House of Commons

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

Monday 28 February 2011

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

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

1. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the community and voluntary sector of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the community and voluntary sector of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.

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

18. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the community and voluntary sector of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.

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

Spending decisions are a matter for local councils, but no council will see its spending power fall by more than 8.8% next year. Councils face difficult decisions owing to a fiscal crisis that was not of their making or of ours. The best councils are expanding the opportunities for the voluntary sector to help them to make savings. The worst-run councils are targeting the sector for disproportionate cuts. We are requiring all councils to be transparent in their actions.

[Dr Whitehead]

Next year, my local authority is cutting more than 20% of its running grants for voluntary and community organisations, which means that organisations such as the citizens advice bureau, the council for voluntary service and advice services generally will find it almost impossible to continue to support the volunteers they have supported over the past year. Does the Minister think that authorities such as Southampton will rue the day they did that, or is he rueing the day that he enabled his Department to acquiesce so readily in the cuts to local government funding that he has endorsed?

[Greg Clark]

I have made it very clear that councils should not cut disproportionately. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to meet his local council. I understand that the leader of the council has invited every voluntary organisation to come to see what other opportunities there are for them within the council. I also hope that if he does go to the council, he will reflect on the fact that every Conservative and Liberal member has taken a 5% cut in their allowances, but Labour members have refused. When he is in city hall, I hope that he will get his friends there to make their contribution to the voluntary sector.

[Julie Hilling]

The Government have completely cut the grant to vinolved—a youth volunteering project—cut the grant settlement to Bolton council by £60 million, which will amount to 25%, and last year cut £1.3 million from Bolton’s grant to the voluntary and community sector. Bolton council is prioritising funding to the voluntary and community sector, but cannot work miracles with no money. Why is the Minister not listening to and supporting the voluntary and community sector?

[Greg Clark]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady listened to the debate in the Bolton council chamber on Wednesday—it was its budget meeting—but I did. I listened to it live on the internet, and it was fascinating. Two things emerged: first, the director of finance warned two years ago that the council should get its house in order, but was overruled by Labour members; and secondly—and disgracefully—a motion by the Conservative group to provide a fund to protect voluntary organisations was voted down by her Labour colleagues. She pipes up in this House, but can she pluck up the courage to talk to her colleagues in Bolton?

[Mr Speaker]

I call Pat Glass. She is not here. I call Andrew Bridgen.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is now more important than ever that local councils maintain and strengthen their links to community and voluntary groups, because these very groups can lead to innovative ways of delivering very high quality public services?

[Greg Clark]

They can indeed, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Reading council, for example, has taken the opportunity to increase funding to the voluntary sector, knowing that actually it helps it to change its services and make some of the savings it is required to make.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recognise the need to bring forward legislation to strengthen the ability of charities to come together to get the expertise to procure and gain contracts from local authorities that all too often set the rules in ways that do not enable charities to provide the services in their local communities that they really want to provide?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and that is why he will know that in the Localism Bill we are establishing rights for every voluntary organisation in the country not to be rebuffed by local authorities but to make a challenge to provide services, if they can demonstrate that they can do it better. That is the right approach, but it did not happen during the 13 years of Labour party rule.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

We all know that local councils are the largest providers of public funding to the voluntary sector, which has grown over the past 10 years, particularly through the partnerships that operate so successfully up and down the country. What was the Department’s estimate of the number of jobs that would be lost in the voluntary sector as a result of the front-loaded cuts the Government have imposed on councils, and will the Minister confirm that the Government’s transition fund, which was meant to help charities that have lost funding, was closed to bids on 21 January, before most councils had even finalised their budgets?

[Greg Clark]

I welcome the right hon. Lady to the debate; I had thought that her silence on matters concerning the voluntary sector might be terminal. We have made it very clear that councils should not cut disproportionately, but she has been absolutely silent, as have her Front-Bench colleagues, about Labour councils that are taking their cuts out on the voluntary sector. We have provided £100 million of transition funding, which is now being taken up. The first grants have been paid this week. I look forward to the right hon. Lady writing to members of Labour councils up and down the country and joining us in making it clear that they should not cut services.

[Caroline Flint]

Labour has always celebrated the partnership between local government and the voluntary sector, and under a Labour Administration we saw those partnerships grow. We saw local voluntary groups taking over some of the services that councils had traditionally run. The fact is that it is not only we who are raising concerns about the threat to the voluntary sector: 88 Liberal Democrat council leaders have made a public statement about their concern, and we know from a freedom of information request that Tory council leaders have also raised concerns about the front-loading of the cuts that they are facing, so the Minister should not make any party political points on this. However much he might pretend otherwise, is it not the truth that every Home-Start that goes to the wall, every over-60s club that closes and every domestic violence shelter that shuts—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we have got the thrust of the right hon. Lady’s question, and we are grateful to her.

