Mr Ron Gould, who was commissioned by the Electoral Commission to review the 2007 Scottish elections, concluded that six main factors contributed to confusion and to the level of rejected papers. First, he identified many problems on the design of ballot papers. Secondly, a new proportional voting system for local government elections had been introduced and voters were confused by combined elections that used two different electoral systems. Thirdly, there was poor co-ordination of the publicity campaigns of the Electoral Commission, the Scottish Government and others. Fourthly, Mr Gould identified problems caused by electronic counting. Fifthly, he found that there was fragmented and late legislation and a lack of involvement from electoral administrators in the legislative process. Sixthly, he said that there was a lack of co-ordination within the electoral community and a fragmented approach to planning.

There is no doubt that public confidence needed to be repaired after the problems experienced in 2007, but I believe that a successfully administered UK general election in Scotland earlier this year will have gone some way towards doing that. I am pleased to say that the Scotland Office has continued the work started by the previous Administration on implementing those Gould recommendations that were accepted by the Government at the time.

In relation to Gould’s recommendation that there should be a six-month cut-off period for changes in the law governing the conduct of elections, we have made sure that electoral administrators and political parties are well versed in the changes to legislation well in advance of May 2011. The target date of 5 November for making the order was always going to be challenging for whichever party won the recent general election. However, the projected date for making the order is still considerably earlier than at the previous Scottish Parliament election, for which the relevant order was made less than two months before the poll.

The draft order applies to next year’s election the Gould and Scottish Affairs Committee recommendations that were accepted by the previous Government. I accept that the draft order is large, so I will focus on the main changes since 2007. However, before doing so, I want to refer to a correction slip that Members may have seen associated with the order. The correction slip makes a number of typographical corrections to the instrument that will become part of the final order for printing if it is approved by Parliament.

It is also appropriate to comment on the four points on the order raised by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Article 2 defines “European Parliamentary Election”, although that term is not used in the text of the order. Rule 20(3)(a) in Schedule 2 includes within the minor errors in nomination papers that returning officers can correct,

“errors as to a person’s electoral number”.

However, unlike the nomination papers for election to the other place, the nomination papers for Scottish parliamentary elections do not contain proposers’ electoral numbers, which renders the reference unnecessary. Both those errors, while regrettable, have no effect on the operation of the order. The Scotland Office will ensure that returning officers are aware that the reference to electoral numbers can safely be ignored and the unnecessary provisions will be removed at the first suitable opportunity to amend the order.

The committee also highlighted Article 3(1), which deals with disregarding late alterations to the register of electors, and Article 4(5), which deals with the effect of alterations to the register where there has been an appeal against a registration officer’s decision. Those provisions have been in substantially similar form in previous versions of the order since 2002 and, so far as I am aware, have not prejudiced voters or the effective administration of previous elections. On reviewing the articles in light of the committee’s comments, we are of the view that there is an overlap with the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1983 that renders them largely unnecessary. Unfortunately, those points were not raised until after the draft order had been considered by the Electoral Commission and had been laid.

We propose proceeding with the order in its current form and will revisit the provisions once we have had the benefit of consultation with the Electoral Commission and other interested parties. Since the equivalent provisions in previous orders have apparently not caused difficulty for voters or electoral administrators at the elections in 2003 or 2007, we do not anticipate there being any difficulty with the provisions being made as drafted.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Before he moves too far away from the issue of defective drafting, perhaps I may raise a point with him. As he knows, I lived through part of this process in government because I became Secretary of State after the 2007 election and received the Gould recommendations and the Electoral Commission report. I accept entirely what the Minister says about the errors having little, if any, effect. My concern is that, to others, such errors may appear to show a consistent inaccuracy in the machinery for dealing with these issues. The Minister will not be able to check this now, but I refer him to the observations of his right honourable friend Mr Alistair Carmichael, who was the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland when I reported to Parliament on the report. Mr Carmichael suggested that history revealed that the electoral machinery that was servicing elections in Scotland was not fit for purpose. I am concerned that dismissing these errors in this way does not draw Ministers' attention to what may be a fundamental systemic problem in the machinery that is in danger of repeating the previous problem.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I hear what the noble Lord says. I could not quite remember where he was in the chronology of the Gould report, but he has now confirmed that he was the Secretary of State who received the report. The point that he makes is perfectly fair. However, the errors were spotted only very late in the day and have been drawn to the attention of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. They were not spotted by the Electoral Commission when it looked at the draft order, nor by the electoral officers to whom the drafts were sent out, either on this occasion or on two previous occasions. That does not excuse the fact that the errors are regrettable and must be looked at. The point is fairly made that perhaps such errors flag up the need to have a thorough-going review of the orders. That said, as the noble Lord acknowledged in his intervention, there is nothing in the draft order that should impair in any way the operation of the elections in May next year. As I have indicated, we will draw the matter to the attention of the Electoral Commission for further consideration. Indeed, I think it has been suggested that the orders could possibly have been withdrawn and relaid. However, given the statutory obligation to consult the Electoral Commission, timing was one of the key issues that Mr Gould’s report flagged up. Therefore, it is important that we proceed with the draft order, while acknowledging, with regret, the errors that exist.

