House of Commons

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

Thursday 16 December 2010

The House met at half-past Ten o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

BUSINESS BEFORE QUESTIONS

New Writ

Ordered,

That the Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the County constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth in the room of Philip James Woolas Esq., whose election on 6 May 2010 has been declared to be void.—(Mr Alistair Carmichael.)

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

1. What assessment he has made of the potential contribution of bioenergy to the Government’s objectives for energy security and climate change.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

The Government believe that sustainable bioenergy, such as woody biomass, bioliquids and many other bioenergy forms, could contribute up to half the UK’s target of 15% renewable energy by 2020. That would deliver a greenhouse gas saving of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2020. It would also improve the UK’s security of supply, as bioenergy is one of the few renewables that can generate energy on demand.

[Fiona Bruce]

Convert2Green, a biodiesel producer in my constituency, produces sustainable transport fuels from waste cooking oil. Those fuels currently benefit from a 20p fuel duty differential which is due to be abolished in April 2012, just three months after the renewable transport fuels obligation comes into effect. Will the Secretary of State consider the merits of an extension of the differential until the RTFO has had a chance to prove itself as a suitable support mechanism for the sustainable biodiesel industry?

[Chris Huhne]

The Government are keen to secure a more rapid development of all bioenergies, and the use of chip fat or any other cooking oil is certainly one option. I am afraid that the specific measure that my hon. Friend wishes me to warm to falls within the responsibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer rather than that of my Department, but I am sure that the Chancellor is as mindful as I am of our commitment to becoming the greenest Government ever.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

2. What recent representations he has received on Government support for deep geothermal energy production in the UK.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

My Department engages regularly with the deep geothermal sector, and believes that that exciting renewable energy source has considerable unexploited potential. I shall be meeting the key players in the sector in the new year.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the Minister for his helpful response. Deep geothermal power could generate 10% of the United Kingdom’s energy needs. It is a tried and tested technology which provides energy in countries throughout Europe. The last Government did not support that type of power generation, and rejected calls for the introduction of a licensing structure similar to those of other European countries. What are the Government doing to provide support for this important energy sector?

[Gregory Barker]

My hon. Friend has fought a vigorous campaign on behalf of this exciting new form of energy. I am delighted to say that, at my direction, officials are actively examining the practical and legal aspects of an exploration licensing scheme covering geothermal heat and power projects, which will be vital to unlocking the true potential of this renewable energy source.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

3. When he last met representatives of (a) Ofgem and (b) energy suppliers to discuss consumer energy prices.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

11. What recent discussions he has had with gas and electricity suppliers on trends in energy supply costs to domestic consumers; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall answer Questions 11 and 12 with Question 3.

Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers and officials meet both Ofgem representatives and suppliers regularly to discuss market issues. Ofgem monitors the market closely, and reports quarterly on retail prices. Its latest report shows large increases in estimated supplier margins—that is, profits—for the year ahead, which are mainly due to recent price increases. I am disappointed by that development, and I welcome the announcement of Ofgem’s review of the retail market. We are also taking other measures to encourage new market entrants to provide new competition.

[Mr Speaker]

I merely point out to the House that the grouping is with Question 11 only. Question 12 has been withdrawn.

[Hugh Bayley]

We are told that there is a global glut of gas. Will the Secretary of State explain why energy suppliers are increasing consumer prices by two, three and, in some cases, four times the rate of inflation? What are the Government doing to protect the old and vulnerable during what seems likely to be one of the coldest winters on record?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. The first and most important point is that Ofgem, as the regulator, ought to have considerable influence over the margin above the wholesale price, and that is the subject of the inquiry launched by Ofgem. If I remember the figures correctly, that margin has risen from about £65 or £70 on a typical bill to about £90, and that is what triggered Ofgem’s interest in the matter and the review. I have encouraged Ofgem to be firm with all the suppliers as to whether such margins are necessary to bring forward the investment we require in the sector, and we await with interest Ofgem’s review.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the vulnerable. He may have seen that we have announced support through the warm home discount scheme, which will run both for the next year and the year after—and subsequently, I hope. It will provide discounts for the vulnerable. We are also continuing to make sure that energy efficiency measures are available, such as by extending the carbon emissions reduction target, so we can help the vulnerable get through what I know can be a very difficult period, particularly if there is a hard winter.

[Mr Speaker]

May I remind the House of my keenness to get down the Order Paper and accommodate as many Back-Bench Members as possible?

[Alex Cunningham]

According to the House of Commons Library, between 1996 and 2004 the number of households in fuel poverty fell from 6.5 million to less than 2 million, but now, in the face of massive increases in energy prices, it has nearly doubled again to more than 4 million. Does the Secretary of State agree that energy companies must cut prices now and reflect the reality when wholesale prices go down, and does he also agree that those companies should play a greater part in tackling fuel poverty?

[Chris Huhne]

This is a real problem, in part because fuel poverty reduction is an objective for which the Government are not solely in control. Clearly, as energy prices bounce around, people get brought into or leave fuel poverty. As part of the fuel poverty review, I want us to set clearly obtainable objectives to deal with the root causes of fuel poverty. One key issue is that those on the lowest incomes often have enormously variable energy bills—varying, in fact, by a factor of six. If they are in modern social housing they can have low energy bills, but they can have very high bills if they are in private rentals. We must deal with energy efficiency issues.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

On energy prices, how will my right hon. Friend ensure that the carbon floor price encourages investors to put money into green energy and does not simply become a mechanism that substantially increases energy bills?

[Chris Huhne]

That is one element of the proposals we will be bringing forward later in the consultation document. Indeed, we will make a statement on it. The Treasury will consult on the carbon tax element today. It is one of four key instruments that we will suggest should play a part in reforming the electricity market, taken together with our price support measures and our very keen enthusiasm to encourage market entrants. As competition is the best guarantee to consumers, I believe we can ensure that we have the best possible deal for electricity and gas supply in future.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his success in Cancun? As energy and utility companies are not passing on falls in energy wholesale prices to consumers, is it not time we had a review of whether Ofgem has the powers to tackle those companies that seem to care very little about the poor and vulnerable, as the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) rightly pointed out?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. There was an outstanding team effort at Cancun. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), who is responsible for climate change, and the rest of the team played a tremendous part in making sure the outcome was much more successful than we might have hoped even as recently as early in that week.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) is absolutely right to make the point he made. In my discussions with Ofgem, I have repeatedly raised the fact that we want it to be firm with energy suppliers and ensure our consumers are not being taken for a ride. Both the chairman, Lord Mogg, and the chief executive are very aware of that, and they are completely in line with our objective of making sure the energy suppliers are providing the best possible deal. The review is looking at precisely this issue. Ofgem does have substantial powers over suppliers and, of course, we can also trigger a competition review.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Labour Members are also pleased that Ofgem is looking into energy pricing. The Government seem to be in a funny place. They appear to accept that energy prices will increase and that that is a price the British public will have to pay, to a degree, for a greener future, but we know that prices rise for many reasons, as the Secretary of State acknowledged. Given the Government’s proposals to increase VAT from January, freeze pay, cut funding to public services and oversee huge job losses, increased energy bills will add to hardship. At the same time, the Government are abolishing Consumer Focus, which battles on behalf of consumers. We have heard lots today about the theory, but consumers are facing the challenges now. Even if energy market reform is successful, can the Secretary of State tell the House what plans he has to improve things for consumers now, as we approach a harsh winter and the measures that I mentioned?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Lady knows that the Ofgem review is a very real review into the margins being charged by suppliers and that Ofgem has considerable powers. If its review finds a real concern about the lack of competition in the sector—I believe that has been a widespread concern—we will move to ensure that behaviour is, in fact, pro-competitive in this area. One of the key objectives of Government policy is to bring more competition into this field, as that is the ultimate guarantee that consumers will get the best possible deal.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

4. When he expects to publish the results of his consultation on smart metering.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

There has been an excellent response to the consultation, with more than 300 replies having been received from a wide range of stakeholders, which have broadly welcomed the key proposals in the prospectus. The Government expect to respond formally to the consultation early in the new year.

[Pat Glass]

The Minister will be aware that smart meters, in themselves, are simply pieces of kit; on their own, they will not change behaviour or reduce energy consumption. What are the Government and the energy companies doing to educate consumers, because that is how we will reduce energy consumption?

[Charles Hendry]

The hon. Lady is right that the consumer experience is absolutely at the heart of the success of the smart meter roll-out. We are working very closely with Citizens Advice, Consumer Focus and other groups that represent consumers, including those representing older consumers, because the experience of consumers and making sure that they use smart meters most effectively to their advantage is at the core of what we are trying to achieve.

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

Crucial to obtaining the benefits of smart meters is ensuring that they are for everyone in this country, no matter where they live—no matter how remote and rural their location—and no matter what the construction of their house, even if it be with walls so thick that most signals will not get through. We need to be mindful that none of the early roll-outs of smart metering lock in a technology that will not be universal. Will the Minister ensure that his response to the consultation gives us a truly universal metering system?

[Charles Hendry]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his tenacity on this issue and the way in which he continually pushes us to make sure that we keep it very much in our mind. We are involving Ofcom directly in our discussions and our approach to developing this area to ensure that exactly those issues are very much in our mind.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

But what about smart meters that are being installed now which might be incompatible with the meters that will be installed in future? I thought that the Government were abolishing Consumer Focus, not working with it, as the Minister said in his earlier answer. What will he do to protect consumers now from those future costs?

[Charles Hendry]

One of the major operators is installing smart meters as we speak. It is installing many thousands every week, so we have to ensure that the regime we put in place for the longer term takes account of those issues. The operator is, to some extent, doing this at its own risk, because if the meters are not compatible with the longer-term solution they will, in time, have to be removed. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to ensure that in all these areas the consumer interest has to be right, because if we do not get that right, this is the sort of programme that could get stuck in its tracks.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

5. What support his Department is providing for community energy schemes; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

The coalition wants local communities to share the business rates generated from large-scale renewable energy projects and to benefit from financial incentives for smaller renewables. DECC has also recently launched the community energy online website to provide advice and support for both communities and local authorities.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the greening campaign, which started in Petersfield in my East Hampshire constituency and has now spread to 200 towns and villages. What can he do to help such bottom-up community-based organisations as they go about providing facilitation and practical support to local groups that are looking to develop community energy schemes?

[Gregory Barker]

The greening campaign in my hon. Friend’s constituency is an excellent initiative. As he knows, community engagement in the energy sector will be vital to our vision of the development of energy in the UK in the coming decades. We are helping communities to access the planning system more effectively through the Localism Bill and giving them more information and advice with the new community energy online website. The finance mechanisms that we are putting in place with feed-in tariffs and the renewable heat incentive will be a great help.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

In response to my question in the last DECC questions, the Minister suggested that all was light and joy in the photovoltaic sector and with the feed-in tariffs. Within days, however, he had called the sector in for an urgent meeting. Speculation is rife that he will rush forward a review, and the headlines shout, “Clouds gather over solar park gold rush”. If there is a genuine problem, why does not the Minister stop denying it, stop passing the buck and get on and fix it? After all, that is what he is paid for.

[Gregory Barker]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—we inherited a real mess from the last Government with ineffective legislation. Just as with the national debt, it falls to this coalition to clear it up. I took action—I did not dither—and I have called in the industry. We will put a stop to the gold rush that might have developed as a result of Labour’s lousy legislation. We will not allow large speculators in field solar to soak up available funds that are intended for community and household projects.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

6. What discussions he has had with representatives of business organisations on the carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency scheme.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

9. What plans he has for the future of the carbon reduction commitment; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

My right hon. Friend and I regularly meet businesses to discuss climate change and energy issues. My officials are also discussing how to simplify the policy landscape with a wide range of CRC and climate change agreement participants. This will inform the proposals the coalition will bring forward next year.

[Mr Watts]

I thank the Minister for his response. On energy efficiency, will he assure me that the Government will include double glazing in their green deal? Will he meet me and Pilkington glass, from St Helens, to discuss the contribution that that company can make to energy conservation and the impact that VAT increases will have on future double glazing sales in the UK?

[Gregory Barker]

We want the green deal to be technology inclusive. Any technology or energy efficiency measure that can pass our golden rule of providing the savings needed will be considered very kindly. We want it to be inclusive and for it to drive innovation and technology.

[Bridget Phillipson]

What reassurance can the Minister give us that he will closely consider the Government’s position to ensure that the initiative works for businesses while also driving down emissions?

[Gregory Barker]

Does the hon. Lady mean the CRC?

[Bridget Phillipson]

indicated assent.

[Gregory Barker]

Absolutely. We had to take a tough decision on the CRC to end revenue recycling, as a direct result of the state of the public finances we inherited. We are talking closely with business and will be having further discussions in the new year to ensure that it remains an efficient measure of driving forward energy efficiency in businesses. We believe that there are billions to be saved in the private sector in that way.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

This week, the Secretary of State was quoted as saying that he does not mind being seen as the Tesco of energy policy, with more for less—being greener for less. Tesco, however, is one of the organisations that will be stung by the changes to the CRC that have, in effect, made it a crude stealth tax for the Chancellor rather than an intelligent driver of energy efficiency. How did Ministers surrender their green credentials to the Treasury so easily and what does this stealth tax—described politely as a “bit of a bombshell” by a local government spokesman—mean for the public sector as well as for the private sector?

[Gregory Barker]

The hon. Gentleman is in denial about the appalling state of public finances that we inherited from the previous Government. Yes, the coalition is taking action to reduce the deficit—absolutely. That is why we are not the basket case that we would have been had the Labour party remained in Government. The CRC will help to drive energy efficiency. We know that about £1.6 billion is still paid by large companies in the UK as a result of energy inefficiency and we hope that this measure, which will become more effective, will help to drive greater efficiency in UK plc.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

7. If he will make it his policy to provide long-term revenue support for renewables obligation certificates for marine renewable technology to ensure that developers and manufacturers locate themselves in the UK.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

We are committed to the establishment of a system of feed-in tariffs in electricity as well as to the maintenance of banded renewables obligation certificates. We have already brought forward the scheduled review of the renewable obligation by a year to give investors greater clarity and confidence. As part of the electricity market reforms, we will set out plans for support for marine and other renewables for the longer term.

[Andrew Percy]

The Minister will be aware that I represent not only the best constituency but one of the most tidal, with several major rivers including the Ayr, the Ouse, the Trent and parts of the Humber. Does he agree that the Humber area generally has huge potential in terms of marine and tidal energy, and will he commit to supporting the pan-Humber vision of making the Humber a centre for renewable energy?

[Charles Hendry]

My hon. Friend raises an issue that applies to many parts of this country. The United Kingdom has some of the highest tidal reaches of anywhere in the world and it is our determination that we should lead in marine technologies rather than follow others. Undoubtedly, the Humber has a significant contribution to make in that respect. Many areas could contribute to that process, which is why we are putting in place a marine energy programme with a view to leading to marine energy parks where those technologies can be taken forward.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that about two months ago, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), met company and trade representatives in my constituency to discuss support for the renewable heat initiative, which I know the Secretary of State has also personally supported? We were expecting a statement last month, this month and now, I hope, in January. Will the Minister look into that and bring forward the statement? A lot of new work in Coventry and throughout the private sector depends on it.

[Charles Hendry]

I am not quite sure how renewable heat ties into marine and tidal technologies, Mr Speaker, unless it is very hot water indeed. We are working to bring that to a conclusion; we understand the pressure across the House for that clarity and we will provide it in the very near future.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Now that the wave hub plug is in place off the north coast of my constituency—a very exciting project that scales up for the first time wave energy—what will the Minister do to ensure that it is a great success? In Scotland, ROCs provide a far better return for projects. Will he work with me to ensure that this project is a great success and adds to renewable energy?

[Charles Hendry]

The project in Cornwall is one of two beacon facilities in the country, the other being in Orkney. That is exactly the approach that we want to take forward for marine energy parks, bringing together the relevant technological, academic and engineering skills that can encourage companies to stay in this country. We have been concerned that some companies have looked overseas to take their technologies forward and we have to put in place the right mechanisms to keep them here in the United Kingdom. Cornwall has a fantastic opportunity in that regard.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

8. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on mandatory carbon reporting for private companies.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

I met my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in October to discuss this issue ahead of the coalition’s bringing forward further proposals in the new year.

[Gregg McClymont]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but legislation is already in place to oblige companies to report their carbon emissions. Will the Government use those powers to fight climate change—yes or no?

[Gregory Barker]

We will announce a robust way forward in the new year that will require a clear route map on how companies are required to report their carbon emissions, as they are required to do by the Climate Change Act 2008.

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

Will my hon. Friend ensure that, through the carbon reporting mechanism, the good work that water companies and others are doing by creating carbon sinks in peat bogs and water storage upstream is more widely known so that we can support it? One example of that is the Pickering pilot project in North Yorkshire, which also brings flood alleviation benefits.

[Gregory Barker]

As Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend is well known as an expert on the matter. She makes some very good points and I shall ensure that they are taken into account when we formulate policy on the way forward.

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

10. What estimate he has made of the change in the number of homes in receipt of assistance with heating and insulation improvements consequent on the proposed reduction in expenditure on the Warm Front scheme.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

The Warm Front scheme is expected to assist approximately 170,000 households in 2010-11. While we transition to the more ambitious green deal framework, DECC will fund a more targeted Warm Front scheme helping approximately 57,000 households in 2011-12 and a further 50,000 households in 2012-13.

[Diana Johnson]

Warm Front has helped more than 2,000 households in my constituency of Hull North, with energy efficiency measures that have reduced fuel bills and started to fight fuel poverty, but many more households still need help from Warm Front. What guarantee can the Minister give me and my constituents that the help, especially now that we have such severe winter weather, will be available over the next couple of years?

[Gregory Barker]

Over the next couple of years, we will be transitioning to the green deal. The fact of the matter is that Warm Front per se was not up to the scale of the challenge of renewing and refurbishing our homes in Britain. If we were to rely on Warm Front, at that rate of progress it would take 82 years to refurbish the 14 million homes we need to refurbish. We are going for a much more ambitious scheme—the green deal. It will be a real game changer and we shall introduce measures in legislation in the other place before Christmas.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

The last time I questioned the Minister, he said that we really have to attack fuel poverty. National Energy Action recently forecast that fuel poverty is set to rise to 5.5 million households next year, the highest level for 15 years. That is one in five homes, yet yesterday we learned that this year’s money for Warm Front—a key weapon in tackling fuel poverty—has run out. This morning, we have heard about reviews, but with the bitterly cold weather, rising energy bills and the warm homes discount not due to kick in until next year, what are the Government actually doing now to attack fuel poverty?

[Gregory Barker]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point, but as I just said to her hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), Warm Front—the key weapon under the previous Government—signally failed. Under the previous Government, we saw fuel poverty more than double; it rose from 2.5 million in 2005 to 4.5 million now. Warm Front signally failed; we need to be far more ambitious. The green deal will be the game changer, and it will bring in billions of pounds. As for now, we inherited a Warm Front waiting time for installations of between three and six months. Anyone requiring heating to cope with the cold weather now cannot rely on Warm Front, and I am afraid they never have been able to.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

13. What assessment he has made of the efficiency and effect on quality of life of onshore wind farms.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

The electricity output from a wind farm is a key factor in determining if and where it will be built. The assessment of a planning application includes, among other things, an analysis of visual, landscape and noise impacts. We are constantly looking at ways to ensure that the analysis remains robust and protects the quality of life of people living close to wind turbines. We have already taken action to ensure that the issue of noise is addressed in a standard way across the country.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Can he tell me what assessment he has made of the Danish state energy company’s recent decision to cease building further onshore wind farms, and a similar decision in France in the summer to restrict onshore wind farms, bearing in mind their impact on local communities versus their efficacy? Can he reassure me that in future we will take into account the impact on local communities, and that we will not force them to have wind farms where they do not fit the environment?

[Charles Hendry]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the United Kingdom is third from bottom in Europe on the electricity it gets from renewable sources, so the situation here is in no way comparable to that in most other European countries. We are absolutely committed to giving local communities greater say on the issues—that is at the heart of the Localism Bill. We are also determined that the host communities should realise real benefits.

[Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Perhaps a solution to the question the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) has just raised is to put the wind farm offshore. Will the Minister join me in congratulating a project in Aberdeen that yesterday secured €40 million of EU funding to build a centre just off the coast of Aberdeen that will develop technologies that can be used to improve the offshore wind sector?

[Charles Hendry]

I am delighted to join the hon. Lady in congratulating the company on that development. It is one of the areas of the country where there is the greatest potential, because the skills are already there in the engineering side of the oil and gas sector and the people who work in the area. We hope to see significant gains for the north-east of Scotland from developing those technologies.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

15. What targets he has set for the provision of energy from onshore wind sources in (a) 2011 and (b) 2020.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

The Government have not set a specific target for onshore wind energy generation. However, our lead scenario as set out in the national renewable energy action plan indicates that onshore wind capacity could be 15 GW by 2020. We are absolutely committed to deploying onshore wind in a way that takes into account the views of local communities and brings benefits to local people.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank the Minister for his answer. I know he is very committed to onshore wind energy generation and I welcome his passion. When does he expect major announcements to be made by companies as part of the round 3 onshore wind programme?

[Charles Hendry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the assiduity with which he advocates the interests of the Humber region and the role it can play in that regard. I was pleased to meet him and some of my hon. Friends and people representing the South Humber gateway last week to enable me to understand the case they are putting forward in that respect. We are delighted that such companies as Siemens, GE and Mitsubishi have committed themselves to major multi-million pound investments in the offshore wind sector, and we understand that some of those announcements are due to be forthcoming early in the new year.

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

16. What assessment he has made of the effects on the electricity grid of the weather of November and December 2010.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

Demand for electricity has been met in full by the normal functioning of the market during this cold period, when electricity demand has been approximately 5% to 10% higher than the seasonal norm. As is usual at this time of year, there have been a few localised disruptions. However, network operators have worked hard to ensure that those consumers affected were restored as soon as possible. We will continue to work with industry to monitor the situation over the rest of the winter.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the Minister for that reassuring answer, but could he outline to the House what steps he and his Department are taking to ensure that there is sufficient capacity and supply in the system to cope with the predicted energy gap?

[Charles Hendry]

We are not anticipating an energy gap over this winter in electricity generation. I was at National Grid last week, and we are in daily contact. We are looking at the margins of supply, which remain robust. We are looking at the import capacity for gas. We are looking at the role that all those technologies can play. During these very cold periods, all the energy companies understand the need to keep their plant ready to generate, to ensure that demand can be met by supply.

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

In order to maintain capacity margin over the longer period, what investigation is the Minister making of electricity storage as an additional way of ensuring that margins are maintained, and that supply that comes on stream at inconvenient hours is captured and restored at convenient hours?

[Charles Hendry]

We are looking at a whole range of different technologies. We are looking at the role of battery storage, hydrogen storage and pumped water storage which is already making an important contribution at Electric Mountain in Dinorwig in north Wales. We are also looking at the role that interconnectors can play, using perhaps pumped storage in countries such as Norway, to enhance our energy security. This is a way of ensuring that renewable energy can be used in such a way that it is there when the demand is there, and it will greatly enhance our energy security in the process.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

17. What recent estimate he has made of the number of homes in (a) Harlow constituency and (b) England which could receive assistance from the Government's proposed green deal.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

The green deal will create a completely new market mechanism for driving energy efficiency installations in buildings, incorporating an entirely new obligation on energy suppliers. All 22 million homes, and within that all 35,699 homes in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Harlow, could potentially benefit from the green deal.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. More than 850 households in my constituency are thought to be suffering from fuel poverty, and fuel prices are rising now. Will the Minister explain what the Government are doing specifically to warm up Harlow homes this Christmas and in the years ahead?

[Chris Huhne]

As my hon. Friend knows, the discount scheme available to people is a voluntary scheme. We are bringing forward the warm home discount bonus for next year, a scheme that will be clearly underpinned by legislation. In the short run, we are putting pressure on Ofgem, as I have previously described in the House, and Ofgem is putting pressure on the suppliers, to ensure that there are not excessive margins in the industry. In the longer term, which is the key if we are to deal with fuel poverty, we have to deal with its root causes. We cannot go on applying sticking-plasters, in the form of discounts or short-term help. The only long-term solution, as we have seen from the failure of the strategy to deal with fuel poverty over the last few years, when it has risen substantially, is to deal with the root causes by improving energy efficiency in the homes of those affected.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

With reference to Harlow, England or both?

[Paul Flynn]

In order to inform myself of the effects of the green deal on Harlow, I researched a website this morning, which states:

“The nuclear industry’s key skill over the past half-century has not been generating electricity, but extracting lashings of taxpayers’ money.”

That was on the website of someone called Chris Huhne. Does this person have any connection with the Secretary of State? Has he sold his principles for a Red Box?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Gentleman should be very aware that the coalition Government are committed to no public subsidy for the nuclear industry for some very good reasons, one of which is in the quotation that he so gracefully supplies to the House.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

18. What recent discussions he has had with energy companies on domestic oil pricing.

I declare an interest, as my home is heated by domestic oil.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

I declare an interest, as mine is as well. We are in regular contact with energy companies, including the trade associations that represent those who supply domestic oil. Heating oil is a seasonal product, and its prices vary over the course of the year. I have spoken to the Office of Fair Trading about the price of heating oil, as the enforcement of competition and consumer law is a matter for the OFT, and it assures me that it is keeping a very close eye on the situation and is keen to receive evidence from hon. Members about any market abuse that they experience.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Several constituents have contacted me about the price of oil. Mr Gander, in particular, relies on oil for his heating, but his supply is running low. A month ago the price was 39p a litre; it is now 71p a litre, and as a consequence he has switched off his heating system. Will my hon. Friend take up that issue throughout the Government to ensure that people are not frozen out of their homes this winter?

[Charles Hendry]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important issue, which is about both pricing and the time that it takes to secure deliveries. People calling today who reckon they will be short of oil over the coming weeks are being told that they will not receive a delivery for three or four weeks. We are monitoring that situation day by day and are extremely aware that, if there is further snow ahead of Christmas, it could become very serious indeed. I ask my hon. Friend to provide evidence on those price increases to the OFT, so that it can investigate them.

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

19. What steps he plans to take to encourage the establishment of community-led low-carbon energy projects.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Communities are where big society meets big energy, and the coalition intends to drive new community-led, low-carbon energy projects with strong financial incentives and better information and guidance. We have already acted to allow local authorities to sell the energy that they generate.

[Julian Smith]

Speaking to representatives of the excellent Settle hydro scheme in my constituency, I was struck by the amount of red tape that they have had to deal with to get the project off the ground, and the legal action that they have had to deal with from environmental groups. Will my hon. Friend make it as easy as possible for community energy projects to get off the ground in the coming 12 months?

[Gregory Barker]

The Settle micro-hydro scheme is exactly the sort of scheme that we want to see more of and encourage, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: we need to make it easier for communities to take the initiative. That is why we are making it easier to get through the planning system and providing more financial incentives; and we have also launched a website to give people the information they need.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

20. What recent progress he has made on facilitating new nuclear power stations without public subsidies.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

The Government are committed to removing any unnecessary obstacles to investment in new nuclear, and we have made good progress. We are consulting on the revised draft energy national policy statements, including the nuclear NPS; I made a decision recently, on regulatory justification in respect of the AP1000 and EPR reactors, which was subsequently approved by both Houses, with an enormous majority in this House; we laid the Nuclear Decommissioning and Waste Handling (Designated Technical Matters) Order 2010, which was subsequently approved by both Houses and published last week; there have been consultations on funded decommissioning programme guidance, and an updated waste transfer pricing methodology for the disposal of higher activity wastes; and regulators are on track to complete their assessment of the reactors going through the generic design assessment process.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful for that answer. Given some of the comments from investors, can the Secretary of State confirm whether there is an appetite in the City to invest in new nuclear and whether we have the domestic skills to decommission our Magnox plants and build a new generation of new nuclear? Will he also confirm whether the planning regime is fit for purpose, so that we can ensure we meet our target of 16 GW of nuclear generating capacity?

[Chris Huhne]

From my contacts around the City, I believe that there certainly is an appetite to invest not just in new nuclear plant, but right across the range of low-carbon technologies. I hope that we will be able to describe that in greater detail in the statement later. On planning and other issues that could present obstacles, we are considering how to clear the way right across all the technologies we will need in a low-carbon future to ensure that that happens.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Achieving 16 GW of supply from nuclear, as the Secretary of State has demanded, would require one new reactor coming on stream every nine months from about 2018 onwards. The industry told the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change the other day that that simply would not happen because there was neither the investment capacity in the City to deliver it nor, indeed, the skills available to build what is required. How will he ensure the continuity of supply that he seeks?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the market has always been composed of different views. He is citing one particular institution’s view, but that is not the common view of other investors in the City. The funds will be forthcoming and we will describe the incentives that we are putting in place for the low-carbon future that we want in the statement later today.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

21. What plans he has to meet representatives of the heating industry to discuss the proposed green deal for energy efficiency.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

I have recently met heating industry representatives and have invited the heating and hot water taskforce and the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council to be represented on the green deal stakeholder forums that I have established. I want the whole industry to be actively engaged with us on the green deal.

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I was interested to hear his response to the question from the hon. Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) on the consideration of glazing in the green deal. Will the Minister confirm that he will consider the replacement of old and inefficient heating systems in the green deal?

[Gregory Barker]

There will certainly be scope for heating systems to be included in the green deal. We want the green deal to be as technology-inclusive as possible, and we want to drive innovation. Any energy efficiency measure that costs less to install than it pays back over a specified period will be eligible. That includes heating measures.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

22. If he will assess the effect of recent winter weather on the heating bills of the elderly and others in the Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Local area energy data are produced on an annual basis covering all homes in a local area. As such, it is not possible to assess short-term changes in energy consumption by specific household types. However, the latest information suggests that eligible households in the Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency have received between one and three cold weather payments so far this winter.

[Chi Onwurah]

This week, Eaga—the green energy company that is headquartered in Newcastle—placed 1,400 people on notice of redundancy as a direct result of the 70% cuts to the Warm Front programme that the Government have implemented. Considering 18% of Newcastle constituents live in fuel poverty, will Newcastle not suffer twice over as a result of the Government’s approach to fuel poverty?

[Gregory Barker]

I am very sorry to hear about the redundancies at Eaga. That is very regrettable. Eaga still has to fulfil about 70,000 jobs this winter, between now and the end of the financial year. However, we need to get more investment into the energy efficiency sector in the long term, which means opening it up to the private sector and getting in billions not hundreds of millions. The green deal is the way forward to achieve that.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

Since the last departmental questions, we have helped to secure an agreement at the United Nations climate change conference in Cancun. We have published the Energy Bill, which includes measures to boost investment in low-carbon electricity generation, to improve energy security, and to give companies better access to upstream oil and gas. The Bill also sets out the infrastructure of how the green deal energy efficiency programme will work, with particular reference to those in fuel poverty.

[Robert Halfon]

Given that Labour Members blame us for everything, including the weather, may I ask my right hon. Friend, in his capacity as climate change Minister, if he can do anything to ensure that we have a white Christmas in Harlow?

[Chris Huhne]

There are limits to my powers. I think that the most popular legislation that this House could ever bring forward would be a short Bill requiring it to rain only between the hours of 2 o’clock and 4 o’clock in the morning. Sadly, the technological capability to deliver quite such meteorological results is not yet with us.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is huge interest, as colleagues can see, and I want to try to accommodate it, but we must have brief questions and brief answers.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the list that the Secretary of State just read out, one would think that he sees himself as Action Man, but we heard this week that he describes himself as Tesco Man. Last time I questioned the Government about green investment, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), reassured the House that plans for the green investment bank would be unveiled in the spring. Yesterday, I read that the Secretary of State has lost out to the Treasury and that this much-vaunted green investment bank is to be a fund with nowhere near enough resources to generate the £200 billion necessary for investment in green technologies. The question is whether the country has lost out. Given the impact on British business, job creation and the climate, a properly functioning bank cannot wait, and this confusion is very unhelpful to British business. Will he tell the House what is happening?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I can assure her that this matter is still under review by Ministers on the time scale that we were anticipating. Much as I like and respect The Guardian, having worked for it for 10 years, I have to say that its report gave only a partial view of what I said. I said, among other things, that ducks quack and banks borrow and lend. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was the person who put forward the idea of the green investment bank when he was in opposition, and he knows very well what a bank is. I am absolutely convinced, therefore, that we will have an institution that does exactly what it says on the tin.

[Meg Hillier]

We still do not have certainty. We hear that the matter is “under review” but we believed that it was a Government commitment. I am proud to be the first Labour/Co-op shadow Secretary of State for climate change, and the Secretary of State has described himself as very happy to be the Tesco of the energy industry. Yet without the green investment bank, whichever model we choose, we will not see the benefits that we want to see. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, spoke earlier of the importance of community energy and smaller suppliers; we want energy to benefit all. We want to see this bank up and running, and the Secretary of State will have support from the Opposition if it gets going. Will he consider joining me, as the advocate of co-operative climate change, in working for the benefit of all, with the green dividend and green investment shared fairly through an up-and-running bank?

[Chris Huhne]

I agree that we have to look very carefully at the sources of finance for green investment. There are undoubted obstacles in the way of some of the technologies that are furthest away from the market, in particular, and that makes the very important case for the green investment bank. That—not the concept—is what is under review at the moment. The commitment to a green investment bank is clearly in the Government’s coalition agreement, and it was an idea of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the reports suggesting that the Chancellor would want to murder his own baby seem a little far-fetched.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

T7. Following on from that question, will the green investment bank include the proceeds of asset sales, as the Chancellor announced recently? Given the importance of green investment to the Tees valley, will the Secretary of State consider putting the administrative centre of the bank in the Tees valley?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question about the siting of the bank, but that is a little premature given where we are at the moment. I am afraid that quite a long list of hon. Friends and others are advocating the benefits of that to their constituencies.

Capital endowment of £1 billion for a green investment bank was allocated in the comprehensive spending review in 2013-14. I have made it clear that we are continuing to look for asset sales. In our Department, we are looking for asset sales from URENCO, for example, but there are other asset sales across Government that could also be used. We will attempt to use that process to ensure that the institution has the proper endowment of capital necessary for its task.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

T2. The green deal is based on loans, which many of my constituents cannot afford, and it places the responsibility for tackling fuel poverty in the hands of the energy companies that have created a national rise in fuel bills of 139% since 2003. Will the Secretary of State explain how the green deal will help the poorest and most vulnerable in my constituency?

[Chris Huhne]

I am happy to answer the hon. Lady, because her question is based on a misunderstanding of the green deal. There is no requirement for anybody to take out personal finance to fund the green deal. The whole point is that finance will be provided for the householder. The company that provides the finance will recoup its return from the householder’s savings on their energy bills. In addition, we will reshape the carbon emissions reduction target and community energy saving programme obligations on energy suppliers into an eco-obligation, one of the key objectives of which will be to provide additional support to those in fuel poverty. Such people will therefore be able to go ahead with the green deal, even if the anticipated savings on their bills are not adequate to pay for the installation.