[Greg Clark]

I wish the right hon. Lady was more vocal when she talked to the Labour councils that are making disproportionate cuts up and down the country. The fact is that they are having to make those cuts as a result of the policies of the previous Government, who left a completely unsustainable legacy. Our spending on debt interest is almost twice the amount that the council tax raises. Labour politicians got local authorities into this mess, and they are not playing their part in helping the voluntary sector. They should be saying very clearly, as we are doing, that councils should not make disproportionate cuts.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We need to speed up from now on. Questions and answers are simply too long.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

2. What steps the Government are taking to encourage local authorities to promote sustainable rural development through an integrated approach to employment and housing in rural communities.

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

The Government are committed to integrating national planning policy on the rural economy and housing in the streamlined national planning policy framework, which will include a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Through neighbourhood planning, we will also enable local authorities to have greater control over the delivery of the services, jobs and homes that their areas need.

[George Freeman]

After a decade of neglect under the previous Government, large swathes of rural Britain have suffered as post offices, pubs and small businesses have closed. Is it not key to rural communities to get jobs and small housing developments back into our rural villages, and will not the excellent Localism Bill help us to change the sustainability rules introduced by Labour that have made that impossible?

[Robert Neill]

The Bill will introduce neighbourhood planning measures and the community right to build, which will enable the incremental growth of villages. This will empower local communities, particularly in rural areas. Also, as I have said, we are revising the whole national planning priority framework, which will enable us to ensure that we have genuine sustainability—the right development in the right places to meet the right needs—while removing the top-down targets that have often resulted in inappropriate development being foisted on rural areas.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

3. What recent estimate he has made of the likely change in aggregate levels of employment among local authorities in the next four years.

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

No estimate has been made of the change in aggregate employment levels among local authorities in the next four years. It is for individual councils to make their own decisions about how their local work forces are organised and managed to ensure the efficient delivery of services for local taxpayers.

[Stephen Timms]

I think there should have been such an estimate. The Office for Budget Responsibility has projected a net loss of 40,000 in public sector employment in the next financial year, yet the Conservative-led Local Government Association says that 100,000 jobs will be lost in local government alone in the coming financial year. How have the Government got this calculation so badly wrong?

[Robert Neill]

It is precisely because it is down to local authorities to configure their work forces to meet local needs and priorities that the Government have not sought to make a calculation and therefore cannot get any such calculation wrong. The right hon. Gentleman might also like to reflect on the fact that some of the figures being bandied about relate not to actual reductions in jobs but to consultations on potential changes that might not come to pass.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating Hammersmith and Fulham council, which, in four years of Conservative control, has reduced its staff by a third, from 4,087 to 2,787, with almost no redundancies? It has cut the communications staff by half and reduced the human resources headcount from 100 to 47, all at a time when its services are rated among the highest in the country.

[Robert Neill]

Hammersmith and Fulham is an exemplar of how councils with imagination and political courage can deal with the matter. My hon. Friend is right to point out that it has done so—without any significant redundancy—by deleting needless posts.

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

Following a detailed survey of 202 councils, the Local Government Association has confirmed that, because of the scale and speed of the cuts imposed on local government, it stands by its prediction that 140,000 jobs will be lost. This was dismissed by the Secretary of State as a calculation on the back of a fag packet. The calculation includes Tory Hampshire, with 1,200 job losses; Tory Norfolk, with 1,500; and Birmingham, with 2,700 losses in next year alone. Sadly, the LGA got it right and the Secretary of State got it wrong. Will he now apologise?

[Robert Neill]

There is nothing to apologise for, because the error lies with those—including the GMB—who have calculated these scaremongering figures on the basis of HR1 forms, which relate to consultations on possible deletions of vacant posts, changes in work force patterns and voluntary redundancies. They bear no relation at all to compulsory job reductions; the hon. Gentleman should know better.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the effects of reductions in formula grant funding on local authorities in the most deprived areas.

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

5. What assessment he has made of the effects of reductions in formula grant funding on local authorities in the most deprived areas.

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

Authorities in the most deprived areas will, thanks to the banded floors, receive a smaller reduction in formula grant than others. We have given greater weight to relative needs in the formula grant, and our new transition grant will make sure that no council has a spending power reduction of more than 8.8%.