I turn to the substance of the draft order. The draft order consolidates legislation on the conduct of Scottish Parliament elections, so that the majority of rules governing those elections are now in one document, which we hope will make it easier for electoral administrators and political parties to use. The draft order sets out for the 2011 elections that we will return to a manual count of ballot papers for both the Scottish Parliament constituency and regional elections. There will be separate ballot papers for the constituency and regional votes, unlike in 2007, when both the constituency and regional votes were on a single ballot paper. Registered party names must be used on ballot papers and the design of the ballot paper follows the principles set out in the Electoral Commission’s publication Making your mark—Good practice for designing voter materials: guidance for government policy-makers.

There will be a longer timetable for running the election—increased from 21 days to 28 days—and, to accommodate administrative demands of increased postal voting, there will be a longer period between the close of nominations and the date of election, with an increase from 16 days before the poll to 23 days. The deadline for registering to vote by post and the earliest time that postal votes can be issued is still 11 days before the poll. The longer period between close of nominations and the date of election will help to accommodate the increased demand to vote by post. Once all the names of all the candidates are known, ballot papers can be printed without any further delays and sent out immediately after the deadline for registering for a postal vote has passed. For consistency, we have brought the control of donations to candidates and limits on candidates’ expenditure into line with the principles set out in the Westminster rules.

Apart from the consolidation of the 2008 and 2009 amendments to the 2007 order, the main new changes that have been made are: new requirements for the review of polling districts and places; the application to candidates at Scottish parliamentary elections, other than party list candidates, of the regime for control of donations to candidates that applies to UK parliamentary elections; limits to the expenses that may be incurred by or on behalf of candidates, other than party list candidates, in the pre-candidacy or so-called long campaign period before a Scottish parliamentary general election; revised requirements for candidates’ returns as to election expenses; revised requirements for the information that has to appear on election publications; an increase in the minimum period between the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament and the day of poll from 21 days to 28 days, which reflects the increase in the overall timetable for Scottish Parliament elections recommended in the Gould report; and provision for electoral registration officers to supply returning officers and other persons or organisations with a consolidated version of the register that takes account of any alterations, as opposed to having to provide a copy of the original register and individual copies of the notices of alteration. There is no longer to be a separate timetable for by-elections.

In addition, the draft order provides for: minor errors on nomination forms to be corrected by either the constituency or regional returning officer; grandparents or grandchildren to assist a person with disabilities to vote at a polling station; a requirement on the voter to sign the tendered votes list; the responsibility for the storage of election documents to be transferred from sheriff clerks to constituency returning officers. The provisions on the death of a candidate during the election period have also been revised. Changes have been made to what information on Members should be entered in the Scottish Parliament’s returns book and to restrict the availability of the returns book for public inspection to the life of the Parliament or to such later date as the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament may direct. The electoral registration officer is now required to inform people that they have been appointed as a proxy and of the length of their appointment.

The draft order provides for limited access to, and for the supply of copies of, absent voting records, such as the postal voters list, for candidates, political parties and elected representatives as well as for public inspection of those records under supervision. The draft order allows the returning officer to determine which of a candidate’s proposed agents are to be appointed for the purpose of attending the postal voting proceedings if the list submitted by the candidate contains more names than authorised by the returning officer.

As Members of your Lordships’ House know, the Government wish to proceed with the referendum on the UK general election voting system on 5 May next year. The Bill dealing with that is currently under consideration in your Lordships’ House—indeed a number of noble Lords have participated in those debates. On Monday, your Lordships’ House rejected an amendment that would have prevented the referendum poll from taking place on 5 May 2011, when the elections are scheduled.

In closing my introductory remarks, I wish to make reference to the Scotland Bill, which signals the Government’s commitment to implement the proposals contained in the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution, including the recommendation to devolve responsibility for the administration of elections. Indeed, no doubt the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, will be taken into account by those who administer elections in the future. The Scotland Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 30 November, but it is clear that the Bill will not receive Royal Assent ahead of the May 2011 elections.