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

T8. When does the Secretary of State expect green deal finance to be extended to microgeneration?

[Chris Huhne]

The coalition agreement anticipated that we might extend green deal finance to microgeneration. We are working on the assumption that green deal finance will be available for insulation measures, because we have secured outstanding incentives for microgeneration through the feed-in tariffs, as was confirmed in the comprehensive spending review. Green deal providers will offer microgeneration proposals precisely because the incentives are so good.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

T3. Like the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who is no longer in her place, many of my constituents who live in rural areas rely on heating oil, the price of which has more than doubled in the past two months. Companies are now refusing to deliver less than 1,000 litres, which is having a massive impact on families and on schools, colleges and hospitals. What will the Minister do now to deal with that exploitation?

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

I would be very grateful if the hon. Lady could give me more details, because we have also heard that some companies are asking people to take lower amounts so that the delivery lorries can get to more homes and more people before Christmas. That is obviously the sensible approach. I would be very concerned if companies were artificially raising the amounts that they expected people to buy at this time.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

As we speak, severe weather is sweeping through the north of the country and heading south. Referring back to the Secretary of State’s remarks about Ofgem, will he stress in all his dealings with that body that for those living in the coldest parts of the country, such as the highlands of Scotland, a fair set of tariffs must be applied that are relevant to their circumstances? There is a real feeling of social injustice, which I believe is entirely justified.

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. As he knows, Ofgem is reviewing competitiveness in the market and the scale of the margins. In addition, a discount scheme is in place for those in fuel poverty, and we will underpin that. The Government are committed to preserving winter fuel payments, and to ensuring that cold weather payment schemes continue. Whatever the weather brings for us over the next few weeks, I hope that we will be in a position to help those who are most hard-pressed. I return to the fundamental point, which is that we have this problem every winter, again and again, and it is time that we dealt with its root causes through energy efficiency measures for those in rural poverty, rather than attempting constantly to put sticking-plasters on it.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T4. Today the Secretary of State told the House that energy bills in private rented housing can be as much as six times higher than in modern social housing. Why do the Government not use the Energy Bill to require all private landlords to comply with minimum energy efficiency standards, and not just when a tenant requests it?

[Chris Huhne]

The Bill will allow us to move forward on F and G-rated homes, for example, if there is not a sufficient improvement in the private rental sector. There is clear provision for us to regulate to deal with the problem.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Referring again to Ofgem, in the past month crude oil prices have risen by 17% but consumers are paying 70% more. Is it not time that the Government took on the oil companies to ensure that my constituents get a fair deal on oil prices? Many of them have no choice but to have oil.

[Charles Hendry]

There are two aspects to the matter. Clearly it is seasonal, with demand going up at this time of year, which inevitably pushes prices up, as with turkeys, Christmas trees and so on. However, there is a fundamental problem in the oil market, because people are not getting deliveries when they need them, even when they order well ahead. We are therefore asking colleagues to give evidence to the Office of Fair Trading so that it can see whether there is evidence of collusion or inappropriate practices.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

T5. Recent satellite photographic evidence shows that thousands of homes in my constituency are still not properly insulated and are pouring heat into the atmosphere. Given that the Government’s plan A for the economy is clearly already failing, would it not be sensible to have a national crash programme of home insulation as part of the Cabinet Secretary’s plan B?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Gentleman may have read recently about the crash programme to do exactly that in Australia. It resulted in large numbers of builders who were not properly trained putting nails through wires in people’s lofts and setting fire to houses. People died, and it was all over the front pages of the Australian tabloids. The result was that energy efficiency got the most appalling name. I intend that the green deal programme will avoid all those pitfalls and deal with the problem genuinely and thoroughly.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the news of National Grid’s announcement yesterday that it will consult residents in the levels and moors in Somerset, Suffolk’s Stour valley and other parts of the country on undergrounding electricity power cables rather than using pylons? Will he congratulate residents on their peaceful and persistent campaign, which will ensure that residents in rural areas benefit from the technology that is taken for granted in urban areas, where undergrounding is standard practice?

[Charles Hendry]

I do indeed congratulate National Grid on undertaking a public consultation on whether the cost of undergrounding is acceptable to the public. I also welcome the research being carried out by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, because people in areas affected by new pylons need to be absolutely convinced of the relative pricing of overgrounding and undergrounding.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

T6. My constituents have faced an incredibly difficult winter, and they want to know what action the Government will take now, not in the future, to make energy companies bring down their prices.

[Chris Huhne]

The action that Ofgem is taking is now, not in the future. It is reviewing the matter and making it very clear to the energy companies that margins that are not justified by the economics will incur its wrath, the use of its powers and potentially a competition inquiry. I merely refer to my earlier answer about all the action that the Government are undertaking to try to ensure that people are protected in these difficult times through cold weather payments, winter fuel payments and the voluntary discount scheme. We want to ensure that the people are who most adversely affected are protected.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Palm oil plantations are now seen as a new cash crop in various parts of the world, but they cause mass deforestation and a huge loss of wildlife habitats. What can the Secretary of State do to ensure that we have a global deal on palm oil plantation that is sustainable for wildlife and the world’s natural resources?

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

One of the real steps forward at Cancun was progress on rainforests and forestry in general. Within the package of measures that was agreed was clear text making it absolutely crystal clear that preserving biodiversity and preventing perverse consequences of supporting palm oil plantations would be a key part of rainforest protection and funding.

[Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)]

On energy security, will Ministers examine critically the supply obligation that we place on companies, given that the tendency to buy short term rather than long term, and sometimes on the spot market, means that there can be no absolute guarantee that the supply will be in place in critical and extreme times for the world?

[Charles Hendry]

That is an element of the Energy Bill. We will increase the supplier obligation to ensure that suppliers can meet demand at times of greatest demand. I have also spoken with other Governments—Qatar this week and Norway more recently—about how to secure more long-term contracts to provide greater security of supply and greater price predictability.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I am very concerned about what I have heard in the Chamber this morning. Hon. Members have said that there is a shortage in the supply of oil, that their constituents are going cold, and that schools and hospitals are losing out. We obviously have an oil supply crisis. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), says that he wants suppliers to ration their oil, but will the Secretary of State take personal command of this situation, call in the oil supply companies and sort this out?

[Chris Huhne]

I have complete confidence in the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who has responsibility for energy. He has been absolutely hands on in dealing with that matter and has kept me informed. I believe that the measures he is taking are absolutely appropriate, but we are watching the situation day by day to ensure that the heating oil supplies are there.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, I call Caroline Lucas.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

In the light of the role that the World Bank could play in establishing and managing the new green climate fund, which was set up following the Cancun agreements, will the Secretary of State comment on the current level of fossil fuel lending undertaken by the World Bank group, and will he support a major shift to lending for renewables instead?

[Chris Huhne]

The Government have repeatedly said, and I entirely agree, that the lending practices of the World Bank and other institutions must reflect the overwhelming need that we have as a globe to move towards a low-carbon economy. It is certainly dispiriting to find that that need was not reflected in some of the loans that were approved recently by the World Bank.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry but we must now move on.

Business of the House

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

11:36

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

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

The business for the week commencing 20 December will be:

Monday 20 December—General debate on firearms control. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement on the European Council.

Tuesday 21 December—Pre-recess Adjournment debate, the format of which has been specified by the Backbench Business Committee.

The House will not adjourn until the Speaker has signified Royal Assent. The House will meet at 11.30 am and be subject to Wednesday timings should it agree to the motion at the end of today’s business.

The provisional business for the week commencing 10 January will include:

Monday 10 January—Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill.

Tuesday 11 January—Consideration in Committee of the European Union Bill (day 1).

Wednesday 12 January—Remaining stages of the Postal Services Bill.

Thursday 13 January—Remaining stages of the National Insurance Contributions Bill.

The provisional business for the week commencing 17 January will include:

Monday 17 January—Second Reading of the Localism Bill.

I should also like to remind the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 13 January and 20 January 2011 will now be:

Thursday 13 January 2011—A debate on the impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Thursday 20 January 2011—A general debate on anti-Semitism.

May I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr Speaker, and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy Christmas and new year, and to thank all those who have kept the House running smoothly this year, particularly the security staff, the police, the Serjeant at Arms and the team who have kept the House running without interruption? I should also like to thank the staff involved in providing services and a welcome to new Members following the general election, including the Clerks, the Officers and staff of the House, the Doorkeepers and the cleaners. A merry Christmas to all.

[Hilary Benn]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. Following the decision of the deputy Chief Whip this morning to break the convention that the party holding a seat moves the by-election writ in the case of seats declared void after an election, which is what happened in Winchester in 1997, can the Leader of the House confirm that nearly 1,000 students in Oldham East and Saddleworth are likely to be disfranchised in this by-election because they will not have returned to university by 13 January, which is the date that the coalition has picked, whereas they would have returned by 3 February, which is the date that we would have moved? Does this not show that the coalition is running scared of the judgment of students at the ballot box?

Does the Leader of the House have any news on when the Prime Minister will come to the House to explain why, week after week, he is breaking promise after promise? When he does appear, will he also explain something else? All summer long, he and the Chancellor have been telling us triumphantly that everyone supports their economic policy. Well, not any more they don’t! What are we to make of the leak of a memo from the country’s top civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell, telling the Prime Minister that in case plan A on the economy does not work, he needs to have a plan B? May we have a debate, therefore, on what plan there is to stop unemployment continuing to rise next year, as people in the public sector—including, as the people of Oldham will see, the 1,387 uniformed police officers in Greater Manchester who are to go—are thrown out of their jobs by the very Government they loyally serve?

Last week, the Justice Secretary, having told us he wants prisoners to have the vote, said that prison is not succeeding. A few days later, the Home Secretary flatly contradicted him when she said that prison works. When will the Prime Minister sort out this squabble? Perhaps he could set up a court—assuming he can find one that is still open—summon them both, hear the evidence and deliver a verdict. I suppose, technically, that would mean making a statement on which of these warring Cabinet Ministers is speaking for the Government.

Last week, the ConservativeHome website reported that there was a pretty difficult meeting of the 1922 committee, with a lot of cross MPs, on the subject of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—I have to say that we all know the feeling. Following last night’s meeting, may we have a statement on what the Government plan to do about IPSA? The grumpiness on the Tory Benches shows that it is not so much the season of good will as seething ill will and loathing. One Tory MP said last night:

“The coalition is an imperial clique”.

I am open to suggestions on who on the Government Benches is Caligula and who is Nero.

The former head of the Prime Minister’s social mobility taskforce, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), talked of sheer hostility towards the coalition leadership. Apparently, he went on to say that it was about a lot of things, including fees and being taken for granted, but especially about the Liberal Democrats being allowed

“to say what they like and do what they like”.

I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but has he only just noticed that about the Lib Dems? They have been doing it for years. Will the Leader of the House therefore assure his Back Benchers that there will now be a debate on how to stop Lib Dem Members getting in the way of Tory Members’ upward ministerial mobility?

With all this unhappiness, Mr Speaker, may I join the Leader of the House in wishing you, the Deputy Leader of the House, all hon. Members and all the staff, who serve us so well, a merry Christmas and a happy new year? As for Christmas presents, I hope that everyone gets what they wish for, although I am sorry to say that, for Lib Dem voters, even though their stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hope that St Nicholas would soon be there, they will not be receiving that shiny new tuition fees pledge they were promised, because St Nick has let them down.

[Sir George Young]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response, his Christmas wishes and indeed his Christmas card. Of course, for the Labour party this is always a time of giving. I have been looking through what he has been giving over the past few business questions—he digs deep into his sack each time. He has promised higher spending on child benefit and housing benefit, lower VAT in the new year and more university funding. We all applaud him on his festive generosity, but until the Labour party comes up with a credible way of paying for it all, it will have no more credibility than Santa Claus. I ask him—[Interruption.]People will not believe in the Labour party any more than they believe in Santa Claus unless the Opposition come up with some decent answers.

The right hon. Gentleman could have had a debate on the writ for the by-election. However, the Labour party chose not to do so, so it is a little rich of him to ask me for one now. The Opposition could have had a debate if they had objected an hour ago to the writ being moved. It is astonishing that they do not want the by-election to be held, when their own candidate has said:

“I can’t wait until polling day,”

so what is all the fuss about? The precedent from Winchester quoted by the right hon. Gentleman is simply not accurate. There is a collective loss of memory on the Opposition Benches about what happened in Winchester. The seat was previously held by a Conservative Member of Parliament, and the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip moved the writ. Therefore, in the most recent precedent of a seat being declared void, the Chief Whip of the party previously holding the seat did not move the writ.

Moving quickly through the other issues that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, let me say that the Prime Minister is here every week to answer questions, and he will continue to do so.

On the Sentencing (Reform) Bill, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the Green Paper published last week was a collective document, published by the Cabinet and the Administration as a whole. In the robust evidence that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor gave to the Select Committee on Justice, he made it clear that there was not a cigarette paper between him and the Home Secretary.

On plan A and plan B, at least we have a plan A. The Labour party does not even have one coherent strategy on the economy. Indeed, yesterday the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), criticised the Leader of the Opposition for his performance at Prime Minister’s questions, saying that

“we have a huge responsibility to take these arguments to the country but we can’t do that if we are dividing amongst ourselves.”

On unemployment, the shadow Leader of the House will have seen the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which stated that unemployment is set to fall next year and every year thereafter, and that the fall in employment in the public sector is more than counterbalanced by the rise in employment in the private sector.

Finally, on IPSA, the position is absolutely clear. We had a useful debate on IPSA—I think on 2 December—and the Government abide by the resolution, passed without Division by the House at that time, that IPSA should be given an opportunity to review the regime and come up with an alternative by 1 April.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, but there is a statement to follow and then Backbench Business Committee business, so there is a premium on brevity from Back Bench and Front Bench alike.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is aware—I have banged on about this enough times—of problems with flooding in my constituency, but we now have a new precedent. The Environment Agency has decided to spend £28 million flooding farmland in order to tick a box for Europe. It is nothing to do with this country; it comes from a European directive. There is now an entire village of people worried that they will be cut off and will have to be removed if the plan fails. This is not the first such case, but things are now getting extremely serious, so may I ask for Government time in which to debate what the Environment Agency is doing?

[Sir George Young]

Of course I understand the seriousness to which my hon. Friend refers and the anxiety in the village concerned. He will have an opportunity on Tuesday to raise the matter in the last debate of the year, but in the meantime, I will draw the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and see whether any action can be taken at ministerial level to allay the concerns that he has expressed.

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

These being the last business questions before Christmas, may I again urge the Leader of the House to allocate more time to Back-Bench business, to compensate for the fact that the Session has been extended to April 2012? While he is working out how many more days to allocate to Back Benchers, can he also look at what days he allocates? The Government are still predominantly giving Back Benchers Thursdays on which to hold their debates, when really we would like a much clearer spread across the parliamentary week.

Finally, may I join the Leader of the House in wishing everybody a very happy Christmas? I would particularly like to wish the Doorkeepers well in the darts world championship, in which our very own House of Commons darts team is taking part. Will he join me in wishing them well on Sunday?

[Sir George Young]

On the first point, the hon. Lady is quite right to say that, because the Session is longer than it would normally be, there are implications for days allocated to private Members’ Bills, Opposition days and Back-Bench business days. Early in the new year, discussions will commence through the usual channels, and also involving the hon. Lady, to allocate more days because the Session is to run until spring 2012. On her point about Thursdays, roughly a third of the days allocated to her Committee have not been Thursdays, but I take her point. So far as the Doorkeepers are concerned, I hope they are as accurate with their arrows as they are in forecasting the time at which the House will rise.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House be so good as to ensure that time is set aside so that we may debate the Government’s Green Paper on sentencing as soon as possible, and long before the end of the consultation period, please?

[Sir George Young]

I note my hon. Friend’s interest in this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) had a debate on this important subject in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, and the Sentencing (Reform) Bill is going through the House, which will give Members ample opportunity to debate the Government’s proposals. The Green Paper makes it clear that, despite record spending, we are not delivering what really matters, and society has the right to expect the criminal justice system to protect it.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I welcome the written statement this morning about the detention of asylum seekers’ children, but may I express my disappointment that it was a written statement rather than an oral statement? May we have an oral statement or a debate on this matter in the new year? My fear is that, although we are transferring children from the large detention centres, we might simply be transferring them to smaller detention units.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for the written ministerial statement. Any Government have to strike a balance between written ministerial statements and oral statements, given the impact that a number of oral statements can have on the business of the House. He makes a strong case for that matter being debated, however. The alternative to Yarl’s Wood, whose closure I am sure he will welcome, has been piloted, and he might have heard Martin Narey of Barnado’s on the “Today” programme welcoming this initiative while recognising that there needs to be some secure accommodation available in the days before deportation. Also, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, might have heard his bid for a debate on the policy.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend tell me whether he had any say, as Leader of the House and on behalf of the House, on the routing of the recent demonstrations outside the House? Given that it is possible that Parliament square will be restored under the provisions of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, does he agree that it would be unwise to put large numbers of demonstrators into the restored square?

[Sir George Young]

The answer to the first question is no; that was an operational matter for the police, and I did not have any say. My view is that it would be wrong to allow encampments in Parliament square, and the whole point of the clauses in the Bill is to restore the square to the position it was in when my hon. Friend first joined the House—namely, a square in the middle of an historical capital city surrounded by Westminster abbey, this building and other significant buildings—rather than being despoiled by a shanty town.

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

I thank the Leader of the House on behalf of all Members for his support throughout the year on a number of issues. He will be aware of the great anxiety surrounding Tuesday’s pre-Adjournment debate, as it is fast approaching becoming a car crash. Will he now, even at this late stage, speak to the Backbench Business Committee to ensure that all Members get genuine answers from the Deputy Leader of the House in that debate, and that it does not become a shambles?

[Sir George Young]

At this moment, the hon. Gentleman is a lot closer, physically, to the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee than I am, and she will have heard his question. What is proposed is a pilot, and the Committee is anxious to hear hon. Members’ views on the proposed format, which will give the Government more certainty about the issues that are being raised, and therefore a better opportunity to respond, although it is slightly less flexible. I very much hope that the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who will be replying to the debate, will have adequate time at the end of the debate to respond to all the issues that have been raised, but that will depend on discipline being exercised during the debate to give him adequate time to address the House at the end.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

The 2012 Olympics will be a significant sporting event and, on the back of that, there will undoubtedly be a significant boost to tourism. Will the Leader of the House make a statement telling us how the Government will ensure that the boost to tourism will also benefit the tourism industry in constituencies such as Carlisle?

[Sir George Young]

This Government are very anxious, as were the previous Government, that the benefits of the Olympics should filter out to all parts of the country. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games has established the nations and regions group to ensure UK-wide engagement and to maximise the legacy from London 2012. The group is working directly with representatives from each of the nations—and, indeed, the regions—to realise the sporting, economic and cultural benefits of the 2012 games. My hon. Friend’s constituency and the wider north-west stand to gain from the wide range of opportunities created by the games.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Female genital mutilation affects more than 20,000 women and girls in this country, some of them as young as 12 months old. A brilliant midwife, Alison Burns, has set up a clinic in the west midlands on her own initiative to deal with this matter. May we have an urgent debate on why there has not been a single prosecution, despite the fact that the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 makes this practice illegal?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady has raised a valid issue, and of course I will raise the matter with the appropriate Secretary of State. I think I am right in saying that she has one of the debates on Tuesday, on women and human rights, at which time she might have an opportunity to touch on that matter, but I will certainly ensure that she gets a reply on that specific issue from whichever Minister replies to that section of the debate.

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

May we have a debate on the Department for Work and Pensions contract for cashing benefit cheques? The contract is currently held by the Post Office and, whereas other competitors might be able to put in cheaper bids, they cannot possibly match the Post Office on quality. Paypoint, for example, has no outlets on many of the islands or anywhere in rural north Argyll. In the recent terrible weather, the Post Office made a big extra effort to keep its branches supplied with cash, and it deserves to keep this contract.

[Sir George Young]

I commend my hon. Friend on raising this issue, and I have seen his early-day motion on the subject. As he probably knows, the Government have yet to announce the contract, but I shall draw his comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

May we have a debate as soon as possible on the conventions of this House? Conflict is inevitable in Parliament—even the geography of the Chamber reflects that—but we have rules and conventions to keep it within manageable limits. If, however, political parties gratuitously break those conventions for short-term party political advantage, as the Lib Dems have done today, that has serious implications for Parliament, and that matter needs to be examined in greater detail, rather than in the cavalier manner that it was dealt with today.

[Sir George Young]

I reject the accusation that anything has been done in a cavalier manner. As I said in response to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the convention that has been followed in this case exactly replicates the convention that was followed the last time a seat was declared void, which was in the constituency of Winchester.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Following the recession, many over-50s in my constituency are, regrettably, finding it very difficult to get back into work, and I know that that issue extends across the country. I would be grateful if time could be found for a debate on encouraging employers to look kindly on re-employing those who find themselves out of work over the age of 50.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He will know that we are introducing a new Work programme from early next year, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is anxious to ensure that job seekers of all ages get the tailored and personalised support that they need to get back to work. I will draw my hon. Friend’s remarks to the attention of the Secretary of State.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Last week, during the tuition fees debate, the Minister for Universities and Science, the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts) probably inadvertently misled the House when he said that there were more Scottish university students studying in England than there were English university students studying in Scotland. According to the latest figures, 11,805 Scottish students were studying in English universities, while in the same academic year, some 22,510 English students were studying in Scottish universities. I know that the Leader of the House takes these matters very seriously. Can we now expect a statement from the Minister to put that right?

[Sir George Young]

It is certainly the case that, if a Minister has inadvertently given inaccurate information to the House, the appropriate action should be taken and the record should be set straight. If one of my hon. Friends did indeed give the wrong information, that will happen, and I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s remarks to the attention of the appropriate Minister.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House allow us a debate on the local government finance settlement, which was announced earlier this week, now that councils have had time to digest the news? There is real concern in my constituency about the way in which the transitional grant has been calculated. The calculation of Pendle’s revenue spending power for 2010-11 is significantly understated. It does not include several amounts that were included in revenue grants received last year. If those amounts were included, the transitional grant would be boosted by more than £1 million.

[Sir George Young]

As a former local government Minister, I know that there is no way of coming up with a draft settlement that satisfies every single local authority. As my hon. Friend will know, we are consulting on the proposals announced on Monday, and if he or members of his local authority have comments to make about the settlement, they should make them. There will be an opportunity to debate the final settlement when it is laid before the House next year.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House invite the Home Secretary to come to the House again to correct comments that she made about public order policing in her statement last Monday? She informed the House then that protesters

“who remained peaceful and wished to leave via Whitehall were able to do so.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 643, c. 665.]

When I pressed her on that, she confirmed it. Since then an e-mail has been passed to me by, among others, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), which reports that peaceful protesters spent hours trying to leave and being prevented from doing so by police. Although the police told them that they could leave, they actually prevented that from happening. Will the Home Secretary come and tell us the truth about the policing of the demonstration?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady will have an opportunity to raise the issue with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary during the next session of Home Office questions. In the meantime, I will of course draw her remarks to my right hon. Friend’s attention and establish whether she wishes to respond to them.

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

Will my right hon. Friend allow Government time for a debate on the provision of health and education for children with special needs, who are some of the most vulnerable children in our society?

[Sir George Young]

I commend the work that my hon. Friend has been doing on this issue for many years. The Government believe that the most vulnerable children deserve the highest quality of care. We expect a Green Paper on special educational needs to be published very soon, and we would welcome his comments on it.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the Olympic legacy? It has become clear that one of the bids involves a complete dismantling of the legacy to athletics, and that is important to the House. Moreover, much that Legacy Trust UK is doing is being done behind closed doors, in secrecy. It is of grave concern that one bid involves the building of a supermarket on the Olympic site: that cannot be right. We need a debate to discuss the legacy for the young people of this country.

[Sir George Young]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Of course we need a legacy for young people after the Olympics. I cannot promise an early debate, but I will draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. The matter might also be a worthy subject for an Adjournment debate.

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

Many of us look forward not only to the royal wedding, but to finding out what title will be bestowed on Prince William. Will the Leader of the House remind the Privy Council that the dukedom of Monmouth has been vacant since 1685, for reasons best glossed over? I am sure that the residents of that county would be delighted to be associated with the royal wedding in any way possible.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was seeking a statement on the matter.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend risks opening a bidding war in the Chamber among other hon. Members who wish their constituencies to be recognised in the same manner. Let me simply say that, although I note his remarks, the issue is way, way above my pay grade.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

May we have another early debate on the funding of universities? As the Leader of the House will know, in Wales—my area—the Welsh Assembly Government are not applying fees. Next week the Scottish Government will probably decide not to do so either, as will the Northern Ireland Government. Why are the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government picking on English students?

[Sir George Young]

I honestly think that the House has had adequate opportunities to debate tuition fees this month. There has been an Opposition day debate on the subject, as well as a full day’s debate on the order and the regulation last week. The discrepancy between what happens to English students and what happens to other students flows from the devolution settlement.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Ghana, one of the most stable democracies in Africa, is about to pump its first commercial oil, worth $400 million a year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that wealth needs to be passed to the whole country, and that the Parliament of Ghana needs to work together to ensure that legislation and regulation are in place to ensure that that happens?

[Sir George Young]

Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the commencement of oil production in Ghana. I hope very much that the revenue will be used for the benefit of all the citizens of that country, and will be managed with a view to Ghana’s future prosperity.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not wish to disfranchise students in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. Will he join me in encouraging the relevant Secretary of State to make a statement to the House today, so that, before the Christmas holidays, students are made aware that they can register for postal votes in that by-election?

[Sir George Young]

If the hon. Gentleman was worried about the timing of the by-election, he could have registered his objection an hour ago when he had an opportunity to do so. He did not, and we heard earlier that Labour Members wanted to “bring it on”. No one has been disfranchised.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am very concerned about the possible impact on service personnel at RAF Marham in my constituency. Given the level of speculation about air bases this week, given that the economic and military case has been made in favour of RAF Marham and given that that appears to be the view of the Ministry of Defence, may we have a statement so that we can have some certainty on the issue?

[Sir George Young]

I understand my hon. Friend’s anxiety. She says that something may be “the view of the Ministry of Defence”, but my understanding is that no decision has been made. Some consequences of the strategic defence and security review, which was published in October, have implications for a number of bases, including the one in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but I understand that no decision will be made until the spring, when of course the House will be informed. However, the strong case that my hon. Friend has made repeatedly in the Chamber on behalf of RAF Marham will have been heard.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

May we have an urgent statement from the Business Secretary on the disgraceful situation in Scotland, where TNT, DHL and other delivery companies are currently refusing to make deliveries? RL Engineering Services in my constituency contacted me this morning because it needs a part in order to rescue a Ministry of Defence tug stuck in the Kyle of Lochalsh, but the companies are refusing to deliver it. Can the Business Secretary take some action to ensure that the situation does not continue?

[Sir George Young]

If the matter is indeed not devolved but retained, I will of course draw it to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), who is responsible for postal affairs, and establish whether he can take any action to ensure that deliveries get through.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

The Leader of the House may be aware that hauliers are to be penalised by the European Union, which is considering introducing a 4-metre height limit on new trailers. I have been lobbied by several hauliers in my constituency, not least Mr Robin Allen, who fears that that is much lower than the current limit and that hauliers will not be able to carry the same amount of goods, which means that there will be more lorries. The bridges do not need to be made any higher, because the trailers are already being driven under them. Will the Leader of the House refer the matter to the relevant Minister?

[Sir George Young]

I am all in favour of fewer lorries on our roads. I think that it would be best for the Secretary of State for Transport to have a dialogue with the Road Haulage Association, establish whether those anxieties are reflected more broadly throughout the industry, and then establish whether we can take action to minimise any loss of trade carried on the larger trailers.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Given that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is on record as having said in the House that this year’s grant settlement would not hit the poorest communities hardest, and given that that is exactly what it has done, may we have an urgent debate on the matter?

[Sir George Young]

There will indeed be an urgent debate on the matter, because the settlement must be approved by the House before the local authorities get their money. As the Secretary of State said on Monday, it is a progressive settlement that reflects the requirements of the parts of the country that need the resources most.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend ensure that time is found between now and the end of the consultation period for a debate on the Floor of the House about the legal aid Green Paper? We had a stimulating debate in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, when Members on both sides of the House made suggestions about what needed to be done in this vital regard, but a debate on the Floor of the House would allow more Members more time in which to amplify their concerns.

[Sir George Young]

As my hon. Friend said, there was a well-attended debate on legal aid in Westminster Hall earlier this week. Any change to legal aid will require legislation of course, and I anticipate that there will be a Bill on that this Session. Our proposals represent a radical, wide-ranging and ambitious programme of reform that reflects our commitment to ensuring that legal aid is available to those who need it most. We estimate that it will deliver savings of about £350 million by 2014-15, but the exact figure will be subject to what final package of proposals we decide to implement following the consultation to which my hon. Friend referred.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

To return to an issue I raised at a previous business questions, the Government have announced that they will change the way in which the police’s use of stop-and-search and stop-and-account powers are recorded, and I think that change will make it impossible to check properly whether their use is proportionate and non-discriminatory. In a Westminster Hall debate on 1 December, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said this change would save 450,000 hours of police time, but that figure is strongly disputed by the StopWatch action group and others. May we have a debate to discuss the reality of the situation?

[Sir George Young]

It is important that we seek a consensus on what the impact of the changes will be. I cannot promise an early debate, but a meeting between the relevant Home Office Minister and the organisation to which the hon. Gentleman refers might represent the right way forward.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Christmas is just around the corner, and many people will receive a gift of a personalised number plate for their car. That provides valuable income to the Exchequer—about £1.3 billion since 1989. However, many of these plates are illegal by virtue of their character, position and appearance and by the addition of bolts in order to create a name or word. That has serious implications for the identification of vehicles used in criminal activity, particularly where the police are using automatic number plate recognition systems. Will the Leader of the House make time for this matter to be considered?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend must move in very important circles given that he says that many people will receive this gift. As a cyclist, I do not, of course, need such a number plate myself. He refers to number plate recognition, and I will draw that aspect of his remarks to the attention of Home Office Ministers.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the Leader of the House’s remark that the Prime Minister is likely on Monday afternoon to make a statement on the outcome of the European Council meeting. We did not have a debate ahead of that meeting even though that would have given the House an opportunity to express its views on some treaty changes that may well have been debated at the weekend. In an earlier answer, it seemed to be suggested that the Backbench Business Committee and the Leader of the House will negotiate about extra days for debates, so will the two sides come to an agreement in order to restore, in whatever shape or form, a pre-Council debate in this House, because it is vital that we have that?

[Sir George Young]

I think the hon. Lady knows what I am about to say to her: in setting up its Backbench Business Committee, the House gave that Committee responsibility for deciding whether there is to be a fisheries debate, for instance, a European Council debate or four days of debate on defence, or whether debates should be held on other subjects. The responsibility for deciding whether there is to be a pre-Christmas European Council debate now rests with the Backbench Business Committee, so the hon. Lady should address her question to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), not the Leader of the House.

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

Will the Leader of the House arrange for an early debate on the performance of the Student Loans Company, so that the House can examine whether it is operating as efficiently as students and their families are entitled to expect?

[Sir George Young]

It was because we believed the SLC was not being operated efficiently that we replaced the chairman and the chief executive within one month of our taking office earlier this year. In respect of recent applications managed by the SLC, the Public Accounts Committee report published last week showed that by the end of October over half a million students had received their funding at the start of term, of which 72% were fully processed, and that 69% of new applicants were also fully processed. There must be continued improvement in the SLC’s performance however, so that students receive the level of service to which they are entitled.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

After the extraordinary revelations in The Times about the disastrous performance of Ministry of Defence procurement, may we have an early debate on the subject? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colombo is reported by The Times as saying that the revelations refer only to the Labour Government, but they go back to the 1990s and 1980s. Does the Leader of the House also agree that we need a complete ban on any Whitehall mandarin or armed services senior officer—or, indeed, any Minister—joining any part of the defence industry establishment on a paid basis for 10 years after they leave office, as we must shut this revolving door?

[Sir George Young]

The PAC report referred predominantly to the performance of the last Labour Government; I do not think it went back to a significant degree to 1997 and beyond. There are existing rules and restraints on what jobs former Ministers are allowed to take, and there is a period of quarantine. I am very happy to look into this matter again however, and I think it goes wider than just former Government Ministers. I think the House would have an interest in this matter.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on costs to small businesses? Two of my Harlow constituents— Mr Raymond Patten and his daughter—have a small business outside Harlow. Their business costs have increased severely this year, with business rates up by 50% and licensing costs trebling. Does my right hon. Friend agree that while this Government are doing many excellent things to help businesses, we must not give with one hand and take away with the other?

[Sir George Young]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I see that there is a debate scheduled for Tuesday on support for businesses, which he may like to attend. He will have read the Government’s Green Paper, “Financing a private sector recovery”, which lists a range of measures the Government are taking to support small and medium-sized enterprises, such as a business growth fund of £1.5 billion, £200 million for the enterprise capital funds and support for the enterprise finance guarantee, as well as supporting SMEs through growth hubs. I will, of course, draw my hon. Friend’s remarks to the attention of the relevant Ministers.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

A written ministerial statement today announced the closure of 10 of Britain’s 19 coastguard stations. There is serious concern about that proposal. Surely the announcement should have been made by way of an oral statement. Will the Leader of the House find a way for this matter to be debated on the Floor of the House?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Lady’s concern but, as she says, this is a matter on which the Government have reported to the House and, as I have said, we have to strike a balance between written and oral ministerial statements in order to protect the business of the House. The matter she raises might be a subject for a debate in Westminster Hall at the beginning of the new year.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House make time for an early debate in Government time on the impact of the cuts in police numbers, especially as we have already heard that 1,387 uniformed police officers are to lose their jobs in Greater Manchester?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. There will be an opportunity to debate the police grant order early next year. It so happens that I have just received a briefing note from my chief constable in Hampshire. It cites the director of finance and resources saying of Monday’s announcement:

“These figures are very close to the force’s predictions and plans are already in place so that we can continue to operate effectively and efficiently within a reduced budget.”

The briefing note cites comments from others too, such as:

“While we do not underestimate the difficult time we will go through over the coming months, there are also real opportunities for us to do things better…we are in the process of identifying ways of improving what we do as a force.”

I hope that approach is also being adopted in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Merry Christmas to you and your family, Mr Speaker, and to other Members of the House.

Will the Leader of the House find Government time for a debate on the impact of the following decisions, particularly on rural—and especially rural coastal—constituencies? My constituents in Felixstowe and places such as Orford and Aldeburgh are reeling from recent decisions on removing fire provision and extending the time they can expect to wait before receiving angioplasty treatment. This is unacceptable, and I hope the Government will find time for a debate on these matters.