[Steve Rotheram]

If fairness is at the heart of this Government’s decision making, as clearly stated in the coalition agreement, why are the most deprived areas being hit the hardest? Given that the Minister wrongly stated that the most deprived area—Liverpool—did not receive a 30% cut to Supporting People funding, when can Liverpool expect to see a recalculation based on the 1% national average, which would result in an £11 million improvement in its settlement?

[Grant Shapps]

Here is something for Labour Members to take into account: one cannot take money away from authorities that are not getting it in the first place. Of course, the biggest spenders, even if we use percentages in the same region, are going to feel the impact in a different way. Liverpool, for example, still receives £764 a head, whereas my authority, by contrast, receives £229 a head.

[Luciana Berger]

Will the Minister congratulate Liverpool city council, which is making £100 million-worth of efficiency savings? Does he agree with the independent efficiency expert Colm Reilly of PA Consulting who said that, given the huge cuts in Government funding, the council cannot make the scale of savings necessary without affecting front-line services?

[Grant Shapps]

As I have said from the Dispatch Box before, nobody says that this is going to be easy. The deficit—the size of the debt—left to the country by Labour makes these reductions inevitable. However, Liverpool is latterly doing something about it; the problem is that it did not plan for this far enough in advance. Had it done so, it would have been in the same position as Trafford and other local authorities that are carrying out these reductions without some of the pain now experienced in Liverpool.

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

I used to be a councillor in Trafford, and I think the Minister should reflect on the fact that the deprivation there is nothing like it is in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford—there is no comparison. The areas I have mentioned have higher levels of poverty and unemployment and much greater inequalities in health than other areas. Despite that, Ministers have chosen to inflict the deepest, the most swingeing and front-loaded cuts on those deprived areas. Will the Minister comment on the letters from 131 Labour council leaders and 88 Liberal Democrat leaders, many from deprived areas, who are united in their anger at the unfairness of the cuts and at the constant political attacks on them by Ministers, which we have heard again today?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Lady refers to Trafford, where she used to be a councillor, but that council receives much less money from the Government than do other councils, including Liverpool. The idea that they are in the same position is untrue. In addition, the hon. Lady should know that we have protected the level of reduction for some of the most needy councils by having banded floors, which means far smaller reductions in the most needy areas, while the transition grant means that no area can be affected by more than 8.8%. A range of other measures, including an increase in the deprivation index from 73% to 83%, also apply.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to reduce the incidence of antisocial behaviour in social housing.

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

I recently announced a package of proposals to strengthen the hands of social landlords and tenants, so that they can take swift and effective action to tackle antisocial behaviour.

[Mr Hollobone]

All too often, the rights of very badly behaved social tenants seem to be given more weight by the courts than the alarm and distress that their poor behaviour causes to fellow tenants in the wider community. Will the Minister agree to meet representatives of Kettering borough council, of which I am a member, to discuss how the problem can be tackled?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important issue, of which I am aware. The amount of time that it takes to evict antisocial tenants is a severe problem, which is why the measures that I announced on 11 January included a proposal for mandatory grounds for evictions when a case has occurred before. I should be happy to meet my hon. Friend.

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

Let me first draw attention to my interests, as declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is quite right for the Government—and all of us—to take action to protect tenants against antisocial behaviour on the part of those who make their lives a misery, but do the Government not recognise that their imposition of harsh housing benefit cuts and steep increases in rents for social housing, and their termination of security of tenure for new social lettings, will inflict misery and insecurity on many more tenants in the future?

[Grant Shapps]

That is an entirely inaccurate portrayal of what is happening. For one thing, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows, the rent policy was set by the last Government in a deliberate attempt to merge housing association and council rents. Ministers in past Governments, including some in the last Government, recognised that the lazy consensus that houses should be given to people for ever, even if their circumstances changed, was long past its sell-by date. It is ironic that so many Opposition Members are prepared to fight and die in a ditch for a policy of lifetime tenures that was introduced by Margaret Thatcher.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Antisocial behaviour is not confined to those in social housing. Neighbours from hell may also be owner-occupiers. What action can be taken to deal with the many landlords of buy-to-let properties who do not care a damn about their tenants, let alone their neighbours?

[Grant Shapps]

The big difference between the public and private rented sectors is that because private sector leases tend to be for six months or more, it is much easier for landlords to terminate them. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the difficulty experienced in the private sector, and I am keen for the Government to assist in any way they can.