Of course, not all of Ron Gould’s recommendations were for the United Kingdom Government to act on; some of them were for the Scottish Government, the Electoral Commission or, indeed, for electoral administrators to implement. I hope that this House is reassured that the draft order will ensure that we take the necessary steps recommended by Ron Gould—accepted and adopted by the previous Administration and incorporated into the draft order—and ensure a successful election in May 2011. I commend the order to the House.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, I support and welcome this order, despite the defects. I am grateful to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for its sixth report and the work it has done in identifying these defects. Together with other Members of your Lordships’ House, I received a letter from a man who has been described in the other place as an SNP lawyer. It contains a briefing that sets out a number of points relating to drafting in areas where this order could be improved. I do not support the general thrust of the argument that we should have taken this opportunity to go beyond consolidation of the legislation and gone into substantial revision in interpreting Mr Gould’s thinking and changing parts of the existing legislation. That would have involved the whole scope of consultation which was not possible in the time that was available. I am pleased that the coalition Government have continued the work that was started under the previous Government—and indeed that I started as Secretary of State. I welcomed Ron Gould’s recommendations in the main, although I did not welcome or accept all of them. I am pleased the coalition Government are setting about the painstaking and difficult work of implementing those recommendations.

I cannot avoid making one or two points because I think they have to be on the record. As I have said, I was the Secretary of State who received Mr Gould’s report via the Electoral Commission. I have to say that the environment in which that report was received was unedifying in many ways. Many people in Scottish politics were trying to avoid responsibility for what had happened in May 2007, and there was one particular pretty appalling attempt to load all the blame onto one individual. I will come back to that in a moment.

The Gould report, read properly, did not reflect well on Scottish political parties, or on the machinery that existed for conducting elections. It clearly was not able to accommodate the level of complexity that it had imposed upon itself by decisions and was not able to conduct the elections on the day—the joint elections with complicated ballot papers—in a way that ensured that everybody who turned up and properly presented themselves could vote. That was a collective failure, but there were many people who were scattering to the winds and re-writing history to avoid their responsibility for that time. However, problems in the machinery were identified, and I think that those problems were shared by all. I do not exclude the Electoral Commission or any of the other organisations, individual returning officers or some local authorities; everybody bore a share of that responsibility.

16:45

First, I am concerned at the level and scale of errors in the draft. That is not because of their effect—because, as the noble and learned Lord said, they have no effect and will not in any sense impede a proper or fair election in the next Scottish parliamentary elections. They may be a symptom of an underlying problem and that should be examined. It is now the responsibility of the coalition Government—indeed, of those people who were very quick to try to blame political figureheads but are now the political figureheads of that system—to present again from that process and infrastructure, which is not of the standard that we would expect. Some significant and difficult questions need to be asked of that infrastructure.

On my second point, this man who has been referred to as an SNP lawyer has a decent point. There appears to have been a lack of consultation on the draft of the order, although there may have been a consultation on a draft. I have not been able exhaustively to investigate who was consulted about what approximated to the draft that has been presented to Parliament, but coincidentally today, as I was making my way from this House to my office, I bumped into a man who I know very well and who I would call a friend of mine who has for years for the Law Society of Scotland kept an eye on legislation with a Scottish interest as it is presented to this House. We all know Michael Clancy, and we all regard him very highly. He said to me, “We were not consulted”. I see other noble Lords nodding to indicate that they were told the same thing by him; indeed, he told me that he had been contacted by other noble Lords. If the Law Society of Scotland, which is diligent in these matters, and which could have identified some of the problems, was not consulted, who was consulted on the draft that is now presented to us?

The Minister knows that I have the highest regard for him. He has been candid in his admission of those problems, and I am sure that he will respond positively. However, that suggests to me that something is fundamentally wrong here. That may be nearer to what caused the problem in May 2007 than all the stuff that grabbed all the headlines. There should be some calm reflection. We will see this order through, we will see these parliamentary elections conducted as well, I hope, as were the UK elections in Scotland—probably by the same people—but there should be some calm reflection and a period of review before we hand this over through the Scotland Act to the Scottish Parliament, or it will just inherit the same machinery. We should look at the machinery to see if it is performing properly. I suspect that we will find things that could be improved, and I think that, as parties which were in government during the relevant period, we should share responsibility for its existence. I am not seeking to apportion blame to any individual party, but it is the responsibility of the parties now in government, and they have the chance to deal with it.