[Sir George Young]

There will be an opportunity to debate many of these matters when we produce our proposals for reforming the health service. I understand there are still opportunities for Members who want to do so to intervene in next Tuesday’s debate on the Adjournment, and my hon. Friend may find that that will provide an opportunity to raise these concerns with the appropriate Minister.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the comments of some of my hon. Friends, the news that Greater Manchester police is to lose a quarter of its entire work force, including over 1,000 front-line officers, is causing real concern in my constituency. We will shortly find out what the public think of this policy at the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, but will the Leader of the House help Members representing Greater Manchester constituencies to get a debate on this issue? He might be satisfied with the news about his local force, but Greater Manchester Members are not.

[Sir George Young]

Of course I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but the former Home Secretary made it clear before the last election that if his party had been returned, it could not guarantee that there would not be a reduction in police numbers.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House consider holding a debate on our industrial heritage? On 21 December 1910, my community was devastated by the loss of 344 men and boys in the Pretoria pit disaster, the third largest such disaster in British history. I hope that he will join me in congratulating the communities of Westhoughton and Atherton on the efforts that they have made over a number of years to commemorate the centenary of the disaster next Tuesday and in sending sympathy to the many families who still remember their relatives and coal mining heritage with pride?

[Sir George Young]

I welcome the initiative taken by the hon. Lady and those in her community, who recognise the tragic disaster that took place at the Pretoria pit 100 years ago. It is right that we should recognise that many sacrifices were made in building the industrial strength of this country and the initiative that she has mentioned will be widely applauded in her constituency.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House remind Ministers that they should tell hon. Members of decisions affecting their constituency? This week, a number of announcements affected my constituency, including the decision not to go ahead with Maghull prison and the cut of two thirds in the budget for Merseytravel. I learned of both by way of media releases forwarded to me and have still to hear from the relevant Minister on either issue. Will the Leader of the House ask Ministers to contact me at the earliest possible opportunity with the details of both those cuts, and will he remind Ministers of their responsibility?

[Sir George Young]

Ministers are quite clear that they should report matters to the House before they report them to the media. The hon. Gentleman should hear about anything that affects his constituency before the media are told about it, and I shall certainly raise that with the relevant Ministers. The transport grant announcement was issued by way of a written ministerial statement, in which case everybody should have received it at the same time.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Last week, I was approached by my constituent, Sharon Martin, who informed me that she had that day sent out a fleece and winter clothing to her son, who is serving in Kabul. He had been advised by the Ministry of Defence that winter clothing would not be available in Afghanistan until February 2011. For the past week, I have tried to get the MOD to respond to this and I was told, “Will you put it in writing? We will respond within 15 working days.” That is clearly not acceptable. Will the Leader of the House therefore try to get a statement made before the Christmas recess, so that we can all have a merry Christmas, including those men and women who are abroad fighting for us?

[Sir George Young]

I applaud what the hon. Gentleman said about our fighting forces. He will get a letter from an MOD Minister before the House rises for the Christmas recess.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Now that the Prime Minister has said that he is taking personal charge of the school sports debacle, can we expect another statement from him on Monday, after he visits the Olympic site, or will an announcement be made in the usual way through the Sunday newspapers?

May I wish a merry Christmas to the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House, who is wrong about the Deputy Prime Minister? He is not St Nick, or even the messiah—he is just a very naughty boy.

[Sir George Young]

I have forgotten what the question was. On school partnerships, a further announcement will be made in due course about our proposals to replace the previous regime. I welcome what the hon. Gentleman said about wishing everybody a merry Christmas, and I hope that he included in that the Deputy Prime Minister.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will have heard the concerns expressed by Members on both sides of the House this morning about the oil supply crisis in their constituencies. Schools and hospitals face shortages, and the old and vulnerable are suffering freezing cold. What provisions are available for an emergency debate next week should the rationing announced by the Minister for Energy this morning create panic buying over the weekend or should the emergency meetings he is having with the industry over the weekend need to be reported back to the House?

[Sir George Young]

I heard the hon. Gentleman share his concerns at Energy and Climate Change questions, when he put a similar question to one of my colleagues and it was adequately answered. At the start of the severe weather spell a number of precautions were taken to deal with salt supplies, the health service, cold weather payments and winter fuel payments. I know that he will be heartened to hear the last bit of my brief, which says that a winter resilience network has been set up and is chaired by the Cabinet Office.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Will it not be appropriate in the new year to debate fully the content of a debate that is taking place this afternoon in order that we can pay tribute to the courage and vision of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth)? Although hon. Members take various views about drug problems, there is a great deal of unanimity on the fact that the policies that all parties have followed for the past 40 years have resulted in the biggest price for drug treatment in Europe, the harshest laws and the worst outcomes in terms of deaths, drug crime and drug use. There must be a better way. Can we not build on agreement between all parties to do better in future?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman has taken a consistent stand on this issue for many years and I applaud that, although I disagree with him. I think that he is rehearsing a speech that he might give later today in Westminster Hall. He will have heard, doubtless with dismay, that the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) was denounced by his party leader.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Four weeks ago, I submitted four written questions on the background analysis done before the decision was taken to end the funding for the school sport partnerships. On 29 November, I received a reply to all four questions stating,

“I will reply as soon as possible.”

Apparently, that time has still not yet come, so will the Leader of the House investigate why it is taking so long to answer such simple questions?

[Sir George Young]

“As soon as possible” will be before the House rises for the Christmas recess.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

This week, we learned that 25% of all children are recorded as being obese when they go to primary school, and the records show that the figure rises to 33% by the time they leave primary school. Given that the Government have now done away with school sport partnerships funding, will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on childhood obesity and alternative ways through exercise to tackle it?

[Sir George Young]

I think that this goes back to a question put to me earlier. The Government will be coming up with an alternative way of promoting school sports, and it will be a more effective and cost-effective way than the system that we inherited. Obesity—not just child obesity, but adult obesity—is a real issue, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education takes it seriously.

Electricity Market Reform

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

12:27

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)]

Today, we begin consulting on the reform of the electricity market. This programme sits at the heart of my Department’s mission: to deliver secure, affordable and low-carbon energy. The case for reform is clear. We need significant investment in our energy infrastructure. As old coal and nuclear plants shut down, and demand for electricity grows, we must build the next generation of power stations. The electricity that they deliver must be both affordable and sustainable, helping us to meet our emissions reduction targets and keep the lights on.

The current energy market has served us well, but it cannot deliver long-term investment on the scale that we need, nor can it give consumers the best deal. Left untouched, it would lock carbon emissions into the system for decades to come. Investors and boardrooms around the world want to know whether the UK is a good place to do energy business, and today we are setting out our plans to make it one of the best places to do energy business.

The challenges and the opportunities are huge. Put simply, we face growing demand, shrinking supply and ambitious emissions reductions targets: demand for electricity could double by 2050 as we decarbonise the economy; 30% of our electricity must come from renewables by 2020—up from 7% today—to meet our contribution to the European Union’s renewable energy target; and in the next 10 years, a quarter of our existing power plants will need to be replaced, as nuclear and coal plants reach the end of their lives.

Without action, we will face a real and growing threat to the security of our supply. The reserve margin of spare generating capacity will fall over the next decade and the risk of interruptions to our energy supplies will rise, so we must build the next generation of power stations, and act to ensure there will be enough reserve capacity to meet our needs. Together with renewables, we will need new gas-fired power stations and new nuclear plant. We must attract more than £100 billion of investment in new power stations and grid connections by 2020—that is double the investment rate of the past decade.

We must rebalance our market framework to attract investment in the right technologies. At the moment, there is a bias towards low-cost, low-risk fossil fuel generation. Renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage all have relatively high up-front capital costs, but a more diverse, lower-carbon energy mix is better for our energy security, better for our economy and better for our planet.

Some measures have already delivered investment in new low-carbon generation—the renewables obligation and the EU emissions trading system—but we must go further and faster. To secure reliable, affordable low-carbon electricity, we must change the market structure. We must create the right framework to ramp up power generation and secure our supply and we must deliver cleaner, greener electricity for the 2020s and beyond.

Today, we are proposing new incentives to drive investment while protecting the rules for investments already made. The focus will shift permanently from conventional fossil fuel-fired electricity to low-carbon technologies—renewables, nuclear and cleaner fossil fuels. Our preferred package of reforms is designed to strike a balance between the best possible deal for consumers and giving existing players and new entrants in the energy sector the certainty they need to raise investment.

Reform will be gradual. We want to reassure industry that the rules for existing investments will be protected. By consulting on a process and principles for the transition to new market arrangements we aim to minimise uncertainty. The competitive market will remain at the centre of our energy policy, but the four elements of the reform package announced today will change incentives in the market and ensure both the security and decarbonisation of our power supply system while minimising costs to consumers.

First, there will be greater long-term certainty about the additional cost of running polluting plant, to make lower carbon investment more attractive. Proposals set out in the Treasury consultation to support the carbon price directly tackle the core problem, putting a better price on emissions, increasing the cost of fossil fuel-based generation and strengthening the carbon price for UK electricity generators.

Secondly, greater revenue certainty for low-carbon generation will make clean energy investment more attractive still. Through the proposed contract for difference feed-in tariff, the Government will guarantee greater revenue certainty for low carbon in the form of a top-up payment if the wholesale price of electricity is below the feed-in tariff and a potential clawback for consumers if wholesale prices go above the contracted tariff.

Thirdly, there will be additional payments to encourage the construction of reserve plants or demand reduction measures to ensure the lights stay on. Capacity payments will create an adequate safety cushion of capacity as the amount of intermittent and inflexible low-carbon generation increases.

Fourthly, there will be a back-stop to limit how much carbon any new coal-fired power stations emit. An emissions performance standard will reinforce the existing requirement that no new coal is built without carbon capture and storage.

Together, those four reforms make good on our commitments in the coalition’s programme for government. They will make the UK a prime location for low-carbon energy investment. They will ensure our energy supply is cleaner and more secure. They will protect the consumer—whereas prices will rise in the medium term, the additional impact of the reform packages will be small, and by 2030 consumer bills will be lower than they would have been if we had not reformed the market. They will lay the foundations for the sustainable economy of the future, bringing jobs up and down the supply chain.

The consultation that opens today invites everyone to tell us whether they think the preferred package of reforms is the right one and to provide the evidence to support their views. Final recommendations will be published in a White Paper in late spring 2011, and the reforms will be introduced before the end of this Parliament. We are also reviewing the role of Ofgem and the energy regulatory framework and today we are publishing the Government’s response to the call for evidence on the terms of the review.

We have a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild our electricity market, rebuild investor confidence and rebuild our power stations. Like privatisation before it, this will be a seismic shift, securing investment in cleaner, greener power and delivering secure, affordable and low-carbon energy for decades to come.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for early sight of his statement and for early notice that it would be made—ahead, even, of Government Back Benchers, for which I am grateful.

Let me be clear at the outset that the Opposition believe that the programme is absolutely necessary to secure energy for the future, and we will support fair and sensible mechanisms for reform. We agree with the Secretary of State that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get it right and we hope that we can work with the Government and that, for their part, they will take on board the Opposition’s comments as they consult.

The issues that the Government must tackle are fourfold: security of supply, meeting renewable energy targets, finding the crucial investment for energy infrastructure—some £200 billion—and, as we heard in Question Time, keeping energy prices reasonable. It is crucial that the Government put in place the mechanisms to make new low-carbon investment attractive and they must bridge the looming energy gap without a rush for unabated fossil fuel generation. I am heartened by some of what the Secretary of State has said, but the Government must also provide energy security across a balanced and diverse energy portfolio and they must provide fairness and affordability for consumers.

We face this big challenge together, but we must not allow the consumer to bear the whole burden. The Secretary of State has dangled cheaper prices from 2030 in front of us today—jam tomorrow—but will he provide his modelling so we can be sure that the Government are doing everything they can to ensure that energy prices today are being tackled, too? We cannot allow increased energy costs to be an excuse for increased profit at a cost to our constituents.

The Government must seize this opportunity and act now to give investors the certainty they need and to meet the necessary time scales. Today, the Government have confirmed that the green investment bank is still under review. The Secretary of State has assured us that the Government are committed to low-carbon growth, but the question is: can he do it on time?

This is not the time for delay or dithering. Now is the time for action, and I hope that the Secretary of State will deem 2011 to be the year of decision. He rightly pointed out in his statement that if we do not take prompt action, “The reserve margin of spare generating capacity will fall over the next decade and the risk of interruptions to our energy supplies will rise.” Questions remain about whether new nuclear can be built on time and at the pace required and whether carbon capture and storage can be proven on an industrial scale and commercially applied to all fossil fuels on time. We also need to know the details about the funding of projects 2, 3 and 4. We also need to know whether agreements on energy storage with Norway or others will be on time, again, and sufficient in scale.

There are other questions, too. Although I recognise that many of them cannot be given definitive answers, I know that the Secretary of State’s officials will have modelled different scenarios. I ask, in the spirit of transparency and open debate, that the Secretary of State share as much as possible of his modelling and risk analysis for plugging the energy gap in the next few years with the House and with the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change so that we can have a fully informed debate.

The Secretary of State today stresses a UK commitment to 30% of electricity from renewables by 2020. His commitment is clear and we support him. However, has he assessed the mood of the coalition’s colleagues in the European Parliament, who often seem to be at sixes and sevens and are certainly not four-square behind his stance? He is, we know, as we heard earlier this week, working closely with European partners. On Monday, he assured the House, with some feeling, that the Government are united on their position in Europe, but what is the true picture?

The statement is on electricity market reform, but given that we enter this winter with the worse gas storage for many years, does the Secretary of State also intend to make proposals on gas infrastructure and storage; and, if so, when?

Finally, will the Secretary of State give certainty to industry and to people who are already paying inflated energy bills that this programme will be enough to encourage energy companies to invest in the UK, to create the jobs that this country needs and, importantly, to protect customers from unaffordable energy bills?

[Chris Huhne]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and particularly for the helpful way in which she couched them. Of course we will be open to Opposition comments on the details of this matter through the consultation period and further on into the legislation. We shall need £110 billion of investment in electricity infrastructure and a total of £200 billion in energy, and one of the most valuable things we can tell investors is that there is, although I do not want to overstate it, substantial cross-party consensus between the coalition parties and the Opposition. That is very valuable in attracting big foreign investors in particular because it means that in the period over which there can be a payback of investments, which might be 20 years, foreign investors can be assured that there will be real stability of policy. I very much value that consensus and very much want to work with the hon. Lady to make sure it is there.

Let me deal with the hon. Lady’s concerns about consumers, which are absolutely appropriate. We have to make sure that business consumers and households in Britain get the best possible deal in supplies of energy—in this case, electricity. A fundamental part of the policy proposal that I hope she will welcome is that by providing investors with the certainty of a feed-in tariff, with a contract for difference, we will attract investment from the big six electricity companies and attract into the market other players—new entrants—to make it more competitive. We will also unlock the pools of capital that various Members have been concerned will not be available without this framework. It is very much part of our thinking that in trying to deal with the underlying problem of a more competitive market we should get more players into the market, because that will ultimately give the best assurance to consumers that we will get the best possible deal.

The hon. Lady asked about the shorter-term view. I made it clear in my statement that this package will deliver lower-cost electricity for consumers than would otherwise be the case on a 2030 view. We will redo the estimates for overall energy policy in the annual energy statement. As far as I can see, on the current basis there is no reason to expect that to change. In the summer, we said that with the overall package of policies we had set out, if one takes into account the energy efficiency packages and the likely reduction in bills as a result, consumers would pay about 1% more in 2020 than would otherwise be the case. That figure involves a fundamental assumption that the oil price will be $80 a barrel at that time, with a corresponding gas price, but oil prices might be substantially higher; obviously, spot oil prices are substantially higher today. The break-even point for consumers is $100 a barrel, and if the price goes north of that the policy framework we are setting out will leave British consumers paying less than if they were reliant, over the relevant period, on the volatility of the world oil and gas markets. That is fundamental. We are dealing with conditions of considerable uncertainty about the future, particularly in the oil and gas markets. We have heard today that the US Attorney General is taking a case against BP as a result of what happened in the gulf of Mexico. We know that there are rising risks and costs in extracting fossil fuels and we have to take that into account when we set a policy that can protect British consumers from the vagaries that might come.

The green investment bank is going to be a clear part of our thinking in dealing with the enormous investment challenge, and Ministers are reviewing the exact market failures that we are attempting to address with the bank. It is a long-term project and the most important thing, when we talk about decarbonising the UK economy, is not to get up and running for 1 January next year a green investment bank that might be half-baked, but to get it right. This institution has to be with us for the long term, right through to 2050, providing lending to help decarbonise the economy over the long haul, so I would much rather get it right than do it early and get it wrong.

I take on board the hon. Lady’s point about the need to deliver. I shall not rub salt in the Opposition’s wounds about the 13 years they were in power, but I remind her that we have inherited the position of being 25th out of 27 EU member states on renewable energy. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) might chunter about that, but these are the facts. I am not making any comments about them, but am merely saying that we are 25th out of 27 EU countries and we need to improve that position.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) also asked us to make available our modelling basis and I am very happy to do that. Indeed, the models that we used for the 2050 pathways study are already available on the Department’s website. Any Member of the House will find that function very user-friendly; it is Professor David Mackay’s favourite executive toy. Users can decide they want more renewables, a little less nuclear, a little more nuclear or a little more clean coal, put the change in and find out what the consequences would be. We aim to be extremely open and transparent in our whole process.

On the European Parliament, the reality is that we will determine these matters in this Parliament, not the European Parliament. I note that we have an overwhelming majority, judging by the recent vote on the regulatory justification for nuclear, for the sort of package that we have set out.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it appropriate, given what the Speaker has said about short statements, that the Secretary of State’s answer to a single question has been longer than the original statement?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Strictly speaking, that is not a point of order, but while I am on my feet let me say what I was going to say when the Secretary of State sat down. I am sure that the House is very grateful for his long and full answer, but I sincerely hope that we will revert to short questions and short answers so that everyone can get in.

[Chris Huhne]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Gas storage is dealt with in the current Bill. On that point I shall end.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that when the new measures are in place, we will require long-term regulatory stability if we are to encourage an attractive investment environment in order to decarbonise our energy market and keep the lights on at an affordable price?

[Chris Huhne]

I absolutely agree that we require long-term regulatory stability. That is one reason why we have been at pains to say that we will not change the terms on which investors relied when they made past investments. We want them to believe that when we put this framework in place they will be able to rely on a similar assurance of stability.

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

I strongly welcome the content of the statement on the future construction of energy markets and how they will underpin the move towards a low-carbon energy economy. The Secretary of State has said that there is currently a bias towards low-cost, low-risk fossil fuel generation, but it is more than a bias. The present build and planning permissions suggest that there is more gas in the pipeline than would cover the gap for reserve generation over the next period. The third of the four pillars he has mentioned involves capacity payments: how does he intend to fund those payments, and will he be able to direct them to ensure that reserve capacity is not overwhelmingly gas, as appears to be the case currently?

[Chris Huhne]

Clearly we want to have low carbon sources of supply, but I have made it clear that we are intending one of the three remaining demonstration projects on carbon capture and storage to be a gas project. Given the development of unconventional gas, there is a possibility that gas will provide a much more sustainable long-term source of supply than people had thought until recently. In those circumstances—carbon capture and storage applied to gas—gas may have a very important role in the long term, not just in the short term. Otherwise, I entirely agree. Capacity payments will be made on the basis of encouraging peaking plant, to deal with the ad break in “Coronation Street” when we all turn on our kettles, and to offset the intermittency problems that occasionally arise—the nightmare of the four or five cold still days in February when the wind turbines are not going and we need back-up capacity. The capacity payments will inevitably be made by consumers from their payments, but they will provide us with the assurance of supply that we have been proud to have in this country for a long time.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

There is, unfortunately, something of an uncertainty paradox, in that measures that seek to create some certainty in the market necessitate of themselves a period of uncertainty. That being the case, will the Secretary of State tell us how long energy investors will have certainty once his reforms have been implemented?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. When he reads the documentation we have tabled, he will see that we are at great pains to ensure that investors have the very clear message—not least because of recent experience in some other member states of the European Union—that the incentives that have been in place will be grandfathered. They can continue to rely on that. We shall minimise the amount of uncertainty, which is important not only to honour our past obligations but also if we want investors to believe in our future obligations. We have to be prepared to stand behind what we have said in the past, and we intend that to be the case. We will minimise the amount of uncertainty in joining up the two regimes, but we are of the view that we have to reform the electricity market to bring forward the low-carbon and secure supplies that we need.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

I hope the Minister can find a way of sitting down now and again.

In terms of nuclear energy, we are talking about a subsidy by another name, and that is a major change in policy. I have real concerns—as will a number of other MPs when they come back in the new year—about supporting nuclear energy in the long term, when we have always argued that it should not be subsidised. What is in this for coal? Coal has played a major part in this country’s economic security, so what part will it play in carbon capture in the future? What projects will be going ahead and when?

[Chris Huhne]

There are two parts to the hon. Gentleman’s question. The first was whether the proposals are a subsidy for nuclear. I could not be clearer: this is a subsidy for low-carbon sources of energy generation. There is no subsidy specifically to nuclear. That is fundamental. [Interruption.] No; this is about low carbon. Our vision in the long term is that we should be able to rely on the market as much as possible to determine which sources of energy are the best for the British consumer. We want companies to make proposals, and—on the second part of the hon. Gentleman’s question—I very much hope that they will be on clean coal. We have an enormous amount of coal in this country that I want us to be able to use, but we cannot use it unless we can decarbonise it. We cannot use it and meet our carbon emissions targets unless we make a success of carbon capture and storage, which is exactly why I was so pleased that, despite a very tough spending round, we managed to secure £1 billion to make sure we have the first commercial-scale coal carbon capture and storage plant in the world. I hope genuinely that it will unlock a whole new future for coal as a source of low-carbon electricity generation.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

Come on.

[Neil Carmichael]

I was just surprised to be asked.

I very much welcome the reforms, which are an excellent start. The Secretary of State talks about a gradual process. Will he give us some idea of when the four elements will be up and running?

[Chris Huhne]

We would aim to get the White Paper out in the spring and legislation landed in this place before the end of the Session, although realistically it would probably have to be a carry-over. I hope very much that we shall have legislation in place, and therefore the market system in place, in 2012.

[Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)]

I welcome the broad thrust of the statement. Does the Secretary of State agree that notwithstanding the beneficial effects of energy efficiency measures on prices, there are three reasons why prices are likely to rise in the medium term? The first is the new investment we require. The second is the climate change measures, which are vital, and the third is the dramatic global demand for energy over the next 30 years, which could go up by 30% or 40%. The only weakness in the statement that I can see is the social policy dimension. It is an irony that we have global warming, yet there are cold homes in Britain. Do we not require a step change in our thinking about social policies of different kinds to protect the most vulnerable during our winters?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He is one of the most informed people in the House on these matters, and he is absolutely right about the long-term drivers for energy markets. The social policy dimension is absolutely crucial for the Government, which is why the green deal puts such an important stress on dealing with the root cause of the problems of fuel poverty. Every winter we have debates in this place about the problems of fuel poverty, yet we have not made enough progress in really tackling the underlying issue, which is the energy inefficiency of the homes of so many people at the bottom of the income distribution. As I said in oral questions, the bills of those who are lucky enough to live in social housing with the decent homes standard could be only a sixth of the bills of owner occupiers or people in private rentals. We have to deal with that.

In the short term, we are committed, for example, to winter fuel payments, cold weather payments and to the continuation of the voluntary discount scheme for bills, and we shall underpin that with our own Warm Homes discount scheme from the next financial year. We are very aware of the issue and very concerned about it. We intend to make real progress in tackling the underlying causes, not merely providing sticking plasters for the symptoms.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I ask again for short questions and short answers. Given that oral questions preceded the statement, I think we can assume that Members remember what was said.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Given the fresh security concerns about nuclear power, its notorious inflexibility and intermittency and the toxic legacy it will leave future generations for 1,000 years, should my right hon. Friend not explore a levy on nuclear to balance any hidden—even if unspecific—windfall subsidy, especially to existing nuclear power stations, which may come about through the reforms he has described?

[Chris Huhne]

My hon. Friend knows very well that our policy is no subsidy to nuclear. We are not intending to impose additional levies on nuclear, but the no subsidy policy certainly encompasses the idea that if there are uncertainties they have to be met in the payments made, for example, on waste and decommissioning.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Capacity payments have resolved one problem the Secretary of State had, which was the falling-off of power in 2017-18, but they may have given him another problem, which is that there will now be another dash for gas. Many companies were holding off, with planning permissions in the pipeline or already approved, but they will now proceed with that investment. Can he be sure that the surge in investment for gas will not detract from investment for other renewables? In addition, will he make good an omission in his statement—that the emission performance standards will not apply simply to coal, but will also apply to gas?

[Chris Huhne]

On the first point, we are consulting on the capacity payments scheme, and obviously the details will need to be worked through, but I believe that it is potentially more radical than the hon. Gentleman may be suggesting. One of the things that can be paid for under the capacity payment scheme is demand-side measures to encourage companies to get consumers to sign up for temporary interruptions in their supply, so they can turn off their fridges and so forth. That is a way of making sure that we need less peaking capacity, which will be very important. That so-called negawatt concept would also be encouraged by capacity payments. I do not believe that a consequence would be a dash for gas.

On the emissions performance standard, we have made it absolutely clear from the beginning—the coalition agreement and beyond—that this is about stopping unabated coal, as the dirtiest of the technologies. We want coal to have a future with carbon capture and storage; we want to see gas plant, if it is built, built with the readiness to apply carbon capture and storage. In the long run there may be a role for gas with carbon capture and storage, but I do not believe that it will have the consequences that the hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The statement was very clear: there will be new incentives, including for nuclear. That is a subsidy by any other name, and directly contradicts what the Secretary of State said on the “Today” programme in May; it contradicts what he said in his departmental debate in July, when he said that the coalition would allow new nuclear but with no public subsidy; and it contradicts what he said to his own party conference in September. So let me ask him: who does he think will feel most betrayed by this U-turn—he, his party, the coalition or the taxpayer who will undoubtedly have to pick up the tab for the folly of the new generation of nuclear power?

[Chris Huhne]

I could not be clearer than to say that there is no subsidy here which attaches to nuclear power. The subsidy attaches to low-carbon generation, and whatever the Member’s view, the reality is that nuclear power is a low-carbon energy source and the subsidy applies to low-carbon generation. Over time I want to see the technologies as they are at the moment compete, so that we can find which are the most effective at providing our consumers with low-cost electricity from low-carbon sources—and the framework will allow us to do that.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

How can the Secretary of State ensure that those who want to invest the much-needed billions right now do not get delayed by the consultation period and the navel-gazing that might follow today’s statement? For example, if someone has half a billion pounds for a biomass power station today, can they spend it?

[Chris Huhne]

My hon. Friend and I have had discussions on the specifics of biomass power stations, and I hope that some of the announcements that the Department has made, for example about bringing forward the review of the incentives for that type of plant, will help. We have also been able to issue some letters of comfort to different investors to try to ensure that they do not have problems with financing projects. I want to minimise the uncertainty that inevitably exists in changing from one regime to another, and make these investments happen as quickly as possible.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned volatile oil markets. These reforms will impact on the domestic oil sector in the UK. Can he tell me what he thinks the impact will be, and in doing so, can he tell me what measures he is taking in the next 72 hours to deal with the Christmas oil crisis?

[Chris Huhne]

I take it that when the hon. Gentleman says “the domestic oil sector,” he means the offshore oil and gas sector in its entirety. The prices for that sector are clearly set in a global market, so what we do, although it will be very significant in the electricity sector within the UK, will have a marginal impact on the overall global demand for oil and gas, and therefore on the prospects for our own domestic offshore oil and gas sector.

In the last 72 hours we have been trying to ensure that drivers can work longer—that they can get heating oil to homes that need it. The Energy Minister has been in constant discussions, looking at any way in which we can ensure that those who need heating oil and are currently short of that oil get it. That is essential. In those discussions, my hon. Friend has been informed about suppliers attempting to ensure that people do not have too much, so that there is enough to go round for everyone.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

The Secretary of State’s statement includes some ambitious targets for renewables by 2020. What consideration has he given to planning matters in view of the coalition Government’s policy intention to devolve planning to a more local level, and what reassurance can he offer many people who might be concerned that large-scale wind farms could be foisted upon them?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question because Ministers and senior officials were discussing that subject with representatives of the industry only this week. We had an interesting and useful round-table discussion about exactly that. I do not believe that top-down solutions are the right solutions, and therefore the planning framework that gives local communities real control over what happens in their area is absolutely crucial. At the same time, one message that we heard loud and clear from the industry is that where the industry has brought in local communities, often as co-investors, and where there is a clear benefit for the local community from renewable energy projects, including onshore wind, those projects go ahead. I think that is the right way forward.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I welcome part of the statement, although certainly not the part on nuclear, and I suspect that the devil will lie in the detail of the rest. For example, can the Secretary of State confirm what level of emission performance standards he intends to introduce, and whether both coalition partners remain committed to their pre-election position that any standard will be set at the equivalent of the emissions of a modern gas plant—in other words, 300 to 400 grams of CO₂ per kWh?

[Chris Huhne]

We are consulting on two levels, as the hon. Lady will see in the documentation: 450 and 600 grams. There is inevitably a certain margin of error, but she will see that those are the two points in consultation.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can I take up the theme of a previous questioner? The history of renewable projects has been bedevilled by planning delays and objections. There is enormous concern in the business community that the new Localism Bill will only reinforce those processes. What representations is the Minister making to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to overcome this, in order that we have joined-up government and give necessary reassurance to the business community?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Some issues can be tackled at national level; one planning issue on onshore wind surrounds aviation impacts and radar, and we should obviously lead that at national level. But I refer him to the answer that I gave previously: local people should be able to determine local planning and, therefore, local impact. If they are on board, and if they are brought into the proposals, renewable projects go ahead. That is our experience throughout the UK, and that will be the right way forward in getting planning approval for renewable projects.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

On what day in May was the right hon. Gentleman bewitched by the Pied Piper of nuclear power into learning to love a nuclear stealth tax? He and his party used to know that nuclear has never delivered on time or on budget, and that the only new nuclear power station in the world is already three years late and £4 billion over budget. Is it not irrational optimism for him to believe that it will be different here?

[Chris Huhne]

The hon. Gentleman is a careful student of the economics of nuclear power and is well aware of the track record. When he looks at the consultation document, he will see that we are providing greater revenue certainty for all low-carbon sources of energy. We provide no subsidy to construction for any particular sort of energy, and no subsidy to any particular type of energy on the basis of that energy’s characteristics. That means, for example, that if someone comes forward wanting to build a new nuclear power station, all the risks of construction—all the risks of delivering on time and to budget—fall on the investor, not the UK Government. If, on that basis, investors come forward, and they assure me that they will, I believe we will have new nuclear power stations, but if there is any delay in construction, that cost will fall to the investor, not to the UK Government.

[Paul Flynn]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, can I give notice that I wish to raise this issue on the Adjournment of the House?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that that is not a point of order, but he has got his point on the record at least.

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

First, can I welcome the Secretary of State restating his long-held, principled and consistent commitment to nuclear power? On carbon capture and storage, specifically, can he guarantee my constituents, who eagerly await the Energy Minister’s visit in the new year, that there will be no delay at all in the decision, which we expect early in the new year, on the first carbon capture and storage project for Longannet?

[Chris Huhne]

I believe that my hon. Friend the Energy Minister is making good progress on that. We have made good progress at an official level as well, and there is no reason to anticipate any delay. I very much hope that at the end of our Department’s collective term of office, we will go down as being a happening Department that makes things happen. That is what we intend to do with CCS.

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

The Secretary of State has mentioned the significant investment that will be required. Does he recognise that the wave and tidal sector seems somewhat unloved in the UK, because it sees its opportunity overseas? What does he feel he should do about that, and what will he do to ensure that that opportunity goes to people in this country who are prepared to invest?

[Chris Huhne]

I do not know how the hon. Gentleman got the impression that wave and tidal are unloved. They are certainly not unloved by me, and I want to ensure that we recognise the potential of those technologies, and that they are brought forward commercially as soon as possible. I know, for example, that the tidal stream pilot project on Strangford lough has made good progress, and there are real opportunities, because, although tidal stream power is intermittent, it has one advantage over offshore wind of being predictably intermittent. So, I very much hope that those technologies come on-stream. We have a marine energy programme designed to make that happen, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that this ministerial team wants that to succeed.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

There will be no shortage of either wind or gas while the Secretary of State is in post, that is for sure. On the oil issue, which we discussed earlier, and the long-term impact of his reforms on the domestic oil market, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) mentioned an immediate crisis. We have 72 hours of inclement weather ahead of us, which means that oil supplies will be even more disrupted. What steps will the right hon. Gentleman take immediately to call together oil suppliers to ensure that he sets out clearly the rationing that he thinks appropriate, something to which the Energy Minister previously referred?

[Chris Huhne]

We are already in very close contact with the suppliers, and we anticipate that deliveries will be adequate to ensure that there are supplies wherever they are needed before Christmas.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Manufacturers in and around my constituency and elsewhere are doing what they can on a small scale to reduce electricity consumption by taking energy efficiency measures, but what plans do the Government have to encourage that on a large scale as a way of dealing with increased demand in the years ahead?

[Chris Huhne]

I refer my hon. Friend to our extensive answers on the green deal scheme in Energy and Climate Change oral questions earlier. It will be an ambitious, comprehensive and enormous scheme to ensure that we completely refit our housing stock.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be well aware that the housing with the poorest insulation is in the private rented sector. Will he put pressure on his fellow Ministers in that field to reconsider their decision not to go ahead with landlord registration or other measures, such as using the buying power of housing benefit to force landlords to insulate homes for those vulnerable tenants?

[Chris Huhne]

I think the hon. Lady will welcome our provisions in the Energy Bill, which is being debated in the other place and will come to us in the new year, because they ensure that, if the private rented sector does not take up the green deal adequately over the period to 2015, first, a tenant will be able to request a green deal installation and not be unreasonably refused, and secondly, there will be regulatory powers to improve the energy efficiency of the private rented sector for F and G-rated homes.

Points of Order

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

13:14

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before the Front Benchers leave the Chamber, I must say that I have not been convinced by the answers that the Secretary of State gave me about dealing with the winter oil crisis. What provisions are there for him to return to the House later this afternoon to make an urgent statement on the detail of how he is dealing with that crisis?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Frankly, it is a matter for the Secretary of State when he chooses to come before this House and the information that he makes available to it; it is not a matter for the Chair. So, the hon. Gentleman has got his point on the record, but at this point in time it is not actually a point of order.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

As long as it does not pursue the same point, Mr Brennan, because I have made it quite clear that the information on when the Secretary of State comes before the House is a matter for him.