[Mr Speaker]

I am greatly obliged to the Minister. I call George Hollingbery.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

7. What expressions of interest he has received from local authorities outside the areas of the family support pilots in the creation of community budget schemes.

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

Authorities in many of the 16 first-phase areas, and in a number of other places, are interested in developing community budgets in relation to a variety of local priorities, and we are discussing the possibilities with a range of Departments. The number of areas involved is constantly evolving.

[George Hollingbery]

May I press the Secretary of State a little further? Given the demonstrable advantages of community budgeting—value for money, local delivery, and bringing people closer to the political process—what further action is the Department taking to increase the number of projects?

[Mr Pickles]

I know that my hon. Friend has taken a great interest in the issue, and that he recently made a number of important points about it to the Select Committee. We are encountering some resistance locally, but we must be vigilant and push local authorities into making decisions, because the future lies in a system that enables us to bring together locally all the funds from the various Departments.

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

I welcome the commitment made by the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—who is responsible for decentralisation—to look favourably on any further proposals for community budgets from local authorities, but does the Secretary of State not agree that Departments have an obligation to become more involved and proactive in this regard? Does he understand my disappointment that at a recent meeting of the Select Committee, Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Department of Health could not between them cite a single proposal for further decentralisation measures? Is it not time that the Government as a whole got their act together?

[Mr Pickles]

The short answer is yes, of course. As I said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), this is a very important Government policy, and much of the reluctance arises in Departments, on the ground. I look to the hon. Gentleman, the Select Committee and my Department—which is taking a considerable lead—to deliver on the policy. I believe that if we do so, we shall be delivering something much better.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

9. How much funding his Department has allocated to local authorities to minimise increases in council tax in 2011-12.

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

I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker, but I have not the remotest idea where I am.

[Mr Speaker]

Question No. 9 from the hon. Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson).

[Mr Pickles]

rose—

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

You are in the House of Commons!

[Mr Pickles]

So I am.

The Government announced in the spending review that we intend to make £650 million per annum available for the next four years to help principal local authorities, including police and fire authorities, deliver a council tax freeze in England in 2011-12. If an authority increases its basic rate of council tax by any amount, it will not be eligible for the freeze grant.

[Mr Wilson]

Now that the Secretary of State is back with us, may I thank him for that answer? Under Labour, since 1997 the council tax for the average home in Reading rose by 116%. This year, the new Conservative-led coalition will freeze council tax for the first time ever. On the day that the Leader of the Opposition talks of a cost of living crisis as standing up for families in the middle, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Labour party should begin by apologising for clobbering families in Reading—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. His question has absolutely nothing to do with the responsibilities of the Government.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State seems to have delayed the inquiry into the localisation of business rates. If it went ahead, Westminster would gain £1 billion and Durham would lose £80 million. What is he going to do to mitigate that, or is that in fact his intention?

[Mr Pickles]

Of course, there is going to be considerable equalisation, but it seems to me that:

“Local business concerns are critical to good local government. There are sound democratic reasons why, in principle, the business rate should be set locally, not nationally.”

That expresses the point best, and I would have thought there would be consensus on it right across the Chamber as, after all, those are the very words of the Labour party’s 1997 manifesto.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

10. What criteria are used to determine the number of houses which should be built in North Wiltshire constituency?

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

Local authorities and communities should plan for sustainable development in their area, taking a visionary and strategic approach to be responsive to the market using robust evidence of the number of homes required.

[Mr Gray]

Across England, developers seem to be taking advantage of what they believe to be a policy vacuum to press ahead with large-scale planning applications. In my area for example, there are applications for 5,000 homes around Chippenham, the whole of Swindon seems to be moving westward to engulf some of the villages there, and there are applications for 280 homes in Malmesbury. Does the Minister agree that local people should decide how many houses they want and where they should be, taking account of homelessness and all that of course, but looking in areas such as mine at preserving the green belt, the countryside and our way of life?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, of course: taking account of the housing needs survey so that homelessness and affordable housing are addressed, the numbers should be set through a process of local decision making. The days of top-down targets, which led to the lowest rate of house building since 1923, are over. That is official, because I can tell Opposition Members that just a couple of days ago the National House-Building Council announced that there had been an 18% jump in the number of home starts—the applications to start building homes. Bottom-up is starting to work.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

My constituents have a keen interest in house building in the North Wiltshire constituency. The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), referred to “incremental” growth, which would certainly be more welcome to them than the urban extensions we have experienced in years past. Will the Minister confirm that decisions on house building should be based on meeting local housing need rather than catering for population movements from elsewhere in the country?