I am slightly at odds with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, because I am not so sanguine in dismissing the failure to meet the six-month window. Not conducting elections with legislation that is less than six months old was Ron Gould’s fourth recommendation. The recommendation was not that it should be put out in draft form for consultation or discussion; it was that we do not ask the machinery of elections to operate legalisation that it is less than six months old. That was clearly his recommendation. That window has been missed. It may have been missed for very good reason, and I have no doubt that if we tracked it back to my acceptance of Ron Gould’s recommendations, we would discover that some of that delay has its roots in things that happened when I was the Secretary of State for Scotland or when one of my predecessors from my party was Secretary of State. I accept that.

However, it is not good enough that a fundamental recommendation that was accepted by government and is now a responsibility borne by this Government has been missed by us collectively. The noble Lord was adept at saying, “We have kind of met this time limit by doing these things”, although I did not think his heart was entirely in it. However, if it turns out that the draft that was circulated some time ago is significantly different from the draft that became the order, that, although not misleading, does not really help to explain whether we are getting this right, and it feeds back to the first point I made. I shall move on as I do not want to detain your Lordships' House too long in relation to this, but some of my DNA is on this legislation, and I want to make sure that if it is found at the scene of a crime in future, there is evidence to explain my views.

In preparation for this short debate, I refreshed my memory about what I said in the other place as Secretary of State in response to Ron Gould’s recommendations and which of them I accepted and which I rejected. I came across this little vignette, which I think I should share with the House because I want to put it on record. In response to my Statement, David Mundell, who is now the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Scotland Office and the Minister who dealt with this order in the House of Commons in what I thought then and still think was a comparatively disgraceful way, went hunting the head of my right honourable friend Douglas Alexander, who had been Secretary of State for Scotland in May 2007, and made some unworthy political points. He said:

“The Secretary of State knows that when candidates and agents break the rules for their advantage they go to prison. What sanction does he propose for Ministers who seek to make rules for their partisan advantage?”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/07; col. 168.]

He was wrong to try to heap all the blame on to one man, and he is now living proof of the fact that the assertion that he made was wrong, too. It is not the case, and he knows it, that when candidates break the rules for their advantage, they go to prison. This is a lesson to all of us. What we say in this House and in many other places is now recorded for posterity, and there is a significant degree of irony in this for Mr Mundell which, from reading in Hansard what he said when he introduced the order, was perhaps lost on him, but it should not be. On some occasions, we should exercise a degree of reflection before we let our political heads rule our political mouths.

Finally, I regret that, despite the overwhelming advice of Ron Gould, at the Scottish parliamentary elections we are again going to be faced by a complicated and unnecessary double event—if the coalition Government get their way, we are going to have a referendum at the same time. People are very good at cherry-picking Mr Gould’s words. They did this in the other place, and I hope that the Minister will resist the temptation to do this in response to me. It is the case that Ron Gould sent a memorandum to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee in which he said, among other things, that he thought that a contemporaneous referendum and Scottish Parliament election could happen. But if one reads the whole of the memorandum, he is still, in analytical terms and in his advice, in exactly the same position as he was when he reported to the Electoral Commission and, through it, to the Scotland Office and Parliament in 2007. From all his years of experience, he recommends that we do not do this.

It is doing a significant disservice to him to have him prayed in aid in support of the quite disgraceful decision by the coalition to breach a principle, which has been a principle of the way in which we have conducted our electoral affairs for a long period of time; namely, that we do not use one set of elections to generate support for, or to uplift the interest in, another electoral decision.

I will not crow over this and I will not seek people’s heads if it comes about, but I say to the coalition that if it gets its way and does to Scotland the disservice to their electoral processes that dominating them by a referendum will do, the people of Scotland will take a long time to forgive the parties which make up that coalition. The Conservative Party already knows what it means for the people of Scotland to take a long time to forgive them, but the Liberal Democrats will learn this very quickly. It is still not too late to think again about combining these two events on the one day.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I again thank my noble friend for his exposition of not only the order, but also the Government’s reaction to the report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on the defective drafting of the order. It has to be said that this is a long, complex and not consumer-friendly order. It would be my recommendation that a proper guide to practice set out by this consolidating order should be made available to help the many people involved in elections in Scotland to find their way around the rules. Much of the order is drafted by reference to other Acts and other rules, sometimes with cross-references within the order. It cannot be an easy matter for those who have responsibility at a local level—not perhaps legal responsibility, but the responsibility of organising a campaign appropriately—to master the complexities of such things as who may obtain information about the forthcoming election, what are the limitations on the information that is required to be revealed and to whom. I think that a handbook, which needs not have the force of law but which is consistent with the order, would be a practical and helpful step to take.

Within this order, there are a number of useful changes. It is not purely a consolidating order. Although it is helpful to have the rules all contained in one order, it is also sensible to have made some of these changes. In particular, I believe that the extension of the timetables for holding elections and the different elements of the election make sense because it means that there will be less pressure of time on those who have responsibility for orderly conduct of the election. In the light of the experience in 2007, it makes sense to revert to the manual count. We cannot regard what happened then with anything other than dismay.

