House of Lords
Deaths of Members
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
My Lords, I much regret that I have to inform the House of the deaths, on Saturday, of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and of the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington of Oxenford, last night. On behalf of the whole House I extend our condolences to the noble Lords’ families and friends.
Financial Reporting Council: Annual Reports and Accounts
Lord Naseby
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they held with the Financial Reporting Council before the Council issued its proposals to allow companies to stop providing hard copies of annual reports and accounts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, the Government have regular discussions with the independent Financial Reporting Council on corporate governance, accounting and audit matters. My honourable friend in the other place, Edward Davey, the Minister for Employment, Consumer and Postal Affairs, last met the Financial Reporting Council in December. This included a wide-ranging discussion about the Financial Reporting Council’s consultation paper, but the FRC did not mention this specific proposal. However, I should remind noble Lords that shareholders’ right to request a hard copy of annual reports and accounts is enshrined in company law.
Lord Naseby
I thank my noble friend for that very full Answer. The 2009 BP report—50 per cent of which I have with me this afternoon—amounts to 108 pages, and the financial standards section amounts to more than 100 pages. Is it not an absolutely crazy idea to put this online when what investors need is a hard copy? Furthermore, is the Minister aware that when companies have something perhaps to hide, it is usually to be found in the notes? If those notes are in the 100-odd pages online, it will be virtually impossible to find them. Would it not end up as almost a passport to fraud?
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, as I just said, as the law stands, you are fully entitled to a printed copy of the report and accounts. So there is no reason why that should occur unless you have asked for it to be online, in which case you can download as much or as little of it as you like. We fully agree that it is very important that the report and accounts are clear, accessible and have the information that shareholders require. That is why we are looking at it now. We are consulting and will report at the end of March on some of the changes that we may be able to make to make things clearer.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Does the Minister agree that there is some environmental gain to be had from people opting to receive these reports online when so many of them are unread or ignored? As she said, there is a question of opting in to this. Does she also agree that it is more important that the report contents are more transparent and accountable, demonstrating that all the remuneration and reward systems are linked to long-term success and showing that active steps are being taken to narrow the widening gap between the highest and lowest paid? While the companies are at it, perhaps they could also tell us how many apprentices they have. Finally, we ought to put our own house in order. We circulate more than 800 copies of this publication, for example. We could put it online.
Baroness Wilcox
Yes, my Lords, I suppose that that might save a few trees but at the moment, under law, we have to provide printed copies. I am sure that if your Lordships' House decided that it wished to debate the matter again, we might hear a lot more new ideas. I thank the noble Lord for the advice.
Lord Newby
My Lords, it might be the law at the moment that people can request a hard copy but the Financial Reporting Council is consulting on a proposal that it should no longer be a right. Given that many of those who need hard copies—because they are not very familiar with the web—are older people who rely on their shareholdings for their income when retired, will the Minister give a commitment on behalf of the Government that they have no intention of legislating for the change that is being consulted on?
Baroness Wilcox
As I said in the original Answer, the Financial Reporting Council is independent and can bring out any suggestions it wishes. The proposal comes from the council and does not represent the view of the Government. As I said, the law states that reports and accounts must be printed and made available. Until it is decided that the law should be changed, that is how it will stand.
Lord Harrison
In talking to the Financial Reporting Council, will the Minister discuss the abject failure of many firms to report on their social and environmental policies in order to keep shareholders better informed?
Baroness Wilcox
The Financial Reporting Council is independent, and the European Union says that we must have an audit regulator. The council has to fulfil certain requirements in law and it does so. It is not for the Government to tell it how it should distribute information.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, is there not a danger, which perhaps my noble friend can take on board, that lay investors will be snowed out with too much information and that items may be smuggled through when they are not particularly obvious? Can she counsel all companies to produce clear, intelligible and straightforward summary material as well as the full monty?
Baroness Wilcox
Yes, I think that we are all aware that these reports are difficult to work one’s way through; I have found the same myself, as have we all. The narrative reporting consultation is going on at the moment—that is the bit that comes at the front, before the financials. If we can get these things clearer and cleaner, we would all benefit. I thank my noble friend for the advice.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve
Does the Minister agree that what is needed in this area is less emphasis on transparency, which encourages mere disclosure in bulk, and more emphasis on communication, which has to be differentiated for its audiences, and necessarily should be differentiated for professionals and the ordinary shareholder?
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, that is a very good point and I shall take it away with me.
Lord Teverson
Will my noble friend remind us where the Government are in terms of carbon emissions reporting in company reports, which is required under the Climate Change Act? Is that about to happen, and what organisations will be involved?
Baroness Wilcox
That is a little wide of the Question and I do not have the information with me. As I said, we are having a wide-ranging discussion ourselves and will report back at the end of March. I have no doubt that there will be a reference to it there.
Lord Broers
Does the Minister agree with me that if somebody is trying to hide something in a long document, it is far, far easier to find it by searching a digital document than by paging through pages and pages?
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, that is a fine engineering suggestion and I am absolutely sure that some would agree with the noble Lord on it. However, there are others who still prefer to clutch a piece of paper—as I am doing—for safety’s sake.
Asylum Seekers: Medical Treatment
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Roberts of Llandudno
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements ensure that deported asylum seekers needing medical care and medication are able to be treated in the country to which they are deported.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, before removing failed asylum seekers, the UK Border Agency assesses whether their removal would be contrary to the UK’s obligations under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Such case-by-case consideration may include the medical treatment and other support available in the country of return. However, the Government would not normally expect to make arrangements for foreign nationals to access medical treatment in their own country.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he agree that someone who receives treatment here but is deported to a country where no such medication is available is going to a death sentence? Will the Minister not urgently consult, for example, the World Health Organisation and voluntary organisations to seek a way to ensure that no one, wherever they are—in the UK or elsewhere—is denied necessary basic medical attention?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I fully understand the point put so well by the noble Lord. However, the UK complies with all the requirements of the ECHR. Furthermore, DfID has an extensive health programme in developing countries. Health is the largest part of the basic services that are heavily prioritised by UK aid—the others being nutrition, education, water and sanitation. DfID’s priority areas for improving health outcomes in developing countries include malaria; reproductive, maternal and new-born health; child nutrition; and HIV/AIDS.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, given that the Minister has confirmed that we fully observe the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, can he also say whether that applies to judgments of the European Court of Human Rights?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I thought we would get a question like that. Two cases, D and N, are from the European Court of Human Rights; the case law is very clear and the UK adheres to it.
The Lord Bishop of Chichester
My Lords, can the Minister give the House any assurances about instructions given to agencies responsible for the removal of failed asylum seekers, whether by coercion or by forms of restraint? What are the Government’s policies on monitoring those instructions?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I think that the right reverend Prelate was referring to the process of removal. A few weeks ago, I visited the UK Border Agency’s training for the removal process. I am satisfied that the training was up to standard.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, this issue is an example of the many responsibilities being placed on the UK Border Agency in conjunction with the National Health Service. Is the Minister satisfied that the UKBA will continue to focus on and give priority to these matters, given the 20 per cent cut in its budget and the reduction in its staff by 5,000? Is it not a question of cutting too fast and too deep?
Earl Attlee
No, my Lords, it is a question of prioritising resources, and I am confident that the UK Border Agency will be able to carry out its statutory duties.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the UKBA appears to have no recent policy on HIV-positive detainees, but that there is anecdotal evidence that some of them are being denied medication while in detention and that they are being given only one month’s supply of ARVs when they are removed? Will the Government consult the British HIV Association with a view to adopting the guidelines which it published two years ago, including provision of a three-month supply of medication to those who are deported, which would give patients at least some chance of finding an alternative source of treatment?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, while asylum seekers are in the UK and have not exhausted their appeal rights, they are entitled to the full range of NHS services. Asylum seekers who are returned should be supplied with sufficient drugs to meet their needs and tide them over until they can access drugs in their country of return. However, I will look further into the issue raised by the noble Lord and come back to him.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, I declare an interest; I serve on the Select Committee on HIV/AIDS. The noble Earl said that people who are awaiting news of their asylum status are entitled to the full range of NHS services. Will he confirm that in fact people who test positive for HIV are not able to access free treatment?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, as far as I know those who test positive for HIV in the UK, as long as they have not exhausted all their appeal rights, have exactly the same access to NHS treatment as the rest of the population. If the noble Baroness knows any different, I would be grateful for the details.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the issue is whether the person being returned is fit to fly. That decision is made by NHS health professionals, not by UK Border Agency staff.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, Mr Nick Clegg promised that the coalition would end the detention of the children of asylum seekers. Why, eight months after the election, has that not been done?
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, I speak as a former member of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. Does the noble Earl agree that there is a large amount of case law relating to the returning of asylum seekers who are sick to their own countries, and that on the whole the tribunal abides by this case law?
The Countess of Mar
There is a large amount of case law that, on the whole, the tribunal abides by in reaching its assessments.
Children: Policy
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the report Early Intervention: The Next Steps will affect their policies on children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the Government welcome Graham Allen’s report, which is a helpful contribution to their thinking on social mobility. We also welcome its acknowledgement of the importance of the early years and good parenting. We are considering the report carefully and will also take account of the recommendations of other reviews looking at related issues: by Frank Field on child poverty, Dame Clare Tickell on the Early Years Foundation Stage and Professor Eileen Munro on child protection.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
I thank the noble Lord for that encouraging Answer. Does he agree that many families bringing up young children need support—sometimes quite a lot of support? Will levels of funding for programmes such as Sure Start, and for family intervention programmes, be maintained?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, that parents need support. As far as concerns Sure Start, the Government believe that they have put enough funding into the early intervention grant to make sure that there is a national network of Sure Start children's centres. The Government have not ring-fenced that funding. Our approach is that local authorities should be able to decide on local priorities. However, they have statutory responsibilities to ensure sufficient provision, and they have to consult before opening Sure Start children's centres or making any significant change to their provision.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the wide range of responsibilities that local authorities have for children. What will the Government do to ensure that the quality of services is maintained as the authorities set various priorities around their cuts? Will the Government look at the various means of inspection such as Ofsted to ensure that standards are as high in welfare as they are in education?
Lord Hill of Oareford
A number of good points are wrapped up in that question. Across the piece, the Government will need to ensure the spread of good practice and concentrate approaches for the families most in need of help. I will take back with me the point about the importance of inspection. As I said in my first Answer, a number of reviews are currently going on that are looking at a range of different but connected issues. The Government will set out later in the spring—I think in May—a strategy to bring these strands together.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, how satisfied is the Minister with the rigour of the methodology proposed in the Allen review for assessing the effectiveness of early intervention initiatives? He may well be aware that a number of experts have considerable reservations about that methodology. Will he look into it?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am aware of the recommendations in Graham Allen’s report and the approach that he advocates of concentrating on the 19, as he would judge it, most approved standards. However, his recommendation is based on an American methodology which is different from the one commonly used in this country, and that is one issue that the Government will need to reflect on in framing their response to the Allen review.
Baroness Ritchie of Brompton
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is a travesty that only 1.4 per cent of health service spending goes on primary prevention? Can he impress on his noble friend the Minister the importance of assessing the effectiveness of early intervention, even if it takes a little while to understand it?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with my noble friend. So far as concerns the Department of Health, the number of health visitors is to be increased by 4,200 and there will be a doubling in the size of family nurse partnerships. However, I shall certainly relay the thrust of my noble friend’s remarks.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the report from 4Children and the Daycare Trust which suggests that 250 Sure Start centres are to close and that a further 2,000 will cut back their services? If the Minister finds that local authorities are not able to fund them, who will deliver these early intervention services?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I have already replied concerning the Government’s policy towards Sure Start’s children’s centres. I hope that we will be able to find more efficient ways of delivering services across the piece. One idea that the Prime Minister talked about was bringing together budgets in various areas with early intervention places instead of having silos of different funding. I take the noble Baroness’s point: there are concerns about Sure Start children’s centres and funding, and my honourable friend Sarah Teather is monitoring the situation. We all have a shared interest in making sure that those services are delivered as effectively as possible and, as I said, local authorities have a statutory responsibility to make sure that they are.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Those kinds of priority targets relate very much to the groups of people that the Government will want to ensure get the support they need. So far as concerns children with special educational needs, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will know that my honourable friend Sarah Teather will shortly be bringing forward a Green Paper on special educational needs and disability, and that will be an opportunity to make sure that those services are provided.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, does the Minister agree that good parenting skills are crucial to giving young people the best start in life? Does this not underline the need for schools to teach these skills as part of the core curriculum?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree very much with the noble Baroness about the importance of parenting and early years. School has an extremely important part to play. As she will know, the department is carrying out a review of PSHE, and that will provide us with an opportunity to look at the whole range of educational services delivered as part of PSHE.
British Film Institute: Children’s Film Funding
Baroness Benjamin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will ensure that a proportion of the funding provided by the UK Film Council to the British Film Institute will be ring-fenced for the production of films whose target audience is children.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, following extensive consultation with the film industry, from April 2011 the British Film Institute will manage all lottery awards for films, including funding for film production. Lottery policy includes a requirement to encourage funded projects to inspire children and young people. That policy will remain in place while the Government conduct a review of film policy with the BFI later this year. The use of ring-fencing can be considered within that.
Baroness Benjamin
I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. Does she agree that the decline not just in children’s television drama but also in children’s UK film production denies our talented writers, our actors and production teams a creative outlet? Would my noble friend encourage the BFI to adopt the Danish film institute’s model, so that there is a solution to this crisis? The Danes commit 25 per cent of their annual film budget to children’s film and animation productions, which attract co-production funds. I take this opportunity to congratulate “The King’s Speech” on its wonderful UK production.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Benjamin on her topical Question today, following the tremendous success of British films at the BAFTA awards last night. One cannot fail to feel proud, having watched all those talented, fine actors. The noble Baroness has a point on the percentage of films for children, but Her Majesty’s Government feel that children are catered for in film productions. There were 191 films produced for children and young people in 2010. That represents 30 per cent of the total number of films passed by the British Board of Film Classification, which is slightly more than the Danish model.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I should remind the House of my declaration of interests at the Second Reading of the Public Bodies Bill. The Minister has already referred to the remarkable success of “The King’s Speech”, not just at the BAFTA awards last night but at award ceremonies around the world. We look forward to the Oscars as well. Is the Minister aware that the “The King’s Speech” was brought to cinema screens by the UK Film Council, which has now been abolished by this Government for reasons best known to them? How confident are the Government that the efforts that they are making to restructure support for the British film industry will result in the replication of the success of “The King’s Speech” next year and in years to come?
Baroness Rawlings
Yes, my Lords, “The King’s Speech” did fantastically well. Actually it had lottery money as well as UK Film Council money. The BFI and UKFC are now working together on due diligence procedures and will publish a detailed transfer plan shortly. That plan will provide a clear timetable, setting out which functions are moving across and when.
Viscount Falkland
My Lords, I declare an interest: my wife is the director of an international film sales company. My noble friend Lady Benjamin has introduced an important and interesting component to our film scene, that of children’s film. However, it seems to me that the answers of the Minister have been rather pointed towards what I would call British acceptance of children’s films. Of course, children’s films are hugely popular around the world and we are very good at making them. We saw our talent last night: it is there waiting to make films for children, which should be sold on a proper strategy. Is it not the case that you create an industry by creating a relationship of sales to foreign film distributors so that they are always watching you and will always buy your films? They are always pre-sold, so you build up trust.
Baroness Rawlings
My noble friend Lord Falkland is absolutely right. In addition to the films especially made for children, government support to a number of film activities focused on children and young people helps especially abroad.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting
My Lords, I declare an interest as a previous vice-chairman of the BFI under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Attenborough, who, as we all regret, cannot be in his place today.
As the Minister will know, in the past, children's film was financed from the Eady levy and the funding administered by the Children's Film and Television Foundation with great success. If the principle of ring-fencing is accepted—I get the feeling from the Minister that it is—would it not make sense for that organisation to carry out the same role in future?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Evans, on his successful time as vice-chairman of the British Film Institute. Ring-fencing is definitely being considered by the Government at the moment.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, also mentioned the making of TV and radio programmes. Will the Minister remind the BBC and other channels of their public service obligation to provide good and interesting films for children, because they have been sadly in decline over recent years?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, makes an important point, but within the framework of the BBC charter and agreement, the provision for TV drama created specifically for children is a matter for the BBC; there is no provision for the Government to intervene.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, does the Minister agree that as well as film and radio for children, which are hugely important, the making of cartoon films—I am here thinking especially of S4C—has been a major contribution and one that can be exported around the world? I hope that nothing will happen to prevent S4C continuing its excellent work.
Baroness Rawlings
Concerning that, the Government also support FILMCLUB, which is a free service helping state schools to set up film clubs for children and young people, to do exactly that.
Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2011
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 14 October and 18 November 2010 be approved.
Relevant documents: 4th and 9th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 25 January.
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2011
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
That the draft orders laid before the House on 13 and 24 January be approved.
Relevant documents: 13th and 14th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 7 February.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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15:29 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 153 / Noes: 236 - Amendment 1 disagreed.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, today's date was fixed without consultation. Had we been consulted, we would have said that there was no reason not to comply with the usual interval of three working days between Report and Third Reading, meaning that Third Reading would have taken place tomorrow.
I raise the point not to invite debate or to seek change now but only so that the precedential effect of this is as limited as possible.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
“( ) Party election broadcasts during the referendum period will not be broadcast if they deal with pictures or implied support of any particular side in the referendum on the voting system for parliamentary elections.”
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, for noble Lords who are interested in this amendment, perhaps I may start again. The first amendment on today’s Marshalled List deals with expenditure on the campaigns in support of or against the alternative vote system. My amendment to Clause 5, and that of my noble friend Lord Bach, seeks to prevent a party political broadcast that supports one or other side in the AV debate being broadcast. I want to achieve that because there are complex and, in my view, sensible rules that one would have changed in a number of respects, but in principle it is sensible that there are rules to ensure that no one campaign can expend significantly more than another in support of or against AV. These rules can be got around if a political party can use its expenditure limits to support or oppose AV in the campaign.
My amendment seeks to prevent any political party using the party political broadcasts that it gets from the state, on the radio or on television from supporting or opposing the AV system. It is of practical significance in this particular debate on AV—whether or not we should introduce the change on the referendum—because the AV referendum, as noble Lords will know, is being combined with other elections in which parties will seek support for individual candidates.