[Grant Shapps]

The idea that Ministers can sit in Whitehall and somehow dictate these tractor-like targets on five and 10-year plans has finally ended, I am pleased to say. My hon. Friend will be relieved to know that deciding where housing should go will now be an entirely local decision, prompted by the new homes bonus and other mechanisms.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to address under-occupation of social housing to promote social mobility.

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

In January, I announced a £13 million programme to address under-occupation by offering support to tenants who wish to move. Our radical social housing reforms will also involve introducing for the first time a national home swap programme.

[Jonathan Lord]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. In my constituency there are a large number of families in overcrowded and cramped housing waiting for a suitably sized home, and the wait for larger homes can be several years. All the while, of course, there are people living in oversized social housing that is no longer needed. Apart from the better home swap scheme that he mentioned, what more can be done to encourage those who are reluctant to downsize, in order to free up that housing?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is an extraordinary 430,000 people living in homes with two or more spare bedrooms, while nearly a quarter of a million people are living in overcrowded circumstances. None of this makes sense, and we have just announced a scheme whereby people are helped to move where they want to. There is no question of anyone being required to move, but assistance with utility bills and bank accounts being moved, for example, turns out to be one of the most useful things available, particularly for elderly people who are interested in moving home.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On reflection, would the Housing Minister like to withdraw his comment that social tenants are “given” their homes? In fact, social tenants enter into a contractual relationship and pay their rent like any other tenants. Does that not show the contempt the Tory party has for them, particularly as he was given his seat by Lord Ashcroft?

[Grant Shapps]

On reflection, the answer is no. The truth of the matter is that homes are allocated to people who are in need because they are in need. The idea that just because at one point in their life they were in need, they should continue to have that home and be able to hand it on to another generation, lives, I am afraid, with a past generation. Even the shadow Secretary of State, when she was in my position, accepted the point that housing reform was greatly overdue.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to remove unnecessary spending on administration within his Department.

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

We are developing an efficiency and reform plan and restructuring the Department to make it smaller and stronger and focused on coalition priorities. We have outlined a new thrift campaign, implementing ideas to remove unnecessary spending on estates, ICT, hospitality and procurement.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does he regret the fact that in 2008 and 2009, the Standards Board for England spent £5,570.54 on just nine chairs? Has he put an end to such shocking waste, not just in his Department but in agencies such as the Audit Commission for which he has responsibility?

[Mr Pickles]

Indeed, and perhaps I should thank my hon. Friend for his excellent report on procurement and the improvement of efficiency in local government. It has been a colossal shock to discover how public expenditure was simply allowed to be wasted under the previous Government. I believe that there was an atmosphere in which the view was, “It’s not our money and we can spend it as we like.” We have reduced all manner of expenditure, ensuring that we reduce the number of printers and the amount of colour printing, that we cancel a number of non-essential subscriptions, and make increased use of video conferences and the like. Those all add up and all make a significant difference.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

13. What estimate he has made of the level of funding from the new homes bonus which will be allocated to Charnwood borough council.

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

A provisional allocation was made to Charnwood borough council the week before last, which I announced, of £644,387 under the new homes bonus.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Minister very much for his reply. There is a real need for affordable and family-sized housing in my constituency and on the part of Charnwood borough council. How is the new homes bonus going to help councils to provide such housing?

[Grant Shapps]

The great thing with the new homes bonus is that it is a lot more flexible regarding the type of housing required. It will pay more where the homes are family-sized and therefore attract a higher council tax band; but in addition—I am sure that Opposition Members will welcome this—every affordable home built will receive a flat addition of £350 per year, the equivalent to about a third extra over and above the new homes bonus on other houses.

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

I should start by declaring my indirect interests, in line with those already mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford).

I am sure that the people of Charnwood listened with interest to the Minister’s response, but they will not have heard him admit that Kensington and Chelsea get 52% more in funding per new home than the constituency of the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), and 91% more than Hull. He also conveniently forgot to mention that the council’s revenue support grant would have to be cut to fund the new homes bonus, with money transferring from deprived areas to wealthy ones. So those areas with the greatest need for housing will not get it, while green fields in affluent areas will. Will the Minister tell us by how much Charnwood council’s and other councils’ funding will be cut to fund this policy in years 4, 5 and 6?