[Kevin Brennan]

Taking on board your comments, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wonder whether you can advise us on the mechanism for a recall of the House if the crisis should become serious or much worse over the Christmas recess?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I think the Secretary of State and the Government will keep a very close eye on that. The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member and knows that any Member can approach the Speaker if he or she believes it necessary for the House to be recalled.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This morning we were given a written statement on the proposed closure of coastguard offices throughout the UK. Stornoway in my constituency faces losing perhaps 27 jobs relating to a massive sea area. Is there any way in which we can get the Minister to the House, so that Members can cross-examine him and raise their concerns, particularly on the announcement before Christmas of a 14-week consultation period? We need at least an extension of that, and we need the Minister here to answer those points.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I have had no request from a member of the Government with regard to making a statement on that issue. Again, the hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member, and I have a feeling that he will probably find other ways to make sure that he can raise his point and question a Minister.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can the Secretary of State give me an update on the longer-term commitment for the feed-in—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Points of order are supposed to be directed at the Chair. They are not an additional way of putting questions directly to the Secretary of State. Given that we have had a very full statement and Question Time today, the hon. Gentleman has had plenty of opportunities to do that.

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

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Members have been spotted in recent days wearing such items as denim in the House and catching the Speaker’s eye. Could you or the Speaker issue guidance to new Members such as myself on an appropriate dress code for the mother of Parliaments?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

There are many things on which the Chair is asked to pass comment; the sartorial elegance of Members is not one of them, and that is not a point of order. As all Members are aware, there is a common dress code for the Chamber, which is to be smart.

[Thomas Docherty]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Mr Docherty, I cannot believe that you have anything further to that point of order.

[Thomas Docherty]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could the Speaker circulate that dress code to all Members, on both sides of the House, so that we do not have a dress-down Thursday in future?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

If you have an issue specifically with Members’ dress, you could always speak directly to that Member and advise them. I am sure that they would welcome it, given your own sartorial elegance. But, using the time of the Chair or Mr Speaker to nudge Members in that direction is inappropriate, and I sincerely hope that we can now move on to the rest of today’s business.

Royal Assent

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Finance (No.3) Act 2010

Equitable Life (Payments) Act 2010

Local Government Act 2010

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Act 2010

Superannuation Act 2010

Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010.

Backbench Business

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[14th Allotted Day]

Park Homes

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

13:20

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that there are approximately 1,800 park home sites in England and Wales; further notes that current legislation permits a minority of park home site owners to cause great distress, damage to property and danger to health of park home residents; welcomes the Government’s intention to lay before the House secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service; but calls on the Government to review the case for establishing a fit and proper person criterion for park home site owners and to bring forward relevant legislation at the earliest opportunity to prevent in particular park home site owners interfering with the sale of a park home without good reason.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the motion before us for debate today. I am particularly pleased that Back Benchers from across the country have the opportunity to put the case for more protection for a group of very vulnerable people. I also thank the noble Lord Graham for his unstinting support for park home owners over many years.

I particularly thank my constituent, Sonia McColl, from the Silent Woman park home in my constituency for organising and motivating park home owners from all over the country to speak out about their bad experiences. During this year, she organised a massive petition that was presented to 10 Downing street, after which there was a meeting here in the House. More recently, as part of her “justice for park home owners” campaign, well over 100 predominantly older people demonstrated in Old Palace yard with banners, photographs of park homes being torn down and some very good chanting. There was a mass lobby of individual MPs and the day culminated in an extremely well attended meeting in the House, when we sadly heard similar stories from people from all over the country. I thank the Minister for coming and listening on that occasion. I also acknowledge the help and support given by the park home owner associations and welcome the fact that so many MPs are here today to support their constituents. Many other hon. Members have expressed regret that they are unable to attend today. However, they wholeheartedly endorse the call for the Government to take more action.

If we look back over the years, the plight of some park home owners has been raised on many occasions and amendments have been made to legislation. However, some of the worst problems have not been addressed. I was interested to read the Adjournment debate initiated by the former Member for Suffolk Coastal in March 2009. He said:

“I have rarely been as angry about a matter as I am about this case…most of us came into Parliament to oppose bullying. Deep down, what we dislike most is those who are strong bullying the weak.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 701-704.]

The issue raised was the buying and selling of park homes, to which I shall return later. The former Member for Teignbridge secured an Adjournment debate in March 2008, which also covered the buying and selling issues and the need for a fit and proper person rule. I hope that today will be a landmark moment and that the Government will commit to do everything in their power to address these long-standing and well documented issues.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

At the Lakeside park in Bridgwater, we are dealing with blackmail, threats and individuals who are determined to get these people out of their houses. Surely the hon. Lady agrees that the matter has become a national scandal? Right across the country, the lives and livelihoods of these people—in some cases the most vulnerable and needy in society—are being threatened because of this anomaly.

[Annette Brooke]

I certainly agree that the matter is a national scandal. If we consider the spread of constituencies represented by hon. Members here today, we can see that it truly is a national issue.

There are approximately 85,000 park homes on 2,000 sites in England, and 5,000 homes on 100 sites in Wales. Park home living can provide an idyllic lifestyle. Park homes are often located on the edge of open countryside and they provide a useful addition to the housing supply, particularly for many thousands of mainly retired people. In addition, they provide smaller homes with lower maintenance costs and lower council tax payments; they are on one level, and they occupy small plots within a larger site. There is the opportunity for a really good community to develop in a positive way in the vast majority of sites.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for championing this cause and securing the debate. Although the tribunal will deal with many of the unscrupulous things that those who live on these sites have to put up with, is not the real issue that of being able to dispose of, or sell, a park home? In such cases, is almost too late for the individual concerned by the time the matter goes to tribunal. Sonia and everyone involved must be commended for raising that over and above what the Government are doing on the tribunals.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I shall return to that in more detail, but today we are discussing the crunch of the matter.

Park homes can provide an idyllic community, but community strength can develop in a different way on the minority of sites where there is an unscrupulous operator, who may well bully, intimidate, harass and even defraud vulnerable people. People in adversity will often stick together. However, in some cases, that sense of community cannot develop because park home owners can become too frightened to be seen even talking to their neighbours. I must emphasise that the points that I shall make are directed at a minority of park home site owners. There are excellent, well managed park home sites in my constituency, and I do not wish to suggest that all site owners engage in bad practices.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I add my voice of commendation to those who have praised the hon. Lady’s excellent work. Even some of the bigger firms that run park home estates, such as the one I have in my constituency, are not above a bit of sharp practice. I shall give two examples that she might like to consider. There is a great reluctance to recognise residents’ associations—for example, there have been demands for lists of all the people who are going to sign up rather than merely requesting sight of a list and people not then being able to take it away, which I believe is the legal position. In one case, there was even a claim that a letter sent to the park home owner complaining about certain conditions libelled the park home owner. Of course, one cannot libel someone by sending a letter to that person if one does not publish it to anyone else. However, ordinary people might not be able to cope with such tactics without the assistance of their MPs.

[Annette Brooke]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s points. I endorse the point that residents’ associations can in principle be formed, but that they are in practice often obstructed. That relates to my point about people being frightened to be seen talking to others on the park home site.

There are good site owners. However, a minority of site owners make legislation difficult and I hope that the outcome of this debate will be a stiffened resolve to tackle the issues, rather than just saying that they are too difficult. I am extremely pleased that the Government have committed to bringing in secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service. That will undoubtedly help solve some of the problems that park home owners have been faced with and will remove the need for an expensive court process in many cases.

A recent case I am trying to deal with could potentially be solved through that route. Let me mention it briefly. A park home was purchased in May this year. The new owner wanted to make improvements and applied for an insulation grant for her mobile home from the local authority, and the local authority granted it. There is a clause in the site agreement with the site owner of this particular site that any works to the exterior of a mobile home require the express permission of the site owner. Somewhere along the line, the site owner has requested that the park home owner agrees to her home being re-sited. She has refused to do that and the site owner will not give permission for the insulation to take place. The local authority has confirmed to me that there is no technical reason why the work on the home cannot be carried out in its current position. The tribunal offers the opportunity for both sides to put their case and for all aspects to be considered. Unfortunately for my constituency, this route is not yet open, which is yet another reason why we cannot delay.

Last winter, the electricity supply on a site was faulty on the coldest night of the year. It was not restored in a reasonable time, and an 84-year-old was taken to hospital with hypothermia the next day. Purbeck district council, bravely for a small council, took the site owner to court. The site owner was found guilty and fined £1,000 with £6,000 costs. We could say that we won the battle, but not the war. My worry is that more bullying may follow.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. The fact that so many Members are here on a day when Christmas is not far away shows the strength of feeling about this issue among constituents and their MPs. I entirely understand what she says about bullying following comments made by residents of Palma park, a park home site in my constituency. The hon. Lady talked about cold nights; in my constituency, the local site owner allowed the gas to run out, which meant that on one of the coldest nights of the year the residents did not have any fuel. The hon. Lady also mentioned the spirit of community in adversity. At the moment, the residents are having to get together to clear the cesspit because the owner will not do so. I entirely agree that this situation cannot be allowed to continue for the many thousands of park home owners across the country.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that we will be continually reinforcing the same points.

I sincerely believe that we need a fit-and-proper-person law, which local authorities will welcome.

[Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She and I work well in many other areas, and I pay tribute to her work on this. We need not only justice for park home owners in their campaign but confidence for people who may think about living in park homes in future but might be terrified of doing so. In my constituency, we often hear about the idea of affordable housing, whatever that means in practice, but these are, in many cases, truly affordable homes. Many people who could have the idyllic lifestyle that park homes can afford may be terrified about moving into that environment because of some of the things that are being mentioned. I hope that that will be one of the things that comes out of this debate.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is indeed the case that this should provide an idyllic lifestyle and a useful addition to the housing supply.

Somebody said to me that we could make a comparison with the employment of a warden at an elderly persons’ dwelling site, because such a warden would be required to have certain characteristics. I am not suggesting that a site owner equates to a warden in any way, but the fit and proper person rule should be taken into account.

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

I welcome this debate; I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing it and on her tireless work on the matter. Does she recognise that there are concerns about fit and proper person criteria given, for example, the utter failure of the Football Association to make them mean anything? Does she agree that the Government must spell out exactly what those criteria are?

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am not pretending that this is easy to achieve, but I am trying to get a clear timetable to make progress on it. There is already work in progress. The previous Government had a statutory instrument ready to run, so some consultation has already taken place. We have the tribunal coming on board. That will provide evidence when people bring their cases about fit and proper persons and enable us to work together on all the issues that are arising.

I want to concentrate on malpractice in the buying and selling of park homes. In 2009, I presented a ten-minute rule Bill on this issue that aimed to prevent unjustified interference by a site owner when residents sell their park home. A park home site owner might reasonably wish to meet a prospective buyer, or at least to have a reference supplied, but an interview without the seller or an independent witness present can provide opportunities for rogue site owners to make misleading or untrue statements. Examples of such statements from across the country include: “The home is in poor condition”; “The home is not worth the price you’re paying”; “The home will have to be moved to another pitch next year”; “I have a right to ask the court to let me take the home off in five years”; and “The park is being developed and the home will have to be moved.”

Alternatively, the prospective buyer might be intimidated by real or implied threats and not want to be involved with the site owner in any way. The prospective buyer might understandably decide that he or she does not want to live on a park run in such a way, and/or by such an unpleasant person, and the sale will fall through. After that has been repeated a few times, the seller eventually sells the home to the site owner for a token sum. In each case, there are no witnesses and the prospective buyer is usually unwilling to give a witness statement, as he or she simply wants to get away from the park as quickly as possible. The seller does not usually go to court because there is no witness statement and the buyer is lost anyway.

The incentive for the site owner is to buy the home for a small sum, remove it from the park, site a new and possibly bigger home on the pitch, and sell it, thereby making a clear profit of perhaps £100,000. Rogue site owners currently have the ability to sabotage sales and can rely on the fact that many people who move to park homes are frail, vulnerable, elderly and easily intimidated. It seems reasonable for a site owner to be able to check out a prospective buyer, but how can we stop the abuse and possible fraud currently taking place? My Bill suggested that there should be an independent witness present at such meetings. However, that would not tackle phone conversations, so I can see that this is quite complicated.

In one case, constituents of mine were offered £81,000 by a prospective purchaser on the open market. The site owner had made an earlier offer of £15,000. A meeting took place between the prospective buyer and the site owner, who wrote to my constituent on 4 October 2007 to say:

“Thank you for your letter...introducing the above young lady to me and seeking my approval for her to buy the above home. Since taking over the park in 1999 we have always promoted the location as a retirement one for people over the age of 55. With that in mind I am unable to agree to”

the lady

“purchasing your home”.

On 5 October, the next day, a letter was issued to all residents on the park that said:

“Since taking over the Park in 1999 we have always promoted the location as a retirement one for people over the age of 55. My legal advisors have informed that this should be formalised within the Park Rules and I now write to advise you of the addition of the following rule…The Park is for retired/semi retired persons over the age of 55.”

So the rule was introduced after the refusal. The letter continued:

“In the event of anyone disagreeing with this rule please let me have your written objection within 28 days of the date of this letter.”

Representatives of the residents association on the site tell me that the prospective purchaser was originally prepared to make a statement about conversations with the site owner.

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

While I entirely agree with the need to find a better solution for the buying and selling of park homes, we also need something to help with dispute resolution. In my constituency, I came across a situation regarding residents wishing to insulate their park homes, which was being resisted by the site owner on grounds of the aesthetics of the park. I looked at that and saw that there were arguments in both directions. I then discovered that there was a conflict of interest because the owner was supplying gas to the residents at a premium price. This raises enormous questions. We need a dispute resolution system to deal with such ongoing problems that will give confidence to park home owners and certainty to operators about how they can act with regard to the residents.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. As he says, certainty and a clear understanding of the rules, and a requirement not to change them overnight, would be a big step forward. The residential property tribunal will enable both sides to put their case. I do not believe that it will solve the problem with buying and selling, but it is definitely a first step, and this debate will ensure that the next steps go ahead subsequently.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady. There were debates on this matter in the Parliament before she was elected, which were secured by the former Member for Bridgend, Win Griffiths, who had Trecco bay in his constituency. She follows a fine tradition. The big problem is the conflict of interests. The main interest of many site owners is selling new properties. That drives every other decision and informs the way they deal with people. That is why they invent new rules every six or 12 months that make it possible for them to sell another property for £80,000, £90,000, £100,000 or £120,000.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is probably time for me to be balanced. We must accept that the site owner needs a return on their capital to invest in the park and make it a good place to live. We need to get the right balance in the legislation that allows for investment, while ensuring that no extortionate demands are made of people. I think that the House has the will to make that happen.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

May I add to the bouquets under which my hon. Friend is being buried for securing this debate? I also acknowledge the Backbench Business Committee for sponsoring the debate. We are bringing Parliament closer to the people by debating the issues that concern them. Does she agree that reasonable, respectable park owners have nothing to worry about in the extension of the rights of park home residents, because residents want to have sensible rules about their ground rent and maintenance requirements to ensure that their communities are strong and safe?

[Annette Brooke]

Good site owners want the business to be cleaned up, because the stories that we hear reflect on them and their ability to run their parks. We must take that on board.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

My hon. Friend not only has huge support today—all of us who attended the lobby pledged to help her take these matters beyond this debate—but if the motion is passed, there is a general will that the Communities and Local Government Committee should be asked to consider this matter. If it takes evidence, there is a willingness to help her and the Government to legislate on all the issues together, not just on the narrow matter that is in the pipeline. I want her to know that we want the law changed to cover all the abuses to which she has alluded.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend, because we have to pursue this issue and not just let it go quiet for a year. We have to push at every opportunity.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and underline the comments that have been made by all hon. Members about her work. The shift from the county court to the tribunal is important, but many people will face difficulty in using the tribunal process, given that legal aid is not generally available for tribunal services. Does she agree that strong guidance is needed to provide understanding for those who want to use the tribunal process?

[Annette Brooke]

There was an enlightening presentation on the future tribunal service at the mobile homes all-party group. We were reassured that the process should not cost a great deal of money for the ordinary person and that the cases and outcomes would be published. It would be extremely useful if those were published on the internet, because that would provide evidence for the next stage of legislation. My main concern is that the right to go to a tribunal will not solve the fundamental problems, because potential purchasers will just disappear when the difficulties are raised.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her great generosity in giving way to so many hon. Members in such a short space of time. The current court process can be prohibitively expensive and many unscrupulous site owners delay in the courts to thwart those who are pursuing them. Does she agree that it is fundamental and vital that the tribunal processes cases swiftly and mediates without delay in all cases?

[Annette Brooke]

The all-party group made that point clearly and we will monitor the issue. We do not need to wait for the Select Committee to do so.

I shall return to the example that I was giving. We went to the police, because it is a case of fraud. There were enormous difficulties in getting the police to accept that it was not just a civil matter. We now have a clear understanding with Dorset police and matters have moved forward. The case was eventually taken up, although not wholeheartedly. It was not pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Even though there are clear examples of fraud, it is difficult to deal with them as such.

I have been putting the case for long enough. I commend the motion to the House so that we can achieve justice for park home owners.

13:46

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on bringing this matter to the House. I welcome and support her acknowledgment of the role of Lord Ted Graham, who has done magnificent work over many years on this difficult subject.

There are a number of park home sites in my constituency. I lost one and gained one as a result of the boundary changes at the last election. The one that I lost was in extremely good order, whereas the one that I gained is frankly a disgrace. The owner has persistently refused to maintain standards at a level that I regard as necessary for human safety. The electricity supply cabinets are his property, not that of the park home owners. He charges through the nose for the use of the meters, and yet they are unsafe. There has been a circular argument between the site owner, the householders, the local authority and various regulators about who is responsible. I have no doubt that the park owner is responsible. He provides the services at a rip-off price to residents, so he is responsible for ensuring that those services are provided in the manner that would be expected under any other leasehold arrangement. Many hon. Members live in properties that have leasehold arrangements and we should draw many parallels from the standards that we expect. That ought to be the point of guidance on which the law is based. I appreciate that there are differences, partly because the longevity of such structures is typically much shorter than that of brick and mortar properties, but the principle holds.

I like the notion of the fit and proper person, and think that we should work on it. There are some very responsible park owners, some of whom the all-party group has met over the years in their lordships House. We have met people who have had very good ideas about how to improve the relationship between tenant and landlord. We need to identify and build on best practice, and we should support and work with park owners who exercise it. At the same time, we must come down like a ton of bricks on the cowboys in the industry, who are not prepared to ensure that there is safe lighting so that people can get to their homes safely, and who enforce practices such as the hon. Lady described.

Selling scams, in particular, need to be examined carefully. If I own a piece of property and choose to sell it, the relationship should be purely between myself and the person who purchases it, although I appreciate that it happens to be parked on somebody else’s land.

I am pleased to see that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien), has just arrived. Following the boundary changes, he inherited a good park home site, although he has an interesting relationship with one of the tenants. I shall say no more about that. [Interruption.] It is one of his more challenging constituents, I think it is fair to say. Am I right? He is nodding.

If a property conforms to the existing rules of the park, the landlord should have absolutely no right to interfere in the question of who the seller can seek to pass the property on to. If it breaches the rules of the site, that is a different matter. That is the same in conventional leasehold arrangements, because if a property has not been maintained to the required standard—for example, in its external decoration—the landlord can put pressure on the individual living there. A few estate agent or lawyerly-looking people on the Conservative Benches are nodding in agreement with that. Those principles are well established in landlord and tenant relationships, so why do we seek to make the matter complicated?

I say to the Minister that in considering what revisions are necessary—I think all parties agree that revisions are needed—we should start by considering how conventional leaseholders in bricks and mortar properties are treated and ask ourselves what changes would bring about a set of rules that will work for park homes. At the same time, we need to protect the interests of decent park owners and address the challenges that the hon. Lady described.

On the site to which I referred, the owner calculates the electricity bill in quite an interesting way. One resident has written to me stating that the cost of electricity is generally between £2 and £3 a unit, which is pretty pricey. I know that the Government have driven up the price of fuel, but not by that much. It seems extraordinary that utilities can be charged at a price that is frankly exorbitant. If investments have to be made across the landlord’s property, it is perfectly reasonable that tenants should make a contribution in the same way that anyone else in that situation would have to. However, for them to be charged for utilities at not just a premium price but a rip-off price seems absolutely wrong. That is another matter that I ask the Minister to consider.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I was under the impression that electricity and mains gas were covered by regulations to be enforced by Ofgem. There is much more of a problem with oil and liquefied petroleum gas, on which there is no protection at all for consumers in park homes. I have been struggling to get an answer from Government Departments on that point. The matter that the hon. Gentleman raises is a real problem, and I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will consider it.

[Andrew Miller]

I am not sure about gas, because no gas is provided in the homes in question apart from bottled gas. In that particular case, the landlord has a central meter and one can see how much electricity is being used on the whole site, but each property has a sub-meter. That worries me intensely, because he appears—I do not know whether this is correct—to be able to charge whatever he chooses for the renting of the meter, which is a nice way of marking up the price. That may be how he gets away with the price, and perhaps we need to reflect on that detail.

Such little scams, added together, mean that people who are trying to live frugally in properties that are not worth a huge sum are being presented with bills that creep up and up. The House should be in the business of seeking to protect those people, because they are among the most vulnerable. The lady who wrote to me has put her head above the parapet and been prepared to take on the park owner, and I commend her for that. She gets every possible support that I can give her, including working with the local authority, trading standards and so on. However, people in such situations are predominantly those who do not have the capacity to take on landlords who make legal threats such as those that the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole mentioned. She talked about a rule being changed the day after a purchase was refused, and in such cases people do not have either the money or the experience to take on the case, so they need the House’s support.

I urge the Minister, and my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) in working with the Minister, to try to find a set of rules that commands the support of the whole House. I urge him to start his search by examining how the rest of the leasehold world operates and considering whether we can learn from the experience of changes in that sector over the past 20 or 30 years. We need to improve the lot of the particularly vulnerable constituents whom we are all seeking to represent this afternoon.

13:57

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing the debate. I wish to speak in support of the motion, which provides us with an opportunity to raise the concerns of a group of residents whose needs are often overlooked.

Park homes provide an affordable alternative to mainstream housing. Quite often, park home owners are retired and have a limited income. Living on a park has the attractions of both security and affordability and provides the opportunity to build up a community spirit. That said, although it would be wrong to paint all park owners with the same brush as being unscrupulous and unsympathetic, there are concerns that home owners do not have a proper channel for voicing their concerns. They need to ensure that their contractual rights are honoured and that park owners provide them with a good service in return for the money that they pay.

One husband and wife in my constituency have contrasted the service that they received in the 1960s with what they get now. Back then—in different times and with different standards, I admit—in return for £2 a week there were clean and well-kept lavatories, proper baths and a wash house with steaming hot water for the weekly wash. Now, in return for a site rent higher than the monthly council tax bill, the only service provided is street lighting and the occasional filling in of potholes.

I welcome the Government’s intention to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service. That will provide home owners with a more level playing field for resolving disputes with park owners and give them an affordable opportunity to have a say on the management of their site, to ensure that maintenance work is carried out as and when it is necessary and that they get the service for which they have paid.

We need to improve the process for selling homes. Currently, that can take too long and can be drawn out over a long period, and site owners have an opportunity to interfere with sales for no good reason. We should bear it in mind that many home owners are elderly, and when it comes to a sale, they may need to move quickly to fund, for instance, residential care. The ability of site owners unreasonably to drag out the process must be addressed.

Home owners have also complained to me about the high rates of commission charged on sales—10% is a high figure when one takes into account that the homeowner and not the site owner finds the buyer. Quite often, the sale price on which the commission is based reflects the value of improvements such as porches, insulation and brick skirts, for which home owners pay. It strikes me that there is little justification for such high charges if they are in excess of the actual costs incurred by the site owner. It is said that reducing the commission will lead to higher site fees. My reply is that it is better to move to a transparent system in which fair charges are made for providing legitimate services rather one that relies on outdated practices.

In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole for securing this debate, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the Government’s timetable for introducing the tribunal service, and their views on how to improve the sales process to make it fairer to home owners.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I call Stephen Gilbert.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

rose—

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like everyone, I congratulate my hon. Friend—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Clearly, I should speak a little louder. Sometimes I get names wrong, but you are definitely not Stephen Gilbert.

14:01

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd). Although we share a first name, there are clearly some differences in our surnames. I am sure he will get a chance to speak later in the debate.

I add my plaudits to those of other hon. Members to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) for securing today’s crucial debate, and to the Backbench Business Committee, which chose it. The Committee is revolutionising the way in which the House works and allows us to respond to our constituents’ concerns in a timely way.

There are more than 700 park homes in my constituency. Thousands of people across the country are affected by this issue, so its importance cannot be denied or ignored any longer. It is beholden on the Government to move swiftly on some of the measures that hon. Members have outlined.

As the chair of the all-party group on housing, I am a passionate believer that every person deserves somewhere safe and secure to live, and that no one should experience extortion, intimidation or harassment in their own home, but that is the reality that faces many vulnerable people in park home sites. In my view, there is a serious gap in the legislation and a worrying lack of regulation, and perhaps most importantly, as has been mentioned, there is no fit and proper person test for site owners, who in effect act as landlords to communities of vulnerable people.

Of course, the majority of park home sites are well run by well meaning people. However, the House cannot refuse to take action just because the majority do well. One reason we are here is to look after, and intervene for, minorities who face difficulty.

Earlier this year, in the run-up to the general election, I conducted a survey of every park home in my constituency. Many of the responses were more concerning than those that hon. Members receive from average street surveys—they were distressing to read. One issue that came up time and again is the extortionate rates at which some site owners increase their pitch fees year on year. One constituent told me of an annual increase of 20%, which is clearly out of order—it was well above the rate of inflation for that or any year. However, that person was elderly and vulnerable, and had no one to act as their advocate. They were entirely reliant on the information that the site owner provided them on their rights.

A 2002 study by Shelter, the housing charity, suggested that

“in practice above-inflation increases or one-off charges may be levied to cover particular items.”

However, the problem is much more endemic. Clearly, above-inflation increases are the norm in sites across the country, and there is no added value for residents. I hope the Minister addresses that in his comments.

Another issue arises when we go back to basics. Under Land Registry rules, there is no requirement to register pitches, so although sites might be registered, individual pitches are not. That enables site owners to move the chalets around and provides no security of tenure for the people who have notionally purchased at least an interest in the pitch.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend uses the word “chalets” to describe park homes. Are there too many ways of describing such homes? They are variously called park homes, chalet sites, static homes and mobile homes, but they are not mobile homes or chalets. They are plumbed into the mains water system and have mains electricity and often gas. If I can put this sensitively, the people in them are very often the opposite of mobile. That should be recognised in the law and in how we describe such places. Such homes are not chalets or mobile homes; they are residential properties.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—I was going to make exactly that point. In a written parliamentary answer to me, the Housing and Local Government Minister used the word “chattel”. My broader point was that people who live in these homes are trying to find a better way of life for themselves, but they purchase no interest in the land on which their homes are sited. They should have such an interest. The House needs to define what that interest is and to make it clear that the pitch comes as part of the package.

When we add to those problems utility provision and charging, and the above-inflation annual increases in the pitch fee, we can see how difficult it can be for park home owners to budget and plan their finances from year to year. Again, in my survey of my constituency, I heard horror stories similar to those told by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). There are increases in charges for water, sewage, electricity and all the basics. Tenants and freeholders take it for granted that they get a fair deal from their suppliers, but park home owners do not have that certainty. Even if they know that they are not getting a fair deal, the vulnerable people we are talking about simply do not understand how to exercise their rights.

Indeed, the draft Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment of Schedule 1) (England) Order 2006 clearly states that if requested by an occupier, the site owner shall provide documentary evidence in support and explanation of any charges for gas, electricity, water, sewerage or other services payable by the occupier, but that never happens. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole spoke of the difficulties that park home residents find in forming residents’ associations and making them into effective vehicles for making those points.

Many elderly and vulnerable people are caught in a very difficult position; as other hon. Members said, selling park homes can be a difficult process. Site owners can prevent sales by blocking a homeowner’s right to sell through a notice to terminate agreements on the basis that the home is having a detrimental effect on the site. However, site owners use that so that they can simply jump in with a bid at a knock-down price.

Even if a site owner does not block a sale, selling might not stack up financially for residents because of the site owner’s entitlement to take a commission of up to 10% of the sale price. Many residents who have tried to buy into a dream have ended up living something less than that, but they could be worse off if they try to exit because of the 10% rule. It is no surprise that the rule is resented by homeowners. Many of them have put up with increasing annual pitch fees, and many have added value to their homes because they are proud people who want to live in nice surroundings.

Finally, I have serious concerns about the harassment, bullying and general intimidation to which homeowners on park home sites are all too often subjected. Bullying tactics, threatening behaviour and even assault are not the norm, but they are not rare either. That is why this subject has brought so many Members to this debate, and it is why it is so important that the Government hear the House’s concerns.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s measured language and his acknowledgment that most park home operators are responsible people doing the best they can for their residents. However, does he agree that, in the wrong hands, the system we have now for the operation of park homes is the nearest thing to feudalism that remains in our country? The introduction of sensitive, fair and well-thought-out legislation could enhance the situation by providing protection for both park home owners and operators, which could only be good for the industry, and, with markets being what they are, it would enhance the value of those properties for everybody.

[Stephen Gilbert]

My hon. Friend puts the point far more eloquently than I have been able to do: we are dealing with the remnants of a feudal system. I hope that the Minister has heard that point.

I want to be balanced, however, because I want to welcome the steps that the Government have already taken—in particular, the transfer of responsibility for on-site disputes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service. That is a helpful step forward, but it cannot be seen as the end game for the Government in their approach to effective regulation of park homes. I do not just want to help my residents to resolve disputes; I want to prevent them from having them in the first place. However, that will require a much stronger and transparent regulatory regime. I look forward, therefore, to hearing from the Minister about the work he has done with interested parties and the recommendations they have made to him.

I end with a call to arms: this issue bubbled away under the last Labour Government—and indeed the previous Conservative Government—but it is time that we gripped it, because we are talking about many thousands of our most vulnerable citizens.

14:11

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friends, I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this debate.

I have been dealing with the issue of park homes for more than three years, and a number of years ago we wrote to the Minister then in charge of the problem about the fit and proper person test. We have to get to grips with this, because it is a scandal. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) said that this has been a problem not just over the past 13 years but before that. If anything can happen in this new Parliament, please can this change be made? We have some superb sites in South Derbyshire, and some very bad ones too. I will not name names, notwithstanding parliamentary privilege, because there are court cases going on and I do not want to say anything that could prejudice them. But for goodness’ sake, this is a wonderful opportunity to show what a progressive Government this is. I wish I could say that we have the support of both sides of the Chamber. However, it is important that the pleas being made today by hon. Members from across the nation are heard and that the matter is taken forward.

14:13

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing it.

I have been approached by a large number of my constituents who have highlighted to me their problems with residential mobile home parks. However, I first want to address the misconception that many people have when talking about mobile homes. As residents, these people are not on a weekend or summer holiday, but permanently living in one place—their mobile homes. These are substantial structures that are not, as their name may suggest, actually mobile. In the UK, we have always stood for the principle that a man’s home is his castle. Today we are talking about people’s homes. Although they may not be the conventional bricks and mortar, they represent the same ideas and sanctuary of the individual. With that in mind, I hope that we can encourage a debate that will lead to mobile homes being granted some, if not all, of the same rights that conventional home owners have.

The residents of Medina Park residents association in my constituency have contacted me with numerous complaints about the owners of their park, Leisure Park Real Estate, which runs several parks across the country. Their main complaint is the unfair level of power that the owners of mobile home parks have over the residents, especially when dealing with the buying and selling of mobile homes. An owner of a park is currently permitted to vet potential buyers of a mobile home. This seems reasonable enough, because it is important that they know whom they are letting into their park. However, this becomes a problem when the owner starts abusing this right—for example, by introducing extra clauses. That might include telling the resident where he can buy his supplies, what company can provide services for him or what homes he is allowed to buy.

I was told of one case in which a potential buyer was told that she could bring her pet dog on to the site only if she bought one of the more expensive homes. That is clearly an abuse of the original intention of this power. I have also been told that an unscrupulous park owner uses this power to interfere in existing owners’ attempts to sell their property. The constant interference by some park owners in the sale of mobile homes—be it through estate agents or private viewings—puts many people off purchasing mobile homes, ruining the opportunity of many residents to sell up and leave.

At the moment, the only solution is a tribunal, which does not give value for money, is not effective and puts people off finding a solution, leaving them at the mercy of park owners. I have been told of one instance where a family have been paying ground rent for more than four years while they try to sell their deceased relatives’ mobile home, but are constantly blocked by the park owner. We have also seen, in cases like these, park owners deliberately trying to force down the prices of existing homes, so that they can buy out all or some of the existing homes and replace them with more expensive, profitable homes and make more money. We have also seen that park owners are unwilling to co-operate with residents’ associations, often refusing contact with those who participate in such groups.

A large number of residents in mobile home parks are elderly, with many parks seen as an ideal venue for retirement. However, the activities of unscrupulous park owners may disrupt this. Furthermore, many residents face continued intimidation from park owners. The elderly are in the worst position, because they are unable to stand up to such owners—many do not have the required energy to do so. These issues are not just restricted to my constituency—that is evident from today’s debate. I know that many mobile home parks suffer from the same problems, often from the same people, who may own numerous parks.

I also know that the solutions that residents’ associations want are very similar. We need to change the law so that the principle of vetting a buyer to ensure that they are a fit and proper person also applies to park owners. That is the only way to sort them out. Those owners about whom no one has any complaints will have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being a respectable park owner. We would then need to increase powers to councils to remove licences for park owners who abuse their power. It is most important that we recognise that mobile homes are homes and no different from any other house in the country, and that they should be afforded the same rights as we give to home owners.

14:20

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

A few Members in the Chamber may know that I am rather hard of hearing, but I have discovered since being elected that in politics there are some advantages to being hard of hearing. However, I will leave that to those in the Chamber to determine.

Like everyone else, I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on bringing this debate to the Chamber. Christmas has come 35 times this afternoon, with so many compliments being paid, but I really mean it, because we are talking about a real issue. It is a fascinating thing, but I did not know that it was an issue until I got involved in politics and met a number of people living in mobile homes either within my constituency or just outside it. It was only then that I discovered what a complete lack of any kind of level playing field there is. It is quite shocking. We are talking about basic things, such as park owners buying mobile homes off the original owners at anything up to a 25% discount and then selling them on. Like other hon. Members, I have even had constituents tell me—I cannot prove this—that their utility bills were ramped up considerably. It is absolutely incredible. Others have talked about trying to form residents’ committees. Similarly, people have been leant on and have not even been able to put together a tenants’ committee through which they could put their points of view. It is quite extraordinary.

In preparing for this debate I did some more research, and, having spoken to my hon. Friend and listened to other hon. Friends today, I know that there has been a problem for quite a while. Indeed, there are people in the House who have been fighting on the issue for quite a while. I pay tribute to them. I am confident about the complete universality of where we are coming from today. I am confident too that the Minister, who is a good hon. Friend of mine, will take that on board and no doubt do all the miraculous things for which he was well known well before he reached the coalition Front Bench—no pressure there, but I look forward to that. We all know what needs doing; we all know that something needs to be done. I look forward to joining my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole in what I hope will be a victory on this issue in the new year.