In addition to broadcasts relating to the alternative vote referendum, party political broadcasts in support of individual candidates in local authority elections will be made available for the state and in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elections. The Tories—the Conservatives—and the Liberal Democrats, as well as the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, will put out party political broadcasts throughout this period.
One party—the Liberal Democrats—unreservedly supports the change to the alternative vote system. It will be possible for it to put into its broadcasts indications of support for the alternative vote in the referendum, which will give in effect a significant broadcast. I do not know how many broadcasts there will be during the election period—perhaps five or six on the television and the radio. It gives them an edge that is not caught by the expenditure limits that are rightly put in the Bill. The amendment has the effect of saying that if you support AV or are against AV in your party political broadcast, that broadcast should not be granted.
There is already a section in the 2000 referendum Act that says that a party political broadcast on the television or radio cannot be broadcast if its purpose or its principal purpose is to support or oppose a view in the referendum. The question is whether it is better just to leave the law as it is and to let broadcasters decide the purpose or principal purpose, which is quite a difficult question of analysis. It is reasonable to assume that the principal purpose of a party political broadcast by the Liberal Democrats will be to promote the Liberal Democrats, but a subsidiary purpose might well be, from their point of view, to support the alternative vote system, which is a question of quite fine judgment. Or is it better, as I submit it is, to be quite clear about what you are saying and simply to say, “If you support one or other side in your party political broadcast, it should not be broadcast.”? That means that the political parties, in particular the Liberal Democrats but also any party that opposes them, will know precisely where they stand.
This point was first raised in Committee and it was agreed that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and I would speak, but we were not able to do so. I then received a letter on Report just as that stage was coming to an end, so it was not possible to debate it at that point. The Minister, Mr Harper, was kind enough to ring me at ten to two on Friday afternoon last week to discuss it, and he sent me a letter that arrived in my hands at approximately a quarter past two today. Because of that sequence of events, it has been possible, unusually, to raise the point on Report today.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
In the light of the wording of his amendment—which is a bit strange, if I may say so, particularly the section that reads,
“will not be broadcast if they deal with pictures or implied support of any particular side”—
what if the Lib Dems put out an election broadcast, let us say, six weeks before the referendum in which they said, for example, that they are strong supporters of constitutional reform across the board, or words to that effect? Would that fall foul of this amendment?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I accept the noble Lord’s implied, or indeed express, criticism. My wording is not good and that is my fault. It would have been much better if the amendment had said: “Party election broadcasts during the referendum period will not be broadcast if they support any particular side in the referendum on the voting system”. It would have been much simpler if I had just said that, and then one would have known where one stood.
On whether the proposition put by the noble Lord in his question would fall foul of my amendment, if the six-week period is within the referendum period, then it would. I would have to check with the Minister because I am not sure whether the six-week period is within the referendum period. However, if we assume that it is within the referendum period, then saying, “We are strong supporters of constitutional change”, implies support, I would have thought. I beg to move.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, has indicated, this matter has been debated in Committee and on Report, and it is clear that the Government have taken a different view from him. However, I accept that it is helpful for us to be able to have a further exchange on the issue.
The Government believe that the framework that is set out in this Bill and indeed in other legislation is sufficient for this referendum. Perhaps I can establish some common ground. We agree with the principle that party election broadcasts should not be used as referendum campaign broadcasts. However, Section 127 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 prevents the main purpose of any broadcast other than a referendum campaign broadcast being to procure or promote an outcome in a referendum, which we believe is sufficient reassurance. In other words, it ensures that a party election broadcast does not become a referendum campaign broadcast. I think there is common ground here and that the mischief which the noble and learned Lord identified—although I would not necessarily accept it—is an incidental part of an election broadcast in which one side or the other is endorsed.
Our view is that there is clear merit in maintaining some flexibility in this area while acknowledging the clear limits already imposed by Section 127. Such flexibility might enable, for example, the inclusion of a brief statement during a party election broadcast that referred to the referendum and to whether the party supported a particular outcome. Although the noble and learned Lord did not say it, I understand from him that he would find nothing wrong with the existence of the referendum being referred to or indeed with an encouragement to vote; it is the endorsement of a particular yes or no position that he seeks to address.
If such a reference was an expression of a party’s wider policy on matters—for example, on political reform—that were of relevance to the elections on 5 May, one might say that precluding mention of that position in a related election broadcast could have an adverse impact on campaigning for a particular party in those elections. To pick up on the point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I can confirm that six weeks would be within the relevant campaign period for the referendum. I understood the noble and learned Lord to agree with the proposition that if in that broadcast a party was to support, let us say, constitutional reform—I do not think that my noble friend even specified a particular outcome of the referendum—that would fall foul of the law if his amendment were passed.
I ask the House to consider that to legislate to forbid a party to articulate its legitimate policy position is an important step to take.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I have an important question for the Minister as to what happens during the broadcast. He referred to flexibility. He is a Liberal Democrat Minister in the coalition. Will he assure us that the flexibility to which he referred will preclude in a Liberal Democrat broadcast any reference to the fact that more than 50 per cent of the electorate would be required to secure the election of a Member of Parliament? In other words, if there is flexibility, I seek to be assured that it in no way leads to misleading statements being made on the 50 per cent requirement.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I have two points in response. Speaking as a member of the Administration, I am in no position to offer detailed assurances on the content of a party political broadcast when that party is only one part of the coalition. However, I shall indicate what the dynamic might be in how the broadcasting authorities treat this issue and, indeed, are doing so—it is not hypothetical.
We believe that it is ultimately a matter for the broadcasters to see that the rules in Section 127 on the content of party election broadcasts, together with relevant guidance issued under the Communications Act 2003, are adhered to. That is the Government’s position. I accept that the noble and learned Lord might disagree with it, but we have not yet heard any compelling reason to convince us that that stance is wrong. The proposed approach would in any case still require broadcasters to take a view on whether the proposed content in a broadcast complied with the new rule. Broadcasters would have to make some sort of judgment as to whether the content of a party election broadcast indicated a preference for a particular referendum outcome. Such a judgment might well be in the field of whether a general endorsement of constitutional reform fell within that or whether the content had to be much more specific, endorsing a yes/no position.
As I indicated on Report, the chair of the Broadcasters’ Liaison Group has already written to the political parties, drawn their attention to Section 127 of the PPERA and asked them to contact him if they intend to include any reference to the referendum in a party election broadcast in order to ascertain whether any reference crosses the line into Section 127 territory and could in the group’s view be unlawful. We believe that these lines of communication will clarify how the legislative framework will apply in the context of the combination of the referendum with other polls on 5 May. The framework for regulating party election broadcasts sits under the Communications Act 2003 and within the broadcasters’ guidance. We believe that that, combined with the Section 127 provisions in PPERA 2000, provides the necessary clarity.
That said, the Government acknowledge the important issue that has been raised by the noble and learned Lord in tabling this and other amendments at earlier stages. The PPERA framework for referendum regulation was introduced by the previous Government and, despite the confidence that I have expressed in the legislation, aspects of the framework might need a longer-term refresh. I reassure the noble and learned Lord that the Government will reflect further on these points in the light of the referendum and the experience of the poll on 5 May. In the mean time, I urge the noble and learned Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his speech, but there is a fundamental problem with it; he referred to flexibility, but the amendment seeks to establish the principle that in a party political broadcast you should not be able to support an outcome in the AV Bill. The Electoral Commission says that it supports the intention behind the amendment, but goes on to say that it is not sure that it is necessary to achieve the intended outcome because of the main purpose issue in Section 127. Surely it is better that there should be clarity about what is and is not allowed—and what should not be allowed is support for an outcome in a party political broadcast, because that would drive a coach and horses through the expenditure limits. I seek the opinion of the House.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
In the event that the amendment is successful, it seems an awful pity that we should use this language. It makes no sense as drafted, as I think the noble and learned Lord accepts. Is there a way, even at this late stage, in which we can adopt his alternative language, which is much clearer?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, the Clerk, brutally, is shaking his head. I would be willing to adopt the noble and learned Lord’s approach to this matter. However, if the House adopts the approach that I am taking, I anticipate that the Government will either reject the amendment in the other place, or, if having had time to think about it the amendment is accepted there, the House of Commons could then tidy it up. I respectfully and tentatively suggest that the House should vote on the principle of whether there should be a prohibition on political parties being able to support or oppose the AV referendum in their party political broadcasts. If my amendment is carried, it can be tidied up or rejected in the House of Commons later.
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
My Lords, we are at Third Reading and the noble and learned Lord has sought to test the opinion of the House. He has taken one interruption, but I fear that if we have multiple interruptions we will prolong the debate. With the greatest respect, I suggest that we should now continue to a Division.
Lord Rooker
“( ) In section 1(2)—
(a) “the electorate” is defined as those persons entitled to vote in the referendum, as defined in 2;(b) the turnout figure is to be calculated on the basis that 100% turnout is defined as the total number of individuals who are entitled to vote in the referendum, as defined in section 2;(c) and “vote” is defined as votes counted under Part 1 of this Act.”
Lord Rooker
My Lords, I shall not detain the House too long. I think that it was generally accepted, after the vote last Monday on Report, that Amendment A1, which the House carried by just one vote and which is now in the Bill at Clause 1(2), requires tweaking. That amendment stated that less than 40 per cent of the electorate turning out meant that the vote was not binding; in other words, it has come back to Parliament, to a Minister. We had a brief discussion across the Floor that the amendment needs tweaking—and I fully accept that, but this is not that tweak.
Clause 8 is binding. That is accepted, and there is no problem about that. The amendment carried last week simply states that it is not binding if there is a turnout of less than 40 per cent, so it is not fatal. It is not a threshold, and it does not wreck the change. The amendment passed last week is a constraint that limits action.
I am moving Amendment 2 today as a result of a very long discussion last Thursday in the Political Reform and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place after we had finished our proceedings on the Bill. The witnesses were the Electoral Commission and Professor Johnston. I have to admit that I watched all the proceedings of that committee, some two hours, on Saturday afternoon, so I gave up quite a bit of time. In all honesty, I have to say—and I watched a bit of it twice, just to get it right—that there was a misinterpretation of the amendment this House passed last Monday by the Electoral Commission, some members of the committee and the chair, which was bordering on the wilful because the context always was that of a fatal threshold. In other words, the whole lot failed without a 40 per cent turnout. That is not what the House passed last week. What it said was that if the turnout is not 40 per cent, the referendum is not binding. The implication was that we have to make it discretionary, so that the Minister can come back. If the turnout is 10 per cent, it does not matter what the result is. The Houses of Parliament could still pass it, so it is non-fatal. The whole discussion in the Select Committee was based on the fact that it is a killer threshold. I was quite astonished at that.
The amendment the House passed last week was a compromise between having a consultative referendum and a binding referendum. Frankly, when the Prime Minister was asked about the issue by Christopher Chope last Wednesday at Question Time, he started to say that, generally speaking, in this country, we do not have thresholds at referendums—as I said, this is not a threshold—but generally in this country, we do not have binding referendums either. This is the first we have ever had. I do not know whether anyone has drawn that to the attention of the Prime Minister—and I add that I will be happy to share a no platform with him during the referendum.
This issue goes well beyond what has happened in the past. At no time during the Select Committee discussion was the unbinding bit of the Bill ever raised. The discussion proceeded on the basis that we cannot measure turnout, because there is no national register, and cannot measure what a vote is. That is what the Electoral Commission said to the Select Committee. We cannot measure the turnout because it is too complicated. We do not even know what a vote is because it is not defined. What is a vote? Does that mean we count the spoilt papers as well as those that count? All that was trotted out before the Select Committee without any challenge. Then the size of the register was raised. Given that we have legislated on the basis that by common consent there are 3.5 million people missing from the register and hundreds of thousands of voters entered twice, either as undergraduates or second-home owners, it could be argued that there is a distinct lack of precision about the register in the first place for all purposes, let alone this one.
It seems to me to be reasonable to call the electorate those people defined in Clause 2 as entitled to vote. The vote is those counted under Part 1. That gives clarity. The Bill sets out the electorate in Clause 2, on which we had long debates. The vote is defined as voters who are counted under Part 1 of the Act, namely those who are yes or no. Those are the only votes that count. Spoiled votes do not count. I would have thought the Electoral Commission would have been aware of this, yet it has raised these issues as if, if there is a little doubt about the result, the whole thing is down the plug hole. It is not. It simply becomes unbinding. That is my worry.
To conclude, if it becomes the case—
Lord Tyler
Could the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, clarify one point? The Electoral Commission points out that there is some doubt about his definitions. In particular, does he accept that the register may be considerably out of date by the date of the referendum? For example, anybody who has died in the intervening period would, under the terms of his previous amendment, be counted as a no. Every abstention is, effectively, a no when it comes to looking at his threshold. Does the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, accept that the Electoral Commission may not be right about everything but it is correct in saying that his current amendment is defective?
Lord Rooker
It is certainly wrong about it being fatal; I will argue that until the cows come home. The Electoral Commission bordered on being wilful. I was about to come to the point that the noble Lord raised, which is a very fair one, about the register. My point is this: after the referendum, when everything is counted, if it comes down to such a fine definition that we have to look at the number of people currently on the register who died or left the country before 5 May—in addition to such elements as foreigners who are able to vote in some elections but not for Westminster—we will have precisely the situation that I seek to avoid in a binding referendum. If all those factors come into play—that is, if the result is narrow and there is an argument over the numbers—it will be the very reason why we should not have a binding referendum in the first place.
My compromise is to say that the threshold should be 40 per cent. My original compromise was that it should all be consulted on. The House threw that out by 17 votes in November. That is my point. If it comes down to the fact that these issues start to matter, we will have a serious problem on our hands. Therefore, if the referendum was not binding, Parliament could then look at it, Ministers could advise Parliament, we could take a rational view and maybe—I fully accept this—still go ahead and introduce AV. This amendment does not stop the introduction of AV. If the circumstances are such that we have that problem, we will also have a problem that is even bigger.
I have listened to what the Electoral Commission told the Select Committee and to the chairman of the committee, who swore blind that she voted for this amendment in the Commons last year. She did not. The amendment in the Commons last year, which was defeated by around 500 votes to a couple of dozen was on a killer, fatal threshold. The Labour Party voted against it and quite right, too. If the threshold was not met, that would be it—the referendum would be off. That is not what this is about. Those who refuse to accept that are being disingenuous about the situation we have arrived at. It is not too late.
In other words, this amendment is directly consequential on what the House passed last Monday. Irrespective of what the Government choose to do in the Commons in the morning, it would be wrong to reject it—I make no assumptions either way—on the basis that the Electoral Commission said that it cannot define “votes” and “the electorate” if we cannot today add this consequential bit to the amendment we passed last Monday. One flows from the other. If the argument is not used tomorrow, this does not apply. However, is it intended that the Electoral Commission brief the Commons and say, “This won’t stand. As we told the Political and Constitutional Affairs Committee last week, ‘votes’ and ‘electorate’ are not defined.”? Since I have made a modest attempt to define them in the context of the Bill, that would be quite wrong. The amendment should be added to what we passed last Monday.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I thought I heard my noble friend be told by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that not voting would count as a no vote in the referendum. This worries me deeply. With my noble friend’s amendment, Parliament will be able to decide, however many people vote for or against AV. That is my understanding. By not voting, people will not contribute to a no vote barring AV being adopted. It is merely a question of whether it becomes automatically binding on Parliament or whether it becomes something that Parliament can judge. I was deeply worried by the description of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Skelmersdale)
My Lords, the House should remind itself that we are at Third Reading. The amendment has not yet been moved. There will be an opportunity for any noble Lord to address questions to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, when he decides what to do with his amendment in due course. May I take it that this amendment has been moved?
The Deputy Speaker
Unfortunately, there is a printing mistake in paragraph (a), which should at the end read,
“as defined in section 2”,
not just, “as defined in 2”.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is an important point. I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Rooker on the meaning of his amendment. I completely support him when he says that this is not a fatal threshold, by which I mean that if more than 40 per cent of those entitled to turn out vote, there is no issue because the turnout threshold is met. If the figure is below 40 per cent, the position is exactly the same as in the Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act, in which case it becomes an advisory referendum and it is for Parliament then to decide whether to pass an Act of Parliament. I say with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that his question was misleading as far as the public are concerned in relation to the threshold that has been put in and was also misleading in relation to what had happened in the House of Commons in this regard.
The second issue is a statutory construction issue. I do not think that it is necessary to put in a definition of “electorate” in order to make Clause 1(2), as amended on Report, make sense. Clause 1(2) states:
“If less than 40% of the electorate vote in the referendum, the result shall not be binding”.
The “electorate” in the referendum is defined in Clause 2, as amended on Report. In answer to the Electoral Commission’s question posed in its briefing, that will include people who are not on the roll at the beginning of the period but are put on to it during the campaign. Therefore, I do not think that any amendment is required in relation to that.
The Electoral Commission asked what would happen in relation to a spoilt ballot paper and whether the person who spoils their ballot paper, whether deliberately or by mistake, is counted as somebody who has voted in the referendum in order to satisfy Clause 1(2), as amended on Report. My view is that they should be counted as having voted in the referendum in those circumstances but I should be interested to hear what the Government have to say about that. I suspect that there is an answer to that which probably does not require amendment. On the basis that the first question raised by the Electoral Commission has an easy answer and the second one has an answer, I suspect that amendment is not required.
The third issue, which is separate from those two matters of statutory construction, is the approach of this House to amendments. Where an amendment is passed by this House which is going to go back to the Commons, whether the Government agree with it or not and irrespective of whether they intend to seek to persuade the Commons to overrule it, the approach, as I understand it, is that the Government, who have access to parliamentary counsel and a full team, do what is necessary to make the Bill whole in the sense of it being consistent with the amendment that this House has agreed to so that when the House of Commons is addressing the amendment, which may be opposed by the Government, it is addressing a Bill which is consistent in all its parts. This would normally be done by amendments from the mover, but quite often it is not. I would expect the Government not to allow an inconsistent Bill to go back to the Commons but to move such consequential amendments as are necessary to make sense of the Bill. In those circumstances, I take the fact that the Government are moving no amendments in respect of my noble friend Lord Rooker’s threshold amendment, if I may call it that, to mean that the Government, having consulted with parliamentary counsel and the Bill team, take the view that no issue that requires further amendment has been raised. That may well be right and is, in effect, the opinion I have expressed on the two difficulties posed by the Electoral Commission in its briefing to the House.