The order is also helpful in setting out the new limitations on pre-campaign expenditure. I assume it is the Government’s intention that any changes which may be required will take account of the current legislation, which is considering the possibility of a referendum being conducted on the same day, and will be included in the Act. But as the Government have indicated that there will need to be a new draft of this order to reflect their acceptance of the defective drafting, I hope that there will be an opportunity to consider the matter briefly in both Houses and consolidate the change at an appropriate time.

17:00

I do not find the drafting of the order entirely clear, but I have no intention of going through in detail its 200 pages since this is not a Committee stage and we have a limited time for debate. Let me take one or two examples at random. I do not expect the Minister necessarily to respond to them, but they touch on an important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, about the system that has produced this order and the need to consider the adequacy of the arrangements for drafting. Article 5(3) states that:

“An election shall not be questioned by reason of—

(a) any non-compliance with the provisions of this article; or

(b) any informality relating to polling districts or polling places”.

These provisions are remarkably opaque. They are not made clear by any definition of the article, nor is it even made clear who would determine whether there has been non-compliance with the provisions of the particular article, or what is meant by “informality” relating to polling districts or polling places. Both those provisions seem confused and confusing.

There are other provisions which again I find far from clear or instructive to those who will have to administer the rules effectively. Article 15 is headed:

“Officers of councils to be placed at disposal of returning officers”.

Paragraph (1) states:

“Every local authority in Scotland shall place at the disposal of the CRO”—

the constituency returning officer—

“for a constituency wholly or partly situated in their area … the services of officers employed by the authority”.

It does not make it clear what criteria will be used to judge the number of people to be made available to returning officers. If in a time of financial stringency efforts are made by local authorities to reduce the cost of conducting elections by limiting the number of officers made available, that could lead to further confusion, which would be highly undesirable and bring the conduct of our democratic elections further into disrepute. There ought to be an adjudicating procedure to determine the requirement—or, if not, at least advice with some degree of moral compulsion behind it. I could go through this order almost article by article and take exception to the manner with which it has been produced. The intention, when producing a consolidating instrument, is to simplify the process for those who have to administer it, and I do not find that this objective has been achieved.

I hope there can be some additional reflection on the inadequacy of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is presented to Parliament to assist us in working through the document. It is likewise filled with errors of a typographical nature which reflect the lack of seriousness in its construction. Perhaps because it is a précis, reducing to a mere six pages a 200-page document, it is guilty of constantly making cross-references to other statutes. It is impossible to understand the meaning of the Explanatory Memorandum without actually having the statutes present on the desk as you go through it. I think it is losing sight of the purpose of Explanatory Memoranda if they are drafted in this incomprehensible manner and are not sufficient in themselves to guide the readers who are seeking to spot what is right, what is valued and what might need some alteration.

It is bizarre that there should be typographical errors in the preparation of the order itself, which have so confused the reading of Schedule 2 by mixing up all the parts. Of course I do not hold any Minister responsible but I think the question that was asked about systemic coherence by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, could be extended to the preparation of this order by lawyers and the lack of consultation which he has referred to. I believe that some people were consulted, but not consulting the Law Society seems an omission which could in future be rectified to advantage—in my experience the Law Society has been extremely careful in giving its advice. I recognise that the Government have had to proceed against quite a tight timetable to produce this order in time to enable it to be the ruling guide to the elections to be held in May, but it is certainly not an exemplification of how to proceed by way of statutory instruments.

In conclusion, I welcome the decision to transfer the conduct of Scottish parliamentary elections, which my noble friend referred to, in the Scotland Bill in conjunction and in accordance with the recommendations of the Calman commission on further devolution. It seems to me that, in these limited debates on statutory instruments, we can give only inadequate scrutiny of something so profoundly important as the conduct of parliamentary or local elections in Scotland. It is a deficiency of our scrutiny which I think will be rectified by what is proposed.

[Lord Davidson of Glen Clova]

My Lords, despite the blistering attack by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, on the order and on the Explanatory Memorandum, we welcome the fact that the Government have continued the work of the previous Government in implementing the recommendations of the Gould report and the inquiry by the Scottish Affairs Committee. This is particularly so after the unfortunate experience in the 2007 Scottish elections to which the Minister has alluded.

There are, however, two aspects on which I wish to hear the Minister’s answers: first, the decision to combine the referendum with the Scottish parliamentary elections on the same day; and, secondly, the delay in bringing forward this electoral legislation. As he is aware, both these aspects do not gain the support of the recommendations of the Gould report.