The really interesting thing about this debate is the huge variety. There is one park home—or however we want to define it—in my constituency called King’s Park that is absolutely outstanding. The sense of community in King’s Park is absolutely fantastic, and that applies across the piece, from people who have been there a short time to those who have been there a long time. To be perfectly honest, if I had lost at the last election and gone broke, I would probably have moved there myself. It looked so good and there was such a sense of community. That shows the variety that exists, and that is a good thing. However, if all park home owners were similar to those at King’s Park, we would not be having this debate. The sense of quality, community and responsibility there is so strong that we might all want to move there—with the agreement of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, obviously.

The challenge is that the lack of regulation means that unscrupulous people have been abusing vulnerable individuals and families for far too long. It is the old story, but I was having a discussion with one of my Conservative colleagues yesterday on the very issue of regulation—the regulation of banking, as it happens, or, to be precise, the regulation of independent financial advisers. The conundrum is that we need x amount of regulation to prevent disreputable people from taking advantage of vulnerable individuals, but the same thing always happens, which is that the regulation gets so strong and heavy that it puts off businesses from getting involved. We end up in a chicken-and-egg situation, and this issue is a classic case in point. In one sense, the regulation is pretty light-touch, because 90% of park home owners—or whatever the proportion is—are, I am quite sure, reputable individuals who do not need heavy regulation. They get on with things, they earn an honest buck and they look after the people who live in their mobile homes. There is not a problem with them. However, because the regulation is slightly weak, the remaining 10%—or whatever the proportion is—are completely unscrupulous people who have driven a coach and horses through that regulation, abusing numerous families and couples, who are often elderly, in a most disgraceful way.

I know what is going to happen, and I agree with it, unfortunately. We are going to need to toughen up the regulations, in exactly the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole proposed in her speech. I will support that 100%, but I find it so frustrating sometimes. The 10% tail is wagging the 90% dog. It is absolutely infuriating. I can think of some ways in which we might deal with that 10% of society, but they might be a bit illiberal and The Guardian will not like me—which it does not anyway since the election, so I will move on. I would urge the Minister to listen to everything that we are saying, and to come through with some support and some suggestions in the new year that are a little more robust than what we are talking about at the minute, because it is quite clear that this issue has gone on a long time. It has obviously become perfectly acceptable for a pretty large number of mobile home owners to behave in a shocking and disreputable way, and it has to be stopped.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Because the fact that the regulation is light-touch is now in the public domain, will my hon. Friend concede that if we do nothing, that will make it more attractive for disreputable people to go into that line of business?

[Stephen Lloyd]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head, not least because—this is the conclusion that I have come to—a fair number of disreputable home owners know each other. The practice has been going on for years and, bluntly, it is a scam. Therefore, I am afraid that, as a light-touch, business-wing Liberal, I am going to ask the Minister for more regulation, and I would urge him to come forward with it sooner rather than later, so that we are not having the same debate in a year’s time. We are talking about people who deserve better, and I am absolutely confident that the coalition Government, with cross-party support, will deliver on that. Finally, I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole on securing this debate.

14:27

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Hon. Members will be interested to know that there is a blog on which one can follow some interesting debates concerning the residents of park homes. Let me quote from one which asks,

“are the government going to sit up and take notice of us the residents, or are we to remain”

the forgotten lost? That is the challenge for us today, and the forgotten lost are not few in number. As the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) pointed out, there are 80,000 such homes in England, and I would guesstimate that these contain slightly under 150,000 people. That is a large army—indeed, several times the army that Wat Tyler took to London bridge in the peasants’ revolt of 1381. There is a sense in which the residents of park homes today are the equivalent of modern serfs, under arbitrary landlords; or, as the Housing Minister put it more gently, there is an issue about exercising their rights.

I would like to join the many other hon. Members who have paid tribute to the hon. Lady for securing this debate today, in which many people on this side of the House, and one hon. Gentleman on the other side, have spoken for this large community of some 150,000 people. My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) commented that the hon. Lady had been buried under a sea of bouquets. I hope that she has all her bouquets, but that she is not buried, because we need her very much above the ground and kicking in order to take the motion forward. I should also like to pay tribute to Lord Graham of Edmonton. He is no relation, and I think that he holds different political views from mine, but I know that he has done some very good work on this subject.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to the transfer of responsibility from the county courts to the residential property tribunals in February, although we recognise that that will not in itself solve everything. I would like to develop a few themes on certain issues and potential solutions that the Minister might like to consider. The first is the recognition of legal residents associations, to which one or two other Members have alluded. There are two park home sites in my constituency, one of which is Woodlands Park in Quedgeley. It has a residents association, which has been admirably chaired by Mike Morgan for many years, but the association is not fully recognised by the owner of Woodlands Park. It is high time that it was, and the same is true for all park homes.

In the motion, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole rightly calls on the Government

“to review the case for establishing a fit and proper person criterion for park home site owners”.

I believe that the best way to take this forward would be for the Government to approve the licensing of park home sites by local authorities. This would have the additional advantage of the licensing authority being able to overview the documentation—sales documents, in particular—to ensure that any buyers of park homes were fully aware of the system of remuneration for owners, which is based on the sale price, the commission and the pitch rent. Those details need to be clarified and spelt out extremely clearly, so that anyone who buys a park home can be aware of what they are doing.

The motion also proposes that owners should cease to interfere with the sale process. I agree with that, but we also need to consider how the loopholes in section 207 of the Housing Act 2004 could be tightened up. In relation to the sale commission, in particular, there is a case for licensing authorities to look at whether a sliding scale could be established, which would vary according to the length of residency by the people who buy park homes.

I should like to highlight some further points that have arisen in relation to Woodlands Park and that could also be reviewed by licensing authorities. The first relates to utilities, and I should like to quote from a recent e-mail on this subject:

“Any resident changing to natural gas from bottled gas has to pay £6.50 a week extra for the privilege. Note this figure is added to the monthly pitch fee and continues for life!”

That cannot be justifiable, and charges for utilities should be brought under the licensing authorities’ review.

The second issue relates to pitch fees, and I quote again:

“One of our residents who moved to the site was paying £106.72 per month pitch fees. This was confirmed in writing…in March 2007…and a letter followed in December 2007 stating that he had underpaid therefore the pitch fee was increased to £140.38 per month. This equates to a 31.5% increase.”

That was entirely arbitrary; it was done after the sale, and there is no way for the resident to challenge it except through the very expensive process of going to the county court. That, too, needs to be reviewed.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

On the point about seeking legal recourse, my own experience of dealing with the challenges faced by the residents of Blunsdon Abbey Park is that they often have neither the financial nor the health capability to engage in a long legal battle.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The financial costs of such proceedings are prohibitive, even when residents are physically and mentally able to take the process forward.

In the review of the process sales cost, sales commission and pitch fee in its 2001 study, Berkeley Hanover said that there was no evidence of excessive profits as a whole, but that the process could not be described as

“perfectly fair, flexible and transparent”.

I think that that is putting it mildly, and that the issue needs to be tackled.

Today there has been a call for action—for what the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole called a stiffening of resolve. I think that all of us who have spoken so far today feel the same. I ask the Minister and the Government to consider making local government licensing authorities responsible for approving, monitoring and licensing park homes, for clarifying the sales process and in particular the commission, for ensuring that the correct documents are issued before the sale of homes, for reviewing the charges for utilities, and for the collection of rubbish and environmental health—a subsidiary issue which, although sometimes overlooked, needs attention in many park homes at a time when we are all keen to drive up recycling rates.

Today the Government have a chance to help 150,000 British citizens without having any impact on the ghastly budget deficit. I hope that they will seize the moment, and will give our constituents a very happy new year in 2011.

14:36

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

So far Members have concentrated on park home owners who have all-year-round occupation, but we should not forget those who have restricted occupation rights and who also have different problems. I want to address some of those problems.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), I need to be careful about what I say, because there is a court case pending involving a particular site owner. The basic facts are these. One of the residents of the park alleges that the owner sold a mobile home for £80,000 under a leasehold agreement. I have seen a copy of the agreement, and it clearly states that the resident is entitled to all-year-round occupation. However, the resident has now been told to leave the site because it is allowed to open for only eight months of the year.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I realise that the hon. Gentleman wants to make his point, but I remind him that he needs to be very careful about what he says in order not to venture into current court proceedings. I am sure that he was going to do that, but I thought that I would remind him just in case it had slipped his mind.

[Gordon Henderson]

Thank you for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that the matter is sub judice, and I will be extremely careful. If you listen to my words, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will understand why I am using some of them.

Naturally, the resident has refused to leave the site, and has commenced legal action against the site owner—who, it is alleged, has responded with a campaign of harassment and intimidation. If that is true, such action is simply—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am very sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but I am afraid that he cannot make that allegation in the context of a current court case. I am really trying to guide him, and I am being advised on this. I ask him to be very careful.

[Gordon Henderson]

You will be delighted to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I was about to end that section of my speech, but I thank you again for your advice. You will have noted that I have mentioned no names at all. However, I will take your advice and move on to another aspect of park home sites that I think should be included in any future legislation, namely periods of occupation.

On Sheppey we have nearly 7,000 park homes, 4,000 of which are mobile homes and 3,000 of which are chalets or bungalows. Those homes provide sufficient accommodation for 28,000 holidaymakers, but it has been calculated that, given the change in holiday patterns, accommodation for a number closer to 10,000 is probably required. Some of those sites have permission for 10-month occupancy, while others have permission for only eight months. Many park homes are freehold properties, and some of them are of the very highest standard and built to full building regulations. They are no longer holiday homes, but are occupied by their owners for 10 months of the year, yet their owners are made homeless for two months of the year by the current planning laws.

One such site is Parklands village in Minster, where the residents of 76 dwellings have this week received a letter from the local authority reminding them that staying in their home between 3 January and the end of February will be a criminal offence. Somewhat bizarrely, these potential criminals were advised to contact the housing services department if they have any difficulty in finding alternative or temporary accommodation.

To add to this ludicrous situation, the reason given by planning officers for refusing a planning application for all-year-round occupation of Parkland village is that it is at risk from flooding. Setting aside the fact that a full risk assessment of the site has shown that the risk from flooding is minimal, and also setting aside the convoluted logic that refuses to allow occupation of the homes during January and February when the risk of flooding is at its lowest but allows occupation in March and April when the spring tides are at their highest, it is madness to force people out of perfectly good dwellings because of a supposed risk of flooding when those dwellings are located slap-bang next to a single-storey hotel that has permission for all-year-round occupancy. These residents are being forced, under threat of prosecution, to leave perfectly good-quality bungalows that have full building regulations and energy standards approved by the local authority’s building control section, and are being encouraged to move into hotel accommodation, such as that offered by the hotel situated on the same site as the bungalows they own. Such a policy is beyond parody, but I do not blame my local authority; I blame a planning system that has allowed such illogical action. It is time that that system is changed.

Like the constituencies of many other Members, the area I represent has a lengthy housing waiting list, yet we have over 3,000 surplus park homes on Sheppey. In 2006, Baroness Andrews was an Under-Secretary of State in the late unlamented Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and she made a speech in which she said:

“We all know that this country has a real challenge to meet the need for homes from a rapidly growing household population, as people live longer and more people choose to live alone. Park homes have a real part to play in expanding the choice and diversity in the housing stock and in providing affordable energy efficient homes.”

Let me categorically state that park homes are a part of the solution; they can help us meet the need for homes. They provide choice, quality and market-price affordability, and they can add environmentally friendly homes to the housing market. They provide a setting for stable, mixed, sustainable communities of all ages and household types.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I am listening with interest to my hon. Friend’s comments. He says some of these homes are up to standard, but what would he say about those that are not up to standard and where people are prevented from staying for more than 10 months a year?

[Gordon Henderson]

I might address that point in my final comments.

I agree wholeheartedly with Baroness Andrews, and I am only sorry that the Government in which she served did not follow up her fine words with action. I hope that the current coalition Government do a lot better in tackling the housing shortage. One way in which they can start to do that is by taking note of the motion and introducing legislation to prevent park site owners from interfering in the sale of park homes without good reason, and using the opportunity actively to encourage local authorities to look much more sympathetically at planning applications that seek to convert holiday park home sites into permanent residential dwellings, conditional on those dwellings meeting full building regulations standards. That would be a way of providing extra homes to the people who need them in my constituency.

14:45

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), with whom I campaign assiduously as a member of the all-party group on mobile homes. As the House has heard, the group has received a number of delegations and deputations, not just in recent months, but in the period prior to my election as a Member of this House. My interest and concern in this area dates back to my days as a parliamentary candidate, when I met and discussed issues relating to park homes with the residents of the Brook Meadow park, which is in the village of Wroughton, where I live in my constituency. A number of residents, some of whom are elderly—they will forgive me for saying that—are not frightened to write to and lobby their Member of Parliament, or to come to the precincts of this House to make impassioned speeches on behalf of not only their own interests, but those of all their friends and neighbours.

An old principle in property law is the right of quiet enjoyment. That principle is well known to English law. It applies to people who live in bricks and mortar, so why does it not apply to people who live in park homes? The reason is simply that there has been only a gradual acceptance among law makers and opinion formers that park homes are not just goods or chattels, but places where people live. That acceptance means that the rights of property—the rights that we automatically assume apply for not only people who own homes, but those who rent bricks and mortar—should now apply for people in park homes.

Interestingly, amendments to the Mobile Homes Act 1983—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) for his proper intervention pointing out that that term can lead to a lot of misunderstanding—were made by the Housing Act 2004. Perhaps that was an implicit acceptance by the then Government that we were no longer talking about mere chattels, but about places in which people live. Whether that was a Freudian slip or a deliberate intention, I welcome it. I suggest that our new Government should adopt that philosophy when dealing with park homes, treating them as houses and places where people live. The Government should allow those people equivalent rights to those that property owners or tenants enjoy under the protection of not only the 2004 Act, but the range of housing legislation that has evolved in this place since the latter part of the 19th century.

The issues and problems raised with me by my local residents are similar to those echoed by other hon. Members, and I do not seek to repeat them. They boil down to a few key areas. There are serious issues relating to the sale of park homes, there is a lack of resolution relating to agreements about the pitch fees to be charged every month and there are problems with utilities. I wish to deal with those in reverse order.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) rightly reminded us in an intervention that gas and electricity utilities enjoy the protection of Ofgem, and water utilities enjoy the protection of Ofwat, and that various guidelines and directives have been issued. The problem arises when electricity and water supplies are administered via the site owner; in other words, they come through a wholesale agreement via the site owner, rather than to individual pitches. Therein lies a great problem. It does not allow domestic users in each park home to benefit from domestic tariffs, for example. A wholesale business-related tariff is charged to the park that is not as advantageous to residents as it might be.

Another problem is that the lack of direct contact between the utility company and the resident can lead to all sorts of complications. One local example occurred in Brook Meadow a few years ago where there was the awful case of residents being written to by the electricity company and told that their electricity was about to be cut off because the company was in dispute with the site owner. The site owner had allowed matters to develop to the door of the court before he finally relented and paid the bill that was overdue. That is not a satisfactory position for residents to be put in. They were thoroughly innocent third parties who were literally terrified at the thought of not having electricity supplied to their homes. That is an inconsistency that needs to be resolved, and it should be resolved via a system of licensing and regulation.

The same can be said about the water supply. Site home owners experience a lot of problems with water pressure. It is far better, in my view, for the site owners to withdraw from the supply issue and let residents deal directly with water companies. That would be far more transparent and easier to administer.

I have mentioned the difficulty with pitch fees. In the case that I am dealing with, the dispute about pitch fees remains unresolved. That has an unpleasant knock-on effect because, in direct breach of the regulations, the site owner has been in the habit of, in effect, threatening prospective sellers of pitches with the fact that the pitch fee has been unpaid, saying that he wants resolution of the unpaid debt before he will permit the sale. He is putting an entirely discrete issue in the way of the sale of a home. That is wholly wrong and in breach of the current regulations, but it is happening.

I use that example to make the more general point that it is now time for local authorities, which exercise a range of powers in other licensing areas, to take on the responsibility of licensing the owners of park home sites. The phrase “fit and proper person” has quite rightly been put under the microscope. It needs very careful definition, but perhaps one can draw a comparison with taxi licences and licences for public houses and clubs. In such cases, local authorities look carefully at each application, gather information about previous convictions and other such relevant information, and make a judgment based on all the evidence.

I am not a person who likes to call automatically for more regulation, but such is the gravity of the situation that faces so many park home residents that there is sadly no alternative.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend said at the beginning of his speech that many park home residents are not frightened to come forward, but we all know that many park home residents are frightened to come forward. I am sure that he would agree that many of these people do not have assets. In fact, the only assets they have are their park homes and possibly their cars. They do not have the wherewithal to seek justice, so the law must be extended to protect them.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who allows me seamlessly to move on to my final point, bearing in mind the need for other colleagues to have their say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) made some cogent points about the provisions of section 207 of the Housing Act 2004, which amended the schedule that applies to the procedure to be adopted on the sale of park homes. That schedule has been subject to several amendments and it is sometimes difficult to follow the path that allows one to work out precisely what is in force and what is not. I understand that from the moment a request is made by the occupier—the owner of the park home—the owner of the site has to respond within 28 days to

“approve the person, unless it is reasonable for him not to do so, and…serve on the occupier notice of his decision whether or not to approve the person.”

I am afraid that is far too honoured in the breach, than in the observance. When it is honoured it is being used as a mechanism to delay sale for reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) has set out very carefully.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I also see examples in which site owners are trying to get long-term residents out of the site and new tenants in on temporary contracts so that they can ultimately try to put the site up for sale for potential residential development at huge profit.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, which has not been made before. We know that unscrupulous site owners will drive down the value of a park home, buy it at that low value and, sometimes, re-sell the same home to make a fast profit. That is an unacceptable abuse of the current situation.

A concrete proposal that the Minister could consider is whether we should adopt a system of deemed acceptance by an owner after a certain period. My experience locally and more generally is that there is often a disastrous combination of indifference and incompetence mixed with cynicism and a wish to make an illicit profit, but why should we allow sites where there is that cocktail to benefit from the current regulations? We should punish incompetence and indifference by adopting principles such as deemed acceptance. Currently, the onus is on the park home owner to seek from the court—I welcome the fact that it will soon be a tribunal—a declaration that the person to whom they wish to sell their property has been approved. Many hon. Members have asked whether that is the right balance. Are we asking too much of people, many of whom are vulnerable, or of the dependants of people who have died and left their park home as part of their bequest? Should we not redress the balance and put the ball back in the court of the park home owner when it comes to sales? I urge the Minister seriously to consider the principle of deemed acceptance and whether it can be worked into a revised schedule. That would be a better way of dealing with the legislation than tweaking it as we have in the past few years.

[Andrew Miller]

Let me put to the hon. Gentleman a point that I tried to make in my speech. If the park home owner has maintained the property within the site’s rules, why should the site owner have any say about whom the sale should be made to? I have not heard a rational reason why there should be any blockage at that point.

[Mr Buckland]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that there is a balance to strike. The site owner owns the land and the property, and we have to accept that there are many good, decent and proper site owners. That is why I am talking, as he did, about striking a delicate balance. We have to be careful of the age-old problem of using a sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut. None of us wants to punish good site owners, but hon. Members the length and breadth of the land keep coming up against the rotten apples that are damaging the reputation of park homes, undermining their viability for the future and, potentially, starving the country of a useful source of housing supply. I regret that I see no other alternative than for park homes to fall under the ambit of proper regulation by a local authority.

Involving local authorities at the beginning, when the site owner wants to purchase the land, is a good way of engaging them throughout the process. Many colleagues will be aware that one of the problems is that local authorities are involved only reactively, when they are faced with a particular challenge or problem, or a prosecution, as the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said, so they are psychologically on the back foot. There is a good case to be made for local authorities taking a proactive role, which is why I commend the approach that Members want the Government to take.

The time for tinkering has passed; it is time for a wholesale root-and-branch look at the regulations. If there is no time for new legislation, I urge the Government at the very least to look at the entire ambit of the schedule to the amended and re-amended Mobile Homes Act. Let us get things right for future generations and give current park home residents peace of mind. Let us allow them the principle of quiet enjoyment.

15:01

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I support the motion and, like many other Members, I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on moving it.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) pointed out, there are many park home sites up and down the country and many park home owners. In England alone, there are 85,000 park home owners, spread across 2,000 sites. In the main, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) eloquently stressed, the sites are run well; they are good places to live. Park homes are comfortable and relatively easy to maintain. They are relatively low cost and affordable. Most of them—certainly those in my constituency—are in pleasant locations. They are nice places to live. Whether park home sites are well or poorly run, they have a strong sense of community.

On a minority of sites, residents face many great problems. In my constituency, the spectrum of problems ranges from sites that are somewhat poorly managed to those where there are blatant breaches of health and safety regulations, many along the lines highlighted by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). In my constituency, at the uglier end of the spectrum, there are examples of intimidation, particularly of vulnerable and elderly people. Intimidation often affects the mental health of elderly residents and can, on occasion, result in great financial loss, as we have heard from many Members this afternoon. I echo the comments made by many Members, and congratulate Sonia McColl on her justice campaign, on pressing so firmly on this important issue and on the work and energy that went into arranging the lobby of Parliament on 3 November.

There are a number of challenging issues, many of which have been raised this afternoon, relating to the operation of park home sites. We have heard much about the importance of the approval of the buyer stage, when an unscrupulous park site owner can put people off and use the rules to make sure that the park home owner does not achieve fair value for their property. In 1990-91, a Department of the Environment survey showed that 25% of park home owners expected problems with the sales process in the future. Of that 25%, some 51% felt that the site owner or the owning company would be the cause of the problems.

Mrs McColl is particularly keen that the approval of the buyer stage should take place in the presence of a solicitor or at a solicitor’s office. I think we should be slightly cautious here, because I am not convinced that that requirement, in and of itself, will solve the problem, and it will add to the cost of the transactions. But where a wrong has been done there should be quick redress at low cost, and substantial damages should be available to those pursuing unscrupulous site owners.

The second area of sale that I wish to address is that of what I would term the forced sale, in which the unscrupulous site owner intimidates and pressurises a resident off the site. The reason for that is clear; as many hon. Members have said, once that home is gone, perhaps a larger home can be placed on that site and profits will follow. My understanding is that some of the problems relate to the Mobile Homes Act 1983, whereby site owners can sometimes claim that an existing home has a detrimental effect on the amenity of the site. That point was raised by Shelter, whose mobile home unit looked into the issue. I therefore urge the Minister to pay careful attention to that aspect of the Act.

Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), have raised the issue of sales commission on park homes that are sold. I know that many park home owners feel it is inherently unfair to have to pay 10% of the value of their property on sale. They will argue that the site owner may have contributed nothing to the sale, and in many circumstances the owners of those homes have enhanced them at their own expense, adding to their value.

We should proceed with caution, however, because in order to make a profit a park home operator will look at all the revenue streams that go into the business, of which commission on sales is but one. It is quite conceivable that if that were reduced or removed, pitch fees would be higher, as the consultants Berkeley Hanover suggested in its 2001 report. It suggested that pitch fees might go up by 20% to 32% if commission was removed altogether. It is the case that where commissions have been reduced in the past from 15% to 10% due to legislation, there has been evidence that pitch fees have increased.

The second danger of removing commissions is that it might inflate the price of what at the moment are relatively—I stress, relatively—affordable homes, and that would be a detrimental move. It is very important that we keep the up-front affordability of these homes for individuals who may wish to buy them in the future. Indeed, the Shelter report did not recommend any reduction in the commission rate.

Several hon. Members have spoken about site conditions and licensing. Licensing was introduced under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which gave local authorities the ability to impose conditions on site licences, and also the power to enforce those conditions. But it did not confer on local authorities any duty to enforce conditions on recalcitrant site owners. Those conditions, on which enforcement action can be taken, would include requirements not only on the spacing of the homes across the site, for example, but on the provision of—sometimes vital—amenities on the site. So it is very important that the Minister looks closely, as I am sure he and his colleagues are doing, at licensing and whether we should make it a duty of local authorities to intervene where there are significant breaches of those licences.

We should also look closely at local authorities’ right to refuse or revoke the site owner’s licence if there is good cause, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) said. In those circumstances, if there were a revocation, we would need to ensure that the local authority had a clear strategy for providing the services and ensuring that the site continued to run in a safe, decent and reasonable manner.

I urge the Minister to look at giving local authorities the ability to take emergency remedial action when things do not happen appropriately on a site, and to charge the site owner for any remedial action that is taken. Local authorities could be given the authority to charge for licences to cover some of the costs of them, and, when there are appeals in the system on such matters, they might be handled by the residential property tribunal.

Much has been rightly said in this debate about the fit and proper person qualification, which was a strong recommendation of the park homes working group. There is no doubt that the park homes business is distinctly different from many others. It is not like running a shop or a pub, whereby, if one is rude to customers or runs the business badly, one can expect to see profits diminish and to go out of business. Site owners effectively have captive consumers and people whose lives they can and, as we have heard in many instances this afternoon, do make a misery.

Given how the economics of the business work, we should not be surprised by such abuse. There is a premium to be gained by bullying people and by pushing somebody out of their home inappropriately, because there are profits to be made as a consequence. The whole market has built into it the dynamics for abuse of one form or another.

I know that the Housing Minister is thinking about the issue very carefully, but I urge the Minister before us to consider seriously a fit and proper person qualification. One objection to the approach is that it might be complicated and difficult, but we already apply it to people who own houses in multiple occupation, so some local authorities already have experience in exactly that area.

Some Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), have said that residents associations have been quite effective in dealing with difficult situations on park home sites, and I welcome the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment of Schedule 1) (England) Order 2006, which permits such associations to be set up and, indeed, requires site owners to recognise them, subject to certain conditions, including one whereby more than 50% of residents on a site must become members. The Government would do well to encourage at every turn, with whatever legislative changes they bring in, such residents associations and to give them authority wherever they possibly can.

[Annette Brooke]

I should like to report on some further good practice by Purbeck district council, which has set up a forum for park home owners, so that they can go and share their issues. That is a very good way of backing up residents associations.

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Lady for that helpful and informative intervention. I am grateful and pay tribute to Buckingham Orchards Residents Community Association in my constituency, which has done a great deal and fought hard to improve conditions on its site. I shall certainly take the hon. Lady’s suggestion of a forum and such activity to that association to see whether it might benefit from that.

Finally, dispute resolution at the moment typically means going through the county courts, and doing so not just at great expense, but often in the face of numerous delays, because unscrupulous site owners are adept at stringing things out and making things difficult at every turn. We have all heard the stories in which site owners fail to turn up, give a reason and there has to be a re-hearing. They just wear people out, which is why I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to a residential property tribunal. However, it is absolutely essential that such a tribunal is quick to deal with grievances, that there is a minimum of delay involved and that it is not expensive to use. On 14 July, in referring to residential property tribunals, the Minister for Housing stated:

“This will mean that park home residents will be able to take action to resolve disputes with site owners, without being restricted by the prospect of facing large legal costs.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 28WS.]

That is absolutely critical. We are dealing with people who are among the least advantaged in our society and cost must be driven down to give them a route to justice.

We should also toughen up on fines and give the tribunal real teeth. At the moment, a breach of a site licence carries a maximum fine of £2,500. In many cases, that is simply not enough to deter the kind of activity that we have been debating this afternoon. I urge the Minister to consider whether there should be an escalation of fines for repeat offences, because we are aware that some site owners do the same things over and over again. Those people should be penalised more heavily each time around.

Many of the things I have raised and that other hon. Members have touched upon may not be achieved simply through secondary legislation. We may need primary legislation. I hope that the Government and the Minister have the political will to ensure that the time required to push forward these changes is made available. We need to act to remove the last refuge of Rachmanism in this country, because that is what we are dealing with; we need to act to stand up for the vulnerable and the elderly who suffer in the circumstances that I and many others have described; and we need to act for the many self-reliant, proud and decent park home residents, who ask nothing more than that they are treated with fairness, dignity and respect.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Before I call the remaining speakers, by way of information, I point out that the wind-ups are due to start at around twenty-five to 4. The remaining contributors might want to reflect on how they can ensure that their colleagues get in as well.

15:17

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I will not detain the House long. As many other hon. Members did, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on tabling the motion. I will happily support it on behalf of my constituents who live at a number of sites in Cheltenham—Sunnyfield lane in Up Hatherley, The Reddings and Harthurstfield park in west Cheltenham. Having named those locations, I emphasise what other hon. Members have said: it is a minority of site owners who are involved in many of these abuses. However, as other hon. Members have also pointed out, the power relationship that exists under the current system between site owner and home owner is so uneven that it almost invites some of these abuses.

Park home living can be a wonderful lifestyle, as it is for many thousands of people. Generally, it involves smaller homes with low maintenance costs that are on the lowest council tax band, on one level and on small plots in parks that engender a strong sense of community. Knocking on doors in the places I have mentioned is certainly a cheerful experience—not least because of some of the wonderfully quirky ornamentation and individual decoration that is often on show

A leading insurer tells me that the incidence of crime on parks is very low. Such homes have low insurance costs and represent a very safe lifestyle. Affordability and safety are key because, as has been pointed out, many residents are elderly and very few are well off. It is unfortunate that the industry is plagued by a small number of unscrupulous operators who, frankly, make their residents’ lives a misery. I shall not repeat the issues of fees, charges and services that many hon. Member have mentioned. Instead, I will highlight again the issue of buying and selling, particularly the approval-of-the-buyer stage, where the park owner meets privately with the prospective buyer. That represents such an obvious conflict of interest that I cannot imagine even the most angelic of site owners not being tempted at times to talk down the value of a park home in order perhaps to make a killing at some stage in the future. It is clear that in many cases the owner, out of desperation, ends up selling back to the site owner, often for a derisory sum, and the site owner then has a vacant plot to develop at a huge profit. At that point they have, in effect, stolen the homeowner’s equity, which sometimes represents the homeowner’s life savings, so it is a very serious issue.

I very much welcome the Government’s intention to transfer jurisdiction to residential property tribunals—a positive step that should address many of the broader issues of fees, charges and so on that crop up from time to time. However, I am not absolutely sure that it will solve the central problem of sales, because often by the time a residential property tribunal process has been completed—evidence has been presented, the tribunal has ruled, and a decision has been communicated—the buyer will be long gone. As one expert professional constituent of mine said:

“I cannot think of a more appropriate sector for there to be some sort of fit and proper person test, some of these owners are merciless.”

A fit and proper person test would be a strong supplement to the residential property tribunal policy that the Government are proposing. That is one of the reasons I strongly support the motion.

I should like briefly to mention the parallel issue of owners of mobile holiday homes. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) has already referred to this, but I have a slightly different concern that has been raised by several constituents of mine who are permanent residents of Cheltenham but own static caravans or mobile homes in Swanage bay in Dorset, which I suspect is near to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. Once again, these owners are not wealthy and are at the mercy of site owners who stand accused of reducing the market price of mobile homes artificially and then buying them themselves with the potential for a tidy profit. Again, we have the issue of fees, with the site owner apparently seeking an increase of nearly 50% in one year, in contravention of existing licences and Office of Fair Trading guidelines.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I, too, have a constituent who has a pitch in the Swanage Bay View holiday park, which may or may not be the same as the park that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, where pitch fees have been increased by 22.5% over the past 12 months. There is a huge amount of pressure on older residents to sell up, with a lot of very commercial tactics being used to abuse their position.

[Martin Horwood]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. We are certainly talking about the identical issue, if not the identical park, and once again we are talking about people’s life savings being at risk, often vulnerable elderly people. This is an almost entirely unregulated sector, and unless it is included in Ministers’ plans for residential property tribunals, it will remain so. Does the Minister have plans to include mobile holiday homes in any of the moves that he is making to establish residential property tribunals? If he cannot answer me now, perhaps he will write to me with his intentions or the Government’s view on that issue.

I am proud to support this motion. Since a minority of site owners apparently cannot be trusted to be fair to often vulnerable and elderly homeowners, it is vitally important for Parliament to step in.

15:24

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

This afternoon we have heard from Members tales of fraud, neglect, intimidation and vandalism. For me, this is not a complicated issue. As a doctor, if I committed any of those crimes I would very quickly be declared not a fit and proper doctor and struck off. I call on the Minister to consider seriously the ability to designate people not fit and proper site owners.

It is obvious from attending the all-party group that the same names keep cropping up. It is evident that we are talking about probably fewer than 10 owners who commit these crimes across the country. Many of my constituents have relayed shocking tales of crime and fraud, but are genuinely too intimidated to go to the police.

We have heard excellent suggestions—I will not repeat them—from my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and I join in the congratulations for the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on initiating this excellent opportunity for debate. I call on the Minister to take action, because we have waited long enough. I hope that he has listened to what all hon. Members have said.

15:25

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for trying so hard to decipher my signature so that I could catch your eye. I think that I am the last Back Bencher to speak in this debate, so I add some final congratulations to the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on raising this issue, which is so important for many hon. Members.

Like many hon. Members, this issue was first brought to my attention while I was a candidate. It was important to meet the Heathcote Park residents association and its chairman, Mary Hulett. Many park home residents feel unfairly treated and ignored, and are frustrated at the slow pace of reform and regulation. I am sure that Members from all parts of the House will welcome the transfer to the residential property tribunal, which will reduce the cost of resolving disputes and empower residents. I am sure that it will be a positive factor for the sector.

I agree with the notion of fit and proper person criteria for park home site owners, and that there should be regulations that can be used against site owners who interfere with the sale of individual park homes without good reason. However, the problems are far wider than that and much more needs to be done if we are to have a fair and well regulated park homes sector. I believe that the primary way in which the Government can assist is through the creation of a strong licensing regime. I believe that “Park homes site licensing reform: The way forward and next steps” laid out the pathway for that.

We must also tackle the disreputable practices of some site owners. That could be done through capping increases in pitch fees to the retail prices index, or by preventing consecutive increases above RPI. That would prevent site owners from suddenly springing large pitch fee increases on owners, which is particularly important in these difficult economic times.

We could also empower park home owners by allowing them to petition their site owners to agree to a framework for developing a sinking fund for repairs and maintenance. For example, if 75% of park home residents petitioned the site owner, the owner would have 12 months to develop a framework that was acceptable to the majority of residents. If site owners did not comply, an ad hoc tribunal could be set up to force a settlement that was reasonable and fair to all sides. Although some hon. Members may feel that that would be too harsh on site owners, I believe that for too long the law has been weighted on the side of the site owner, rather than that of the resident.

If residents put forward reasonable proposals and there is a degree of consensus, I do not see why a site owner should be able to refuse their requests. Well maintained park homes are in everyone’s interests. I appreciate that interventions should take place only when absolutely necessary, but we must not allow site owners carte blanche to do whatever they want. There must be a relationship of trust and co-operation to create sustainable communities. In my constituency, all residents want is a bit of fairness.