For the purposes of process, which is important, I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, could confirm that the broad approach I have defined is the one taken by the Government.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, seeks to clarify two points in relation to the amendment in his name carried at Report stage; namely, that if fewer than 40 per cent of the electorate vote in the referendum, the vote shall not be binding. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, indicated that the amendment was directly consequential on the amendment passed on Report. Paragraph (a) of this amendment defines “electorate” in reference to Clause 2, which sets out who is entitled to vote in the referendum. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, says that the amendment was unnecessary. We on the other hand think that it is to some degree helpful to clarify what defines the electorate for the purposes of the referendum. It would exclude European Union nationals who can vote in some elections. It obviously includes Peers, who would not be entitled to vote at a Westminster parliamentary election.
However, this is more of a political point, because there is no way of dealing with it otherwise. The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right to say that those who come onto the roll, perhaps as a result of a campaign encouraging people to register, would be included in the electorate, but that account could not be taken of, for example, undergraduates—who, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, might be registered at two places but can vote only once—and those who have died since the canvass which took place perhaps some five months earlier. Those points are perhaps more of a political, rather than a technical, nature.
Lord Maxton
My Lords, I accept the point about people who have registered more than once in separate constituencies, but it is very demanding on their honesty. What checks will be made on whether they have voted more than once in the referendum? If any check is made, what action will be taken against someone who has voted twice?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I cannot indicate what checks are likely to be made. It is obviously easier to check if that happens in the same constituency, but if a person is registered in two far-flung parts of the country, it is not readily obvious as to what check can be made, other than the fact that voting twice is of course illegal. Therefore, if it were somehow proved that that had happened, the person would have to face the consequences set out in the schedule to the Bill.
Paragraphs (b) and (c) of the amendment define 100 per cent turnout as the total number of people entitled to vote in the referendum under Clause 2, and “vote” as “votes counted” under Part 1 of the Bill. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, indicated, that means that the turnout figure would not include those who had turned out to vote on the day, but whose votes, for whatever reason, were deemed to be void. That is because paragraph 42 of Schedule 2 to the Bill specifies that void votes should not be counted, albeit they are recorded by the counting officer.
If eligible voters go to the polling station on 5 May and vote, they have in fact turned out, and should be included within the turnout figure, even if their vote is subsequently deemed to be invalid. The noble and learned Lord agreed with that proposition.
The amendment is not ideally worded. It is silent on whether a single independent body should be made responsible for verifying the turnout and whether the 40 per cent figure has been met. It leaves it unclear whether that would be left to the Government or would be a matter for the Electoral Commission. However, despite the drafting issues, it would not be helpful for us to be obstructive, so it will be for Members of the other place to decide whether the amendment and the one that it supports are acceptable.
Perhaps the most important issue raised by the amendment is not what it does but what it does not do. It does not address the problem with the original amendment because it does nothing to change Clause 8(1), which still imposes a legal obligation on the Minister to implement the alternative vote. I fully accept the explanation of the amendment given by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—that the intention is to make the referendum result non-binding if a 40 per cent turnout is not reached. He is right that it would not be fatal. Nevertheless, it is an important and significant provision. The effect of retaining Clause 8(1) is that the obligation to implement AV will apply even if the turnout is less than 40 per cent.
I am sure that that is not what the noble Lord intended by his amendment. I recognise that this matter should be dealt with before the Bill becomes law. We understand and share the concern that any statutory provision should be technically effective. We are considering the way forward on this issue and will set out our plans when the Bill returns to the other place. It will be for Members there to decide tomorrow how to respond when considering your Lordships' amendments. On the basis that the amendment goes some way to clarifying the position in the light of the earlier amendment, it is not our intention to resist it.
Lord Rooker
I am extremely grateful for that response from the Minister. I do not mind whether or not spoiled votes are counted as long as we have clarity and rules.
On Clause 8(1), the “may/must issue”, I fully accept that if this stayed in the Bill according to the wish of the other place, the Government would have to make available, in the exchange of amendments, the discretionary part for the constraint—it is not a threshold—to be made to work. That is all that I seek to do. If it comes down to having an argument about whether or not someone has died in order to determine whether we should have a major change to our constitution, we will have a serious problem on our hands. I am extremely grateful for the way that the Minister has dealt with the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick
Lord Pannick
My Lords, the amendment is entirely consequential on the amendment to Clause 11 that was carried on Report last Wednesday. It is a tidying-up amendment. I hope that it is entirely uncontroversial.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, indicated, this is a consequential tidying-up amendment following the amendment that was passed last week. We had a good debate on the issues. The House made its decision and we share the concern that any statutory provision should be technically effective. The Government are considering the way forward on this issue. We will set out our plans when the Bill returns to the other place tomorrow and your Lordships' amendments are considered. On that basis, the Government do not object to the amendment.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, the amendment responds to the indication given on Report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, that an accommodation could be achieved on the treatment of the City of London. Noble Lords who followed the exchanges on the City of London, in Committee and on Report, will know that the point at issue is the inclusion of the whole of the City of London in one parliamentary constituency. This requirement of current legislation is noticeably absent from the Bill. My earlier amendment sought to deal with the issue by requiring the whole City to be included in one constituency so far as practicable. A qualification was included to avoid an absolute obligation that might have collided with the allocation method enshrined in the Bill. I also related the requirement to the City being seen as a “special authority” to emphasise its individuality. The noble and learned Lord the Minister acknowledged that individuality in his response on Report, and I am wholly content not to include that reference in the amendment which I have now tabled in agreement with the Minister.
I shall briefly explain the effect of the amendment. It adds a reference to the City of London as a whole into the interpretation of “local government boundaries” in rule 11 of Schedule 2, which is inserted by Clause 11 of the Bill. That, in turn, makes the City of London as an entity a factor for the Boundary Commission to take into account in any future review. Unlike a number of amendments with which your Lordships’ House has been concerned, this is about keeping a small area with particular attributes but few parliamentary electors together in what will inevitably be a much larger single parliamentary constituency. That is why reference in the amendment to the City of London as a whole but not to its sub-divisions, such as wards, is so relevant.
One point not covered in the amendment is the inclusion of a reference to the City of London in the name of the parliamentary constituency. Although I appreciate that the question is ultimately a matter for the Boundary Commission, it is, I think, in order for me to invite the Minister to express a view on the appropriateness of such a reference in any future constituency which includes the City.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to record my gratitude to all the Members of your Lordships’ House across the Chamber who have actively supported this case. In particular, I thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin, who has supported me throughout, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who earlier tabled her own amendment, and finally my noble friend Lord Newby, who also added his name to my original amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville has explained, the amendment adds the boundaries of the City of London to the local authority boundaries which the Boundary Commission for England may take into account when drawing up constituencies. I thank my noble friend for his amendment and for the interest which he and the other noble Lords and the noble Baroness, together with others, have shown in this matter, and for their persuasiveness in pressing their argument. I believe that his proposed wording provides the best way of including the boundaries of the City in the commission’s considerations, and the Government are content to accept the amendment.
My noble friend raised the question of the name of the constituency and indicated that it is of course a matter for the Boundary Commission to decide. I see a very good argument for including the City by name in any constituency that it falls within, and no doubt those who feel strongly about the matter will be able to make representations to that effect to the commission as part of the review process. Therefore, I am pleased to be able to support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
“( ) The Chief Counting Officer must take whatever steps the officer thinks appropriate to facilitate co-operation between that officer and the officers to whom sub-paragraph (3) applies in taking any steps under sub-paragraph (1) or (2).”
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I hope that I can move this amendment even more briefly than I did in Committee and on Report. I, too, thank many Members of the House who have supported the principle of the amendment, not least the opposition Front Bench.
It is a straightforward, practical and modest amendment but it goes to what many noble Lords will think is one of the hearts of the Bill—the bit which seeks to ensure that as many of our countrymen as possible take part in the referendum. In paragraph 10 of Schedule 1—I pay tribute to the Government for including this from the outset—there is a series of provisions under the heading “Encouraging participation”. Among them is one which casts upon each of four officials—the chief counting officer, a regional counting officer, a counting officer and a registration officer—a formal duty to encourage participation in the referendum. As noble Lords will see from the way in which I have drafted the amendment, it simply maximises the effect of the provisions in the Bill by ensuring that someone seeks to co-ordinate the activity between those four sets of officials. Without someone having that responsibility—not to order them what to do but to facilitate co-operation—one might find black holes and serious and unnecessary overlapping and, of course, we have little time in which to generate interest and informed interest in this referendum. The amendment simply seeks to do that.
If anyone has questions about how I have moved the amendment or about the amendment itself, I will be happy to answer them. I hope that that is sufficient to spread understanding of the amendment and I invite your Lordships’ appreciation of it. I beg to move.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, we support the amendment and we supported it previously. The noble Lord invited our appreciation of the amendment. I expressly appreciate the amendment for its drafting and also its mover who has spent a lifetime supporting participation of this sort. He thoroughly deserves to get his amendment.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Phillips for the amendment and I join in the general approbation of it. For all the difficulties that we have had during parts of this Bill, a common theme in all parts of the Chamber has been the importance of participation in the referendum process. As my noble friend indicated, this paragraph of the schedule does that anyway but he has highlighted the way in which it can be done even better. I am grateful to my noble friend for the constructive discussions we have had on this and the result of those is that the Government agree that the proposal adds useful clarification to the Bill, particularly by emphasising the importance of co-ordination and co-operation. I am pleased to urge the House to accept my noble friend’s amendment.
Middle East and North Africa
(13 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, with permission, I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, I will make a Statement on recent developments in the Middle East and north Africa. Over the last few weeks we have witnessed events of a truly historic nature in the region, including changes of government in Tunisia and Egypt and widespread calls for greater economic development and political participation. I visited Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the situation with our partners in the region.
I held talks in Tunis with interim Prime Minister Ghannouchi, who is overseeing ambitious plans to open up Tunisia’s political system, reform its constitution, revive its economy and prepare for free elections. I strongly welcomed these intentions and the steps that have been taken to sign up to international conventions on human rights. I met some inspiring young students whose motivations were a desire for the freedom, employment and human dignity that we enjoy in Europe. I believe that there is now a clear opportunity for a closer relationship between the UK and Tunisia. I discussed how the UK might support projects in Tunisia through our new Arab partnership fund, with new funding announced to this House on 1 February, which will support economic and political development across the region.
In Egypt, as in Tunisia, there is now a precious moment of opportunity for the people of Egypt to achieve a stable and democratic future. Yesterday, I spoke to the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and to the Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafik. I welcomed the statements of the higher military council promising a peaceful transition to civilian and democratic government, new elections and a reform of the Egyptian constitution.
Tahrir Square is calm today after yesterday’s announcements of the dissolution of Parliament and the suspension of the constitution. I encouraged the Egyptian Government to make further moves to accommodate the views of opposition figures and was pleased to hear from Prime Minister Shafik that members of the Opposition should be included in a reshuffled Cabinet during the week. We would also like to see a clear timetable for free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections and a genuinely inclusive dialogue about the country’s future. We welcome the military council’s commitment to all regional and international obligations and treaties.
Egypt is a sovereign country and we must not seek to dictate who runs its affairs. But we have been clear throughout this crisis that it is in our national interest as well as that of Egypt for it to seek to make a successful transition to a broad-based Government and an open and democratic society, and to an Egypt which carries its full and due weight as a leading nation in the Middle East and in the world. I believe we have been right to speak particularly strongly against repression or violence against protesters, journalists and human rights activists. We call now for the release of those detained during the demonstrations and steps to end the state of emergency, which curtails basic rights. The UK will always uphold the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech.
Looking to the future, it is vital and urgent to work with the European Union and other nations to support economic development and more open and flexible political systems in the region. We have begun discussions with the United States about co-ordinating our assistance. The Prime Minister discussed this with President Obama at the weekend, as I did with Secretary Clinton. We can help with the building blocks of open societies, knowing as we do that a stable democracy requires much more than just holding elections. We are also working closely with the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, and her officials. A task force has been set up in Brussels to put together a plan for immediate assistance and long-term support for Tunisia, and a plan of long-term economic and institutional assistance for Egypt.
The UK Government are in close communication with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to ensure that the international financial institutions are doing all they can to provide appropriate and timely support to Egypt. We have also received a request from the Egyptian Government to freeze the assets of several former Egyptian officials. We will of course co-operate with this request, working with EU and international partners, as we have done in the case of Tunisia. If there is any evidence of illegality or misuse of state assets, we will take firm and prompt action. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will discuss economic support and possible freezing measures relating to assets with European Union Finance Ministers tonight and tomorrow in Brussels, and has requested a discussion at ECOFIN tomorrow.
I hope the House will also join me in paying tribute to the staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and those who, over the last three weeks, have calmly and professionally run our embassy within yards of Tahrir Square while assisting the departure of thousands of British nationals from Egypt, and to the Ministry of Defence and the UK Border Agency. We will keep our travel advice under constant review.
The changes taking place in the region provide opportunities that should be seized, not feared. Egypt is a nation of more than 80 million people who should soon have the opportunity to choose their president and their representatives democratically. In Tunisia, more than 10 million people may now finally have the opportunity to unleash the economic potential that their geographic location and talented population put within their grasp, and to enjoy democratic freedoms.
However, this moment is not without risk. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Yemen, where I spent a day in meetings with President Saleh and members of the Opposition. I had three clear messages for the Government there. First, we want them to make progress on national dialogue with the opposition parties, including agreement on changes to the constitution and action to address the grievances of people in Yemen. Secondly, we have asked for and are now examining a prioritised and budgeted development plan for poverty reduction from the Yemeni Government so that we can establish a multi-donor trust fund for Yemen and be confident that funds are properly used. These issues will be the main focus of the next Friends of Yemen meeting in the coming months. We also look for intensified Yemeni efforts against the al-Qaeda threat on its territory. I know the House will salute the courage of our embassy staff in Yemen, who face the highest threat of any of our posts overseas and have twice been attacked by terrorists in the last year.
There is also a serious risk that Governments will draw the wrong conclusion from instability in the Middle East and pull back from efforts to restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. We should draw the opposite conclusion, which is that we need to see an urgent return to talks so that people’s legitimate aspirations for two states can be fulfilled through negotiations. Together with the recent steps that the Jordanian Government have taken to promote domestic reform, this was the main subject of my discussions with King Abdullah of Jordan. In a region of uncertainty, the certainty provided by an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians could be of immense significance.
Our Government are a friend to both Israelis and Palestinians. We are calling for both sides to show the visionary boldness to return to talks and make genuine compromises. Talks need to take place on the basis of clear parameters. In our view, the entire international community, including the United States, should now support 1967 borders as being the basis for resumed negotiations. The result should be two states, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both, and a fair settlement for refugees.
Finally, we must not allow our attention to be diverted from the grave danger of Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran claimed that it supported protesters in Egypt, but denied its own people the right of free expression today and placed opposition leaders under house arrest. Meanwhile, the threat from its nuclear programme has not diminished. Given Iran’s refusal to engage in genuine negotiations over its nuclear programme at the recent talks in Istanbul, we are now in talks with international partners about steps to increase legitimate peaceful pressure on Iran to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and the requirements of the IAEA.
All the issues that I have described underline how important the region is to our national interests. That is why our Government began from our first day in office a major, long-term effort to intensify Britain’s links with the countries of the Middle East, north Africa and the Gulf—in diplomacy, in trade, in defence and in education, health and civil society—as part of a distinctive British foreign policy towards the region.
I reaffirmed last week to leaders in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that we are committed to intensifying our engagement on foreign policy issues and will step up over the coming months our discussions with the Gulf states on Iran’s nuclear programme. We will also pursue firm engagement with countries where we do not see eye to eye but have a considerable interest in edging them towards a more constructive role, a process that I began when I visited Damascus two weeks ago for talks with President Assad.
At this time of opportunity and uncertainty, the UK will be an active and distinctive voice in the Middle East. We will send a constant message about how important it is to move in the direction of more open and flexible political systems and sound economic development, while respecting the different cultures, histories and traditions of each nation. Although we cannot set the pace of this change and must respect each country’s right to find its own way, we will be a reliable friend and partner to all those looking to do so and a staunch defender of the UK’s interests in the region”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this comprehensive Statement, which I am sure the whole House welcomes as an update on where we were even as short a time ago as last Friday, when the House had the opportunity to discuss the current situation in the Middle East and north Africa in a full debate.
The Statement rightly concentrated on the Foreign Secretary’s discussions in the region. Not only have Tunisia and Egypt seen changes in government; Jordan has, too. Although the head of state there remains the same, which I readily accept is the difference between that country and Tunisia and Egypt, it is important that the king of Jordan has decided to instigate a full-scale change in that country, too.
It is also important that Tunisia has even in the short time since the revolution—if that is the correct term for it; I believe that that is how Tunisians are describing it—decided to sign up to the international protocol on the abolition of capital punishment and all forms of torture. I believe that it has also signed up to the international protocol on embracing the procedures of the International Criminal Court. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm those points, which were raised in debate on Friday.
Only a few days ago, when we made our various contributions to the debate last Friday, we were all wondering what the weekend would bring; it took only a few short hours to show us what would happen next. I have heard a number of commentators lament the fact that the military high council has in effect taken over in Egypt and say that this amounts to martial law. However, I hope the Minister will agree that the army has been a formidable force for stability in that country. Although people have understandable concerns about what will happen next and about the timetable for free and fair elections, nevertheless the army has brought relative peace to the streets of Cairo much more effectively than the police did earlier in the stand-off last week. Can the Minister tell the House any more about the timetable that we might hope to expect in the move towards bringing people from elsewhere in the political establishment into the Government—which would be a highly desirable development—and for free and fair elections? I agree with everything the Foreign Secretary said in his Statement about the freedom of journalists and the freedom of the press.
I make no excuse for returning to the issue of Jordan. Those of us who have been there recently—I am sure that many in the House have done so—recognise that Jordan is quite fragile at the moment and needs a great deal of international support, particularly in respect of the job market for young people. It has the terrible combination of rising house prices on the one hand, and the feelings of many young people about their lack of a future and being able to develop their jobs and careers on the other.
There is a quite distinctive view in Jordan among some in the business hierarchy that there has been insufficient economic reform to allow them to grow organically the way in which their economy works. The noble Lord might not be able to answer these questions now, but will he in particular address Jordan’s relationship with the EU, the way in which the association agreement with the EU works and the way in which the EU is at the moment considering an advanced form of relationship and an advanced treaty? Will he also address some of the issues around helping the Jordanians to exploit more fully their relationship with the EU in investment and trade? These matters have arisen over and over again in recent discussions, as I am sure has been the case for many other noble Lords. As I say, the Minister might not be able to address these issues now, but I hope he will in the fullness of time.