The combination of the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary elections at least runs the risk of creating voter confusion similar to that identified by Gould in the 2007 election arising out of the combination of local government and Scottish parliamentary elections. Gould reports such a combination as a disservice to the electorate. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s answer as to why the UK referendum on alternative voting on the same day does not detract, to some degree, from the Scottish parliamentary issues and candidates, and, indeed, vice versa.

The other area of dissonance with the Gould report on which I also wish to hear the Minister’s answer is in respect of the delay in bringing the order forward. I share the concern of my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton on this point. I, of course, understand the crowding-in effect that can afflict government business; however, as the Government have made much of the aspiration to move to more efficient governance, I would observe that they have not met the Gould recommendation that electoral legislation should not be,

“applied to any election held within six months of the new provision coming into force”.

Given the unfortunate aspects of the 2007 Scottish parliamentary elections, it might have been hoped that the Government would have adhered to what Gould identified as,

“a practice found in the electoral laws in other countries”.

Is there a reason for this approach? As there was an opportunity to take a major initiative to rationalise Scottish parliamentary election legislation, I would be interested to hear why this recommendation has not been followed.

On the drafting infelicities to which my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton has already alluded, I took the Minister’s answer to be an acceptance that there is a systemic problem in the drafting. As my noble friend put it, this seems to be a symptom of a real problem in the process. Again I will be interested to hear the Minister’s answer to this analysis. I can well understand my noble friend’s disappointment in discovering so many infelicities as it was he who approved the task of consolidation of electoral legislation, the whole point of which is to bring everything together in a more understandable formation of legislation.

I also share my noble friend’s astonishment at the failure to consult the Law Society of Scotland. I also draw the Minister’s attention—he may be aware of this—to the fact that the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland can also provide useful views in relation to constitutional matters. I, like he, am a member of that body.

17:15

Perhaps I may mention one further matter. I share the view of my noble friend Lord Browne about the unworthiness of the attack in another place that was made on the right honourable gentleman Douglas Alexander. I think most people would agree that he was one of the most able Secretaries of State for Scotland to serve Scotland.

In relation to the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, that a guide might be provided in relation to this legislation, I respectfully wonder what it might look like. I share his concerns about the Explanatory Memorandum as possibly providing light. I wonder whether a guide would, in the same way, run the risk of not really providing much more in the way of light. The hope that this is never prayed in aid in construing legislation is a hope that is not always fulfilled.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I wonder if the noble and learned Lord would accept that a short guide could, in its appendix, refer to the relevant provisions of law, but that the guide itself need not be an expression of the law; it is simply a guide. A lot of lay people who are not lawyers have to understand the basic rules. These are obscure and cannot be easily abstracted from this document.

[Lord Davidson of Glen Clova]

That is certainly an ambition that I would applaud. It is the execution with which I perhaps have a degree of concern. When one has seen what has been done with the Explanatory Memorandum, even a short guide for the increase of understanding by ordinary lay people would help. It is a matter on which we will never know the answer, I suspect.

In conclusion, despite the points that I have made in relation to the matter so far, I welcome the useful changes that have been produced by the order, which should enable a more rational, modernised election process in Scotland.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, notwithstanding some of their criticisms about the technical details and some of the content of the order. Nevertheless, they have welcomed the generality of the order and indicated their support for it. I shall try to deal with a number of the important, serious and constructive points that have been made, which merit a response. First, I will deal with perhaps the politically more controversial part—the elections being held on the same day as the proposed date of the referendum on the voting system to be used for the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, indicated that Mr Ron Gould, in his submission to a Select Committee in the other place, had made comments on this; and I accept that he expressed a preference for separate dates. However, it is important to put on the record that he said:

“The marking of yes or no on a referendum ballot is much easier to understand and carry out than the requirements of marking an STV ballot”,

which, of course, was the other ballot paper that voters had to fill in for the election in 2007. He went on to say that there were benefits to combination with reduced and higher turnout. He specifically 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 Parliamentary and Municipal elections would arise if both the Parliamentary Election and the Referendum were held on the same date”.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, I am significantly disappointed in the Minister, because I set exactly for him where the trap was and he walked right into it. In my view, it is entirely inappropriate to edit this man’s words. They have to be read in their entirety. The debate about his recommendations was bedevilled by the editing of his words, sometimes down to parts of paragraphs in order to make points. This man is an expert. He reported in full. He wrote a memorandum, every word of which I am sure he pored over, to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. In the sentence immediately before the one that the noble and learned Lord chose to read, he clearly made the point that if a referendum was conducted at the same time as an election, it would overshadow the election, and that would not be an appropriate thing to do.