More must be done to myth-bust the idea that park home owners should not form residents’ associations. It is important that park home residents have a forum in which to air their grievances and to discuss them with their neighbours. Although the vast majority of site owners are happy for that to occur, some are keen to break up such important associations. It is vital that we give residents proper protection, and through the use of petitions and residents’ associations I believe we can go some way towards doing that.

I have one final point to make before I conclude. Park home site owners have to do more to name and shame owners who are not operating in a fair manner. The British Holiday and Home Parks Association should, where there is evidence, be willing to publish lists of site operators who are not responsible in their dealings with park home residents, and so warn individuals who are considering purchasing park homes. Ultimately, if incidents involving disreputable site owners continue, it will only further damage the sector. It is in everyone’s interest to do what they can.

All hon. Members who have had to deal with constituents’ problems with park homes know how distressing they can be. We have to remember that we are talking about something extremely personal—people’s homes. Our homes are central to our way of life and our quality of life, and people care a great deal about them, as we can see from the 10,000 signatures that were delivered to Downing street. We have to work towards finding more innovative ways to settle the problem for the benefit of park home residents, and to ensure a sustainable future for the park homes sector in general. I look forward to the Minister’s contribution and to seeing how we can move forward accordingly.

15:31

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who has been an indefatigable champion of park home residents for a number of years. I pay tribute also to Members from both sides of the Chamber who have contributed to a very good and powerful debate. They have highlighted some appalling abuses of the situation in which many park home residents currently find themselves.

I do not presume to match the hon. Lady’s expertise on the subject, but I am aware from representations that I have received from park home residents that they feel the current legislation is inadequate. They have told me that it does not go far enough in safeguarding their rights and offers insufficient protection against the small number of unscrupulous site owners who can and do exploit loopholes in the law, as we have heard today.

One of the main complaints of residents is the ballooning pitch fees demanded by site owners, because they say they are powerless to resist unreasonable increases. We have heard from the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and others about distressing examples of such abuse that they have come across in their constituencies. It seems that the standard agreement drawn up by the National Federation of Site Operators, which is now the British Holiday and Home Parks Association, leaves a lot to be desired.

I am aware that about 20 years ago a survey was commissioned for the then Department of the Environment. Residents were asked whether they were consulted by owners on any increase in pitch fees, as they were supposed to be. Only 3% said that they had been. It seems that, 20 years on, there is still a lot to do. I think that there have been some improvements, but the situation has not improved enough.

Mobile home owners have told me that they have sometimes run into problems when they have wanted to sell their homes. Members have referred to those problems during the debate. Site owners often find ways to block sales from going through. Shelter’s mobile homes unit found that some owners served notices to terminate agreements, claiming that the homes involved were

“having a detrimental effect on the amenity of the site.”

The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) referred to that. Although that move is legitimate in some cases, in others it is not. It has been claimed that it is often used to bully park home residents into selling up at knock-down prices, as the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who is no longer in his place, pointed out. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole has described that as a massive scandal, and it is certainly a cause for considerable concern for many people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) pointed out, it is a real problem throughout the length and breadth of the country.

In 2006, the previous Government removed the ability of site owners to attach conditions to their approval of prospective purchasers. Since then, the only factor that they can take into account is the suitability of an incoming resident. However, the Park Home Residents Action Alliance says that site owners can still abuse that test.

There was a proposal to transfer the jurisdiction on appeals and applications from the county courts to the residential property tribunals earlier this year, but Parliament was dissolved for the general election before the necessary approval was given. The Opposition therefore welcome the new Housing and Local Government Minister’s intention to introduce the secondary legislation that will transfer jurisdiction to residential property tribunals and urge him to press ahead as soon as possible.

However, it is clear that despite the improvements introduced by the previous Labour Government, more needs to be done to protect the rights of caravan and park home residents. Let me assure the hon. Members for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—the former is no longer in the Chamber—that there is cross-party support for stronger measures. All official Opposition Members want them, and Opposition Front Benchers are united. We want to work with the Government to ensure that appropriate protection for such vulnerable people is introduced.

Much of the groundwork on identifying what legislative improvements need to be made has already been undertaken. The Department for Communities and Local Government consultation paper, “A new approach for resolving disputes and to proceedings relating to Park Homes under the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (as amended)” was published in May 2008. In May 2009, the previous Government published a further consultation document, “Park Home Site licensing—Improving the Management of Park Home Sites”. A further paper, “Park homes site licensing reform: The way forward and next steps” was published on 30 March this year.

As I pointed out, the Opposition want to work constructively with Ministers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) requested. We want to build on the good foundation that we left to secure a thriving and well-run park homes sector that provides sites where people want to live and, indeed, invest. We believe that a licensing system that raises and maintains standards on sites, and one that ensures that sites are safe, well planned and well managed, with appropriate facilities and services, will help to achieve those objectives.

Such a scheme must operate fairly, and it must be proportionate, cost effective and enforceable. An effective scheme must deliver improvements in the management of park home sites where improvements are necessary while continuing to secure a vibrant and healthy sector.

15:37

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

It is a pleasure to respond to this Back-Bench debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke)—I always have to get my norths, souths, easts and wests carefully organised when I refer to her constituency. The debate, which featured 14 contributions from Back Benchers, has been well informed, wide ranging and sometimes passionate—hon. Members have given a real sense of the injustice that some park home residents are forced to suffer—and it has come at a good moment, because as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government already told the House, he will make a statement on this matter in the new year. I will ensure that all the contributions and the many and varied suggestions and ideas come to his attention as he works on that.

Rightly, many Members acknowledged the broader context. The sector provides homes for 85,000 families and perhaps as many as 150,000 residents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) said. The very large majority of those residents enjoy peace and quiet, and are happy and satisfied where they are. Many sites are properly managed and maintained by decent, honest and professional site owners who have regard to the welfare and rights of the communities in their parks. It is a pity that their good work is often overshadowed by the unacceptable conduct of a minority, about whom we have heard some telling stories this afternoon. That minority can cause misery to a community in many ways; for example, by not maintaining sites properly, by bullying residents and by interfering unreasonably, or even unlawfully, when residents try to exercise their lawful rights. The House has also heard significant allegations of criminal behaviour and even blackmail. However, I do not want to dwell on the specific allegations, except to say in plain terms that the Government believe that the park homes sector should have no place for these people. I want good site owners to thrive and bad site owners to be taken out of the sector.

It is important to note some of the themes that have come out of today’s debate. We have heard the stories and anecdotes, which I do not dismiss, but Members on both sides of the House have also recognised that there has to be a balance between the powers and responsibilities of site owners on one hand, and of home owners on the other. We need to reflect on the fact that every home owner, in becoming a home owner, will have had the opportunity to look at the terms and conditions of the sale and purchase. I hope that we might also reflect on how we can make those terms and conditions more transparent to prospective purchasers, and ensure that once signed they are adhered to by both sides.

We have heard contributions about the degree to which regulation should be light or tough. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), who declared himself to be a deregulatory Liberal, has come to the conclusion that we need to toughen up regulation, and that was the message, I think, from hon. Members throughout the House. I will ensure, therefore, that that view is conveyed clearly to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government.

The Government are committed to targeted reform that does not place unnecessary burdens on site owners, who ought to be allowed to thrive. We will not solve the problem if we drive well-run sites out of business because of an overburden of regulation or control. Our first priority, therefore, is to make it quicker and easier for residents to challenge unreasonable behaviour by site owners who disregard residents’ rights. My right hon. Friend announced in July that, under the Mobile Homes Act 1983, jurisdiction in the settlement of most disputes will be transferred to the Residential Property Tribunal Service.

I can assure the House that subject to parliamentary approval we intend those tribunals to become operational from next spring. That has been a priority for park home residents for many years, and I am committed to implementing it as quickly as possible. It will enable residents to resolve disputes much more quickly and easily, and act as a deterrent to unreasonable behaviour. I can also assure hon. Friends that access to the tribunal is normally free, although in some cases there may be a fee of £150. However, legal representation is not necessary, so the cost is much less than for court proceedings. That is a major step forward. It will give residents quicker and easier access to justice, provide an opportunity for rapidly resolving disputes and deter unreasonable behaviour.

[Andrew Miller]

That is a sensible proposition, but I ask the Minister to reflect on the history of other tribunals that started in a well-meaning way but gradually became more and more bureaucratic and legalistic. As time passes, there will be the risk—starting perhaps with the site owners—that more lawyers will enter the process, so we will need to reconsider the situation after a year or so of running the tribunals to ensure that we have got the balance right.

[Andrew Stunell]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important and interesting point, but if I may say so, perhaps we should focus on introducing tribunals before we start to evaluate them.

The aim is to improve site management and deter bad practices. That will benefit not only residents, but the industry as a whole. It does the sector no good at all to develop a reputation for bad behaviour. As they pursue their work, the tribunals will provide evidence in an open and transparent way—through a body of cases, involving case law and decision making—which will benchmark good behaviour and identify unacceptable behaviour, thereby playing a standard-setting role.

The motion calls on the Government to review the case for establishing a “fit and proper” licensing system. There is certainly no role in the sector for unscrupulous and criminal operators, but they are a minority. That brings us back to the balance between regulation and the burden of implementation. The Government’s general approach is to reduce top-down regulation and minimise the involvement of central Government in local decision making. However, we are committed to protecting the most vulnerable, and I know that some park home residents are among the most vulnerable members of society, as has been well pointed out in this debate. We are not convinced that the protection of park home residents from the minority of unscrupulous site owners requires a complex and costly national licensing system, which would apply across the sector and place burdens on all site owners, good and bad, with that cost ultimately being passed on to residents too. We have to strike a careful balance—one that protects the vulnerable, targets the worst and minimises the regulatory burdens on the law-abiding majority.

On the blocking of sales, I have every sympathy with residents who are unreasonably thwarted when trying to exercise their lawful right to sell their homes. I know that those concerns are shared by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. The park home justice campaign is to be commended for bringing this important matter to the forefront. Ministers are now well alert—if we were not before—to what the issues are. However, we need to look at what the remedy is. The premise is that unscrupulous site owners might be less likely to make false representations or deter potential buyers if an interview with a prospective purchaser took place in front of a solicitor. However, it is a little hard to see exactly how that would work or who would appoint the solicitor, let alone who would pay for him or her. There is no reason to believe that an unscrupulous owner is likely to be any less dishonest because there is a witness present.

There is also a wider question about whether interviews are required at all, because there is certainly no statutory or legislative reason for them. The Mobile Homes Act 1983 permits the site owner to approve the purchaser, but that could be done in a number of ways, not necessarily through an interview process; for example, by providing relevant documents. If there is no legal requirement for an interview, it would be burdensome to introduce a formal regulatory process for conducting one. However, that is not to say that we believe it acceptable simply to let unreasonable behaviour be tolerated. We see improving access to justice through the residential property tribunal as the first step towards ending abuses in such cases. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State is only too aware of the problems, and he intends to announce in the new year a package of measures that will curb the excesses of the minority of unscrupulous owners, while not placing undue burdens on the majority who manage their sites effectively and in the best interests of the community.

[Martin Horwood]

In my remarks I talked not only about sites for permanent homes, but about holiday sites, where often there is also a lot of evidence of abuse. Will my hon. Friend’s measures and his right hon. Friend’s considerations include those sites as well?

[Andrew Stunell]

I will certainly take that request away, and we will certainly consider it. It is worth reminding the House that where mobile homes are used for full-time residential purposes, they have a number of tax and regulatory advantages, as compared with what we might call “normal” homes. That is because of their status as residential homes of a particular type. Holiday homes are in a different category, and have all sorts of other regulatory frameworks relating to them. However, I will ensure that that point is taken into consideration.

This has been an important and timely debate. It has certainly highlighted important areas of concern to Members, and it is a tribute to the new Back-Bench debating system that it has come before the House today. It has been helpful to me and my ministerial colleagues and I hope that, when the announcement is made in the spring, hon. Members will feel that their contribution to the debate today has had an influence on the way in which the Government are approaching the problem.

15:50

[Annette Brooke]

I shall make a brief concluding statement. I should like to thank all the Members who helped to secure the debate, because we had to convince people that we would have enough speakers today. I have been having sleepless nights about it, and I thank everyone for turning up today, especially at this time on this Thursday afternoon. I welcome the cross-party support for the motion; it is absolutely vital and it makes me feel positive that we can move forward. I hope that it will also make the campaigners feel positive. We have talked about our proud and dignified home owners, and about the fact that park homes are homes, not just chattels. That is incredibly important. Those people deserve better; the words “the forgotten lost” summed up what we have been debating this afternoon.

I am all too aware that we need a sustainable, flourishing industry, but it cannot flourish or achieve its full potential for providing this much-needed housing unless we have a way of addressing the many issues that we have been talking about today. Speed and transparency have been referred to, and they are both important, because time is running out. I welcome the first step of establishing the residential property tribunals, but I want to see concurrent planning for the next stage, because it is clear that we need more.

I wavered as I listened to the Minister’s response. First, I thought, “Oh, that’s good”, then I thought, “Oh, that’s not so good.” It is a pity that we could not have delivered a Christmas present to our park home campaigners today, and that they will have to wait until the new year for the Minister’s statement. I trust that they will not have to wait until the spring, and that the statement will be made early in the new year, because we need a response to these long-term problems that have now been raised so many times in the House. I accept that we need to strike the right balance, but that is no excuse for doing nothing. We must have action!

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that there are approximately 1,800 park home sites in England and Wales; further notes that current legislation permits a minority of park home site owners to cause great distress, damage to property and danger to health of park home residents; welcomes the Government’s intention to lay before the House secondary legislation to transfer jurisdiction for park homes to the Residential Property Tribunal Service; but calls on the Government to review the case for establishing a fit and proper person criterion for park home site owners and to bring forward relevant legislation at the earliest opportunity to prevent in particular park home site owners interfering with the sale of a park home without good reason.

Public Accounts Committee

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: The 40th, 44th, 46th, 49th and 51st to 53rd Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts, Session 2008-09, the 1st to 33rd Reports from the Committee, Session 2009-10, and the 1st to 10th Reports from the Committee, Session 2010-11. ]

15:53

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to ensure that all recommendations contained in Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts and accepted by Government Departments are implemented and that the relevant Minister makes a statement to the House on any recommendations accepted but not implemented within a year of their acceptance.

Over the past nine years, this debate has been ably led by my predecessor, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), to whom I would like to pay tribute. His tireless contribution to improving public services and delivering value for money has been acknowledged and recognised by hon. Members across the House.

The very first Public Accounts Committee debate was held on 19 December 1960. The then Chair, one Harold Wilson, began his speech by saying

“in my view, the confrontation in this debate is not between Government and Opposition but between the House of Commons, with its traditional responsibility for controlling the public purse on the one hand and the Government on the other.”—[Official Report, 19 December 1960; Vol. 632, c. 894.]

Those are words that should continue to guide us today. The PAC has never been, and should never be, a creature of either the Government or the Opposition Front Bench. We are a creature of Parliament, working together for the benefit of the citizen, holding the Executive to account and constantly seeking improvements in the value that the Executive give for the money that they spend.

As well as reflecting that long and proud tradition, today’s debate reflects important changes that we have collectively made to strengthen the role of Parliament. For one thing, I am the first Committee Chair to be elected to the post, as well as being the first woman in the job. It is also the first time that my fellow Committee members have been elected to their positions. I think we would all agree that that additional democratic legitimacy increases both the responsibility and the authority with which we carry out our duties.

The PAC has made changes to our standing orders. As well as allowing us to meet even when the House is not sitting—on Christmas day if need be, as we are often reminded by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon)—it will make it easier for us to gain access to specialist advice from sources other than the National Audit Office should we need to do so. Furthermore, this is the first occasion on which we have had to bid for our slot from the Backbench Business Committee. That, too, strengthens our accountability to our colleagues.

The motion before us today is different from those of the last 50 years. Rather than simply calling on the House to note our reports, it specifies the changes that we want to see in the way in which the Government respond to our recommendations. That is definitely progress.

The final reason why today’s debate is particularly important is the context in which it is taking place. The new Government, for good or ill, have embarked on major changes. The spending review marks the first wholesale fiscal retrenchment for 20 years, and by some measures the greatest such retrenchment for several generations. Other reforms, in the national health service and the benefits system, are similarly ambitious. The Government want to achieve more for less. They want to achieve value for money, and the people of the country want the same. They want real value for money, real efficiency and real cost-effectiveness, so that the financial cuts have as little detrimental effect as possible on front-line services.

We are still in the very early stages of implementation of the spending review, and the question of whether or not the changes will prove to be value for money is still up for grabs, but there is no doubt that the work of the PAC is hugely important at this time. I firmly believe that if our recommendations are heeded, value for money will improve and the delivery of services will get better. Therefore, I strongly urge the Treasury to give diligent consideration to our reports, and then, after not too much consideration, to ensure that concrete action is taken. I can assure the Treasury that we will monitor implementation much more closely than may have been the case in the past.

I thank all those who help to make the work of our Committee effective. It is no mean feat to question senior civil servants from two different Departments every week—three this week—especially given that our hearings range over every conceivable aspect of public service. As might be expected, that does not happen by itself. I pay tribute to all my hard-working fellow Committee members, who turn up to hearing after hearing impeccably well informed and full of incisive questions. I thank the people who ensure that each hearing runs smoothly: the Clerk and his team of hard-working assistants, and the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff at the National Audit Office. We are able to perform our role only because of the high quality of work carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff.

I want to make three observations about the motion. First, Departments have achieved some notable successes, which we applaud. However—this is my second point—value for money is still too patchy. The same issues arise time and time again. Thirdly, in the past, Governments have too often been too slow to act on some of our recommendations. We will be much less tolerant of that inaction in the future.

The PAC has a reputation for tearing senior civil servants to shreds. Its members have been seen as “glass half empty” rather than “glass half full” people. We have been depicted as the hunters, and the poor accounting officers as beleaguered victims. Actually, the Committee has always tried to give credit where it is due, but the fact is that the amount of waste and poor value for money that it must consider has often been overwhelming. We are redoubling our efforts in this regard, however. It is important that success is celebrated, not just because that is fair, but because it is rare that success in one Department does not produce lessons from which the rest of Government can learn.

Two reports that we have considered in the last six months stand out, both from the Department for Education, which is therefore accorded star pupil status, at least on a provisional basis. The first was the welcome success in raising standards in the academy schools programme launched by the previous Government for struggling schools working in challenging circumstances in deprived areas. The second was the success of the programme to increase the take-up of science subjects right the way through the education and training systems.

Regrettably however, more often than not we have to consider failures rather than successes. Despite all the years of recommendations from us, the National Audit Office and others, and despite much good will and many good intentions on the part of Ministers and civil servants, we still find lots to concern us. Everyone pays lip service to the need for value for money, but genuine and detailed consideration of value for money across Government is still far too patchy.

One of the first evidence sessions we held was on the last Government’s attempts to realise value-for-money savings targets set as part of the last spending review in 2007. I was a member of that Government, and let me say that I believe those attempts were serious and sincere. Nevertheless, I must admit that I was shocked by the results. Halfway through the programme, Departments had reported only just over a third—30%—of the savings required, and only a third of them were genuine, sustainable savings.

Faced with the much more challenging task set by this spending review, what needs to change? I want to highlight two issues. First is the Government’s inability to deliver projects to time and within budget. For example, let us consider two of the hearings we have had this week. The Ministry of Defence is renowned for always delivering late and invariably overspending, but yesterday’s session, with the evidence we had before us, was truly shocking. Committing to the aircraft carrier project only to delay it eight months later at an extra cost to the taxpayer of at least £1.56 billion is truly shocking. While that did happen on Labour’s watch, I am strongly of the view that the permanent secretary at the time should not have allowed the signing of the contract, which so quickly led to such a terrible waste of money. On the Typhoons, taking £1 billion out of the budget when the MOD knew we had a contractual commitment to a third phase of the contract, leading to us having to put in £2.7 billion now to pay for a further 16 aircraft that we do not need, is completely scandalous.

Today’s evidence session on the project to widen the M25 left us all flabbergasted. Never mind the nine years it took from concept to contract or the £650 million extra because the contract was signed during the credit crunch, and never mind the £80 million spent on consultants, one of whom went on to employ the senior responsible official; the real point is that we probably should never have undertaken to widen the road in the first place. We should instead have used the hard shoulder, which would have been cheaper and almost as effective.

The second issue I want to highlight is that, time and again, we identified the lack of good and appropriate data, which leads to poor value-for-money decisions and bad choices. Whether through the evaluation of the pathways to work scheme, which measured effectiveness by including all those who asked to go on to incapacity benefit rather than those who were eligible for it, or through the failure of the Department of Health to give primary care trusts the data telling them what works in helping people to stop smoking so that they stopped wasting money on ineffective programmes, the lack of appropriate data too often results in money being wasted.

I cannot leave this subject without mentioning the Government’s recent publication of large amounts of new data on public spending. It is inconceivable that somebody in my position would do anything other than welcome this move towards greater transparency, but I must also sound a word of caution. I must be frank and say that it seems that the problem has never been the amount of data, because an almost infinite amount has always been available; the problem has been how useful the data are, where the gaps are and how well the data have been analysed. To be useful to decision makers in government, as well as to parliamentarians, the National Audit Office and the ordinary citizen, the data must be presented in a way that allows them to be understood and used. I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort that the publication of hundreds of thousands of receipts through the Combined Online Information System—COINS—database is not being done at the expense of the analytical capabilities of Departments.

To date, the Committee has focused on the actions of the previous Administration, which is entirely to be expected because the nature of audit and accountability is to be backward-facing. In time, we will consider the actions of the coalition Government and, as a cross-party Committee that jealously guards its reputation for objectivity, we shall do so impartially. I say clearly to the House that the problems we have identified will not go away simply because of a change of Administration. On the contrary, dealing with them will require concerted action, a willingness to confront age-old ways of doing things and a commitment to improve the skills of civil servants and to get better evidence with which to take decisions.

There seems to be an inbuilt resistance to change in the huge tanker that constitutes the Government machine. Why are projects so often late? Why are we invariably looking at cost overruns, rather than savings? Why can the civil service not build in-house capability to provide effective management and delivery, as well as sound advice? Why is there no culture of proper personal accountability in government at senior levels? Why can Departments not co-operate better and compete less? Why can government not learn from its mistakes?

This is not about political will; it is about institutional inertia and institutional resistance to change. All politicians want better value, enhanced efficiency and improved effectiveness. All politicians, of all allegiances, get blamed when they fail in that regard, yet the ability to succeed in securing those things seems all too often to elude us. That is partly because of the conservative aversion to risk among public sector workers and partly because nobody stays in their job long enough to see things through and be truly accountable. It is also partly because we do not recruit the right people with the right skills and partly because political expediency too often overrides economic efficiency—that is true of all parties.

That brings me to my final observation, which is the one that forms the backbone of today’s motion: the degree to which the Government act on the Committee’s recommendations. It is inevitable I would say this, but it is my sincere belief that the process of improving value for money in the public sector would be made easier if the Government made more effort to implement our recommendations. All too often, too little effort has been made. Indeed, all too often our recommendations have just been quietly ignored.

Let us consider the example of the Government use of consultants. The PAC examined that issue in 2002 and 2006, recommending on both occasions that the then Government do more to grow the skills that they need within the civil service, rather than paying out money to costly consultants. What did we find when we looked at the issue again just a few weeks ago? We found that the proportion of spend on IT and project management grew from 50 to 60% between 2006 and 2010. One of the most staggering revelations was that the Department for Transport’s spend on consultants came to the equivalent of 70% of its expenditure on in-house staff.

There are plenty of other such examples, which is why we are going to get tougher on following up recommendations. When they are not accepted by Departments, we will want to know why. When they are accepted, we will expect them to be implemented. Hence our call that the Minister responsible should make a statement to the House about any recommendation he or she has accepted but failed to implement within a year.

Today marks the publication of the first two Treasury minutes on hearings that we have had in this Session, another reason why the timing of the debate is so good. We obviously need time to study the detailed content of the documents, but they represent a relatively good start. In the response to our report on the future strategic tanker aircraft, I particularly welcome the commitment to fit these planes with a defensive aid package so that at least they can deliver troops to the war zones, as was originally intended. I also welcome the wider commitment from the MOD to work with the Treasury on renewing its guidance about where and when to use the private finance initiative. I must say, however, that is it dismaying to see how the Department is still determined to justify the decision to use PFI on that project. In my view, that is nothing less than an attempt to defend the indefensible.

On pathways to work, the response we have seen is similarly mixed. It is good to see that the Department is seeking to put proper incentives into the new Work programme so that contractors will not get paid unless they deliver. I welcome the commitment to allocate cases to private companies on a random basis in the future so that they cannot cherry-pick the easiest ones. Moreover, the results of Professor Harrington’s review of the new work capability assessment shows that it is more than just our Committee that has concerns about it, and I look forward to the Department’s response. I dislike the assumption that outsourcing these duties to the private sector is definitely the value-for-money thing to do. After all, our report found that Jobcentre Plus, almost without exception, did better than private contractors, even though they were given a smaller caseload in easier parts of the country.

I want to draw the House’s attention to one important aspect of our work over the coming months. Our work will be dominated by the implementation of the spending review. We have already held sessions with experts outside Government, and we have taken evidence from senior civil servants to understand the new framework of accountability and the role and purpose of the business plans and we will develop our own framework for ensuring proper value for money in the cuts and changes Departments make. We will rigorously hold the Government to account, but in doing so we want to assure the House that our purpose is one we share across the Benches. We want to help eke out best value for every penny spent on behalf of the citizens of the country and we want to contribute to the improvement of public services in coming years. All we ask is for serious engagement from Ministers, accounting officers and their staff across government and for the Treasury’s assistance in making that happen.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Eight people are trying to catch my eye and I shall be calling the Front-Bench speakers at about half-past 5, if people can bear that in mind.

16:12

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the new elected Chair of our Committee. I congratulate her on the way in which she has fulfilled and is fulfilling her office. It is a great pleasure to serve under her leadership. Her predecessor was something of a stern headmaster, and although her style is slightly less stentorian—I looked up Stentor, and he was a Greek herald with a booming voice and it is hard to think of anyone in this House with a more booming voice than my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)—she has already shown that she is no soft touch. She has shown her teeth on a number of occasions and she chairs the Committee with great aplomb. You might expect me to say that, Mr Deputy Speaker, but ask yourself which Conservative is likely to be able to resist serving under a strong woman whose first name is Margaret.

I want to say how much of a pleasure it is to have so much new blood on the Committee. It was a bit of a shock for me and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) to realise that we were the only members of the Committee who had served in the last Parliament and there is a great cast of new active keen members who are working very hard and contributing their new and varied experience.

Let me start by endorsing something that the Chair of the Committee just said. The problems will not go away because there has been a change in Administration. I have been looking at the problems that Government face through the lens of the Public Accounts Committee for the past nine years—I have been wrestling with these problems— and it staggers me that the problems are so generic and are repeated so much. In my relatively brief speech, I want to focus on a number of different reports and then on one issue in detail.

I shall look first at some reports that show structural improvements in the way that we are working with the National Audit Office and secondly at some that show welcome improvement in a particular area—financial management. I shall look thirdly at some reports that show the areas where there are still serious issues, one of which would be almost hilariously bad if it were not so serious because it involves public money, and fourthly at a couple of reports that are particularly important to how we might work in future. Finally, I shall look at one report in detail.

The first three reports I want to discuss signal something quite important. They are the 52nd report of 2008-09 on reducing health care associated infection and the 26th and 19th reports of 2009-10 on improving stroke care and improving dementia services respectively. The 52nd report was the third time since 2000 that the Committee looked at hospital-acquired infections and there has clearly been significant change in that time. The Committee considered it first in 2000 and again in 2004, when there had quite shockingly been a dramatic decline. The NAO published its report in 2004 and we took evidence on it later, and that catapulted hospital-acquired infection up the agenda. Everyone will remember what a strong issue it became during the 2005 general election and it has been an important one ever since. It continues to be important for hospitals, but it will remain so only if they know that they are under scrutiny. That is why I was so pleased that we took evidence on it again in 2009. The report shows that there has been significant progress, particularly regarding the two infections that are the subject of national targets—MRSA and clostridium difficile—but that there have not been those measurable reductions in other avoidable infections that were not targeted. Clearly, progress is made in areas we scrutinise, but more needs to be done.

By returning briefly to an issue, as we did in our 26th report on stroke, we were able to demonstrate that there had been considerable improvement. Our report stated:

“We welcome the demonstrable improvements in stroke care which the Department of Health…has achieved since our first report”,

but noted that there are still further steps to take. I firmly believe that the Committee should, as a matter of routine, return to issues much more regularly. We also did that with our interim report on dementia, which showed that although the then Government said that dementia would be a national priority, they did not walk their talk in the way that they did with cancer and coronary heart disease.

The financial management reports that caught my eye are the 46th report of 2008-09 on financial management in the Home Office and the third report of 2009-10 on financial management in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Let us remember that almost the first act of Sir David Normington on becoming the permanent secretary at the Home Office a few years ago was to sign an unaudited and unauditable set of accounts merely so that they could be presented to Parliament. As we said at the time, that was a very unenviable position to be in and it certainly was not his fault. Our report shows that there has been considerable improvement in financial management at the Home Office and that it needs to sustain that momentum by incorporating strong financial management as standard across its business. We have identified areas in which further progress is needed, but we should stop to note the considerable improvement since the chaos of a few years ago.

Similarly, with the FCO, it was a delight to see the permanent secretary turn up with two chartered accountants and to be able to say in our report:

“The Committee is pleased to note that the Department has acted upon previous recommendations”.

That is relevant to what the Chair of the Committee said a moment ago, and I wish that more Departments would do the same. In contrast, however, our 25th report of 2009-10 on the FCO’s estate management showed that it has a lot further to go in that area. We commented that its

“new Estates Director currently does not have the information he needs to do his job.”

The lack of correct information in Government Departments is a theme that we constantly come across and the NAO has rightly focused a suite of its work specifically on estate management because the Government are such a big property owner. There is still a great deal more to do in that area to improve the quality of management within Government. It is not common to find qualified chartered surveyors and qualified chartered quantity surveyors in charge of a Department’s estates in the way that we would expect, and are now getting, with financial managers in relation to financial management in Departments. That is something that the Government should focus on.

I turn to less successful areas, notably the private finance initiative project to deliver the multi-role tanker—the future strategic tanker aircraft—which should never have been set up in that form. Paragraph 1 of our report states:

“The use of PFI to deliver a vital military capability like FSTA was inappropriate.”

It is rather depressing that after years of identifying projects where the use of PFI was inappropriate, and saying that certain types of project should never be subject to PFI—for example, the Libra project to supply computer systems for magistrates courts—it is still being used in situations in which it is wholly unsuitable. I was looking at the questions put by our Edinburgh colleague, the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire). At question 187, she asked the permanent secretary whether, notwithstanding the pressure he was under, there was any justification for the fact that when the Ministry of Defence

“went into a project, that they did not know what it looked like, would sound like, would turn out like, had no indication of the costs of the subcontractors.”

The permanent secretary replied:

“I am certainly not arguing in favour of the approach that was taken…All I am trying to do is to offer a little bit of mitigation for that failure by reference to the operating conditions at the time.”

I think what Sir Bill probably meant by

“operating conditions at the time”

was the previous Prime Minister, who when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we would do it under PFI, or it would not happen. We need to be slightly more honest with ourselves about what is and is not appropriate, and to have more open debate about it. The project was scandalously managed and cost much more than it should. It has taken much longer than it should, and it was inappropriate in the first place.

The Chair referred to the aircraft carrier project, which is similar. We looked at that only this week with the new permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, as we did at the beginning of the year in our 2009 major projects report. What staggers me is that only seven months after signing the contract, the MOD took a decision that would increase the costs, not because of project management failure or management ineptitude—it was purely a decision to delay. Decisions were taken that increased the cost by £908 million—or so they thought when we reported on the matter in our 23rd report, in the 2009-10 Session, HC 338. It turns out that the figure was not £908 million; it was £650 million more than that. It was £1.5 billion extra, on top of the original cost, purely because of the decision to delay. I agree completely with our Chair. The permanent secretary at the time should have said, “Affordability is such an important component that if you want me to do it, you should require me to do it by issuing a direction.” I am sorry that was not done.

Our report on the National Offender Management Service highlighted a significant issue relating to the management of the civil service and the way that civil servants are placed on projects. Our recommendation 5 notes that

“the Senior Responsible Owner did not have the right experience for the role.”

Who put that person in that job, when she did not have the right project management experience? If we set people up to fail, we cannot be surprised if that is exactly what happens.

I should like to refer to several other reports, but I shall concentrate on the report on the Rural Payments Agency, which illustrates some deep issues in the relationship between Ministers and civil servants that are as important for the future as they were in the past. I shall remind the House of the facts in the RPA debacle. It involved the single payment system. Various methods were available, but the Government chose to implement the most complicated system on offer with the shortest available timetable. That process was certain to increase both the total number of claimants and the total land area claimed, while the agency had not properly completed the essential digital mapping exercise—refusing to recognise that it was flawed—and was using a computer system that had not been fully tested, and which was anyway not up to the job. It used an approach that split the work into separate tasks performed in different parts of the country, which made it impossible to track the progress of individual claims. It cancelled the parts of the system that would have provided management with information about what was going on and scrapped the contingency plan that would have at least enabled the agency to make part-payments. Furthermore, the RPA sacked its most experienced staff and replaced them with unskilled temporary agency workers who were required to work unsocial hours on the minimum wage. One is tempted to ask, what could possibly have gone wrong? But the fact is that, as we all know, it did go wrong.

To say that the single payment scheme was convoluted was an understatement. Indeed, Dr James Jones of the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester told our sister Committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:

“This has been highly confusing conceptually even at the highest levels of those responsible for creating the scheme rules at EU, Member State and regional level: most of the difficulties experienced in implementing the Single Payment Scheme stem back to internal contradictions that arise because

(a) entitlement is based on past occupation of specific parcels of agricultural land but is then not linked to that land;

(b) payment is related to occupation of ‘agricultural land’ but does not require agricultural production; and

(c) most of the cross-compliance and other conditions relate to production but the Single Payment was not a production-based subsidy.”

And that was just for starters. One still had to decide which of the three possible years one would start the scheme in, whether to incorporate funding for the dairy sector into the scheme, and the crucial question of the method that would be used to calculate payments. That offered possibilities of quite byzantine complexity.

The main choice was whether to use as a reference point the payments that individual farmers had received in the past under the old common agricultural policy schemes—known as the historic approach—or whether to average out all payments among farmers in a state or region, which was known as the flat-rate approach. Member states could also apply a mixed model under which they were allowed to apply different calculations in different parts of their territory. It was this that enabled the Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to use a different system from that used in England.

But there was a further twist within the mixed model. Even within one region of its territory, such as England, a member state could calculate single payments using a part-historic and part-flat rate approach. Under such a “hybrid” system, payments would be calculated partially by taking the available money within a region and splitting it among farmers on the basis of a flat-rate entitlement, and partially by taking account of the old subsidy that a farmer had received historically under the common agricultural policy schemes.