The Statement is helpful as far as it goes. We all know that Yemen is an extremely fragile country, as it was before the recent developments. It has been one of the least stable places in the Middle East, and it is very important that the national dialogue with the opposition parties becomes a reality. I am very pleased to hear about the meetings with Friends of Yemen and I hope that we will have regular updates about what is happening in Yemen.
From the first moment I set foot in the Foreign Office, Yemen was a constant source of difficulty, but because it is such a poor country it sometimes gets pushed to the back of the hierarchy of countries in the Middle East. However, if things go wrong there, it will open the door, as the Statement makes clear, to a good deal of unhelpful activity, not least among the AQ operatives, who we know are engaged there.
The Statement does not say a lot about what is happening elsewhere in the Middle East, outside the countries that were visited. I understand that announcements have been made in Algeria about the possibility of lifting the state of emergency there. If that were true, it would be a very welcome development. Can the Minister say more about that?
Furthermore, it was good that the Foreign Secretary first visited Tunisia on his progress around the Middle East. While fully acknowledging that this was a fault of the previous Government, I believe that, on the whole, the Maghreb countries have not received the level of attention that they might have done in the Foreign Office. I hope that that will be addressed. They have a birth rate lower than that of other countries in the Middle East, and perhaps their problems seem less acute. None the less, they deserve our attention. Morocco has been a good, long-standing friend and has its own well-developed institutions, but we need to ensure that we keep engaged with those countries.
I am sure that we all agree with the Foreign Secretary on asset freezing. I re-emphasise the point about European co-operation. We all need to concentrate on trade. It is not exclusively for the Foreign Office, and I hope that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is fully engaged on these issues. Perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that it would be a good time for that department to engage with those who have an interest in what is happening in the Middle East in business terms. I stress my own interest as chairman of the Arab-British Chambers of Commerce and suggest that perhaps it would be the right time to convene a meeting of the chambers of commerce, the Middle East associations and British expertise. There are a tremendous number of business councils, and perhaps their chairmen could be brought together in UKTI for a full briefing on what could and should be done to help these trade initiatives. It is not something that we want to see happening only in the EU, important though that is—bilaterally, there are many supporters of the Middle East who would be happy and willing to have such discussions and to do what they can.
I thank the Foreign Secretary for what he said about our excellent staff in Cairo. We touched on that last week. Dominic Asquith and his team there, and our team in Yemen, who have endured so much, have done an enormous amount to keep a steady hand on the tiller for this country.
On the Middle East peace process, we are friends of both Israel and Palestine. The Statement talks about visionary boldness, and of course something visionary is greatly needed at this juncture. The fact is that the Middle East peace process was running into the sands. Last week, we discussed whether a two-state solution remains possible, and some of your Lordships believed that it was. Some were enthusiastic to resume talks on the two-state solution while others had more doubts. In that regard, this country and our Foreign Secretary ought to be speaking out. I was pleased to hear what he said last week, and I hope that he will continue to push on this issue. We have a particular role in it, and I do not believe that this country is as despised and disliked in the Middle East as some Members on some Benches intimated last week. I believe that this country is very highly respected in the Middle East, and I find nothing but friendship and enthusiasm for us. Yes, there are issues about Balfour and the history of the situation, but most of the interlocutors in the Middle East recognise that this country has a particular role and that it is distinct from that of the United States. We can bring pressure to bear not only on our friends across the Atlantic but within the European Union. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that we will continue to do that.
On the Gulf states, there is still a problem in Bahrain, which relates to the difference between Sunni and Shia and the fact that the ruling royal family is of one persuasion while the large majority is of the other persuasion. Further attention also has to be given to Syria, which is an important country in the region. I hope that the noble Lord will say one or two things about it. Finally, Saudi Arabia, difficult as it might be as a country—some people regard it as impenetrable—must be addressed by the Foreign Office. It is not just a matter of trade in Saudi Arabia; it is a matter of the Foreign Secretary and others at Secretary of State level addressing what is going on in Saudi Arabia. It is high time that that important country received ministerial attention in country. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that will happen shortly.
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her very comprehensive response and comments on the region, which she knows well. She referred to a whole range of issues, not all of which I shall be able to answer in detail in a few minutes; I hope that she will understand that, as I am sure your Lordships will. Of course, I will supply any further information that I can at a convenient moment in the future. I shall—I hope not confusingly—answer her end questions first and then work back to the original questions on Tunisia.
The observations that the noble Baroness made at the end are completely correct. Obviously, our relations with Saudi Arabia are extremely important. The country is an ally whose significance in the world order as well as in the Middle East is unquestioned. It is certainly our intention at all times to strengthen and maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia.
My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has just been to Syria and described in the Statement how he has talked with President Bashar Assad. We obviously do not see eye to eye with Syria now, but it is important to maintain and strengthen our relations with that country.
The noble Baroness also mentioned Bahrain. There have been undoubted difficulties, which are of quite long standing, over Iran’s sometimes malign influence on Bahrain’s stability. She is right that there are problems that have to be faced. We will give supportive attention to them, as Bahrain remains a close friend.
Let me go back to the Middle East peace plan, which is at the centre of all our thoughts. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has stated clearly that he regards this as a moment of real urgency, when the windows that may now be open could close. In recent days, he has spoken out strongly on the need for movement on all sides. I do not think that there is any doubt or disagreement on that. Of course we must move forward. Whether that view is taken in Jerusalem by the Israeli Government is still an open question. No doubt they are seeking to establish their view in light of what happens next in Egypt. It is certainly encouraging that the new Egyptian authorities have made it clear in their first hours that they want to respect and maintain international treaties, presumably including the Israeli-Egyptian treaty. These are still uncertain times and it would be a bold man who forecast exactly how these matters are going to develop.
The noble Baroness rightly emphasised the need to give more attention to the Maghreb countries. These countries are full of resources and talent and are in a position to play a more decisive role in the new world landscape in which we are all operating. I assure her that my colleagues at BIS are fully focused, as is our Trade Minister, on the situation and on the need for a strategy of generosity and support in relation to the economic aspects. It is slightly sobering to ponder the state of the Egyptian economy at the moment. The shops and the economy have been closed down for two or three weeks. There is an estimate that the whole exercise has cost the Egyptian economy more than the equivalent of £1 billion, which for that economy is a serious blow. The investor confidence aspect has taken a hit, and all this will need to be repaired. We stand ready to do everything that we can to maximise that process of repair.
I was interested in, and will note, the noble Baroness’s idea that the chambers of commerce, with regard to trade with Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the region, should get together and work out how we proceed from here. All that I can say at this stage is that our basic attitude is supportive, and we need to take practical steps. These will certainly be needed as some of the realism in the interviews with wiser people in Egypt has demonstrated. Most realists in Cairo reckon that it will take some months, if not longer, for economic recovery to begin to proceed. Some heavy penalties will have to be paid as the price of freedom.
The noble Baroness mentioned Algeria. She is right that we should keep a close watch on the situation there. My advice is that about 500 demonstrators gathered in central Algiers yesterday, the demonstration was banned by the Interior Ministry, a heavy security presence was deployed and a number of arrests were made. We understand that all demonstrators have been released. That is the latest comment that I can give. Clearly the whole underlying force of intercommunication and information, electronically driven by the mobile telephone, the internet and so on, is at work in all these areas and is giving a new impetus to public concern and desire for improvement and a widening of freedoms. That is endemic and is the pattern throughout the whole region. We should not be surprised that it is occurring everywhere.
I go to the beginning of the noble Baroness’s list, and Tunisia, which has made certain commitments, although I am not sure that they cover every detail that she mentioned. Certainly, there has been a very positive response, as the Foreign Secretary made clear in the Statement.
As for the military in Egypt, I have to reiterate what is said in the Statement. We welcome commitments to a peaceful transition of power and an elected civilian Government, to changing the constitution and putting the amendments to referendum, as well as the commitment to honour existing international agreements, which I have already mentioned. We believe that it is important to set a specific timetable for these actions as soon as possible and remain concerned about the relative absence of public statements regarding a role for the opposition in the process. We urge the Egyptian Government to continue the broad-based dialogue with opposition groups and activists that has been started. That will help to reassure people that this process will lead to genuine change and not get stuck. That is our position. I emphasise that we urge a specific timetable.
The noble Baroness mentioned Jordan and Yemen. We share fully her sentiments on the need for support and encouragement for our friends, the Jordanians. It is a country with which the British have a long-standing and excellent relationship, and we want to support it. I was asked in the debate last Friday about aid to Jordan. As I explained, it is now regarded as a middle-income country and therefore does not necessarily qualify for all the DfID support programmes that it once had in the past. However, there is a substantial EU programme, to which we contribute a really good slice. We will continue, particularly in the present situation, following the excellent talks between my right honourable friend and King Abdullah of Jordan, to work out every way in which we can support Jordan through its period of government change, which we hope will lead to greater stability and not to more disruption. I am fairly confident that that will be so.
On the Yemen, I do not think that I have anything to add to the points made by my right honourable friend in his speech. He has talked to President Saleh and there are obvious dangers. There have been signs that the al-Qaeda movement or franchise, having perhaps—this may be a sound of hope—found themselves squeezed in Afghanistan and maybe even a little in Pakistan, is moving to other areas and spreading its activities through there and through the Horn of Africa. These are great dangers for this country. We have a direct and acute interest in helping these governments and societies to create the conditions of stability, openness and democracy in which the non-democratic and violence-based doctrines of al-Qaeda can finally be rejected.
I hope that that answers most of the noble Baroness’s questions. As I have indicated, we are working together with the EU to develop packages to support both our bilateral efforts and other countries’ efforts on the trade and economic side because it is livelihoods and prosperity that will bring the conditions in which these turbulent events can lead to better times for all.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we were foreshadowed a Statement on Afghanistan earlier today which I understand is, unfortunately, not taking place because there has not been agreement in the usual channels that it is a priority? Might I say to my noble friend that, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, we are sorry that an important issue such as Afghanistan is not being addressed when it should be, given the number of casualties that we are still encountering there?
On the Statement on the Middle East, I will try to be extremely brief because I know that several other noble Lords will want to get in. However, the Statement says that the transitional Government “should” include all parties in the new governance arrangements in Egypt. I wonder whether the Foreign Secretary had any reassurance that a broad swathe of existing parties—including the smaller liberal, secular ones—would indeed be brought into that transitional Government.
On assets, the Foreign Secretary stated that he would work with the EU and with other partners. While that is extremely welcome to us, the Statement calls for the freezing of the assets of Egyptian officials. That sounds to me rather narrow, as often we know—certainly from the Ben Ali family as well as the Mubarak family—that there are allegations that the extended family members hold significant assets abroad. The Statement seems to talk about just officials, so I would like some reassurance from my noble friend on whether existing money-laundering laws will apply to the assets of wider family members, if they are found to be under suspicion in that regard.
On Bahrain, I suppose that my noble friend will not have seen the report of Amnesty International that came out just about an hour ago. However, human rights abuses continue unabated in Bahrain—as he knows, because I have discussed it with him in the past. I hope that we will look at that report extremely carefully to see how we might indeed be a candid friend to Bahrain, particularly as I understand that we are involved in training the security services there.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am grateful to my noble friend. On her last point, she is right that the Amnesty International report has just come out and we will obviously be studying it carefully. I am not aware of the question of the priorities of Statements on Afghanistan but there is absolutely no relationship between the particular day-to-day timings of Statements and the importance of issues. Everyone recognises fully that the Afghanistan situation is deeply serious and central for the foreign policy of this country and of many others; everyone recognises, with great sadness, and salutes the courage of our soldiers in Afghanistan; everyone offers deepest condolences to the families of those very brave young men and women who have given their lives, including the most recent ones. I do not think there is any connection between my noble friend’s concern about Statements and our deep feelings about the seriousness and centrality of the Afghan issues.
The noble Baroness asked about our view about all parties being included in a transitional Government. That appears to be the broad intention, but I emphasise what my right honourable friend said in his Statement: it is not for us to dictate or place a template on how the Egyptians organise their processes of government and how they move forward. It is for them. The more that the western powers try to assert their pattern, the more counterproductive that will be. This is a very important lesson, and I am not sure that everyone has fully grasped it yet. It is for Egypt as a nation to restore its own respect and redeem its own feelings about its possibilities in the world and recognise that it is potentially a great nation, not a suppressed and oppressed people. That appears to be going forward, but it is for the Egyptians to decide.
As for the freezing of assets, the Statement indicates that we are now looking at this matter. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is looking at it very carefully. These are very early days, and it is not possible to give details about the nature of the assets held. However, if anything is held illegally, the processes of law enforcement will apply to it. I can assure my noble friend of that.
Lord Judd
My Lords, does the Minister accept that many of us will be greatly reassured by his firmness in saying that it is not for the outside world to run the show but for the people of Egypt to take forward the opening that they have generated? In this context, does he also accept that many of us will be greatly encouraged by his tone in saying that while we thank and, indeed, congratulate the army on its restraint and the role it has played, it is a holding role, and history and the world will judge the army on how it enables the people to make a success of the opening they have generated. We need to see firm indications of how that is to be done as soon as possible.
On Yemen, there is a very difficult situation, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments because while acute poverty is not the whole explanation, the grave problem of Yemen is, of course, related to the instability associated with that country. We must therefore be very careful about not appearing to say that enabling the people to enjoy greater prosperity and material well-being is somehow conditional upon the Government playing a fuller part in the battle against al-Qaeda. That battle is vital, but the needs of the people for economic and social progress are paramount.
Lord Howell of Guildford
Those are very wise words from the noble Lord. He rightly says that as far as the politics and democratic future of Egypt are concerned, we can support and assist and offer our skills and experience, but we cannot lecture, dictate or harangue. The more we and other outside powers do so, the more counterproductive it will be.
I agree with what the noble Lord says about the military. They will be judged by how they proceed. We are entitled to watch, to hope, to note some encouraging aspects as well as—one must be realistic—those that are bound to take time, if I may put it like that, and possibly to show a degree of patience as well as a desire to see things go the right way. I also agree with what he says about the pattern in Yemen. The terrorism, the divisions, the civil war, the problems in the north, the other difficulties, the poverty and the many other internal challenges that Yemen has faced in recent years add up to a very difficult situation. There is no one button that can be pressed to bring it all to a happier state of affairs. We have to proceed with great care and understanding in that country.
Lord Hylton
My Lords, I noted what the Statement said about assets. The Minister will be in the picture about certain small, discreet but very helpful initiatives that the Government of Switzerland have taken as regards the Middle East. Will HMG at least consider following Switzerland’s lead in freezing temporarily the assets of the Mubarak family in this country until such time as it can be determined which assets are personal, family assets and which belong to the state of Egypt? In this context, I hope the noble Lord will agree that accounts and valuables in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands should be included in any process.
Lord Howell of Guildford
At this stage I can tell the noble Lord that we will note and are studying the actions taken by other countries, including Switzerland, and the moves that they have made. Any illegality will be met properly by the appropriate application of the law, as we have said. We will seek to clarify the situation regarding any asset holdings in this country. I know the noble Lord will accept that over the years these matters have been evolved—if that is the polite verb—in very complex ways and ways designed to make it extremely difficult to unravel where the ownership of these assets lies. All these matters will have to be unravelled and unravelled I hope they will be. We will certainly take the steps that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary described in his Statement, and we will take them firmly.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I think it is the turn of the Conservatives. We will then return to the Labour Benches. Perhaps I might encourage the several Labour Peers who wish to intervene to consider in the mean time which of them they would like to yield to first.
Lord Tugendhat
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of how welcome will be the Foreign Secretary’s statement that we will be following a distinctive policy in the Middle East? Will he also take it from me that his initial remarks about the moment of opportunity in relation to the Israel-Palestine talks are a very welcome start? I very much hope that he will be able to press that case in the days and weeks ahead.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I thank my noble friend. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has indeed made clear his view that it is not up to us alone, but that we can play a distinctive and effective role. We intend to do so.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, in the final paragraph of the Statement, it is said that,
“the UK will be an active and distinctive voice in the Middle East”.
That begs the question of how that voice will be transmitted to the various countries of the Middle East. In Friday’s debate the noble Lord said, very flexibly and in a very welcome way, that he would revisit the cuts to the BBC World Service. He also mentioned the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Surely we need to look at this in the round and look at what DfID is doing in the Maghreb and elsewhere. We should also look at strengthening our embassies. For example, when the Foreign Affairs Committee visited the Maghreb five years or so ago, we were very concerned about the low emphasis that we placed on that key area. Surely we should now revisit this and reconfigure all those various instruments that are available to us to convey the voice that is spoken of in the last paragraph.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I would make it clear to the noble Lord that the words I said on Friday were carefully chosen. I did not say that I would revisit the cuts; I said that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary was looking at the proposals that had been put to him by the BBC World Service and examining the reasons and explanations for the decisions that it wants to take. At the heart of these is the view of the BBC World Service authorities, under whom these decisions have to be made, that the short-wave services are not the best way and the priority way of maintaining communication and our voice and influence in the Arab world. They point to the fact that—we debated this at length on Friday—although radio is still extremely important, up and coming are online services, a mass of television services, iPad services, mobile internet services and a thousand other things which are creating the opportunities to convey good messages and, I am afraid, some bad ones as well. Those are the conditions of the modern world that have empowered the street, as it were, more than ever. What I said on Friday reflects exactly the position at the moment. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is certainly looking at it and discussing it with the BBC but it is up to the latter to decide how it wants to react within the inevitable parameters of the budget, which are unavoidable for all sorts of reasons I do not want to go into now.
As to the noble Lord’s wider point, he is absolutely right—the situation has changed. As to whether that should have been predicted exactly, some of us indicated more than a decade ago that this sort of world was emerging. The situation has changed in the Middle East. There could be entirely new relationships between peoples and Governments and parties and politics and military forces. In these circumstances we must be agile and review the disposition of our influences and our programmes. The noble Lord is right about that and I agree with him.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I suggest that we hear from the noble Marquess, then from the Liberal Democrats. Then there will be time to get back to the Labour Benches.