That is the argument that I make. Of course it is possible to conduct these two mechanisms at the same time. Of course it is possible for Scots to get their brains around putting Xs on different bits of paper in the right order. The point that he makes, which is consistently ignored, is one that has been made repeatedly to this coalition Government: they are doing a disservice to the Scottish Parliament, to the Scottish people and to their election by creating an environment in which another issue will overshadow that election. That is the point that he makes and the one that needs to be addressed.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I do not think that I walked into any trap; I acknowledged that Mr Gould had said that he would prefer a separate date.

I ask the noble Lord to reflect that the first election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 was held just a matter of weeks after the NATO engagement in Kosovo. That issue dominated much of the election period. Indeed, he will no doubt recall the leader of the Scottish National Party starting the election campaign by saying that it was error of some proportion—I think he said that it was an unpardonable folly. That was a huge issue that dominated the news, but no one suggested at the time that it detracted from the proper discussion and debate about the issues that the new Scottish Parliament was going to debate.

The noble Lord will also recall that in 2003, some six weeks before the election, under the leadership of his right honourable friend Mr Tony Blair, this country invaded Iraq. The noble Lord supported it; I did not. Nevertheless, it was an issue of considerable importance—neither of us would disagree with that. The whole invasion campaign dominated the period of the Scottish election campaign. I do not think that anyone suggested that debates on the issues that the Scottish Parliament was responsible for, be that health, education, transport or local government, were in any way impeded and that politicians did not engage in those debates as they went to the hustings in the May 2003 election.

I suspect that, by comparison, however important we may think a referendum on the alternative vote system for the House of Commons is, in my view that does not compare in gravity with the invasion of Iraq. I have no doubt that when it comes to the lead-up to the election, the people of Scotland will be able to distinguish clearly between the issues involved in the election of Members to the Scottish Parliament and the issue that they will be asked to address of how the other place should be elected in future.

The noble Lord seemed to suggest in his remarks that it was a constitutional outrage to link two polling opportunities together. He will no doubt recall, or maybe he does not, that in May 1998 the Government, of which I suspect he was not a member then but was subsequently a member, actually combined the referendum on the London mayor with the London local elections. I look back and consider that the general election of 2001 was linked to the local elections; indeed, they were both moved—at least, the local elections were moved and the general election piggybacked them—to June 2001 because of foot and mouth disease.

I think that I am right in saying that in 2009 the Government of which the noble Lord had recently ceased to be a member moved the local elections to coincide with the European election, and that the right honourable gentleman Gordon Brown was quite happy this year to combine the general election with the English elections that were already taking place. The combination of elections is not exactly unprecedented; there has been quite a lot of it in recent times.

[Lord Davidson of Glen Clova]

While it is always fascinating to have a lengthy analysis of many things that have nothing whatever to do with the Scottish parliamentary elections, I remind the Minister, if he is going to continue with this theme for many more minutes, that the Gould report dealt with the point that if one has two particular votes being made at the same time, the concern is that there would be a dominance of one campaign by the other. He considered that it was wholly inappropriate to have the Scottish parliamentary contest potentially dominated by another election or vice versa, as I indicated earlier. If the Minister might answer that particular point as opposed to proceeding with his historical analysis, we might gain some light on the matter.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The only reason I proceeded with an historical analysis was that the noble and learned Lord’s noble friend said that it was “almost unprecedented”. I was identifying a number of occasions on which it had happened, under the auspices of the Government of which both noble Lords were, at some time, members.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

The coincidence of elections with foot and mouth, or with events such as conflicts, may be things we have to live through. I understand all that. I will not rehearse a speech I made at a Committee stage; the Minister was in the House when I made it. My point then was that I concede that there are, in some circumstances, arguments for what I call analogous elections, where the same parties are competing broadly over the same body of policies, either at local, regional, mayoral or national elections. There is some argument for combining them. My point, which I thought he understood, was that there is a strong body of academic, analytic and political opinion that says, “To conduct a referendum, which because of the nature of a referendum involves cross-party working and confusion, potentially against a background of party-political politics, with a party-political contest, is designed to confuse”. My point in the other debate, which I will allude to briefly, was that, particularly in Scotland, where our media is and will be dominated by arguments from London, this will do an extraordinary disservice to the Scottish people and the Scottish Parliament. Of all Members of this House, the Minister, having been a Member of that Parliament, and knowing how much it is valued by the people of Scotland, should recognise that. He should have listened to that Parliament’s view.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am not sure about the confluence of interests between a European election and local elections; they are somewhat far apart. However, I take the noble Lord’s views that referendums are somewhat different. Of course, he will no doubt give us an explanation of why the Government in which he served brought together a referendum with local elections in 1998.