That was not all. Member states could choose a hybrid scheme and leave it at that, which was known as a static hybrid, but if they wished, member states could choose a hybrid scheme and then vary it as time went on, so that over the years the proportion based on the historic subsidy payment declined and the proportion based on the flat rate increased. This was known as a dynamic hybrid.

The permanent secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Dame Helen Ghosh, made it very clear that this was not the Schleswig-Holstein question. Members may recall that that was the question of which Lord Palmerston, a former Prime Minister, said that there were only three people who ever understood it: one of them died, one of them went mad and one of them forgot what the question was. But it was undoubtedly byzantine in its complexity. It prompts the question, what did DEFRA and the Rural Payments Agency actually think about all this? Well, funnily enough, it was very clear what they thought about it.

According to evidence from George Dunn, the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association, which he gave to the EFRA Committee, Bill Duncan, who was head of the central scheme management unit at the Rural Payments Agency, said that if the RPA were to choose something other than a simple historic or a simple regional average system it would be a “nightmare” to administer. That is what the senior Rural Payments Agency official thought. David Hunter, who was the director of European Union and international policy in DEFRA, said it would be “madness.” That is what the senior DEFRA official thought.

Yet Dame Helen Ghosh, the permanent secretary of DEFRA, giving evidence to our Committee, in answer to a question from David Curry, then a Member of the House and a member of the PAC, and of course a former Agriculture Minister, told our Committee:

“Ministers were being told it was possible when it was not in fact possible.”

The full quote is as follows, and I think it is quite illuminating:

“The capacity of the organisation to advise ministers—and I think we put them right—and indeed the connection between the policy and operations in the Department”—

I think she actually meant the lack of a proper connection between the policy and the operations—

“meant that ministers were being told it was possible when it was not in fact possible.”

The quote continues:

“The point I am making is that had ministers at the time been told it was effectively impossible—and I think it is very difficult to discuss counter-factuals—they may have made a different decision, had they known the difficulty”.

In other words, the senior official in the RPA with specific responsibility for the management of the scheme, Bill Duncan, thought the route that they were choosing would be a “nightmare” to administer; the senior DEFRA official with direct management responsibility for the oversight of the scheme, David Hunter, thought the route that they were choosing would be madness; but Ministers were being told that it was quite deliverable. As Dame Helen said,

“ministers were being told that it was possible when it was not in fact possible.”

Why? It is the job of the neutral civil service to ensure that Ministers are in full possession of all relevant facts before making a decision, so we could blame the civil service for that debacle.

On the other hand, and in actuality, the Minister at the time was absolutely determined to go down a dynamic hybrid route come what may, so we could blame the Minister, and perhaps we should. The Minister should have been told, however, “It cannot be done.” He should also have been told, “If you want me to do this, Minister, you are going to have to issue a direction to me to do it, because it cannot be done in a way that is economic, effective and efficient.” Why did they do it? In the end, they did it because Ministers told them to, and they were not prepared to stand up to Ministers in the interest of taxpayers, as they should have.

What is the lesson? It is quite rightly true that civil servants respond to what they believe to be a Minister’s priorities, but it is also essential for Ministers to be aware of the consequences of their decisions, and for civil servants to stand up to them and to make sure that they are aware of those consequences. I should like to think that the best civil servants do that, but I fear that it does not happen now as much as it did a generation ago. I am not making a party political point, however, because that was a criticism in the 1980s under the Thatcher Governments and subsequently; it has been a criticism of the previous Administration; and, for all I know, it will become a criticism of the current Administration. It is absolutely essential, however, for Ministers and their advisers to understand the consequences of what they do and the impact of those decisions on large-scale—often world-scale—organisations.

The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), in evidence to the Public Administration Committee, made the point very clearly, stating that

“there has to be an understanding on the part of the politician about the impact of political decisions on the ability to manage organisations. I am critical of a failing of some of the leaders of this Government and previous governments who have believed that essentially political decisions could be taken without a proper appraisal of the impact on the running of a department.”

16:32

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I, too, pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). She is the first woman—indeed, the first elected—Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and that is a unique combination. She is also one of the bravest politicians in the House, and anybody who has seen the magnificent election battle that she undertook in her constituency against the British National party may well understand why permanent secretaries might be worried about appearing before her at the Committee.

It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), but he needs to remind me to give him a lecture on Scottish geography. He always tells me that he knows a bit about Scotland, but I must tell him that, although Edinburgh and Stirling have castles, Stirling has by far the best, and it, as opposed to Edinburgh, has me as its MP. I forgive him, however, because I admire the skill and tenacity that he brings to the Committee, and he is a role model for us all.

I am not a new Member, but as someone who has been here since 1957—[Interruption.] It sometimes feels like that. As someone who has been here since 1997, I am asked by some colleagues, “Why do you want to go on to the PAC?” The Committee has an image deficit, and, although in various analyses of our work we are called the “queen of Committees”, we are still a bit of a mystery to the majority of our colleagues. Indeed, today’s attendance shows that we will remain a mystery for another few months at least.

On the PAC, one walks in the footsteps of history. I learned more about William Ewart Gladstone in my first few weeks on the Committee than I ever did taking an honours degree in history at Glasgow university, and all sorts of historical anecdotes add to, if not the glamour, then the attraction of being a member. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking mentioned Harold Wilson. One of the anecdotes that delights me most was the fact that, when he was shadow Chancellor, he decided that he also wanted to be Chair—he would have been a Chairman in those days, of course—of the Public Accounts Committee. In some ways, that was breaking new ground. Such a decision tuned in with Harold Wilson’s desire to consolidate his portfolio, so that he could ensure he was in control of all the strategic decisions that had to be made within the Labour party at that time. Ben Pimlott, his biographer, states that such a decision also had a practical benefit because, at a time when accommodation at the Palace of Westminster was not available for senior Opposition Front Benchers, the PAC Chairman was provided with his own room—a citadel of great importance in Westminster’s psychological battleground. My right hon. Friend has maintained the image of that citadel in the Upper Committee corridor.

Of course, the Committee does not consider the formulation or the merits of policy; it focuses very much on value-for-money criteria that are based on economy, efficiency and effectiveness, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk mentioned. Those are the three by-words that should determine how we judge the reports that come before us. In many respects, such an approach is almost counter-intuitive for politicians because we spend most of our time discussing and developing policy. However, as at least one previous Labour Prime Minister has commented, it is no use throwing money at something unless it guarantees the delivery of the objectives. I fully understood that cry of frustration in relation to one report we considered in the Committee. I shall come on to that in a moment.

We have gelled reasonably well as a Committee. There is a mixture of people who have longevity in the House, people who have longevity in membership of the Committee and people who have more recently joined this place. We bring to the Committee a range of external work experience, which allows us to question things in a way rooted in some sort of credibility in managing finances. As a Committee, we have a breadth of experience that allows us to challenge even the most eloquent of the accounting officers who appear before us. Although the subject is sometimes considered to be rather dry, we have developed a passion for our discussions with witnesses. Certainly, anyone present at our sittings this week would have noted that both energy and passion are in abundance in Room 15—anyone who follows our deliberations will have that confirmed.

In my brief contribution, I want to highlight three things that I have drawn from my short experience as a Committee member. The first relates to the lessons that we can learn from discussions on the reports and the Committee’s conclusions. Some of these issues have been the subject of previous debates—indeed, I think the hon. Member for South Norfolk has probably raised them—but they do need repeating. There is still a concern, which I hope is shared by most of my colleagues on the Committee, that the recruitment and training of civil servants has not kept pace with some of the issues, particularly that of financial responsibility. There has been an increase in training and personal development, which is welcome, but it astonished me to find out that, for example, it was only a couple of years ago when a financially qualified senior civil servant was recruited by the Ministry of Defence.

Sir Gus O’Donnell stated at a recent hearing that the British civil service has always prided itself on recruiting,

“the brightest and the best”

and on making people skilled generalists. I am not suggesting in any way that we stop recruiting those exceptionally bright people, but we also need to recognise that, in delivering projects efficiently, effectively and economically, they need to be managed properly. Will the Minister address that issue in his comments at the end of the debate and tell us what Departments are doing to enhance the training opportunities for those who undertake project management? It is not fair to the taxpayer or, indeed, to the individual civil servant for us to assume that people can manage complex and expensive projects without having the appropriate skills from the very day on which they assume responsibility for that work. With complex financial projects, learning on the job is simply not good enough.

Another point that has emerged from our discussions is how lessons are disseminated—or not, whichever is the case—across Government Departments. How does this happen currently? I get the feeling that permanent secretaries talk about it when they meet, and I understand that they meet on a regular basis. But is it a structured discussion? Is it then cascaded down to other colleagues in their Departments? Is it a learning experience only for them and their senior officials, or is it used as a corporate opportunity to change the way in which the service as a whole develops? I would like to get a feel for how we spread the word of good practice across all Departments.

Before I leave this part of my speech, I want to comment on one Department where people have tended to get it right—not always, but probably in the majority of cases—and that is the Department for Work and Pensions. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking, I have a special interest in that Department having been a Minister there for more than three years. I was delighted to hear from the retiring permanent secretary about the implementation of the new employment and support allowance IT platforms. I remember this particularly because as a Minister, when we had discussions on that project in undertaking the development work that led to the Welfare Reform Act 2007, we were told that, yes, it was “stretching”, but those officials immediately started to look at ways in which they could deliver it.

I know that there are good officials in all Whitehall Departments, but the one distinguishing feature of the DWP and its senior management team is that they tend to “grow” their own people. Officials at the DWP have come through the ranks. They understand the business, and they have had to deal with real people and solve real problems throughout their civil service career. I was pleased to note that the permanent secretary who was retiring indicated that the new perm sec, Terry Moran, follows in that tradition as someone who joined the Department as a 16-year-old in Blackpool, as I remember. That is an indication of how Departments can get it right. The DWP is not perfect, by any manner of means, but on average it tends to be a bit better in delivering some of its projects.

I want briefly to mention two specific reports and Committee sessions: first, on the academies programme, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking also mentioned; and, secondly, on tackling health inequalities. On the first, it was a joy to be present at that discussion. Unlike the current proposals, about which I have grave misgivings on a political level, this programme was intended to improve the performance of so-called failing schools still within the state system and directly managed by the Department of Education. The NAO report clearly indicates that most academies are achieving increased academic success and that Ofsted reports are, in the main, good. There are, of course, imperfections—the report did not say that things were perfect—but in delivering effectively, economically and efficiently, the Department is doing reasonably well.

It was no surprise to discover that one of the reasons that happened was that one person, in the shape of Lord Adonis, was there at the inception of the idea and through to the delivery of the project. Consistent and persistent political overview obviously helped. In the same vein, we need to look to consistent and persistent senior responsible officials to deliver some of these complicated reports.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady may be aware that a previous NAO report seen by the previous PAC established that Excellence in Cities, which was a predecessor programme, achieved equally good results at far less cost.

[Mrs McGuire]

I am speaking purely of the report that was in front of us, but I accept that there may have been other approaches. I was using the point as an illustration, not a comparison.

[Mr Bacon]

I fully accept the right hon. Lady’s point, whether it was meant as an illustration or a comparison. Another interesting facet of the academies programme, which Lord Adonis pointed out to the Committee in a seminar, was that after a relatively short period it was he, as the Minister, who held the collective memory in the Department. All the civil servants who advised him on the programme had been there for less time than him. What does that tell us about how the civil service manages its people?

[Mrs McGuire]

The hon. Gentleman highlights a recurring concern among Committee members, which is that the tendency to move civil servants around the system so often means that the collective memory is not built up. That was illustrated beautifully in yesterday’s discussions with the people from the MOD. Even in a programme of intermediate length, there had been God knows how many senior responsible officers. That leaves no opportunity to build up the collective memory.

I will take your comments to heart, Mr Deputy Speaker, and will not speak for too much time. However, I wish to highlight one other report that I found outrageous, which was on health inequalities and life expectancy. As the Committee said, the issue of health inequalities is not new. A J Cronin wrote about it in his stories about Dr Finlay and Dr Cameron. We all know about these issues. Although it was officially identified in 1997, our progress in dealing with this problem, which has been staring us in the face, is depressing. There are issues with the approach of general practitioners to those who suffer health disadvantages.

I hope that the new Government will look at the report carefully, because as they reform and change the NHS, they must consider whether they can deal with the inequalities in health across the country, or whether they will reinforce them. For the record, that is one report on which I received positive feedback from people outside this House who are in public health. A colleague in the Scottish Parliament said that it was one of the best reports he had read on the issue.

I will conclude by looking briefly to the future. Parliamentary scrutiny of the taxpayer’s pound will be more challenging. As more services are devolved to commissioning GP practices and thousands of schools, the scale of the audit trail will be breathtaking and value-for-money analyses will be even more complex. I hope that the Minister gives us an understanding of who will be responsible for the spend. Can we expect it to still be the departmental accounting officer, when he or she will have no control once the money leaves the Department? Will we invite school governors and managers, partners in general practices, and chief executives of voluntary organisations to appear before us? This is a question for us all: who carries the can when public money is involved and who pays the price if it all goes wrong? It is bad enough at the moment, when few heads appear to roll even when things go spectacularly wrong. What will it be like when thousands of people are ostensibly responsible for signing taxpayers’ cheques? A taxpayer’s pound is a taxpayer’s pound, whoever spends it. The PAC, along with the NAO and the Government, will have to consider quickly how we will manage our work to ensure that there is still public accountability and that value for money is still identified.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Quite a few Members are trying to catch my eye and I hope to call them all. If it looks like I will not be able to do so, I will have to put a time limit on speeches, but I do not want to do that.

16:49

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I am a former member of the PAC, and I found it an extraordinarily useful part of my parliamentary life and actually quite a lot of fun. I noted the remark from its Chair that its members are invariably impeccably well prepared, and I must admit that the Committee has therefore improved somewhat. I can remember times when the odd member might have simply glanced hurriedly at an NAO report just as they walked through the door. I am sure that does not happen today and that things are significantly better.

The PAC specialises primarily in post hoc analysis. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is in his place, and I wrote to the Treasury about that shortly after the end of the last Parliament, suggesting that it had not learned enough from the PAC and had not taken on board some of the messages that the Committee sent it. We said that there was scope for improving parliamentary scrutiny. Lo and behold, the Treasury has recently asked us to work on improving scrutiny by the House. Some people have greatness thrust upon them, and that is certainly the case for us in our modest role in the order of things.

What the PAC offers is a post hoc diagnosis, a forensic analysis of how policy is implemented by civil servants according to what their political masters dictate. They are invited in for a Socratic discussion about how things have gone, and the idea is that the Treasury then responds by trying to learn lessons and ultimately spread good practice. That is the subject of the motion.

To be fair, the hon. Member for Gainsborough has claimed in the past that the Treasury, or somebody at any rate, has implemented most of the lessons that the PAC has endeavoured to teach it. However, the PAC should have bigger ambitions. Its role in the House could be more than just to provide a commentary, and it could be a more functional part of the legislature, as is its parallel body in the USA, and as the hon. Gentleman and myself desire.

At the moment, after whatever botch-up we happen to be talking about in the Ministry of Defence or wherever, hon. Members, usually the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), ask rigorously what tests were applied at the time. Indeed, that was the burden of the hon. Gentleman’s speech today. He asks what health checks were made, what the gateway review process was and whether the costings were robust enough.

The hon. Gentleman was honest enough to say today that we might be asking all those questions all over again at the end of this Parliament, because a whole series of other programmes are being rolled out, such as academies, which have been mentioned, welfare reform, NHS reorganisation, which is a heck of a big programme, and court closures. PAC members will be aware that, in the past, it discussed the effect of court availability on such matters as cracked trials, people failing to show up and court costs. There is also the green energy programme announced today. They are all huge Government programmes.

Each of those programmes should, and in fact does, involve some type of internal gateway review and Treasury assessment. There are jolly clever people in the Treasury who make it their business to examine them and see where they are heading. Unlike in local government, however, in which such processes are overt and public papers are circulated, the information never emerges in public. It is not released until long after the event, when the PAC might get its hands on it. It is held within the Government’s walls. In one sense that is bizarre, because Parliament is asked to authorise all the schemes, and in a way we vote for them blind, without adequate financial assurance.

What Parliament does in that regard is not sufficient for the task. We vote on money resolutions, but we do not talk about them. We have the farce of estimates day, and on the occasions when supplementary estimates go before Select Committees, those Committees by and large talk about something else. Occasionally a Committee will probe the finances of a particular project, and the Health Committee has done some trailblazing work in examining the finances of current Government policy. Occasionally there is a political knockabout either in Westminster Hall or on the Floor of the House, but we do not have in place adequate stress testing of policy. The PAC could contribute to that, but that testing is weak in this legislature.

The PAC is ideally set up for such a role, because it is not a policy Committee. It can ensure that costings stand up to critique. The proactive role that I hope for would keep the Government on their mettle—fewer foolish schemes would make progress—and keep the PAC on its mettle. The Committee has the advantage at the moment of always acting in hindsight in that it never gives its judgment up front so that people can see whether it turns out to be correct.

Going down the road I suggest would encourage transparency, avoid Parliament voting in ignorance and bring us into line with other countries. What is more, it would be a significant enhancement both of the PAC’s role and of parliamentary scrutiny, and a significant improvement in government. The NHS IT programme would never have run if the PAC had such a simple and clear-cut role. It would empower Parliament, improve its efficiency, and make the Government more efficient and competent. I believe that people not only in the Treasury, but in the Cabinet Office, have efficiency and competency as a determined ambition now. The country hankers for boring, effective, evidence-led government. We have had enough of being flash, we are fed up with revolutions in this service and that, and we do not really require a great deal of liberation. It would also be significant improvement if Ministers could stop using the word “step change” every time they do anything.

Good, efficient, boring government would be a significant development, and the PAC has a significant role to play if the Government allow it to do so.

16:56

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

I am delighted to contribute to this debate as a new Member of the House and a new member of the PAC. We have seen the breadth of experience within the Committee and some formidable Members have addressed the House already. It is incredibly daunting to join them. I pay tribute to the Chair and her work in making newer members of the Committee feel very welcome, although we must do our homework.

I stood for election to this important Committee because Parliament has three key roles. First, our role is representation—we speak on behalf of the people who voted us in. I am conscious that when I speak, I do so not as myself but as the representative for Walthamstow. Secondly, we are here to make laws as the legislature. We all came into politics not just to change governance, but to change lives, which we do through passing laws. Finally and crucially, our third role is oversight and scrutiny. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) alluded to, sometimes that is not seen as glamorous as the other two roles I mentioned, but I disagree, because oversight and scrutiny is crucial. The best oversight and scrutiny is about whether politicians can achieve the things that they say they want, and why they cannot do so if that is the case, and considering other ways of doing things. Oversight and scrutiny speak to a recognition that Governments should not just start projects or policies—the public expect them to be able to finish them too. Essentially, implementation is as important as ideology in politics.

Clearly, good governance requires all three of those functions to be enacted effectively, and each depends on the others for success. Without an effective system of scrutiny and oversight, wise words and good intentions will falter on the wheel of day-to-day delivery and the messy complexity of how change occurs.

I therefore ask hon. Members to support the motion, because it relates to the PAC’s performance of those functions within the House. The PAC is very different from Select Committees that look at the desirability of policy because it looks at policy effectiveness and implementation. That is why I take great pleasure in being a member of the Select Committee that Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield described as

“the queen of select committees”.

I take pleasure in quoting him not least because I represent him, which is a nice way of referring back to the first function of Parliament that I mentioned. The Westminster model is seen across the world as the gold standard of accountability on questions of effectiveness and value for money—other countries have subsequently followed that proud historical tradition.

I stood for election to the Committee not least because of my experience in local government and the value of scrutiny in the delivery of policy. I have been on the Committee only since November, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience so far, because we take seriously our job of safeguarding public money. I understand now why Baron Hennessey argues that the PAC exerts a cleansing effect on all Departments, because each week we thoroughly challenge witnesses—some more than others, perhaps—on the basis of the evidence before us. We take seriously the lesson that John F. Kennedy once taught: from his experience in government, when things are non-controversial and beautifully co-ordinated, there is not much going on.

The wide range of topics I have covered in my short time on the Committee bears that out—from our work on the community care grant to the major Ministry of Defence projects and the employment of consultants. I have learned more about hard shoulders on motorways and the nature of the M25 than I ever thought I wanted to know. However, all our work reflects the Committee’s crucial role in holding Governments to account over how they deliver on their promises to the public. The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) expressed that honourably in his detailed examination of farming policy. That, too, reflects the breadth of our work.

Our Committee is an exercise not in teaching new or seasoned MPs about the topics of the day, but in understanding the concept of delivery and how to make it work. It is also about the crucial and honourable role that civil servants play in government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling admirably set out some of the challenges in how the civil service and the Government work together. However, the work does not stop with meetings, and that is what the motion reflects and why I want to pay tribute to the Clerks and the National Audit Office for the work they do to support our Committee. I have found their reports incredibly useful. Our role is about the process of change and how it is followed through. That is the cleansing work in action.

The Committee’s meetings and follow-up work form a circle of scrutiny that is critical to how Governments act, which is why it is vital that our work does not disappear into a dusty report or an uncomfortable meeting in Committee Room 15—however cold or hot it may be. The motion is about ensuring that the cycle of scrutiny and oversight matches our legislative and representative functions in Parliament. Ministers need to be held accountable, if there are problems with their Departments in following up on the Committee’s recommendations, and it is right that we have a motion about the power to bring them to the House if necessary, so that all Members can be involved in the discussion and understand what is happening on the ground with those policies.

There are examples of where these problems of accountability lie. According to recent research, about 60% of the Committee’s recommendations have been accepted and about 30% partially accepted. That is comparable with other systems. However, there is an issue for us to consider, because it is not any one Department that has been challenging in terms of following up those recommendations. We need to reconsider our ability to follow up those issues and tell Departments and Ministers what is happening. The Committee Chair set out admirably some of the challenges we face over the patchy delivery of value for money and the pace of change in implementing recommendations.

When recommendations are followed up, there can be great benefits for the Government and ultimately the public in the delivery of policy. In particular, I am impressed by the work done on obesity. The Committee played a role in bringing together a holistic view of how the Government were looking at the cost to the taxpayer of not addressing obesity. That work is key. Also, the Committee’s rigorous and persistent scrutiny in relation to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has finally enabled change to happen.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk also alluded to the work on health and stroke care. That is another example of where the process of overview and scrutiny has made a real difference to the quality of service that people in this country receive. We also had a debate this week about the major MOD projects. Clearly, that is a controversial subject, and yesterday, we took some very difficult testimony. Notwithstanding the examples that we looked at yesterday, this rigorous scrutiny of how those projects are delivered, and the fact that the NAO, together with our Committee, has continued to apply pressure, is testament to the work that we do. Some 13 out of the 15 projects we are looking at are now being delivered better. That is a result of our work with the Government. That is why I think that our Committee reflects what is best called constructive criticism made real. However, we need more powers to ensure that that happens.

From my few months on the Committee, I can vouch for the fact that we have been equally helpful to both the last and the current Government. That is why the Government should not fear the motion, but welcome it, especially given some of the major changes to delivery that they are talking about making, particularly in terms of localism. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling admirably set out some of the challenges involved in having new actors delivering things through the public purse and perhaps even being responsible for commissioning services. It is all the more important that Parliament should have a clear role in asking, on behalf of the public, whether we are getting value for money, and whether we are able to deliver the things that we talk about in this House and that we as representatives, making laws, want to see happen.

It is also important to note what studies of other public accounts committees have looked at. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) gave some examples of that. For instance, 75% of public accounts committees that were surveyed by the World Bank agreed that it was crucial to their effectiveness to have the power to follow up reports and to check the implementation of their recommendations. The World Bank also calls for powers for public accounts committees across the world to be strengthened. It is therefore important for us to recognise—as perhaps representing, as it were, the gold standard of public accounts committees—that we could lead the way on that, through today’s motion and the proposals that have been put forward. That is why the House should support the proposals, because this debate is not just about the positive impact of overview and scrutiny of public policy; it is also about ensuring that the work that we do benefits the people of this country. Indeed, I am also incredibly mindful of that representative aspect to this debate. We have a responsibility to the House and to the people whom we represent.

I do not intend to speak for too long, as I know that many other new Members also want to contribute. I hope that I can persuade the Government to accept the motion. In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

I hope that the House will see the Public Accounts Committee as part of that process of setting things to rights, and that the power that we are seeking today becomes part of ensuring that policy is delivered in the way that we want it to be delivered. If that alone is not encouragement enough, I would also ask the Minister to reflect on the words of an anonymous source who said:

“Admit your errors before someone else exaggerates them.”

I hope that the Minister will see the reports that we produce as a fair reflection of the work of Government and the challenges ahead, and that, in the spirit of constructive criticism, he will support the motion today.

17:07

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that time is short and a number of colleagues wish to speak, so I shall abridge my remarks accordingly. However, I would like first to endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and other members of the Committee, in paying tribute to the stewardship of the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). I would like also to thank the National Audit Office, which serves members of the Committee tremendously well.

It sometimes feels as though, as members of the Public Accounts Committee, we are getting a glimpse into the cosseted world of the television studio interviewer. We can climb on a pedestal and enjoy the clear view of hindsight. We have the safety harness of asking questions rather than giving answers. We can look at issues in isolation, rather than being distracted, as decision makers are, by many competing challenges. Yet in the short period in which I have been a member of the Committee, the same issues have kept appearing, with the ticking frequency of a metronome—a lack of accountability; poor data quality; insufficient testing of pilots; inadequate project change controls; and a mismatch of management skill sets. What binds many reports is unnecessary complexity, which invariably adds cost and masks inefficiency.

However, in this, the annual debate on the Public Accounts Committee, it is right to step down from the comfort of our perch and set out some solutions to the challenges that we face. In particular, I want to touch on five areas, subject to the time available. We need to clarify the letters of direction signed by accounting officers on their appointment and make such letters Department-specific. We need to improve the transparency of the information given to Parliament by ensuring that the NAO has unfettered access to National Rail, the BBC and the Bank of England. We need to redefine the role of senior responsible owners, to ensure that the current gap between skills and requirements is addressed. We need to introduce greater standardisation of the data presented by Departments to Committees, to facilitate better benchmarking across Government. We also need to embrace different mechanisms—some of that is already happening—so that we not only hold those making decisions to account, but look at different forums and opportunities to learn lessons.

I do not put forward those suggestions in the belief that they are in any way revolutionary. Nor do I believe, given that not even the brightest of our Sir Humphreys have managed to solve them—indeed, the Public Accounts Committee has been in existence since 1836—that my proposals are a panacea. They are simply some areas in which the Committee can start to change the direction of travel in a practical way.

I want to give the House an example to illustrate the first of those points, and perhaps the Treasury can take this away as an action for today. It relates to the letters sent to permanent secretaries. The letter dated 13 October 2010 appointing Martin Donnelly as permanent secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills makes reference to “RfRl, 2, and 3”, without defining what these are, and to section 5(6) of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000, to section 5(7) of that Act, and to chapter 3 of the “Managing Public Money” document. It also requires him to look at the Treasury handbook on “Regularity, Propriety and Value for Money”. I suggest to the Treasury that a new permanent secretary taking over the reins of a Department has better things to do than read those documents.

We saw in the evidence from Sir Bill Jeffrey that there had been a discussion about why he had not sought a letter of direction, when signing the contracts for the aircraft carriers, on the ground of affordability. There was a lack of clarity there, and that was in conflict with the letter that the Committee had received from Sir Nicholas Macpherson. So it is clear that there are issues there.

[Mr Bacon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Barclay]

I will not, because other colleagues need to speak. In fact, I have time to discuss only this one issue, and I will not talk about the other four. I hope that the Treasury will conduct a review of the letters that go to permanent secretaries, so that they can at least be made Department-specific and self-contained as stand-alone documents. At the moment, they are unclear, and that gives rise to the kind of confusion that we saw in relation to Sir Bill Jeffrey and others.

17:11

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I, too, have the pleasure of being a member of the Public Accounts Committee, serving under the probing chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). I want to follow up some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay). Sometimes serving on the Committee does feel a bit like being in “Groundhog Day”, as we see the same issues arising again and again in relation to delays in executing contracts, poor management and so on. I want to concentrate on one theme leading from that, which is leadership.

Leadership is crucial to the delivery of any programme. It involves the ability to take ownership, and to ensure that projects are delivered to deadline and on budget, and that they are fit for purpose and deliver the objectives that they are meant to achieve. Too often, we have found such leadership lacking. My message to my colleagues on the Front Bench is that, given the public spending constraints that we now face, value for money is of central importance, and the Treasury needs to play a much stronger role in ensuring that Departments deliver their obligations. For that reason, I heartily endorse the sentiments in the motion, which will put ministerial accountability at the heart of delivering value for money. Hitherto, the Committee has not called Ministers to give evidence, but I am fast coming round to the view that there is a case for doing that, so that Treasury and Cabinet Office Ministers can tell us what they are doing to ensure that their colleagues across government are delivering against their obligations.

The right hon. Member for Barking referred to the Committee’s report on the 2007 comprehensive spending review. Ministers should read that report, to see where things might go wrong in the current spending environment. There was a massive discrepancy between Departments in the degree to which they were able to deliver against the cuts that were required of them. In particular, the Department for Communities and Local Government had achieved only 5% of its required savings halfway through the inquiry. That brings me back to the importance of leadership and the importance of government as a machine ensuring that the principle of value for money really is pushed all the way through the system.

Other colleagues want to speak in the debate so I shall close by drawing the House’s attention to the private finance initiative, which has been the subject of a great deal of work by the Committee. In the recent past, the machinery of government has been rather too attached to PFI as a funding stream, with delivery being focused on completing a deal rather than on whether the PFI contract really represented value for money for the taxpayer and whether it would deliver what was required. The Committee examined the role of the PFI after the credit crunch. We found that the banks had increased the cost of financing PFI projects by up to a third, and that the risks had been transferred back to the public sector at an additional cost of £1 billion to the taxpayer.

It is not surprising that financing costs rose following the credit crunch, but it is very disappointing that the Treasury did not use that occasion to challenge the view that the PFI was still an appropriate funding vehicle for many projects. The contract for the widening of the M25 has already been mentioned. The cost of that was increased by 23%, or £660 million. In the past few weeks, the Secretary of State for Transport has had to announce significant cuts in his expenditure. It is clear that the delivery of other projects has been jeopardised. We are locked into some PFI contracts for 30 years, which means that those that are of poor value will clearly be of ongoing poor value to the taxpayer.

Moreover, a contract of that length is not suitable for some services. Facilities need to be able to react to the constantly changing needs of hospitals, for example. If we nail everything down in a PFI contract, we embed inflexibility in the system. NHS South West Essex primary care trust in my constituency is in a very poor financial state, and is implementing a severe programme of cuts to deal with an overspend. Sitting in the middle is Brentwood community hospital, an underused facility funded by an expensive PFI contract.

My message to the Government is very simple. The Treasury and Ministers throughout Government must be vigilant and fleet of foot in ensuring that their Departments deliver value for money, and a central part of that will consist of responding to the findings in our reports. I look to the Treasury in particular to ensure that appropriate leadership is given, and that we deliver better value for the taxpayer.

17:16

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to contribute, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I also thank other Members who have curtailed their speeches in order to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak in this important debate. I emphasise the importance of the debate, and also that of the role of the Public Accounts Committee. I am a relatively new Member of Parliament and a new member of the Committee. I hope that the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) will forgive me if I say that I am indeed learning on the job, and it is a very steep learning curve, but I think that many new members are getting to grips with their role very well. I am pleased to count myself among friends on the Committee, even if we are not all hon. Friends on the Floor of the House.

I must make a brief apology to a rather wonderful lady called Julia Whitehill. She is my constituency caseworker, and she worked diligently to arrange the constituency office drinks party this evening, which I have forgone in order to speak in the debate. If that is not a measure of the importance that I attach to the PAC’s work and to the debate, I do not know what is.

I shall touch briefly on just one of the many reports that the Committee has undertaken in the current parliamentary year, because I think that it is of significance to my constituents. Tackling health inequalities has already been mentioned in the debate, and the report to which I refer is entitled “Tackling inequalities in life expectancy in areas with the worst health and deprivation”.

My constituency in the north-east of England is at the centre of much of that challenge. We have real deprivation in my region, and we face real challenges in health care and life expectancy, which need to be addressed. The Committee identified some of the failings in policy that had hampered earlier efforts to tackle the problem, and suggested a number of measures that future Governments might wish to take. It found that the health gap between deprived areas and the general population had widened despite the efforts that had clearly been made—I do not deny the legitimate efforts made by the last Government to tackle the problem, and I do not suggest that it is not high on the agenda for many Members in all parts of the House—and that the Department of Health had not set about its important task with sufficient urgency or focus.

The Committee also found that a failure adequately to address GP shortages in areas of deprivation had led to the widening of the gap, or at least had been a significant contributory factor, and that that was still a problem. It suggested that there were opportunities for the Department to identify new measures to drive up GP numbers in areas of deprivation, including the possible use of the GP contract to give GPs an incentive to go to the places where they were most needed.

The NHS spends about 4% of its overall budget on prevention, but the Committee found—this is a recurring theme—that individual commissioner spending was not readily identifiable; as we find when we look at many Government Departments and operations, the lines of accountability were blurred. Time and again we find that accountability suffers when Governments of whatever political hue push forward with measures that do not properly take into account the lessons the Committee tries to help them understand.

Along with funding shortfalls and other problems which, sadly, I do not have time to go into in detail, we found that there is much work to do and that previous efforts had not succeeded. Across so many Departments, the lines of accountability—the ability to measure what is supposed to be achieved and to set milestones on where we are meant to be going—are lacking in the plans put forward, whether by civil servants, Ministers or political parties. A huge amount of work needs to be done to change the way government functions so that Governments can deliver their objectives, whatever they might be. Whatever our political outlook, we all have an interest in ensuring that Governments work efficiently so that when Ministers pull the levers of power, things happen in the way that is intended. A key aspect of the PAC’s role is identifying where Governments do not deliver in the way they are supposed to, irrespective of policy determination or the lead coming from the Ministers at the top.

I am conscious of the time constraints but I merely wanted to have the opportunity to make this contribution and to put on record my admiration for the work that our wonderful Chairman, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), is doing in leading us through a challenging set of reports and issues. Our work load is, I think, greater than that of the other Select Committees of this great House at this time, as is the pace at which we tackle it. I am extremely pleased to be a member of the Committee and to have had this opportunity to contribute to the debate. I will end my remarks now in the hope that other Members will also be able to contribute.

17:21

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

I thank those hon. Members who have curtailed their speeches, and due to the severe time constraints, I will also limit myself to addressing just one theme. It is the theme we discussed in the recent hearing on the Department for International Development: supporting primary education around the world. That is a subject in which I take a particular interest.

That hearing contrasted with many of the other hearings the Committee has had, because DFID is not a repeat offender in the sense that it is not having to be forced to implement past PAC reports. It is a Department that is being reformed from top to bottom, very much in the spirit of the long line of PAC reports that have been critical of value for money within the Department.