The Marquess of Lothian
My Lords, at this time of emerging democratic awareness in the Middle East, will the Minister and his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs use their considerable influence to encourage the Palestinian Authority to adopt a true, full and honest electoral process in the months ahead so that those who speak for the Palestinian people in the future do so with a genuine mandate for the Palestinian people as a whole?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I thank my noble friend for that observation. Of course, this is the right way to go. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has spoken on these lines and we will continue to use the influence that we undoubtedly have. We must always use that influence in the most careful and selective way. I believe that the Palestinian Authority is aware of the need to move forward using precisely these methods. It faces grave difficulties but we will certainly do anything that we can do to encourage it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
If we are very quick we might get three speakers in. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has been trying to intervene since the beginning.
Lord Clinton-Davis
How do the Government intend to press the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority to resume the peace process? Is not that a matter of extreme urgency? Hamas and Hezbollah have repeatedly expressed the view that Israel ought to die. Against that background, is there any prospect of resuming meaningful discussions between the Israelis and Hamas and Hezbollah?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord speaks with great experience, feeling and wisdom on this issue but I know he is the first to understand that, although we can do our bit, many parties and pressures are involved. Some feel that it is all up to our American allies and that they should increase the pressure and recognise the urgency. Indeed, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has indicated some of that feeling in statements he has made over the past few days. Some feel that renewed pressure should come from within Israel and the Palestinian Authority provided they can work together in a better way than they have done so far with the two elements of the Hamas people in Gaza and the authorities in the West Bank. All these tasks must be addressed. Therefore, the broad answer to the noble Lord’s question is: yes, the urgency is recognised; yes, we will do what we can but we are not, alas, the only party involved, nor can our influence alone be decisive—I wish that it could, but it is not so.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
Does my noble friend agree that the single most important thing that can be done is to reassure Israel and Egypt of the continuation of the longstanding treaty between them? If a democratic Government in Egypt are to accept the peace settlement, it is necessary for Israel herself to look again at the settlements and the blockade of Gaza in order to persuade the Egyptian people to support, as they should, the continuation of peace with Israel?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My personal hope and, indeed, the hope of the Government is that that is the way things will unfold. However, we have to see the steps ahead. First, there is a military Government and the change of constitution, and then we have and must continue to press for their commitment to create the conditions for a democratic new Government in Egypt, with different attitudes from the Government of the past but with the same attitude to the treaty with Israel. Then that new democratic Government have to be incentivised, just as my noble friend was saying, to feel that they are going to get a constructive response from Israel. All these are sequences ahead for which we must work. My noble friend describes exactly what we want to happen. Now we have to see what forces can enable it to happen. Indeed, we have to be realistic and see what forces may prevent it happening.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that these welcome indications of support for Egypt and Tunisia and their economies, which will be in poor shape, risk an excess of individual countries and organisations all flinging themselves at the same object, with much confusion? Will he consider what went on after the collapse of Soviet Union domination of eastern Europe, when a co-ordinating clearing-house arrangement was reached, under which the United States, Japan, the European Union and all its member states worked in a coherent and concerted way to do what needed to be done to the economies of eastern Europe? There could well be an important lesson there for the weeks and months ahead.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I have certainly heard such suggestions, including one, not from within government, that there should be an approach similar to the Marshall Plan, which goes back further than the eastern-Europe approach that involved successful co-ordination and worked rather well, if we look back at the history of that dramatic period at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The answer to the noble Lord’s question is, yes, these matters are considered. Some have pointed out that there are considerable differences between the eastern European process involving the unwinding of the Soviet satellites and what is now going on, which is in its very early days, regarding the rise of people power, street views and new pressures on Governments in the Middle East. However, the proper answer to the noble Lord’s question is, of course, that these issues and the lessons of history—the differences and the similarities—will be very closely considered by those in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Government who wish to formulate the most successful plans for the next moves.
Building Schools for the Future
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat the Statement on Building Schools for the Future, made earlier in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, I am grateful for this opportunity to repeat the points made in my Written Ministerial Statement on Friday. On Friday, Mr Justice Holman handed down judgment on the judicial review brought by six local authorities, including Waltham Forest, following my decision to cancel BSF projects in their areas. It was of course deeply regrettable that any building projects had to be cancelled, but the scale of the deficit we inherited meant that cuts were inevitable, and the inefficiency that characterised the BSF schemes meant that we needed a new approach.
All the local authorities that pursued the action agreed that cuts had to be made, but, as the judge records, the local authorities argued that other unidentified projects should have been stopped, rather than theirs. The claimants argued that the Government’s decision-making was confused and irrational, but the judge makes it clear that the decisions that I made were clear and rational. He states that,
‘the Secretary of State intended to draw, and did draw, a clear demarcation between situations where there were obligations under contract and those where there were not. The decision is not open to challenge on irrationality’.
The claimants argued that the chosen cut-off date for projects was wrong, but the judge also makes it clear that a cut-off date of 1 January reflected government-wide policy and helped to achieve that policy by making very large savings.
The claimants also argued that there was a breach of promise in stopping their specific projects, but the judge also said:
‘I do not consider that there was any failure … because there was no such promise or expectation’.
I am grateful that on all these substantive points, the judge found as he did in our favour.
On two procedural grounds, the judge ruled in favour of the claimants. In essence, his view is that my consultation with 14 local authorities in relation to 32 sample schools and a further 119 individual academies projects did not go far enough, and that I should have included the six claimants in my consultation. He judges that I should have had rigorous regard to equalities considerations in reaching my decision.
The judge has not ordered a reinstatement of funding for any BSF project; nor has he ordered me to pay compensation to any of the claimants. Instead, he concluded that I must give each of them an opportunity to make representations, and must review the decision, in so far as it affects the six authorities, with an open mind. I am happy to do so.
The judge has made it clear that the final decision on any given school or project still rests with me, and that I may save all, some, a few or none. He concluded by saying that no one should gain false hope from this decision. I am grateful to the judge for that direction, for the fair and careful manner in which he appraised the evidence and for his support for the Government on the substantive decisions that we took to repair the economic mess that we inherited”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, before I respond to the substance of the Minister's Statement, it would be helpful to provide some context for the judgment that led to it. The Secretary of State had previously acknowledged that before 1997 there had been a failure adequately to invest in school buildings. The Labour Government were responsible for building, rebuilding or significantly refurbishing 4,000 schools, with 1,000 completed in the past two years. As a Government, we were on track to see a further 1,000 new school buildings in the next two years. Building Schools for the Future refocused schools investment on the strategic renewal of the schools estate. It was intended as a programme to renew the entire secondary estate and to plan and provide for changes in demand. Building Schools for the Future was gathering pace at the end of the Labour Government and was a success story.
I thank the Minister for his Statement, and for the clarity with which he set out the department's plans on the issue. However, I was surprised to hear him on the airwaves on Friday trying to downplay the judgment as minor and technical. Surely it is anything but that. Perhaps I may remind the Minister that the judgment said that the Secretary of State's handling of the cancellation of Building Schools for the Future was,
“so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power”.
An abuse of power is anything but minor and technical. It is because of the gravity of the decision taken and the subsequent judgment that we are discussing the issue today.
The two specific arguments that were accepted by the judge in the case were that the Secretary of State failed to consult, and that he failed to consider his public equalities duties. Neither of these points is technical or minor, and they say a great deal about the cavalier style adopted by the Government. Is it not true that this attitude is becoming something of a pattern? We hear constantly of challenges to government decisions on the grounds that they have not taken the time to follow proper and due process. I cite as examples the Home Secretary’s failed attempts to limit immigration numbers and criticism about the Government pre-empting consultation on the forestry proposals alongside Parliament’s consideration of the Public Bodies Bill. With this Secretary of State alone, we have seen the same reckless approach adopted in respect of school sports, Bookstart and the education maintenance allowance. On the latter point and in the light of this decision, I ask the Minister whether the Government plan to reverse their decision to cancel education maintenance allowance payments for current recipients.
Is it not time that the Secretary of State stepped back, learnt from those mistakes and adopted a more conciliatory approach to policy-making in the future, where partnership and consultation with stakeholders and service users are at the forefront of the approach to developing an education strategy? One of the most damning criticisms in the judgment is that, by failing to consult, the Secretary of State could not have had any of the crucial information required to make an informed decision. He therefore could not have known what impact his decisions would have on individual schools and communities. He could not have known, for example, which schools were in the worst condition, which were addressing the real needs of disabled students and which were meeting special equality considerations.
Given the seriousness of the judge’s criticism, should not the Secretary of State’s Statement in the other place have started with a word of apology or regret? Today, if nothing else, will the Minister put that right and now apologise to the communities that suffered the devastating effects of his Secretary of State’s defective decision-making?
To restore public confidence and the confidence of this House, will the Minister now publish all relevant information and advice relating to the decision? Will he confirm reports that a leading QC warned the Secretary of State that councils had a “fairly strong case” against him? Why, then, did he proceed regardless, and how much public money has been wasted on legal costs? Can he confirm that there will be full and transparent consultation with all those affected to give parents, students and teachers confidence that they will receive a fair hearing? Should not the Secretary of State now remove himself from any further part in this decision?
This is a damning verdict on a Cabinet Minister by a High Court judge. He is a repeat offender and these are serious issues that need to be addressed. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I start by saying a word in response to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on Labour’s record and its intent in the Building Schools for the Future programme to restore, rebuild and refurbish the school estate. I completely recognise that that was the intent and I think it is one that all parties share. Therefore, I have never knocked—if that is the right word—the intent behind Building Schools for the Future.
I spent much of the autumn talking to those in schools and local authorities and to MPs representing some of the areas where Building Schools for the Future projects have been stopped, as referred to by the noble Baroness. Much as they wanted their school building projects to go ahead, they all accepted that the way in which the scheme developed, silted up and accreted meant that it was a flawed process. Obviously, they all said that they would have liked their school building projects to go ahead but they did not seek to persuade me that the way in which the programme operated was perfect.
On the background to the decision taken by the Secretary of State—a point that is sometimes forgotten—I think I am right in saying that the previous Government themselves acknowledged, and said before the general election, that there would need to be capital cuts of some 50 per cent and that the education budget and building budget were not exempt from that reduction.
As for saying that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been reckless in his decision, I hope I made it clear in the Statement that the judge found that it was a rational decision, not a reckless one.
On the ruling that was handed down on Friday—I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was subjected to me fumbling my way through a media interview—I was trying to draw the distinction between the substantive points about whether it was a rules-based approach, a rational approach, and whether the Secretary of State had raised any false expectation in the minds of local authorities. On all those substantive points the judge found in the Secretary of State’s favour. However, on the procedural points, I did not seek to hide the fact that the judge very clearly found that the department needed to look again at consultation and the equalities impact assessment. We will approach the nature of that consultation with an open mind. Obviously we will need to work out how to carry that out in connection with the local authorities and the local communities to ensure that it is carried out properly. The judge was clear in his ruling that the Secretary of State should decide himself whether to remove himself from that process. The information that the department had on the whole Building Schools for the Future process and the decision that we took was all passed to the judge.
On the educational maintenance allowance, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, will know that we will bring forward proposals on how to move towards a more discretionary fund in the near future. In reaching the decision that we did, I completely understand that we caused schools, head teachers and local authorities a great deal of difficulty and concern. I cannot remember how many meetings I had with them over the summer but I had an awful lot. I told them all how much I regretted the difficulty that it caused them. I have apologised for the way in which the decision that we took has led to their hopes being stopped. I recognise the need for investment in building schools to continue. However, I do not apologise at all for the fundamental decision to stop the Building Schools for the Future programme, which was forced on the Government by the state of the deficit and the interest payments that are mounting up. As I have argued in this House before, interest payments each day of £120 million would allow us to build the best part of 10 new schools each day.
Baroness Walmsley
When the Secretary of State comes to do his consultation, as the High Court has required him to, what criteria will he use when reaching his further decision? What elements will be contained in that and what priorities will he give to each one? Will he be prepared to publish them?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The best answer I can give my noble friend is that I think the department needs to work out how best we can carry out the consultation. There are important issues to address of the sort that my noble friend raises. As we have not yet done that, as we had the ruling only on Friday, we need to ensure that the process is carried out in a proper and fair way with those six local authorities. I think it is best if the department reflects on that and then I can come back to my noble friend in due course.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
I make it clear that I have not read the judgment, only the extracts which have appeared in the Written Ministerial Statement. Is it not apparent from the Ministerial Statement, at any rate, that there was not a complete failure to consult on the part of the Secretary of State? Indeed, he consulted 14 local authorities and 119 individual academies. He did not consult, of course, the six claimant authorities and that was a grave error. He should have done that. He has not exactly apologised for that but he will make it good by consulting them now with an open mind. Is that a fair way of looking at the situation?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I think that that is an extremely fair and probably more concise way of summarising the position than I was able to manage.
Lord Grabiner
I have two points for the Minister. First, is he telling the House that a decision has been taken not to appeal against that judgment? I could not tell that from the Statement. Secondly, some play is made in the Statement of the fact that no compensation order was made by the learned judge. My understanding is that that issue was not even before him, so it is entirely unsurprising that no such order was made. Can the Minister confirm whether that is the position?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I can certainly confirm that the department accepts the judge’s ruling. On the second point, I will have to check whether that was at issue.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, the judge found that there was an abuse of power by the Secretary of State. Given the unrepentant tone of the Statement and the unrepentant nature of the Secretary of State in the other place in answering this Question earlier today, is it not important that the public believe that a fresh, objective look is taken at the circumstances of the six authorities? Is it not therefore right that the decision should be taken away from the Secretary of State—just as the decisions about Sky were taken from Vince Cable and given to Jeremy Hunt—and given to a Minister whom we all trust, such as the noble Lord?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his attempted hospital pass, which I decline to accept. The reason that I decline to accept it is that although, as I said, I have spoken to a large number of local authorities concerned over many months and will be happy to do so again, the judge makes clear in his ruling that in his view the decision as to what to do subsequent to the representations made by the six local authorities rightly rests with the Secretary of State.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
My Lords, the essence of the judgment in the High Court is that the Secretary of State did not carry out appropriate consultation. What consultation has my noble friend had with local authorities about the top-slicing of capital budgets for academies and free schools? If he has not had legal advice on that matter, will he take it urgently to avoid going to court again?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I think that I am right in saying that that question should be directed to the DCLG, which is the responsible department, but I will follow up my noble friend's question.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I appreciate that the Minister had to respond to a number of questions from my noble friend Lady Jones on the Front Bench, but can he answer her question about publishing all the relevant information regarding the case of the local authorities and how much public money was spent on legal fees to advise the department on those proceedings? Can he answer more fully my noble friend Lord Knight’s question: what reassurance can the Government offer the public that a truly open mind will be brought to the second attempt to make the decisions according to due process?
Lord Hill of Oareford
It is clearly the case that an open mind will be brought to it. We have been told by the judge that it needs to be considered in an open way, and we would be extremely foolish if we did not listen to what the judge said to us.
On the first point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, about the publication of information, as I said, all that information was given to the judge and the court, so he had all that information in front of him when he reached the decision that he did.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, in reference to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, will the Minister confirm that, despite the top-slicing to which the noble Lord referred, which amounts to £435 million over the next two years for new academies, the sum in the department’s own estimates is £75 million? Will he explain the difference between those two figures? In the circumstances, would he consider avoiding adding insult to injury to the six authorities and other authorities affected by the Building Schools for the Future programme by exempting them from that top-slicing?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I do not think that I am able to add a huge amount to the answer I gave my noble friend on that point.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, would the Minister, who I thank for his courtesy and his careful responses, care to inform the House how much money is available for people setting up free schools and how, having due regard to equality issues, that money should not be put alongside the available capital when considering the needs of schools in these authorities?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I should like to provide some context in terms of scale. As I am sure the noble Baroness will know, this year, the amount of money made available for free schools is £50 million. The department’s capital budget in total this year is in excess of £7 billion, so the scale of the sum of money made available to the free schools when viewed in the whole is small. One of the points of the free-school policy is to find new ways to set up schools that are quicker and cheaper, and to look at things such as leasing and the different uses of school buildings in order that we can try to get schools open more quickly and more cheaply than in the past.
Free schools will, I hope, be a great success if we manage to get them open and delivered more quickly and cheaply. I hope that they will provide a good education for children in the same way as all maintained schools; that is, they will follow the admissions code and all the other things that I know the noble Baroness would be keen to see.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, will the Minister explain why the Secretary of State did not consult properly with every local authority in the first place? Given the fundamental criticism that the judge has made of the consultation process, will he confirm that there is an intention to consult properly, not just with the six which brought the case but with every local authority which was not consulted during the first stage of these decisions?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I have two answers to those two questions. As regards the broader application of the ruling to other local authorities, the judge is clear that the ruling applies to those six local authorities, which are those which the Government will consult. The basic answer to the noble Baroness’s first question, which the judge accepts in his ruling, is that Governments, particularly after a change of Government or a general election, have every right to make decisions. Given the scale of the deficit, the Government felt that the overriding imperative was to make decisions quickly and that the longer the process was drawn out, the more money would be wasted and the more uncertainty caused.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, the Secretary of State has quarrelled not only with local authorities but also with architects. Can we hope that we will not hear a repeat of the diatribe he launched against architects at the Free Schools conference? It was a diatribe that was particularly ill judged, as he commented individually on my noble friend Lord Rogers. After all, it is widely accepted that the design of the Mossbourne Academy by my noble friend did contribute to the transformation of academic achievement there.