On what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, said, I indicated in my earlier remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that I have fought two elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and 2003, both against the backdrop of war. It did not impede the people of Scotland from being able to address and identify what the issues were in the election. The fact that there is a concurrent referendum campaign in May next year will in no way impede them from evaluating from what the parties are putting before them—nor, indeed, from making up their own minds as to whether they wish the alternative vote system to be used for future elections to the other place or not.

I fully understand the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, as I am sure that he wishes to be in the Scottish Parliament today to express his support for the Scotland Bill. He has amendments tabled for later stages in Committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and I rather suspect that this argument has got some way to go yet.

On the timing, the order will not be made until within six months. Nevertheless, the order was also laid within the six months. Subject to the typographical errors in the draft, it will be the same order that had been laid and circulated to political parties, returning officers and electoral administration officers. Therefore, while the form did not meet the six months, the substance certainly did. I hope that noble Lords will accept that. The timetable was set in motion by the previous Administration. I have no criticism of that, but it was always going to be very tight.

17:30

That links into consultation. I am able to inform the House that the Law Society of Scotland was not consulted. As far as we are aware, it has not been normal practice to specifically consult the Law Society for Scotland on electoral matters. None the less, I hear what has been said on that point. I can give some further detail as to the consultation that took place. Much of it focused on the consultation—possibly instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Browne—following the receipt of the report from Ron Gould. Focus groups were held with members of the public in late May and early June 2008, including those with special needs such as the visually impaired and those with learning difficulties, to find out the view of the members of the public on election issues that directly impacted on voters. Representatives from the Society of Local Authority Lawyers and Administrators in Scotland, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, the Association of Elected Administrators, the Scottish Assessors Association and the Electoral Commission were fully involved in the consideration of the amendments to the 2007 order. The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament was consulted on the changes to the returns book and the increase in the minimum period for the dissolution.

In accordance with Section 7(1) and 2(g) of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 the draft order was sent to the Electoral Commission this year on 6 April for statutory consultation. The commission made a number of observations that were considered when finalising the order. The draft order was sent to the electoral administrators on 14 April and to members of the Electoral Commission’s political parties panel on 11 June 2010. The reason why it was not sent to political parties before then was because of the election and the purdah period. Copies of the draft order, as I have already indicated, were sent to returning officers, main political parties and the Electoral Commission on 25 October.

It is always possible to improve. I accept and acknowledge the considerable forensic skill that someone like Mr Michael Clancy brings to dealing with these matters. I take on board the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and reflected in the comments from my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart. In terms of the errors that have been identified, I suspect that it is always a possibility when you are consolidating that those parts of the order that have never given rise to any difficulty in the past simply get rolled forward and more attention is paid to the bits that are new and are being incorporated. I rather suspect that that is what happened. It does not excuse it. Given that the Scotland Office sets out as one of its key objectives the efficient running of Scottish elections, I will draw my noble friend’s remarks and those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne, to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary State for Scotland and ask what can be done to have a thoroughgoing review before this responsibility is handed over to the Scottish Parliament, assuming the provision is enacted in the Scotland Bill. I do so without commitment, though I commit to ensuring that these remarks are brought to the attention of my right honourable friend.

My noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart also mentioned the possibility of a handbook. I suspect that will not be possible as such between now and then. However, I am advised that the Electoral Commission will bring forward a guide that will be based on the detailed statutory provisions that are here. Some of the complexity that he referred to is due to the fact that much of this reflects what is in the Representation of the People Act 1983, as amended and, no doubt, as amended as amended. With regard to the possibility of the referendum being held on the same day, anyone who is familiar with the provisions of the Bill—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, is—will know that the rules for normal parliamentary elections are set out in primary rather than secondary legislation. There will be ample opportunity to discuss these in detail at a later stage.

Finally, to clarify a point made by my noble friend Lord Maclennan, the amending order will come at a later stage. Assuming the House approves this draft order, the order which will be made will be the draft order, as amended, with the typographical error sheet attached. Any future order will obviously have to go through a proper consultation process comprising statutory and other consultees. We take on board the point made by the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates that it cannot happen before the election. Whatever comments have been made, I think we all wish these elections in 2011 to be successful in their operation and administration. We have different views on what success means in terms of political outcome—that will be a matter for the electorate to determine—but we have a responsibility to ensure that we try to get the administration right. Adopting the recommendations that have been made, which were set in train by the previous Administration and brought to fruition with the order before the House today, will pave the way for successful and efficient elections. I commend the order to the House.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 5.35 pm.