The hearing provided us with a very good insight into the work of a Department that is of major importance to the coalition and will become of increasing importance as we meet our commitment to lift the share of aid spending to 0.7% of national income by 2013. Let there be no doubt as to my support for this commitment, which demonstrates the coalition’s determination to stand behind the poorest people around the world. However, at a time of severe retrenchment across unprotected Government Departments, it is all the more crucial that DFID continues the work that has been ongoing—since May, I would say—to do more to secure maximum value for money for the UK taxpayer and the greatest possible impact for those whom the Department is trying to help. The PAC hearing raised a number of concerns in this respect.

First, the primary education programme supported by DFID illustrates the way the Department has, until recently, made astonishingly little attempt to measure value for money in even its biggest programmes. DFID’s rationale for investing in education is that it brings wider benefits which support poverty reduction, but the National Audit Office report and then the PAC hearing clearly found that too much emphasis has been placed on measuring simply the numbers entering education and that DFID has been too quick to claim credit for increases in enrolment rates that are hard to link directly to its programmes. It is also clear that the Department has paid too little attention to how many children are actually attending and completing primary school education, along with the standard of literacy and numeracy they attain. Those are key areas where limited progress has been made. I am glad that, since May, value for money has been vigorously addressed by the new Secretary of State and his team. There is the clear objective of reorienting the entire aid programme to focus on results, not inputs.

That is all the more important in the context of a comprehensive spending review where DFID’s budget is being increased quite substantially, from £6.3 billion this year to £9.4 billion by 2014-15. That is the single biggest increase across all Departments and is an increase of 37% in real terms. By 2014-15, DFID will be bigger even than the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. That is why I particularly appreciate the work that it is doing to set up the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which will further emphasise the new value for money priority of the Department. A chief commissioner is in place and is starting work as we speak.

It is also worth pointing out that even though DFID’s budget is expanding, the Department is not losing its focus on administrative efficiency and value for money. That is another area where we can commend the way in which the Department is pre-emptively addressing the concerns that we were raising in the PAC hearing. Although DFID’s overall budget is increasing, administrative costs within the Department are to be reduced by 33% over the course of the comprehensive spending review period. There is certainly evidence to suggest that there is still fat to be cut. I find it surprising that, in an aid Department, there are civil servants earning £175,000, and I am not sure that that sets a great example to the pro bono sector in general.

Lastly, I return to where I started. Measuring outcomes accurately and demonstrating value for money will help to build public support and buy-in for the substantial expansion of the DFID budget that we are programming over the coming years. The PAC’s work in that respect will make a valuable contribution to the process.

17:26

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I shall be brief. I am also new to the House and the Public Accounts Committee, and I thoroughly enjoy working for the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and respect the massive expertise of my fellow Committee members.

I wish to discuss the recurring themes of our work, which is an issue that has been mentioned today. Even at this early stage, I recognise the same messages coming out again and again. The hon. Members for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who are the corporate memory of our Committee, often remind us of that. I was recently contacted by a former senior civil servant in the Home Office, who discovered that I was serving on the PAC and wrote me a long e-mail outlining the issues as he remembered them, how the Committee’s recommendations were dealt with and the crucial issue of accountability. Although he retired seven years ago, his e-mail could have been written about what was happening yesterday.

I am conscious that the Committee tends to review problem areas, rather than successes, and so one perhaps gets a slightly jaundiced view. However, one is struck by the eye-watering sums we often talk about and one can get desensitised. One begins to think that £100 million of waste does not seem too much. Last week, we held a review of errors in the benefits system and it was suggested that £1 billion might be some kind of irreducible minimum. It is inconceivable that that discussion would take place in the private sector with that conclusion being reached.

I support the comments that have been made about leadership. I describe the people who the Committee sees as the good, the bad and the slippery. We get some very good ones, but we certainly get some of the other types too. I was going to talk in detail about the consultancy area, of which I have direct experience, but time does not permit me to do so. I shall therefore pick up just one point on that, which was that consultants tend to be engaged on a time basis, rather than on the basis of fixed outcomes, fixed prices.

So many of our reviews have huge time scales; it is common to be talking about issues that have taken longer than the second world war to sort out. That raises questions about the way the Government contract, engage consultants and so on and whether they really get things done in a timely fashion.

I recognise that there are challenges ahead. Although I welcome some of the Government’s movements on accountability and business plans, there are challenges involving the comprehensive spending review as well as two issues that have not been mentioned yet. The first is the abolition of the Audit Commission, and I still think we need to decide what the post-life is on that. Secondly, crucially, much Government money is now going to outside bodies that are beyond the reach of the National Audit Office. For example, in the consultancy world, £700 million is estimated to go to outside bodies versus £1 billion in departmental spending.

I welcome the motion, which seems a step in the right direction. It is right that we should not engage in political discussion or decision making, but many of our conclusions are not just about the Treasury—they require ministerial action. I commend the motion to the House.

17:30

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I have sat through the debate and found it extremely positive in its approach to the issues. There is a great deal of cross-party support for making how we manage issues in government a key focus.

May I begin by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge)? It is already clear that she has not only a grasp of the role of the Public Accounts Committee but the respect and support of Members on both sides of the House. It is crucial to consider the PAC’s role by leaving aside party politics and examining where systemic failures in Government expenditure occur.

May I also echo my right hon. Friend’s thanks and support for the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)? He served the House of Commons well during his period in office, when he produced more than 400 reports on a range of issues. I can honestly say that during the last Parliament I appeared to wake up most mornings to the hon. Gentleman on the radio, kicking somebody. As a Minister in the last Government, I was often grateful that it was not me.

I welcome the approach taken in the motion. I will support it as I recognise that it contains elements that will help to strengthen the accountability of Ministers for acting upon the reports that they have accepted as recommendations from the PAC. Anything that puts in place a mechanism that will make Ministers and their civil servants know that they have to report back to the House on progress on measures that they have accepted and agreed to do is extremely important.

I am grateful for the speeches made by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. Several key themes have come out of the debate. First, we have seen the importance of the scrutiny role that the PAC will perform and has performed. The hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) pointed out the recent report on the activities undertaken by DFID.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) referred to not just scrutiny but to the positive actions taken on hospital-acquired infection as a result of reports undertaken by the PAC. Indeed, he mentioned the improvements that are taking place in the Home Office. I can speak from personal experience as for a short period I was subject to a report as a Minister in the Ministry of Justice. It was on the National Offender Management Service’s C-NOMIS programme, which is an interesting point to which I shall return later. I became a Minister three and a half years after the programme commenced, froze the project three months after my inauguration in the Department and was subject to a PAC report that considered a range of issues. Civil servants had come, gone and left before I came and, after I left, civil servants were still managing that project. There are important lessons that we need to consider.

The scrutiny role of the PAC is important, but key issues to do with good governance have arisen in today’s debate and they are equally important. The hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) listed clearly what is required of good governance in any project management. It is the sort of project management that anybody in the private sector or the voluntary sector who has responsibility for resources will undertake. Even in our private lives, most of us will undertake such good governance to ensure that we meet collective objectives. The hon. Gentleman’s point was also reflected in the comments of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) on the leadership that is required for the role of good governance. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) also touched on that.

Good governance relates to some key issues that were reflected in what the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) said about self-evident truths that recur. They should be the key issues that the Committee focuses on as part of its future role, and they involve simple issues such as having a proper business plan, clarity of objectives and clarity and responsibility for budgeting. It is also about having a reporting mechanism so that people know what is being spent when, how and for what purpose, and it involves the good governance of civil servants, which the hon. Member for South Norfolk mentioned, and good ministerial governance. That was reflected in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Dr Creasy) about her constituent. Now that he has been elevated to the Lords, I am afraid that however he voted at the last general election, he will not be able to vote in the next one.

The issue is how to put in place and systemically manage the overall issues. It comes down to key issues of personal accountability for civil servants and Ministers. There is a role for the Committee, which is echoed in the motion, and it relates to the accountability of individuals—Ministers and at civil servant level—for the decisions they take and for how they manage the good governance issues I have outlined.

Delivery is key. The hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), who showed real commitment to the Committee by missing his constituency party, focused on the issue in his area about how the political aspirations of whichever party is in government are delivered on the ground. What Ministers decide, how civil servants protect the taxpayer against reckless ministerial decisions and how they implement positive ministerial decisions is key. The points that the hon. Gentleman made were very important in relation to the health aspirations he discussed, but this is ultimately about value for money and making sure that whatever objectives Ministers have set are delivered in a timely, sensible and forward-looking fashion.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) highlighted some of the challenges we will face in the future. I do not want to politicise this debate, but the current Government’s focus on greater localism, devolution of power and distribution of responsibility will mean that the food chain of accountability that she mentioned will be equally important in future.

As a background to all this, we are in a time of increasingly reducing resources. The Government’s Budget proposals mean reductions of £32 billion a year and additional net tax increases of £8 billion a year by 2014-15. Departmental losses include figures such as a 49% reduction in the capital budget in the Home Office and reductions in revenue budgets of 23% and 24% at the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. Whatever our views on those matters, and we all have our own views, it is even more important at this time of diminishing resources that they are spent with a clear focus on value for money, that they deliver what they are meant to deliver and that they are managed by Ministers through the civil service. As we have seen recently, the Committee’s reports on the Ministry of Defence’s major projects review, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking has ably led on this week, and on the private finance initiative contracts with the Highways Agency to widen the M25 show that, retrospectively, there are real issues that will be common themes that we need to address for the future.

Before I conclude, let me make a simple point about how stability relates to political accountability. I was a Minister for 12 of the 13 years of the previous Government and not once did I hold a job for more than a couple of years. I was the longest-serving Minister with responsibility for prisons and probation in the history of the Labour Government—I served for two years and one month. I had to pick up, learn about, develop and manage projects that had started before I was in the post and carried on after I left to go to the Home Office. As well as accountability for civil servants, it is important that we have accountability for Ministers. The motion would ensure that Ministers who make agreements and accept recommendations report back to the House on what they have done. I hope they will have longer in office so that they can see projects through from start to finish. They would thus remain personally accountable and, on behalf of the House, they could hold civil servants to account, too.

I commend the motion to the House, and I look forward to hearing the Minister. I thank Members on both sides of the House for their contributions.

17:40

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

I am standing in for my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary, who has been called away due to family illness. She would have wanted the opportunity to take part in an interesting and wide-ranging debate.

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) on her election as the PAC Chair. As we have heard, and as the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) pointed out, she clearly has the support of her Committee. She demonstrates the long tradition of the PAC in ensuring value for money and I am sure she will be determined in pursuing that aim. As she rightly says, when we face challenges in the public finances, the issue is more important than ever. As a Treasury Minister, I fully support the right hon. Lady in her determination to seek value for money.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) who chaired the Committee with such distinction over two consecutive Sessions. The Committee grew under his chairmanship, and he brought in a number of innovations that will stand the test of time.

I recognise the contributions of new members of the PAC, both to the debate today and to the work of the Committee more generally. We heard from the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Dr Creasy) and my hon. Friends the Members for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), for Stockton South (James Wharton), for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) and for Redcar (Ian Swales). They have all demonstrated their commitment to the PAC—some by missing the office party, which surely goes beyond the call of duty.

Everyone has been impressed by how quickly the Committee has moved. The new Committee set about its work with hearings just a few days after it was reconstituted. That is a clear demonstration of the importance of the Committee’s work, and shows that value for money is a key consideration for all parts of Parliament.

We heard from the right hon. Member for Barking that she is the first woman to chair the PAC. She is also its first elected Chair. I believe I am the first Treasury Minister of a coalition Government to respond to a PAC debate. Perhaps that demonstrates that in the PAC, as in the Government, Members from different parties can work together to ensure that we serve our country well.

Data collection was one of the issues raised by the right hon. Lady. She highlighted the fact that far more information is made publicly available and she was concerned that it might be at the expense of the analysis that is needed, whether at governmental or parliamentary level. The intention is that the information should complement ongoing work. We want information disseminated to as many people as possible, allowing citizens to hold the Executive to account. Many people will have an interest in detailed or local data that the House may not have the time or energy to scrutinise in depth. That is not a criticism of the PAC, which clearly has enormous energy. None the less, it is right that people outside the House can explore the issues and make sure that their voices are heard and taken into account by decision makers. I hope that will complement the excellent work undertaken by the PAC.

I fully recognise the Committee’s concerns, set out in the motion, that Departments should implement agreed Committee recommendations. As I understand it, some 90% of Committee recommendations are accepted by Governments of whatever colour. That shows the value added by the work of the PAC and its ability to identify where improvements need to be made. The Committee knows that Departments already have to give accounts in their annual reports on whether they accept or reject Committee recommendations, and the Treasury enforces that requirement quite strictly because we take the Committee’s recommendations very seriously and we are pleased to accept them in the majority of cases. However, I understand the point made in the motion that the Committee feels that more could be done to ensure that Departments implement in a timely way those recommendations that they have accepted.

The Treasury and Departments already view the implementation of Committee recommendations seriously; moreover, the National Audit Office already carries out follow-up studies, in part to check progress in implementing Committee recommendations, and those reports are placed before the Committee. In those circumstances, accounting officers have to account directly to the Committee on why agreed recommendations have not been implemented. It is also important to remember that there will be some circumstances in which it simply is not possible to implement all agreed recommendations within a year of acceptance.

However, I think it is a sensible principle that Ministers should make written statements to the House on any recommendations that have been accepted and not implemented within a year of acceptance, and the Government are pleased to support the motion because that is a useful addition to our accountability. There will of course be a need to look carefully at exactly how we can implement that; there is some discussion as to quite how many written ministerial statements will be necessary as a consequence, but I think it is a helpful principle and we would support the motion.

Very many issues have been raised in the debate and I shall not attempt to address them all, but I noticed that two themes emerged in many speeches. The first was the issue of capability—the ability of Government Departments to deliver big projects, and to cope with many of the issues that they face. Hon. Members will be aware that the Government have established the Efficiency and Reform Group, in which the Cabinet Office and the Treasury work very closely together. The intention of that group is to strengthen capability—to strengthen the expertise that is available in these key projects, to ensure that the right skilled staff are there. We hope that will address many concerns. As many hon. Members said, it is particularly important to strengthen the financial capability of Departments. We as a Government believe that the role of the financial director of any Department should be respected and should be a very significant role in any Department.

The second theme that emerged repeatedly was accountability. We heard examples of difficulties that arose because senior reporting officers moved on too quickly. That is a very fair point. It is absolutely right that we ensure that there is proper accountability for spending when spending is devolved to local communities and organisations, and we must be alive to the issues there. In the context of the Ministry of Defence and aircraft carriers, an issue was raised about the role of the accounting officer. I agree with those hon. Members who say that it is part of each accounting officer’s duty to respect the financial limits within which his or her Department operates, and we should expect that to happen.

Many detailed issues have been raised in the debate and there is not time for me to address them all, but I thank Members for conducting such a wide-ranging and interesting debate. We have covered plenty of topics and I look forward to seeing how the Public Accounts Committee develops under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Barking. I wish her and her Committee well for the future, and I look forward to working with hon. Members to deliver value for money throughout Government expenditure.

17:49

[Margaret Hodge]

I had the opportunity at the start of this debate to say a lot, so I shall say very little now.

First, I am very grateful to the Government for agreeing to the terms of the motion before us. I simply draw to their attention the fact that there should be no need for any written ministerial statements if every Department responds properly to the recommendations to which they have agreed and implements them. We hope that the device will empower action rather than lead to further ministerial statements.

Secondly, I warmly and genuinely thank all the members of my Committee. The hard work of all my colleagues has led to the rather good reports—I think—that we now put out. We are a team, not an individual, and the quality of our reports reflects the brilliance of that team—all of us who are Committee members. My thanks also go to the National Audit Office, because its work is of an extremely good quality.

In respect of civil servants, on the whole we do not want to criticise what the Government do; we want to celebrate success wherever we can. We just wish that we were able to do so more often. I know from my time in government, as do other former Ministers, that there are a lot of dedicated and very able civil servants, and the question is just one of whether we can get the work going beyond that.

Finally, our Committee’s work is important. Last night, after our evidence session with the Ministry of Defence, I went out for dinner and just happened to talk about what we found. Totting up the amount of money wasted, I noted that £3.7 billion was binned because we cancelled Nimrod; £1 billion was mostly binned because we cancelled Sentinel; £1.56 billion was wasted because we delayed the aircraft carrier; and £2.3 billion was wasted because we ordered Typhoon aircraft that we do not want.

That shows the importance of the vigilance that we intend to continue to have over how the Government spend their money. We cannot afford to waste it, because we need it too much, particularly in the current circumstances, so we look forward to working with the Government to ensure value.

I wish everybody a happy Christmas.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House calls on the Government to ensure that all recommendations contained in Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts and accepted by Government Departments are implemented and that the relevant Minister makes a statement to the House on any recommendations accepted but not implemented within a year of their acceptance.

Business without Debate

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

Sittings of the House

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

Ordered,

That, on Tuesday 21 December 2010, the House shall meet at 11.30 am and references to specific times in the Standing Orders of this House shall apply as if that day were a Wednesday.—(Miss Chloe Smith.)

Football Governance

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Miss Chloe Smith.)

17:52

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in an Adjournment debate that the Speaker has kindly granted me on football governance and what the Government can and should do about it.

If one were to ask about the crisis in English football, one would anticipate that, at the top of football’s establishment, facts and figures would pour forth to demonstrate that English football, under the premier league, is one our prime exports, that receipts and revenues have exponentially expanded over the years and that things are growing healthier and going better than ever.

Last Tuesday, a unique—but, I fear, not for long unique—football match took place near my constituency. It would have been in my constituency if one of the teams in a rearranged FA trophy match, Worksop Town, had a stadium or, even, a pitch, but it does not, because the fourth oldest football club in the world has been locked out of its stadium by the owner for some years and exiled to rented stadiums elsewhere throughout England.

Unusually, however, the match was also a major derby, because not for many decades have Worksop Town played near rivals Mansfield Town. Many leagues have separated the two but, by luck, the FA trophy brought them together. There were snowy conditions, but the match could not be switched to Mansfield, because Mansfield Town has also been locked out of its stadium by its previous owner and landlord. The match therefore took place in Ilkeston, which is the same Ilkeston where the football club has recently been liquidated. So, two teams played a match in the grounds of a club that has been liquidated and that some people are trying to reform. I shall not waste the House’s time by giving the result. In that match, there were, uniquely, two teams that were both without a ground, with 250 years of history between them. That demonstrates the true crisis underlying English football.

I will just make one comment on the recent FA bid for the World cup—I will not attempt to draw the Minister into such a small distraction. Suffice it to say that there is a 23-member committee and if one country has a member on that committee and it ends up with just two votes when there are two decisions, there is something very wrong indeed. Politicians know the dynamics of committees and decision making, so hon. Members will appreciate and understand the negotiating hand available to anyone with a vote within such a system.

Now is the time to start changing English football. The impetus and imperative is not the much-publicised World cup bid and its failure, but the less well publicised uniqueness of Worksop Town versus Mansfield Town and where that match was played and could have been played last Tuesday. Both teams’ owners could have put out any football team they had bought on to those two grounds because no one has deemed them not to be fit and proper persons for the governance of English football.

A second issue that has not been explored is how we are seen across the world, particularly in Europe. Some 60% of European football debt is in English football. I have heard such a theme before, although not quite in relation to those figures. We call it the financial crisis—the big banks. Before Lehman Brothers collapsed, no one had said that banks in this country could collapse. However, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, HBOS and other smaller entities were on the verge of collapse and there had to be major Government intervention that involved huge amounts of taxpayers’ money. Those banks were ever onward and upwards. They were taking risks, leveraging and presuming that growth would be for ever. No one really questioned in advance whether such a situation was sustainable.

In English football, there has been a similar boom to that experienced by the banks. It is contemporaneous—perhaps not coincidentally contemporaneous—that there is a risk that the English football boom will turn to bust, and that we will see major forced restructuring when something significant happens. The banks have a term for what happened: toxic debt. Much of the money lent to English football is exactly that—toxic debt. In other words, it is money that the banks cannot rationally hope they will get back.

The contrast to English football is the German Bundesliga. With its good governance law, the Bundesliga is in profit. Indeed, if a Bundesliga club is not in profit, according to the rules, it will automatically be relegated. The Swedish league is in profit. There are many models of football bodies that have reorganised their governance, but in terms of the competitive advantage that our clubs perceive that we have on the European stage, the German one, in particular, will come back to haunt us.

18:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Miss Chloe Smith.)

[John Mann]

Perhaps we should be looking at the German model of football refinancing itself. I suggest to the Minister that we should consider how people were persuaded to change the rules of football governance through the German football association.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the rumours on the internet that a Qatari consortium is planning to buy Tottenham Hotspur football club? This is apparently to do with a decision to leave the poorest ward in London and move across London to Stratford. Is he concerned that Manchester United or Liverpool FC might fancy moving down to London to increase their shareholder profits? Does he think that community and history should stand alongside the big business that is taking over football?

[John Mann]

In 1923, Tottenham Hotspur famously bribed Worksop Town to replay a match two days after its initial historic 0-0 draw, allegedly providing copious amounts of beer to disable the team, which unfortunately then had a rather heavy defeat.

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point from which two issues emanate. First, who owns English football clubs? Are they merely chattels to be bought and sold, as we have seen, but, more dangerously, to be moved across London or across the country, as we saw with AFC Wimbledon, or indeed to be moved across the world, be it for the 39th match or the entire club? That is a scenario that I foresee in 10 years’ time. Who knows what will happen? Football clubs are free to make their decisions. However, community responsibility is involved. Good governance should instruct that the FA, at the top of the pyramid, ensures, in terms of its rules and their use, that good community relations, community development and community inspiration are key.

Secondly, it is rather outrageous that the football world has not stood as one behind the athletics world regarding a football club using the Olympic stadium as part of the legacy. It would be very good for a high-level football club to use that superb stadium. But when we have the best athletic stadium in the world, it would be outrageous for the football world to think it acceptable that it will be just for football, not athletics, so that we would not be able to host and win the 2015 world athletics championships because we do not have a stadium. The Minister can have some influence on that.

[Mr Lammy]

Does my hon. Friend remember the video with which we won the Olympics, with the faces of young Londoners, many of them black, and the dream of athletics that is now apparently to be ditched in favour of big business? Will he, like me, continue to remind the House and the Government of that responsibility?

[John Mann]

Worksop Town and Retford United, the two semi-professional clubs in my area, do not compete quite on the levels of Tottenham Hotspur, but their communities’ views are the same. We want our clubs in our communities. At our rather modest level, we expect those governing English football to give us every assistance in having rules that they implement to ensure that we are not simply chattels to be moved around. It can be as big as the Tottenham Hotspurs, or as small as the Worksop Towns or smaller still, but we have a right to expect that the history, the tradition and the communities who have funded these organisations should not be cast aside because someone has some developmental idea of making more profits out of that institution by shifting it, be it elsewhere in London, into the Olympic stadium, to the far east, or wherever else. That will be an increasing risk in English football. Similarly, the bubble of television rights might burst. I shall say a little on that in a minute.

I return to my analogy of the banks, because it is a relevant one. Football debt is toxic debt. The risk taking of the banks was predicated on a model of permanent growth. They offset and hedged tomorrow’s income and used it for today’s expenditure. Football has got into precisely the same mindset. The premier league is rightly proud of its success, its export potential and the tax revenue that it brings into this country, but so were the banks. The premier league thinks that there will be permanent growth. A simple change to the European Commission’s rules on the bundling of football rights could prick the bubble and send some clubs out of business, because the money would be pulled back by the banks, as their shareholders would expect. Those are the risks that football is taking.

The Deloitte report is rather expensive, but luckily it is available free to Members through the Library. Because of the risk of great personal expense, the copy that I borrowed is being returned at this very moment. According to the 2008-09 figures in that report, of the 44 premier league and championship clubs, only eight had a pre-tax profit, a majority did not have net positive assets and only two had no debt. That is extraordinary considering the growth and success in revenues. However, that has been increasingly squeezed out by players’ wages and agents’ fees. Teams compete to buy big-name players and more expensive players because of supporter demand. That is not a sustainable business model. Even building a club’s brand as an investment is not sustainable with that amount of leveraged debt. The bubble will burst and it is about time we started to say so. Will it be next year, in five years or in 10 years? Who knows? However, just as with the banks, the bubble will burst and the over-exposure to debt will ripple throughout football.

We used to hear about administrations, but now we hear about liquidations. It is a new language. Clubs vanish and have to be reformed. King’s Lynn football club, which was in the same league as Worksop Town, disappeared last season—bang! Gone! That meant one less club to be relegated, much to Worksop’s relief. It had a regular crowd of 1,500, which I think was the highest in the Unibond North—disappeared, gone, vanished! Another example is Ilkeston Town. Chester City was once a great and famous club that sometimes beat the very top clubs. It had been a member of the Football League throughout most of the league’s history, but then bang! Gone! It now has to be recreated right at the bottom by the supporters. Scarborough Athletic has had to move to Bridlington, which is rather ironic, to exist in any form. Of course, such clubs can come back with their supporters behind them. We would keep Retford United or Worksop Town going however low they went.

Is any of this fair and just? Fairness and justice have gone out the window as far as the FA is concerned—not in its rules, but in the application of its rules. Why should Exeter City, a club that was saved by its supporters and that has sensible balance sheets, have to compete with clubs that are borrowing money that they will not be able to pay back and that know that they may well go into administration if they do not succeed in getting promotion? More than half the football clubs in the Football League have gone into administration in the past 15 years. That has been the boom time for English football, during which we have said that we are leading the football world.

Who are the losers? No one has yet fully quantified the losses for Portsmouth, for example, but it would not surprise me if the losses—not to the football world, nor even to the Exchequer, but to local businesses in Portsmouth—were in the order of £4 million. One remembers that horrendous time when a club that I first saw at the age of four and have seen thousands of times since, Leeds United, went into administration and St John Ambulance was not paid, even though it was the boom time for English football. Governance in English football is in crisis, and has been for a long time.

When there are big music concerts—the Glastonburys and the rest—the organisers pay for the policing and stewarding required. They hire stewards in large numbers. There are not thousands of police thronging around every time there is a music festival in London or anywhere else, but when there is a football match the police are there, and who pays for them? The taxpayer pays a lot of the money. We need to use leverage—if football will not put its house in order, some of us will start demanding that it pays full policing costs. Why should my police force lose out, and why should I have football clubs in my area that are not able to play in their own stadiums because of the weakness of the application of football’s own rules? That is not sustainable in the political world, and it is not sustainable for my constituents.

[Mr Lammy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[John Mann]

Sorry, I should make some progress.

There is an inquiry into the matter by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and I hope that the Committee will consider a few matters. It ought to consider the chocolate question: Cadbury and Rowntree’s, once great British institutions—gone. Should that be allowed to happen in English football, as it did in the car industry, as you know very well, Mr Deputy Speaker? It should consider whether the UEFA fair play league, an excellent initiative, should be part of the root-and-branch reform of English football.

I should also like the Committee to examine in detail the question of Leeds United, not to pick on Mr Ken Bates specifically—I do not particularly care about his arrangements and motives for having the club owned offshore—but to see what the football authorities have done and who owns Leeds United. That is a legitimate question for the Committee to take detailed evidence on, not to attack Mr Bates or the club but to explore the processes behind it. We need to know why the FA and the Football League have been unable to answer questions about the matter.

We need to know whether Mr Ali al-Faraj, once owner of Portsmouth, actually exists. That would be a good question for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to ask. If he does, by what process was that man, who some claim does not even exist, deemed a fit and proper person to own a premier league football club, and who is he? The process by which football leaders asked and answered that question should be part of the inquiry, and I am sure it will be. I am sure the Committee will also examine why there are not currently three non-executive directors appointed to the FA, and how long it will take for that to happen.

It may sound as though I am attacking the big names, the brands. I am not. Frankly, it is a free market and they can do what they want, as they have done and will continue to do. I am attacking the governance of English football. If the big brands disappear abroad to a European super league, or go to play a 39th game or locate themselves in China or wherever else in the far east, that will be their choice and their loss. I want to ensure that the structure of English football means that the teams in my constituency can play at their own grounds and not be thrown off them. I want the Worksops, the Mansfields, the Ilkestons and the Chesters, as well as clubs higher up, to exist in the future.

I think that the FA is somewhat terrified of the figures in the premier league. The Minister ought to strengthen the FA’s resolve by asking it the difficult questions and forcing its hand. Where are the black managers in English football? Where are the Muslim and Jewish players? Where are the women at the heart of the FA? No other sport would tolerate unfit, improper persons in the ownership of clubs. Football, uniquely, wearisomely and supinely, does so. Why are the rules not applied? In Spain, there is a law on transparency, and in France the law gives people the ability to open the books. I have mentioned the situation in Germany already.

As well as leverage over the European Commission and thus Sky’s packaging and bundling of football, the Government have leverage over the FA. They give the FA an awful lot of money. A new chairman is about to be independently appointed. I say to him or her—that would be a turn-up for the books—that they have to use the powers they have already and reject the pressures from the premier league when the premier league conflicts with the FA, because we cannot justify taxpayer support for football if football cannot sort out the absurdities of last Wednesday, when Mansfield and Worksop were locked out of their grounds by the club owners.

I trust and hope that the Minister will use his leverage—his influence—to ensure that our national game survives at every level, and that we force good governance on the FA. Every change in English football has been forced on the FA, and the Minister must use his leverage to ensure that it gets its act together and runs English football properly, as it should be run.

18:16

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on securing this debate and on how he presented the case for reform in football, which is a powerful case. He asked a number of questions, which I shall attempt to answer in a minute. Before I do so, it is worth placing on the record exactly why football is important to the Government, and thus why reform is so necessary.

Football is our national game. More people play and follow it than any other sport. Events such as the World cup and European championships and the key domestic football fixtures command the attention of many millions of people up and down the country. Every single constituency has a football club in it, and many, including the hon. Gentleman’s, have a large number of clubs.

The hon. Gentleman alluded to the fact that the Government directly contribute to the financial running of the game through the whole sport plans, which we managed to protect through the comprehensive spending review, and through the Football Foundation. Indeed, funding to the grass roots was preserved as part of the CSR. Finally, as he touched on towards the end of his speech, Governments of all persuasions have supported initiatives such as Supporters Direct and the Kick It Out campaign, which goes to the heart of the black and minority ethnic issues that he mentioned. If I can give him any comfort on those, I spoke at a Kick It Out reception earlier this week. I am absolutely determined that the lamentable record of English football in that regard will be addressed—no ifs or buts. Football will continue to be important to the Government and the House.

Let me try to answer some of the questions he posed in his speech. He rightly said that there was something very wrong indeed when England could get only two votes apart from the one it commanded out of the 22 on offer for our World cup bid. Indeed, it remains a sad and sorry fact of that whole bid that our technical evaluation was the best of any of the bid teams. By common consent, we produced the best presentation on the day, but we then got the lowest number of votes. That tells us a number of things, principal among which might be that we simply aimed at the wrong target. We presented to FIFA a strong and compelling case for hosting its World cup, but it was in fact looking for a new frontier for football and a global political statement. All sorts of rumours are swirling around the bid, but that essential truth lies at our failure to land it.

The hon. Gentleman’s second question was on financial mismanagement. He rightly paid tribute to the German leagues, which are in profit. It is absolutely right that we look at the example of the German leagues. I gather that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, as part of its investigation, is going to Germany to examine precisely that. Having said that, we have to acknowledge that the German league started from a slightly different position to the one we are in. We know that the current system needs reforming, but the question is about how we get from where we are now to where we want to be.

The hon. Gentleman’s third point was about the Olympic stadium. I have probably had a lucky escape, because the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has now left the Chamber. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw asked why the football family has not fallen in behind the athletics use of the stadium. I suspect that the honest answer is that two competing clubs that are part of its family are playing off against each other for the use of the stadium. Even though I am safe—speaking at the Dispatch Box—from being sued, I should simply say that a process is in place that will come to a conclusion in early January, when I hope that a preferred bidder will be announced. We have all been advised by the lawyers not to get involved in that process, so if he will forgive me, I will leave that one alone, although we should have an answer by the beginning of January. I can reassure him that the commitment to leave an athletics legacy after London 2012 was one we made to the International Olympic Committee, and I suspect that it was a crucial part in delivering to us London 2012. From my point of view at least, it is a commitment that will be met.

The hon. Gentleman asked about why the level of debt is so high. Debt, in itself, is not always—although it often is—a bad thing. The key thing is the relationship between debt and revenue. The premier league has made some welcome introductions and tightened up its rules this year, as too has the Football League. However, I agree entirely that there is a great deal more to be done, and I will come now to how we might tackle that.

The hon. Gentleman’s next question was about the Select Committee report and the investigation it is about to undertake in the new year. He asked whether the fit and proper person test would be examined as part of that investigation. I hope it will be. It was originally the Government’s intention to take up the cudgels over football governance and reform as soon as the World cup bid was over. We were advised not to do that before, because of the interrelation between Government interference and how the international regulators look at the world of football. We were set to do that, however, and the Select Committee then announced that it wished to conduct an investigation into it. Out of respect to the House and its Select Committees, it is much better that we allow it to do that, rather than set out another investigation alongside it. Of course, that will have the advantage of allowing hon. Members from both sides of the House to contribute to the Select Committee investigation, which will allow, on a cross-party basis, many of these issues to be examined.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the relationship between the FA and the premier league and why the governance of the FA is so poor. I want to make it clear that we have said to the FA all along that we support the Burns proposals and that ideally it should have a fully independent chairman. If, in order to get the very best person to provide the sense of leadership and direction that the governing body of our national game needs, it feels that it cannot meet the one-year independence rule, as far as I am concerned, that is fair enough. I want it to have the best possible person, and I do not want it to be hamstrung. However, if it chooses somebody who is not independent by that definition, it will remain our intention to ensure, as the hon. Gentleman said, that it has a considerable number of non-executives on its board. We have said two. If it was to go further than that, I would be delighted. As he said, the relationship between the FA and the premier league—one the representative of the premier league, which is this country’s most successful sporting export, and the other our national game’s national governing body—is crucial, and if one is weakened irretrievably, it damages the relationship beyond repair.

The hon. Gentleman’s final question was about the use of Government money. He will have guessed from what I am saying that we are keen to advance this agenda. For the moment, however, I am happy to let the Select Committee have its say. I undertake to him and the House to take extremely seriously the Committee’s report, and if necessary we will use all the tools at our disposal, which would include the use of Government money. The only caveat I would make is that, given that the public money goes to the whole sport plan and the Football Foundation, the danger, if we activate that lever, is that we simply hurt the grass roots of the game, rather than targeting our action where we believe it is needed.

With that, I shall finish where I started and thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and congratulate him on securing this debate. This will be my last appearance at the Dispatch Box this year, so I wish everybody a very happy Christmas and new year.

Question put and agreed to.

18:25

House adjourned.