If the Secretary of State is turning over a new leaf in this regard, will he listen carefully to what has been said by Sunand Prasad, the former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who is not entirely opposed to the new approach that the Secretary of State wishes to adopt? He sees a place for templates, prefabricated parts and repeated designs, but has advised that you still have to take account of site, locality and context. Surely that is important in relation to the Government’s own aspirations for a new localism. Does he expect that people, within their localities, will take kindly to having designs centrally imposed upon them? Can we learn the lessons from the Building Schools for the Future programme? Can we also learn the lessons from the Australian experiment, which is rather more akin to the approach that the Government intend to adopt and which, although it has its limitations, has been partially successful? Finally, does he recognise that schools historically have been built as statements of civic and community values, and that if you impose central, standardised and banal designs of the kind epitomised across the country by Tesco and Dixon’s, whose representatives are advising the Secretary of State, then you will be falling short in your responsibilities?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I have rather a lot of sympathy with the thrust of the remarks made by the noble Lord. Through the James review, the Government are striving to achieve on the standardisation of design a sensible balance between as much standardisation—if that is the right word—or replication as is possible. That is because, in a time of limited resources, to design each school ab initio every time and not to learn the lessons from what has worked well in previous school buildings does not make sense, and neither does each time to incur a set of consultants’ fees, architects’ fees and all the rest of it. Our view is that there must be ways of getting greater standardisation, but at the same time I accept that part of gaining acceptance of a building involves including the people who will be concerned with running it—the head, the staff and the pupils—in the process. It is a matter of trying to find the balance between a common-sense approach to standardisation while also allowing some flexibility around local circumstances.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that the greatest disappointment was caused when new school projects were either cancelled or postponed? Indeed, two schools in my old constituency were seriously affected. Having said that and having heard a former Minister of education who was responsible for these matters in the previous Government claim that the current Minister is unrepentant, can I ask my noble friend what examination has been made of the fact that, as he referred to in his Statement, the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised that the school building programme and expenditure on education could not be exempt from the cuts that the then Government knew would have to come? They were staring a very serious deficit in the face. Could an investigation be made into what warnings were given to schools in those circumstances? Were they told that it might not be possible to continue with the full programme in the recognition that they were approving projects for which there was no money?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am afraid I have to agree with my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater that that was indeed the case. I fear that it is part of a broader picture. I understand why the party opposite will, perfectly properly, question spending decisions and cuts that this Government are having to make but hope that they can see the reason we are having to make those decisions and cuts. I do not enjoy finding myself in the situation of going around the country having to turn down all kinds of applications for school capital. It is because we inherited a situation in which we had no capital.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
My Lords, first, I should express a possible conflict of interest as the vice-chairman of an educational foundation that underwrites two schools, or at least collaborates with the Government in that, in the East End of London. The Minister may remember that almost before he had drawn his first breath as a Minister, before the Recess last summer, I asked questions about the status of one of those schools in the borough of Tower Hamlets that had made a great deal of effort to get itself into the right position to have its Better Schools for the Future programme agreed. At that time, despite my asking him on two separate occasions, the Minister was not able to answer my questions because, as he honestly said—he is a man who always says what he honestly feels—he did not know the answer.
That was last summer. I expressed on that occasion anxiety that the foundation of which I am vice-chair had already incurred £5 million-worth of expenditure to acquire a piece of land and was incurring significant legal costs as it sought to process the application. Everything was on hold; everything went into abeyance; nobody knew what was happening through the autumn. We worked through the Christmas holidays with lawyers—our legal fees have now accumulated to nearly £500,000—and, just last week, I signed off an agreement with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for it to hold £7.4 million on behalf of our trust against the day when, or if, the Government allow the £13 million that we still hope to get from the Building Schools for the Future programme because we were one of the schools that was in the end spared last summer.
Is the Minister able at this stage to enlighten me as to whether we can go ahead, because we still do not know? Will he agree that the word used of the BSF by the Government to describe it, inefficient, happens to be exactly the word that the trust of which I am vice-chair thinks applies to the Government to describe the way in which they have handled this matter?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the frustration that the noble Lord feels and I accept the reproach if it has felt to him like a poor process. I am not able, I am afraid, to answer the specifics now, but I shall go back after this Statement and check what they are. I shall then follow up the matter with him as soon as I can.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
We appreciate the way in which the Minister deals with this House, but will he accept that there was real feeling when the Secretary of State made his announcement because it was so precipitate, because it had not been consulted on and because it was so quick? He would not have saved any more money if he had taken another two or three weeks properly to consult and make sure that he knew what he was doing. The announcement sounded ideological to most people. Will he accept that the decision has had devastating effects on some schools that are well past their sell-by date and where children are being educated in conditions which are inadequate for an education in this country? What will the Government do to make sure that those children are able to have their schooling in adequate and decent buildings so that they can get a more-than-adequate education, particularly in the most vulnerable and deprived areas?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I do not accept that the decision taken by the Secretary of State for Education was ideological. No one takes any pleasure from having to stop investment in schools. As I hope I have said a number of times, it was something to which we felt impelled by the state of the finances with which we found ourselves. I accept what the noble Baroness said about the need for good places and I would very much want to be in a position where I had a larger capital pot to do more for schools. I hope that she might accept in turn that had the result of the general election been different and the Labour Party were in government it would have found itself in a similarly difficult situation, having to stop capital spending on schools. It had said before the election that there would need to be a 50 per cent cut in capital, and the then Secretary of State for Education was clear that the schools building programme and schools would not be exempt from that.
Health: Mental Health Strategy
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Murphy
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to implement their new mental health strategy.
Baroness Murphy
My Lords, 10 days ago, the first ever cross-government mental health strategy was launched, laying out plans for the future of mental health care in England. I congratulate the Government on recognising the crucial fact that mental health affects every area of a person’s life and impacts upon their ability to play an active role in society and I welcome the Cabinet-level commitment expressed so far. The strategy also makes plain that mental health has a parity of esteem with physical health—a lovely phrase—finally giving the issue the equal footing it deserves.
Sticking with the good things for the moment, I am delighted with the commitment to repeal the outdated law which forces MPs to stand down if they have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act for more than six months. This is an important anti-stigma signal by the Government.
However, I turn now to my—what shall I call them?—not exactly anxieties or worries but a sense of unease about the messages. I had niggles about the New Horizons strategy from the previous Government, so I am not blaming the coalition; rather I am blaming all of us in government, professional organisations and the voluntary sector for letting the ball slip through our fingers. I declare a personal interest¸ having spent most of my career working in specialist psychiatric services with people with serious, life-changing mental health disorders such as dementia, schizophrenia and other major psychoses and serious disabling developmental disorders of personality.
For me, the overarching theme of the strategy represents a misguided, somewhat soft-headed, utopianism focused on well-being and mental good health, as though there were a direct connection between a happy society and reduction in serious mental illness. But there is not. Events and circumstances, often unavoidable, play a significant part in the origins of serious disorders—but only a part, and often a very small part.
Let me make it clear that the broader public health issue of mental well-being and the aim to intervene to prevent the experience of distress are legitimate national strategic objectives. The toll of emotional human misery and minor psychiatric morbidity costs England an estimated £105 billion every year. This burden spreads beyond health services to education, employers, the social security benefits system, housing, the criminal justice system, families and communities. National well-being should influence our approach to economics and it is entirely legitimate to try to intervene to promote good mental well-being. However, I have doubts as to whether this should be the target of a mental health document which will largely be read by health and social care providers.
Many in the Chamber today have campaigned for the wider availability of psychological therapies, but again I have doubts about what Marjorie Wallace at SANE has recently referred to as the “therapy for the nation” strategy, which comes across as a panacea for the whole spectrum of mental health conditions and is being launched against a background of active planning for cost improvements of about £20 billion in the NHS, with local authorities shamelessly slashing and burning community services.
The experience of many local voluntary organisations which work with people with serious mental disorders is that people are being turned away from help, especially from in-patient care, when they feel desperate or they and their families have reached crisis point. Mental health services are still not getting it right for people with serious mental ill health and I want a strategy that does. Only today I received a deeply moving letter from the mother of a young man with a chronic enduring psychotic illness whose life circumstances were extraordinarily tragic and who was receiving inadequate support from the community services.
I am particularly critical of the public health outcomes framework in the strategy document, which seems to me to be mostly aspirational wishful thinking. It includes everything from reducing reoffending and self harm, all the way through to access to green spaces and “improving social connectedness”—a Facebook account for all? It is all lovely stuff but nothing to do with mental ill-health realities.
We know from studies in the US and our own research that social interventions that make a difference—for example, to the mental well-being of children and young people—have to be comprehensive, very focused, usually costly and require major changes in the way services are organised. Successful pilot schemes have been exceptionally difficult to replicate on a larger scale and to translate from experience in the United States. It is a waste of time, as we have known from so many social interventions, to intervene with individuals and families on a small scale, yet there is a real danger that that is what we will do.
Let us take maternal depression as an example. I am not denying that there is some evidence for the efficacy of preventive interventions, such as home visiting, parenting programmes, peer support, the refocused Sure Start children’s centres, parent support advisers working with school staff, and other family support workers, such as health visitors and early years outreach workers. Your Lordships may have noticed that I have already mentioned an army of helpers and workers of one sort or another. Then there is the family-nurse partnership programme, which works with the most disadvantaged young families with complex, interlinked problems and is aimed at interrupting the transgenerational cycle of poor health. The evidence is poor that this will work unless it is properly replicated on a very wide and expensive scale. The Government have pledged to increase the health visitor workforce by a further 4,200 posts, refocusing health visitors on maternal and infant mental health. However, the overall evidence for the efficacy of health visitors has been slight in the past. The NICE report currently on its website is based on an earlier Health Development Agency review of the evidence, which did not give much comfort in this area. Research has been small scale; much of it is interesting and encouraging, but its findings have so far been modest. Yet we are about to embark on vast investment.
To support these and other programmes, the Department for Education has introduced a new early intervention grant, which will bring together funding for a number of intervention and preventive services. These will replace the current targeted grant. I have no quarrel at all with the idea of a general grant that local authorities can use for the priorities in their area, but altogether the early intervention grant will be 11 per cent lower than the aggregated funding for this year, with a further major drop for next year. What of the £400 million extra for psychological therapies, which can and should, in my view, be targeted on those with the greatest need? It is in the baseline funding of the NHS, but do we really expect that it will be spent in the suggested fashion in the context of the £20 billion reduction? Some of it will be retained by a few areas, but I have grave doubts that it will find its way through to where it is really needed.
I suggest that a mental health strategy should focus primarily on those with the most severe disorders, whose lives are so often wrecked by the misery of mental illness. It has to be fit to be translated into measurable outcomes for the commissioning board and turned easily into commissioning intentions by GP consortia. We know that GPs lack confidence in commissioning mental health services. A survey last year by the charity Rethink found that, although three-quarters of GPs are happy to take on responsibility for commissioning diabetes and asthma services, fewer than a third feel the same for mental health services. They know that they do not like what they get at the moment for their patients with severe mental illness. Only half of GPs are confident about the quality of specialist care for depression and only a third are confident about the quality of care offered to people with psychosis. Many GPs doubt that patients with mental ill health will get the treatment that NICE recommends. In a way, that should encourage us, because GPs will want change for the better. I know that the Mental Health Network of the NHS Confederation is doing some very good work in collaboration with the pathfinder consortia.
The well-being of the nation is an important thing, but it is perhaps something other than a mental health strategy, so does the Minister not have doubts about whether we know enough to intervene cost-effectively or whether we have the public wealth to intervene on a wide enough scale to make a real difference? Will he accept that the well-being of a nation does not have a great deal to do with the sorts of services that will be delivered to people with serious and enduring mental health problems? I should like to see a strategy that really gets it right for the seriously ill.
Finally, I look forward very much to hearing other noble Lords on this topic. I firmly expect them all to disagree with me profoundly and I hope by the end of this debate to be converted back to my usual optimistic self.
Lord De Mauley
I have been informed that at least one noble Lord has withdrawn his name from the list of speakers for this debate, which means that all speeches, except for that of the Minister, will be limited to six minutes.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I had been going to say, “Five minutes not long”—six minutes still not long—“will speak a little staccato”. First, I declare an interest as chair of Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. Secondly, I shall make no special pleading on behalf of that trust; the points that I want to make are general points. Thirdly, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, who has done us a service by getting this debate on the Floor of the House at what I think was short notice. I shall listen with great interest to the Minister’s reply to the thoughtful and penetrating points that she made.
I have a brief confession. I put my name down to speak, given the short notice, at only three minutes to 12, and I was slightly taken aback to find that I was second in the debate. It is just as well that I did not spend the whole weekend writing this speech, because I would probably have had to cut it in half. It is probably a mercy to the House that I have to be brief.
To start with, I congratulate the Government on having produced this paper. The very fact that it is there and seeks to put mental health into the mainstream in a different way is worth while. One cannot quarrel with its objectives. The list of specific objectives or policies in chapter 5 is pretty well impeccable, especially when taken with what the Government are saying about dementia. It includes services for veterans and, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will have noticed, services for drug misusers and offenders, which has been one of the Cinderella areas. All the right noises are being made, and I have no problem with the strategy. My concern—and this is perhaps a rather blunter way of putting some of the points made by the noble Baroness—is whether we have the right mechanisms for delivering the strategy on the ground. This is especially so in a time of austerity, and bearing in mind the demands for considerable savings of up to about £20 billion over a relatively short period, which actually started under the previous Government and which are now having an effect throughout the service.
There are two points. First, to echo something that the noble Baroness said, there is a clear link here between the worries in the voluntary sector, the third sector or the civil society—whatever it is being called this week—and the pressures on local authorities. That sector provides a wide range of services helping and supporting people, in both the mental health and the learning disabilities areas, as well as those with multiple problems including drugs and alcohol. There is a lot of concern about their prospects. Secondly, and most importantly, there is a real tension between some of the things being said and the emphasis on having not ring-fencing but local decision-making. I understand the aim but, whatever is said in this document, mental health remains, as someone in Suffolk said to me, somewhat below the radar with regard to public demand and perception. As it happens, I have never chaired an acute trust; I have chaired a specialist trust and two mental health trusts, so I have not faced this dilemma. But I am pretty clear that if I was chair of an acute trust or a PCT concerned with services in an area and you had problems in mental health, accident and emergency and maternity, there would not be much doubt about which two out of the three would win. One paper will not change that area. In other words, even if mental health is declared not to be Cinderella it is a long way from being clear that it will feel like that on the ground.
If anybody wonders whether I am alone in that, I refer them to this week’s Health Service Journal, which I happened to be leafing through on the way in. Page 9 says:
“Adviser says he was sacked for therapy views”.
I do not know whether that is true but he was worried about whether there was enough for the new therapy services. That links with page 13, which says:
“‘New’ talk therapy cash to come from existing funds”.
Again, I know no more than I am reading but if I go on to page 14, I read about:
“‘Despair’ over mental health cuts”,
being proposed by PCTs in the West Midlands, so I am not unique in having this worry. There is some evidence that the worry is real. I simply hope that my noble friend will be able to say how this strategy will be translated into real action on the ground.
Lord Patel of Bradford
My Lords, I, too, add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, for calling this timely and important debate. As some of your Lordships will be aware, I have a keen interest in the subject of mental health, having been chairman of the Mental Health Act Commission for a number of years prior to its transfer to the Care Quality Commission. Also, as a researcher and service manager, I have a long history of working to improve experiences and outcomes for mental health service users, carers and families, especially those from black and minority-ethnic communities. I therefore welcome the Government’s strategy, which places experience and outcomes at its heart.
However, despite the excellent approach this strategy represents, there remain some areas that I feel should receive greater attention, especially with respect to the mental health experiences and outcomes of black and minority-ethnic service users. For example, I was disappointed to see that the proposed outcomes and the action plan appear to contain little on tackling inequalities with respect to ethnicity, especially given the emphasis placed on reducing stigma and discrimination, which is often compounded by issues such as racism, the high levels of fear and the lack of understanding among so many black and minority-ethnic communities. I shall raise two issues in this respect: first, how the funding for mental health services will be protected as a whole; and, secondly, how the new mental health strategy will ensure that the full range of data and information on ethnicity and mental health is used to the best effect.
I start with protecting the financial investment that I believe is vital, in light of the sweeping reforms to the NHS and the cutbacks across the public sector services. The Government have acknowledged that making cuts to mental health is a false economy, storing up problems in the long run with costly consequences. These consequences can be even more devastating for those communities that already face the burden of inequality and discrimination. While I am pleased to see the commitment to £400 million of investment for early intervention services, I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and the noble Lord, Lord Newton, would like to see more on ensuring that that money is actually spent on the intended services and does not become a casualty of the severe and increasing pressures that we know local health and social care authorities currently face.
This is, however, not just an issue of money, as the proposed changes in the Health and Social Care Bill over commissioning are a source of particular concern, especially among many of those who work in mental health. There is enough evidence, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, already said, from the experience of PCT-based commissioning to give serious pause for thought over whether GPs—whether in consortia or through commissioning agencies—will have the appropriate knowledge, experience and planning skills to ensure adequate mental health provision, particularly in specialist in-patient services. The increased focus on contestability could also mean the end of some of the more specialist services that we now have.
What assurances can the Minister give that mental health funding will be protected at local levels and what specific actions will be taken in the strategy to ensure that commissioning is appropriate and expert in relation to mental health? For example, can the Minister assure me that GP consortia will be subject under the Equality Act 2010 to the public sector equality duty?
Secondly, although the strategy highlights the importance of collecting and monitoring information on ethnicity and culture at local levels and how it can be better used to inform commissioning and service delivery, there is no reference to the importance of existing data sources, such as the Count Me In census. I must declare an interest as the original architect of the Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health programme, including designing the Count Me In census. Therefore, having been involved in the set-up of the Count Me In census, I am very concerned by this omission and by the continuing delays in publishing these vital data. They are almost 10 months overdue. This is at a time when we know from the most recent findings of the mental health minimum data set that:
“The proportion of inpatients who were detained during the year rose across all ethnic groups, but this was particularly noticeable for the Black group, of whom 66.3 per cent were detained in 2009/10 (compared with 53.8 per cent in 2008/09)”.
We also know that black and minority-ethnic patients are even more disproportionately represented, albeit by a small margin, in community treatment orders, something I warned could occur when these new orders were introduced if they were not accompanied by action to address the existing levels of discrimination and imbalances in representation in the mental health system. Against these disproportionate rises in numbers of black people subject to the powers of the Mental Health Act, the evidence and information provided by the Count Me In census is more important than ever. What specific actions will be taken under the strategy to ensure that the full amount of information on ethnicity and other equality strands is published and used to inform local planning and service delivery?
In summary, while there is much in this strategy to be recommended, and the overall approach is one I strongly endorse, the devil, as they say, is always in the detail, and it is the detail that we currently lack. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some of that detail in answering my questions, and I also hope that we will see this strategy develop in a way that truly improves mental health services and well-being for all communities.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am grateful to my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, for obtaining this debate, albeit, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, said, a brief debate in which it is not possible to deal with such a complex subject as mental well-being and a complex system for dealing with it.
I come to this debate with feelings very different from those of previous speakers. For the whole of my professional life, I spent half my time on Northern Ireland politics and the other half on developing mental health services, particularly psychological services, in Northern Ireland. As a young psychiatrist, I discovered that there were very limited services for alcoholism and drug dependence. There was no proper training for psychological treatments within psychiatry, so I devoted myself to working at that for the next 25 or more years. When I retired at the end of March last year, part of the reason for doing so was because I felt increasingly depressed about the way that mental health services were going. For the first 10 or 15 years, every year I could look at services, not just the one I was working in, but more generally, and see improvement and development, but for the past 10 or 15 years, everything seemed to get worse every year in a number of different ways. In devoting myself more to working in Parliament to try to make changes, this document is the first time in the past 10 or 15 years that I have felt seriously encouraged that people are beginning to address mental health and well-being problems in a proper and serious way.
I shall describe the document from two or three perspectives. First, it is the first document I have seen issuing from government that recognises that mental health and well-being go across all government departments. We talk about stigma. One of the key elements of stigma in mental health is that everybody in the community and right across government is very happy to deposit mental health in psychiatric departments and not recognise that education, maternity services and well-being in employment practices all contribute to mental health. We had a Government who demanded that people reconstruct the management of their businesses in such a way that bullying became good management to get the best out of things. It was neither good management nor good for people’s well-being. The point about this document is that it makes it clear that in business and management—which includes management within government—we have at our disposal the mental well-being of those who work in the services. We need to take that into account.
We can get into the details. I see that one Royal College of Psychiatrists document—No Health without Public Mental Health—is well represented but Self-Harm, Suicide and Risk, which I was involved in, is relatively little represented. In particular, there is not much recognition that self-harm is a different phenomenon from suicide; it is not just uncompleted suicide. In the details there are things that one could point out. At a high level this document seems to be an attempt to get recognition right across government and the healthcare services that not only in what people sometimes dismiss as the walking wounded but in serious, enduring mental illness—the schizophrenic disorders, manic depressive psychosis and the more organic disorders—there is a psychological component.
One of the difficulties in my own college is that for some years—it is not true more recently—there was such a focus on the biological side of things that the psycho-social became much less important. Many professionals, including some from my own profession, fell into the trap of thinking that the way to deal with things was to retreat into a biological approach. This document says, “No, I’m sorry, that’s not sufficient. We have to see the person as a whole”. Four hundred million pounds may not be a lot of money in terms of developing psychological services but at the moment it would not be easy to find all the trained therapists within the National Health Service who could go on to do the work. You cannot produce therapists at the drop of a hat, particularly in the psychological services. It will take some years to train them. One of my anxieties is that to spend the money quickly there will be a temptation to employ all sorts of people who might not necessarily be good therapists. The previous Government never got around to the statutory registration of psychological therapists, despite considerable pressure over the past 10 years from some of us.
As I look at this document, it is wholly possible to point out all the flaws and difficulties. We are starting from very difficult circumstances. However, it seems possible to understand from this that the Government are trying to point to a whole new direction in this document. I am not much enamoured of the term “big society”, which is used in this document and pretty much everywhere else. However, I do like the notion of active citizenship. When people come along with difficulties in their lives, it is not about what we do to them in healthcare services, but about how we engage with them and help them to engage with their lives.
I pick up on one comment in closing. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, whom I regard as my noble friend, talked about the danger that serious, enduring mental illness might not be dealt with because lots of other things might be espoused first, particularly in psychological therapies. It was not this Government who produced the notion of recovery models. However, the Government pointed out, albeit in a footnote, that recovery does not necessarily mean that you recover. It means, as it says in the footnote on page 16,
“living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life even with the limitations caused by the illness”.
The noble Baroness is totally right. It would be Utopian to have the notion that mental illness can be done away with completely. It is part of the human condition for more of us, including some in this House, than we would like to believe. In the face of the enormity of that problem, we should not be dismayed by this report but encouraged by it.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, given his career as a practitioner in mental health services. I second his desire to encourage the Minister and his colleagues the honourable Paul Burstow and the right honourable Andrew Lansley to take every opportunity to go out and visit services, schools, young offender institutions and the wider services catering for young people with mental health problems. There is tremendous anxiety out there about the impact of the cuts. It might be difficult to experience that but people need to see Ministers and Members of Parliament on the front line and know that there is interest in the issue and support for it.
I welcome this very timely and important debate initiated by my noble friend Lady Murphy. I am grateful that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will reply to the debate, given his long experience in this area. We are grateful for that, given the challenges that lie ahead of us. I welcome the Government’s No Health without Mental Health strategy. I was particularly struck by the evidence that many smokers have a mental health disorder. I also welcome the fact that early intervention is emphasised. The work that the Government have commissioned from Frank Field MP, Graham Allen MP, Dame Clare Tickell and Professor Eileen Munro to look at how we can intervene early to improve outcomes for children is all very welcome and I am sure will be an important part of the strategy. Tim Loughton MP is a great example of someone who has got out there and found out what is happening on the front line. Practitioners have immense respect for him as he has done that. At a recent meeting on children’s centres, he spoke about the need to share best practice in Sure Start centres. I hope that there may soon be a means to do so. I understand that the Government are considering making a grant to organisations to hold a conference on that, which I welcome.
Unfortunately, I have a number of concerns. On a quick reading of the document, I saw no reference to the mental health of looked-after children and specialist looked-after children mental health teams. The statistics for the mental health of children, especially in children’s homes, point to a high degree of unfairness in this area. It needs constant thought and attention. CAMHS concerns me very much. A huge amount of CAMHS funding comes from local authorities. In the London Borough of Barnet, five-sixths of the funding for CAMHS comes from the local authority. That funding has been hit by the current cuts. Lots of thought needs to be given to how to support CAMHS at this time.
The report refers to targeted mental health services in schools—TAMHS. Very successful pilots have been run in schools but I understand that if there is no will or funding to sustain them, this early intervention, which is so effective, may be lost. The Minister is kindly giving careful thought to the future of the Cassel Hospital and the possibility of providing national funding. I know that he has been concerned about the vacancy rates in the family assessment unit. I understand that they have been rising for a number of years following a 2005 ruling in the High Court which forbade judges insisting that local authorities fund assessments at the Cassel Hospital. In short, the Cassel Hospital has not been funded adequately. It provides specialist services for families with very complex needs. I am grateful to the Minister for the attention that he is giving it. I should be interested to hear what other options he may be considering for these families. That interesting information would inform our further discussions on this matter.
There is concern that the Sure Start centres in the most impoverished areas are the ones most at risk of closing. I hope that the Government will listen to their adviser, Frank Field MP, and will consider ring-fenced funding if it seems to be necessary, or other means to incentivise local authorities to fund these fundamental early intervention services.
I have here a note about the number of commissioners who have already been lost, with all their experience in local authorities and the health service. There is a shortage of psychiatrists, as I have said. Clinical psychologists are more in abundance, but future generations may be put off by the fact that it is difficult for the current generation to find work. This profession is crucial. For example, Hackney’s social services have in the past three years experienced a reduction from 500 to 270 in the number of children taken into care, and it is astounding that a quarter of young people leaving care in Hackney have gone on to university—the highest proportion across the country. Hackney’s teams have included clinical psychologists with additional training to become systemic psychotherapists. Support from that sort of professional can make a huge difference, and I know that the noble Earl is considering a review of NHS professions. I hope that that consideration will be given priority.
To conclude, I welcome this strategy and hope that the Minister will take every opportunity to visit the services I have described.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, on securing this debate. She seems to have a knack of securing debates of this nature at an important time. In 2009, she secured a debate on dementia, and anyone who reads it will realise the power, information and knowledge that a debate of that sort in your Lordships House brings to the issue.
It seems that society increasingly expects GPs to have the answer to every health problem. While the demands on the National Health Service grow, more and more patients turn up at GP surgeries expecting answers to ever more complex medical problems, compared with, say, just 10 years ago. The plain fact is that GPs are inadequately equipped to provide the overspecialist diagnosis that many patients, perhaps unreasonably, expect from them. For me, the big worry is that the Government intend to place an even greater burden on GPs by making them the local health commissioners through GP commissioning.
Under the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill, local commissioners and GP consortia will be responsible for ensuring that the mental health needs of their local communities are properly and adequately met. The worry is that they are inadequately trained and prepared for this. GPs have a small degree of training in mental health and their knowledge of it is varied, sometimes with worrying consequences. In my former constituency of Islwyn, we have a wonderful group called SHADE. It is a self-help group of ladies who have suffered with a range of mental health problems, especially depression. When I first got to know the group many years ago, one lady who was suffering with depression told me that when she went to see her doctor he listened carefully to her problems and then said, “Nothing wrong with you, love. Go home and get your husband to buy you a new dress”. What worries me about the Government’s plans is the lack of any proposal to remedy such ignorance.
The one exception—and as a former Minister for Veterans I welcome this—is on page 45 of No Health without Mental Health, where there are proposals to provide training for GPs and other NHS staff who may come into contact with veterans with mental health needs. That is most welcome. If the Government propose to do this for veterans, it is an admission that there is a training gap, and the Government should extend this sort of training on general mental health matters to GPs. This would significantly decrease the risk of poor-quality mental health provision posed by some of the plans to give GPs commissioning powers over health provision.
As I understand the Government’s NHS changes, only a small number of specialist high-cost low-volume services, such as secure mental health services, will be commissioned directly by the new GP commissioning board. The majority of mental health services will be commissioned by GP consortia in place of primary care trusts. It will therefore be vital that GPs properly understand mental health and the services needed to help people with mental health problems. Yet, the Government’s own evidence on page 58 of No Health without Mental Health shows that only one in every six older people with depression discusses their symptoms with their GP, and fewer than half of those receive adequate treatment.
In my time as a Member of Parliament, too many elderly people came to see me and complained that they were unhappy with the care offered by their GP, who would often say: “What do you expect at your age?”. Senior citizens expect a first-class health service. Citizens of whatever age are entitled to and deserve that. The evidence suggests that if GPs are going to take responsibility for commissioning mental health services, it will be necessary for them to receive further training on how best to treat mental health problems. At the very least it will be necessary for the Government to carry out a full assessment of whether GPs are in a position properly to commission mental health services.
On page 51 of No Health without Mental Health, the Government say that they want GP consortia to be,
“well placed to understand the broad range of mental health problems experienced by people in the local population and to commission high-quality services across primary and secondary services”.
We can all sign up to that aspiration, but GPs will need further training. I fear that the proposal from the Government may simply be storing up even greater expectations of what GPs can do for their patients that will not be fulfilled, leaving many with undiagnosed and inadequately cared for mental health problems. Like other noble Lords, I welcome this document, but I see it as a work in progress rather than as the final answer to our difficulties.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, for securing the debate and for the first two minutes of her introduction. I will start by pointing out that both David Cameron and Nick Clegg, very soon after they took over as leaders of their respective parties, chose to highlight mental health as an area about which they felt very strongly and which they believed should be properly addressed in a way that the previous Government were not doing. In one of his first Prime Minister's Question Time, Nick Clegg challenged Gordon Brown on the lack of available access to talking therapies. That was a brave thing to do, because, as noble Lords have said, mental health remains a Cinderella part of the health service and not particularly popular. The Government are to be commended for sticking to promises made before the election and coming forward with a strategy that, as the noble Baroness charitably said, is aspirational. However, it is also comprehensive.
I say to noble Lords, in particular to those who were here a few years ago and who went through the misery of debating what became the Mental Health Act, that there is a stark contrast between the legislation that was passed by the previous Government and this document. I would much rather see a Government committed to, and putting resources behind, some of the aspirations that are in this document. Will it address serious and enduring mental health questions? Probably not. However, it addresses a lot of the issues that were highlighted during the passage of the Mental Health Bill as areas on which the Government needed to work. Therefore, there is much to be commended in it.
In particular, there is much to commend in the way in which the strategy picks up on many discussions that we had in your Lordships' House about how existing mental health legislation was applied disproportionately to different groups in the community, and how certain groups were suffering adversely as a result. It is refreshing to see a document that talks about the mental health of veterans and older people, lesbians and gay men, and people from black and minority communities. That is a refreshing change from the Government, and I strongly welcome it.
I was struck when I read the briefings that we were sent when people outside learnt that we were to have this debate. I looked for the criticisms. Most of them came from organisations such as the NHS Confederation and were not about the contents of this document but about the general position on health funding, to which noble Lords have referred. There was not a great deal to which people took exception in this.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, was right to focus on the key question of the ability and capacity of GPs to commission mental health services. At the moment, there is a great hue and cry about GPs’ capacity to commission a whole range of services, and some of the arguments are more compelling than others. It seems that on mental health there is a clear case for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of General Practitioners to work together to inform GPs in very practical ways about how they should go about fulfilling that commissioning process. Can the Minister say whether that is intended to be one of the priority areas in the work of the ministerial advisory group?
There is one very important thing that I wish to dig out from the depths of the strategy document. On page 54, in point 5.84 in the section on improving quality of outcomes, it is stated that payment by results currencies will not be setting-dependent. In lay terms and cutting through the jargon, that means that for the first time we will have a system in which the payment for treatment does not encourage practitioners to keep people in hospital. That is a significant breakthrough. During our discussions on the Mental Health Bill, I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, talking about the need to make mental health professionals understand that the transition between acute care and community care had to work better for patients. That one measure in itself could have a more profound effect on the organisation of services and outcomes for patients than almost any other, and I was very glad to see it.
Finally, I notice in the document that there is a passing reference to the Mental Health Act and to the increase in the number of community treatment orders issued under it. I well remember people who supported that Bill standing up in this House and saying that we had to support the legislation but that we could review how it was going. I ask the Minister how quickly that will be reviewed and how soon Members of this House and another place will receive evidence on the impact of the legislation. That underpins to a large extent the capacity of professionals to implement what I think is an extremely good strategy overall and one that we should welcome.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, I join in congratulating my noble friend Lady Murphy on securing this important debate. The strategy is most welcome. It has a lot to commend it, especially the pledge to combat the stigma and discrimination that is still faced by so many people affected by mental illness.
In its opening lines, the strategy, one of whose key areas for action is to identify mental health problems and intervene early across all age groups, tells us that good mental health and resilience—I emphasise that word—are fundamental to our physical health, our relationships, our education, our training and work, and to achieving our potential. The use of “resilience” here and the rhetoric that follows it so early on in the strategy are interesting. They inform us that the main focus of the strategy is the very worthwhile desire to get people of all ages with mental health issues into work and to keep them there—an endeavour that deserves our full support. This might prove particularly hard in the difficult economic circumstances that we face. As chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Corporate Responsibility, I heartily endorse anything that facilitates a better understanding of the contribution that people with mental health issues want to, and can, make to our economic recovery, and the critical role that employers can play in bringing that to pass.
One of the key examples that our group recently highlighted has been the Business in the Community campaign, Business Action for Working Well. Mental and emotional well-being is an important focus of that campaign. I can do no better than to quote Alex Gourlay, the chief executive of the health and beauty division of Alliance Boots and chairman of the BITC campaign, when he said,
“Employers need to take urgent action to promote the mental and physical health of their employees if they are to ensure the competitiveness of their companies in difficult, as well as prosperous, economic times”.
A small charity in south London is one such example. It trains people, some with severe physical as well as mental health conditions, to achieve NVQ qualifications or credits towards NVQ qualifications in IT, office skills and sometimes in horticulture, working in the nearby hospital grounds.
The key to the project’s success and to the achievements of the students is the sort of flexible working that they can cope with, so that fluctuating conditions can be accommodated by giving people certain agreed tasks to complete in a specific time, say one month, and not by measuring their achievements by the usual outcome measurements that we use. That enables their resilience to their conditions to be maximised. The sense of achievement of many of the people who gain an NVQ or part of one is quite remarkable. It can transform their sense of self-worth and, through that, their future.
In welcoming the strategy, I have some concerns that the section entitled,
“Improving outcomes for older people with mental health problems”,
majors on depression in older people, which is very welcome, but sadly gives dementia scant treatment. The document states that improving the quality of care for people with dementia and their carers is a major priority for the Government and that the Government are committed to more rapid improvement in dementia care through the local delivery of quality outcomes and local accountability for achieving them. As chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, I would say that this is very welcome, but the strategy goes on to report that for every 10,000 people over the age of 65, 500 have dementia, as if in some way this were a low figure and not too troubling. We know that the reality is very different.
Research shows that more people fear being diagnosed with dementia above anything else, including cancer or even death itself. One million people in this country will suffer some form of dementia within two decades, and one in three people of 65 and over will die with it, yet 12 times as much is spent each year on cancer research, and six times as many scientists are working on how to treat tumours. Currently, as many as two-thirds of people who develop dementia are never diagnosed, while the best treatments can only help to reduce symptoms and cannot prevent the degenerative disease progressing. In Annexe A of the strategy an action within objective 4 is to,
“Implement the recommendations of Quality Outcomes for People with Dementia: Building on the work of the National Dementia Strategy”.
We know that in development of a dementia quality standard, the condition seems something of an afterthought in the strategy.
I also have a concern that the strategy might inadvertently imply that some people with mental health issues were unsuited to the world of full-time employment and are therefore, in a sense, second-class citizens.
The wording of the strategy tends to focus on contribution. I feel that that is too associated with condemning older people—those over working age, including those with early-stage dementia—to being in an unstoppable decline into residential care and to never being expected to be resilient or even interested in contributing to society, whereas we know that many people with early-stage dementia could remain engaged, independent and supported at home, making a significant contribution to their communities, perhaps supporting others who are in full-time employment.
My last point is that dementia is still not always treated as a health issue, but rather as a social ill that is funded, especially in the community, mainly through social care rather than as a health condition. Despite the fact that dementia confers a life expectancy of only five to six years, it remains the poor relation to cancer and heart disease in research funding, because it is not seen primarily as a health issue. We must change that, and I hope that the strategy will, because only by changing it can the ambitious challenge of the strategy to mainstream mental health in England be fully and effectively taken up by both commissioners and providers in health and social care.
Lord Layard
My Lords, I, too, welcome the debate. It is extremely timely, because it is a time of great opportunity for mental health services but also a time of great danger, as many noble Lords have said. I should like to begin with the opportunity. We have here an excellent strategy which provides a better deal for mentally ill people, especially the one in six adults with depression or anxiety disorders and the one in 10 children with mental health problems. If we take those two groups, we are starting from a very poor base where only a quarter of those people are at present in any form of treatment. It is great that the Government are giving that group a major boost through a specific strategy, the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. I must declare an interest as a national adviser to the programme.
In the spending review, the Government have backed the strategy, with £400 million allocated. This must be the first time that specific money for mental health has appeared in the top six priorities for health spending in a spending review. That is wonderful progress. It is also very satisfying that the spending has been extended to include CAMHS, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Of course, the task is to ensure that the money gets spent to good effect. A key issue here is the role of local commissioners. The NHS operating framework gives clear instructions because, for the first time, improved access to psychological therapy has been made a national rather than a local priority for local commissioners. Again, that is major progress. The framework also requires session-by-session monitoring of outcomes and reporting, so that commissioners can see what they are getting for their money in both access, where there is a clear standard of 15 per cent of the mentally ill population, and in the quality of service, represented by the recovery rate, which is intended to be at least 50 per cent of those treated.
However, it is important that those key performance indicators are made publicly available, because that is the only way in which local commissioners, as well as providers, will be held to account by the public. It is important that commissioners understand that they really have to do something to deliver the key performance indicators. Perhaps the most important thing that they have to do, which was assumed in the calculations for the spending review, is to make sure that providers are employing sufficient qualified therapists—at least 40 for every 250,000 population. We should consider those as some of the most important jobs in the country. It is very exciting that the Government have a training programme in parallel with local service delivery to provide that number of therapists and it is important that the local commissioners then ensure that they are employed. We are starting from a situation where the NICE guidelines for depression and anxiety simply cannot be implemented in at least 40 per cent of the country. But, if the spending settlement is properly implemented, the whole country will be covered by 2013.
This is a major challenge and a real revolution if it can be brought about. It is in everyone’s interest that it is, including the whole of the NHS, because the waste in the current situation is terrible. It is not just a waste of lives and taxpayers’ money: one can show that improved access to psychological therapy will pay for itself twice over as regards the taxpayer. First, it will save more in incapacity benefit and lost taxes than it will cost. Secondly, the programme will save the NHS as much money as it costs.
We have evidence, unfortunately, only from the US, but we also have good evidence from 28 randomised control trials of cognitive behavioural therapy. Data were collected on the cost of the therapy and the subsequent healthcare costs of those treated and of the control group. In 26 of the 28 trials, the savings in subsequent healthcare costs were greater than the cost of the initial therapy, which is a cast-iron case. However, the danger is that we are in a world of cuts. In all previous worlds of cuts, mental health expenditure has been cut more than physical health. The studies that I have quoted show how incredibly short-sighted that would be even in terms of the costs of physical health. It must not be allowed to happen again.
Finally, I want to ask the Minister two simple questions. First, is it government policy that mental health expenditure should be cut by no more than expenditure on physical health? Secondly, if that is their policy, what steps will the Government take to make sure that this is what happens? I think that these are the key questions which lie behind much of what noble Lords have said today. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to help us when he replies.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Murphy for securing this debate, particularly as it is the first debate on mental health since my introduction in November. I, too, declare an interest. Although I began my medical career as a general practitioner, I have worked for probably 35 years as a psychiatrist, particularly working with people with learning disabilities and complex mental health problems.
As a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, I am quite accustomed to arguing the corner for mental health. I remember writing to Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister suggesting that when he spoke about health, it would be a good idea to use the phrase “physical and mental health”. When the word “health” is used, people, including doctors, tend to think about surgery and surgical interventions, but not about mental health. Gordon Brown and the rest of the ministerial team then referred to physical and mental health for about six weeks. I wondered why it did not last any longer and came to the conclusion that it was because of the difficulty in trying to understand the complexity of mental health problems, plus the discrimination associated with mental illness and the fear and ignorance which go along with that.
There was a time when cancer was spoken about in hushed tones. No one had the language or the confidence to speak openly about it. In many ways, mental illness today is where cancer was all those years ago. My vision is of a time when mental illness will be spoken about more openly by politicians, the public and medical professionals; when everyone has a language and the confidence to express what needs to be said and what needs to be done; and when people with mental illness and learning disabilities will be more fully accepted and included in society. I am delighted that these are the objectives of this excellent new mental health strategy, No Health without Mental Health. I applaud its public health focus and the determination expressed within it for parity of esteem.
At the end of my presidency in 2008, the Royal College of Psychiatrists launched its manifesto, A Fair Deal for Mental Health. At the time, the campaign pointed out that only 12 per cent of NHS spending was on mental health, a share that did not accurately reflect the human and economic cost of mental illness. I therefore welcome the recognition in this strategy that mental health problems cost England £105 billion every year and that these costs are incurred across several government departments, including health, education and criminal justice. The challenge will be to address the imbalance between investment in physical health services and investment in mental health services at this time of financial constraint.
The failure of commissioners and managers to make provision for the overlap between mental and physical conditions leads to expensive and unnecessary investigations, such as for medically unexplained symptoms, and for missed opportunities to treat, for example, depression associated with heart disease. People who are depressed are much more likely to die from heart disease even when their depression has been effectively treated. This points to an interrelationship between physical and mental health which is rather overlooked. I always say to medical students, “Have you noticed that the brain and the heart are in the same body?”. There is plenty to research in this interrelationship, but the separation between physical and mental health has not allowed us to look at it properly.
I did not see much mention of research funding in the strategy document, although I may have missed it, but research will be a critical friend in the move towards better mental health services. Here is the rub: for every £1,000 of charity funding for cancer research, just £26 is available for mental health research. The stigma associated with mental illness has a negative impact on charitable giving for mental health research. Mental Health Research UK, the first mental health research charity, is struggling to establish itself and would benefit from proper funding so that it can begin to be a significant player in the research arena. Government sources such as the National Institute for Health Research need to start giving priority to mental health research in order to redress the inequity.
Finally, I should like to comment on the provision of appropriate treatments for all patients with mental health problems. I welcome the proposed increased investment in the Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies project, in particular the expansion to engage with harder-to-reach groups, but I am concerned that there are still no plans to extend talking therapies to people with learning disabilities who, again as far as I can see, receive no mention in the strategy documentation.
The nuts and bolts of how to provide effective treatments for people with complex mental health needs, such as those with learning disabilities, are often poorly understood. Face-to-face appointments are clearly an essential component of treatment, but the specialised supervision, consultation and multidisciplinary liaison that is needed behind the scenes is expensive, although crucial to enable success. Highly specialist teamwork is the only way of both managing risk and enabling patients with complex needs to access appropriate treatments and reach better mental health outcomes. The pathway from primary care treatments for people with common mental disorders to specialist mental health services for those with complex problems needs to be commissioned carefully.
I know that the noble Earl and the rest of the health team are determined to improve the quality of mental health outcomes, but I seek assurances that established complex needs services for people with severe mental illnesses, including services for those with learning disabilities with a dual diagnosis of mental illness, will not be cut to pay for the new public mental health programmes.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has provided us with an opportunity to discuss this important issue, for which we should all be grateful. The Government published their new mental health strategy, No Health without Mental Health: A cross-government mental health outcomes strategy for people of all ages, on 2 February. It is designed to set the framework for the policy and development of mental health services for at least the next five years. It is accompanied by a call for action to set out the principles of change and urge co-ordinated action in delivering the strategy. I join other noble Lords in saying that this is an aspirational document and there is no doubt that it makes a powerful case. However, as is this Government’s habit, it does not contain goals and target-setting as a means to reach its objectives.
I welcome the strategy’s acknowledgement that mental health problems cost England £105 billion every year and that this burden spreads beyond health services to education, employers, the social security benefits system, housing, the criminal justice system, and families and communities. I also welcome its demonstrating how effective interventions and initiatives can reduce that burden and prevent needless suffering to individuals and their families.
I think that we are all familiar with policy documents that are excellent and long on analysis of the problem in question but unfortunately bring to bear solutions that lack the same passion, drive and specificity. I think that I am not alone in expressing this concern—the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and my noble friend Lord Patel are but two of the others who have done so. In the same week that the Government launched their mental health strategy, the Commons debated the revolution in the NHS that is the Health and Social Care Bill and the uncertainties that it may bring. At the same time, hundreds and thousands of people with a mental health problem will face a test of their incapacity evidence which is already suggesting great unfairness and causing great distress. If one adds to this the local cuts which threaten services that are vital to many, one concludes that the Government must expect a level of anxiety about the deliverability of the strategy.
I commend the work of the voluntary sector in this area. I did a trawl through the websites of Mind, SANE and Rethink to see what they had to say about the Government’s plans. I also had a look at their blogs to gauge their members’ reactions. Like most noble Lords and me, they give a general welcome to the strategy. However, I shall quote what someone on the Mind website said:
“The county council will cease to provide funding for our local branches of Mind, or indeed for any services for people will mental health problems. We, (mental health service users who attend any of the pitifully few groups or agencies available) were told that this is so we can all have more ‘choice’ by opting to fund organisations ourselves with personal budgets. In reality, people with life-long mental health problems are being weeded out at every stage of trying to access these budgets and will therefore be unable to attend anything. Centres such as those provided by local Mind charities may well have to close if there are no longer people who can afford to attend them. So much for ‘choice’. The future health and stability of those now left unsupported does not appear to concern the council. At a time when council budgets are being slashed, social care is under a great threat. Any talk of a ‘strategy for mental health’ is somewhat meaningless in the circumstances, particularly for anyone with long term problems”.
That is a point of view that the Government need to take very seriously.
Will the Government’s strategy work? For people who experience mental health problems, I suggest that it has to work. It is legitimate to ask questions about how it might be delivered. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on the lack of mention of funding for research in the document. I make two points. First, multidisciplinary commissioning is vital for pathways of care. Some of the matters will fall within the remit of the public health authorities, some with the NHS Commissioning Board and some with GP consortia. This may risk fragmentation of provision. If co-ordination and co-operation are so important, why are the Government abolishing the National Mental Health Development Unit as part of their rationalisation of the arm’s-length bodies?
The second point is the greater societal challenge. We have to recognise that cuts will bring restrictions to education opportunities, unemployment and debt. The impact on people’s lives and their mental health cannot be underestimated. Debt and the risk of homelessness and family breakdown will have a huge, spiralling effect on stress and anxiety levels. There will be an even greater need for these services to be got right.
In recent times under the Labour Government, we saw the start of a positive change in public attitudes. Evidence clearly showed that we need to support people in the workplace and the wider community. I will be very interested to learn from the Minister the answer to the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and others have posed in this debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, it is always instructive and never less than a pleasure to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, on the subject of mental health. Mental illness and its consequences affect us all, directly or indirectly. We know that one in four of us will experience mental ill health over our lifetime, and that one in six of us has a common mental illness at any one time. Underlying this is the overall financial cost of mental health which, as noble Lords have pointed out, is staggering—an estimated £105 billion a year to the economy as a whole—and the costs of treatment alone are expected to double in the next 20 years.
This is why we launched our mental health strategy, No Health without Mental Health, on 2 February. To support it we are making around £400 million available for expanding talking therapies through the improving access to psychological therapies programme. This will build up the essential skills base of the NHS and mean that we can start offering talking therapies across a wider range of mental illness and to a broader range of people. I was grateful for the supportive remarks of my noble friend Lord Alderdice in this context.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was right to stress that early intervention is essential. We know that half of those with lifetime mental health problems first experience symptoms before the age of 14. That would be part of my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, who voiced disquiet that by focusing on the mental well-being of the nation we were doing so at the expense of those with very serious mental illness. We know that early intervention is important. Also, 25 per cent of older people have symptoms of depression. Those are good reasons why this strategy encompasses the whole population. The strategy acknowledges the dimensions of the problem by covering the full age range of society.
It also makes clear an expectation of parity of esteem between mental and physical health services. Improved mental health and well-being is associated with a range of benefits, from improved physical health and life expectancy to better educational achievement and reduced health risk behaviours. The prerequisite for achieving this is to build the awareness and understanding of mental illness and mental well-being across society. We also need to tackle stigma and discrimination, and we have put this at the heart of the strategy.
Yet to shift public attitudes substantially requires a major and sustained social movement. Already Comic Relief, the Big Lottery Fund and the major anti-stigma campaign, Time to Change, which is led by Mind and Rethink, aim to inspire people to work together to end the discrimination surrounding mental health. We know from discussions with voluntary and private sector organisations that there is an appetite for an even more ambitious programme. We will give this social movement our full support and active participation.
I should make it clear that mental health is a priority across government; this is very much a cross-government strategy. Of course it is easy to set out principles but the big question is how do we make it happen, especially at a time of financial challenge. A number of noble Lords have asked that pertinent question. The ingredients for success will be leadership and collaboration across the country, drawing on the skills and insights of clinicians and partner organisations and involving service users as much as possible to shape services in line with local needs.
The new NHS architecture will provide a clear opportunity to support mental health and drive improvements in care. The three outcomes frameworks—for the NHS, public health and social care—will entrench mental health needs in service priorities and provide clearer accountability for results. At the centre will be Public Health England, which will build up the evidence and expertise around mental health interventions.
Finally, at local level we have GP consortia, driving up standards by bringing resource management together with clinical management for the first time. There is undoubtedly a need to build up the skills and awareness among GPs and we are working with the Royal College of General Practitioners to do so. I do not in the least quarrel with the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, on that point. However, there are already many GPs with a real interest and expertise in mental health issues. Good commissioning of services must involve collaboration, so that GPs and mental health professionals communicate with and—above all, perhaps—understand one another. Again, I hope that the strategy can be a catalyst for these conversations to take place.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, expressed his doubts about the ability of consortia to commission mental health services, as did my noble friend Lady Barker and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. The intention is that commissioning GP clusters will commission most mental health services in the same way as they commission other services. However, they will not be doing this on their own; they will do so in line with guidance from both NICE and the NHS commissioning board. I say in particular to my noble friend Lady Barker that we are indeed working with the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the NHS Confederation to develop guidance and support for GP consortia in commissioning effective mental health services. In addition, there will be opportunities for third sector and for-profit organisations to provide specialist commissioning advice on mental health to GP consortia.
My noble friend Lord Newton asked what mechanisms will be in place to see all this through. First, the Cabinet sub-committee on public health will oversee the implementation of the strategy. Secondly, we will establish an advisory group for mental health, composed of key stakeholders such as service users and those who care for them. This advisory group will work in partnership in realising the improvement of mental health outcomes for people of all ages. Between 2011 and 2012, the advisory board will identify actions in the transitional year to deliver the mental health strategy. Thereafter, and once the NHS commissioning board and Public Health England have been created, the board will become a focus for all stakeholders to discuss the details of how implementation of the strategy will take place and review progress. The board will advise on improved indicators for tracking progress against the mental health objectives that could be used locally, by the NHS commissioning board and potentially in future iterations of outcomes frameworks. Plans for the all-important structures that need to be there for implementation of the strategy to be successful are already in place.
My noble friend Lord Newton, the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, expressed fears that the £400 million is not strictly speaking ring-fenced and therefore might not be protected. The answer to that is that the NHS operating framework mandates an annual expansion of IAPT services in line with our commitment. PCTs are currently drawing up their plans for next year to implement the operating framework. The plans that we have seen so far are consistent with the Government’s commitments to expand talking therapies. We will hold strategic health authorities to account for managing their delivery. Additionally, we are in the process of making sure that, through a range of communications, PCTs, managers and commissioners are aware of the importance of IAPT and the mental health strategy generally.
Lest there be any doubt, I should say that the £400 million is additional money. It was announced with the publication of the cross-government mental health strategy and is part of the 2010 spending review settlement for the department. It is in addition to the £173 million announced in the spending review in 2007, which is in primary care trust baselines for April 2011.
A number of noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Layard, referred to funding cuts that are in prospect. I just say to the noble Lord that, as I am sure he knows, the NHS budget as a whole is protected; it is not going to be cut. I have already referred to the NHS operating framework as a mechanism to ensure that these plans are delivered. Of course, mental health services cannot be exempt from the need to make efficiencies, but any efficiencies made must be based on robust evidence and, more importantly, mental health services must be given parity of esteem with physical health services. That is the answer to one question posed to me—when decisions are made on how to save money. The mental health strategy points to ways in which efficiencies can be made while also improving quality through the programme.
My noble friend Lord Alderdice referred to the lack of focus on suicide and self-harm. We will be publishing a separate suicide prevention strategy soon.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, spoke powerfully about black and minority ethnic issues. On the question of Count Me In, the Care Quality Commission expects to publish the census report in April this year. Incidentally, the census was never intended to continue indefinitely; the mental health minimum data set has the potential to be an even better way in which to monitor what is happening. I understand that the data are to be collected quarterly rather than annually. The noble Lord also asked me whether GP consortia would be subject to the Equality Act, and the answer is yes.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, focused in particular on services for young people. One of the first things that we need to do is to develop agreement on the nature of the requirements for psychological therapies in children’s services and the best way in which to meet them. Officials have already held preparatory meetings to do this, and we are in the process of setting up a team to take this forward. It is very important that we get consensus on the way ahead, because we cannot simply use adult psychological therapies programmes as a one-size-fits-all template. The Government have increased the funding available for CAMHS to give an even greater flexibility to those at a local level, investing funds to expand access to psychological therapies for children and young people. That will enable the development and initiation of a stand-alone programme to extend access to psychological therapies, building on learning from the IAPT programme.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, referred to the other end of the age spectrum and older people, and suggested that the strategy does not say quite enough about that dimension of the issue. The mental health strategy talks about the problem of depression among older people and recognises that only one out of six older people with depression discusses their symptoms with their GP. It sets out the importance of early intervention, such as befriending programmes, which can be very helpful in tackling the social isolation associated with depression. In the public health operating framework, we are consulting on indicators that are very relevant to older people’s mental health. The mental health strategy also sets out the importance of ensuring that psychological therapies are accessible to older people as the programme rolls out nationally.
My noble friend Lady Barker referred to community treatment orders. Our view is that they are potentially useful, but we need to be certain, as she rightly said, that they are being used properly in patients’ interests and do not undermine confidence in the Mental Health Act. She was right that the coalition parties expressed doubts about CTOs when we were in opposition. We intend to keep the use of these orders under review, and I would be happy to write to her with further details on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, referred to research. The Department of Health, through the National Institute for Health Research and the Policy Research Programme, has invested significantly in mental health research and will continue to support high-quality mental health research. The NIHR will also continue to work with research councils and other funders to co-ordinate research efforts consistent with the recently published MRC review of mental health research. We are increasing spending on health research in real terms over the next four years.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, referred to the closure of the National Mental Health Development Unit. We are clear that at a time when the NHS budget is under pressure, we need to find efficiencies so that we can invest in front-line services. We are working with the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Psychiatrists to produce robust guidance for GP commissioners, as I have already mentioned.
I firmly believe that this strategy represents an unprecedented opportunity to improve support, to prevent illness and to make mental health issues a more accepted part of everyday society and everyday life. We intend to put every possible effort into making that happen.