[Grant Shapps]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady may have misunderstood the way this policy operates, despite the fact that I published it the week before last. The amount that each area gets per home is exactly the same—in fact, I have equalised it across the country—so just because council tax is higher in Kensington and Chelsea there is no question of it being any different from Charnwood or anywhere else; the funding is based on the average in each different area. In point of fact, nearly £1 billion of funding has been provided for the new homes bonus which is not top-sliced off the other sums. In later years, when the money is indeed top-sliced from the formula grant, the bonus will be a positive incentive to get on and build homes—the Labour party used to encourage that.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the likely change in the provision of services by local authorities as a result of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.

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

We have given councils much greater financial freedom and flexibility to manage the more than £7 billion of funding from 2011-12 which is moving into formula grant, is being un-ring-fenced or is new funding for the settlement. This will enable them better to meet local communities’ needs. If councils share back-office services, join forces to get better value from their buying power, cut out excessive chief executive pay, and root out overspending and waste, they can protect key front-line services.

[Heidi Alexander]

I am not sure that that answer related to my question at all. Within weeks of this Government coming to power last May, Lewisham council had half a million pounds slashed from its Connexions budget and half a million pounds cut from employment and enterprise support schemes, and, as we all know, time was called on the future jobs fund. With youth unemployment nearing 1 million, what action will the Secretary of State take to ensure that local authorities can do more, not less, to help young people into work?

[Mr Pickles]

I have checked the question and I think that what I said answers it exactly. I must say to the hon. Lady that her local council has £58 million available to it in non-school reserves and that youth unemployment continued to rise under Labour in the good times and the bad. We have given the flexibilities I described and it is about time that ladies and gentlemen on the Benches opposite woke up and accepted their responsibility for the financial state of the nation—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) laughs at the idea because it is someone else’s money. Labour councils are cutting back more than Conservative councils and the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has done nothing about it.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Northamptonshire county council, East Northamptonshire district council and Wellingborough borough council have all frozen their council tax this year and they are all Conservative controlled. Is it not the case that Conservative councils cost you less and deliver more?

[Mr Pickles]

What a wonderful slogan. I wonder who first thought of it. [Interruption.] It is indeed mine and what it says has proved to be the case. There is a really strange thing about this whole process. If we match up councils authority by authority, we see that Liberal Democrat and Conservative authorities are protecting the front line, but under Labour authorities the front line is the first one to go, the voluntary sector is the first one to go and the most swingeing cuts are the first thing to happen. It is time that the right hon. Member for Don Valley accepted some responsibility for that.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the community groups, Save Levenshulme Baths and Friends of Levenshulme, on the success of their campaign, which was announced officially in Manchester town hall this morning by Councillors Amesbury and Reid? Levenshulme baths are to be rebuilt and are to reopen in two years and, in the meantime, the existing baths will stay open. Is this not a victory for community action, unlike the whingeing from the Liberal Democrats on Manchester city council?

[Mr Pickles]

It will certainly make a very big splash.

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

When a council has made a significant cut to a front-line service, such as by withdrawing support from 20 libraries, would it be possible to require that council to publish on its website the measures that it has taken to try to protect the service? Such measures could include working with other local authorities, as the Secretary of State has suggested.

[Mr Pickles]

The great thing about transparency is that a number of citizens are looking at their local council and asking it questions if it is closing down swimming baths or libraries while spending on things that do not relate to front-line services. I think that transparency is a very good thing. If people are closing down valuable community assets, they should make a very strong case for doing so.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

15. What recent assessment he has made of the effects on fire authorities of the planned reductions in grants to local government.

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

As part of the local government settlement for 2011-12 and the provisional settlement for 2012-13, an assessment of the reduction in spending power for individual, single-purpose fire and rescue authorities was published and is available in the Library.

[Rosie Cooper]

Since 2004, Lancashire fire authority has successfully reduced expenditure without jeopardising public safety—incidents of arson and fire casualties have been reduced by more than a quarter. Lancashire faces cuts of 4% next year and there are fears that the back-loaded cuts at the end of the comprehensive spending review period will mean a 15% reduction. What reassurances can the Minister give to my constituents and firefighters that those latest cuts will not jeopardise or threaten their safety?

[Robert Neill]

Bearing in mind that the formula grant amounts to some 50% of the income of single-purpose fire and rescue authorities, which therefore have other sources of income through council tax or reserves, the reduction in spending power for Lancashire in the current year is 1%, and next year it will see an increase in spending power of 0.1%.

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

It strikes me as a bit bonkers that many communities have separate fire, ambulance and police stations, many of which have been built recently. What is the Minister doing to encourage emergency services to work together to cut costs and to get rid of three lots of electricity bills and the such like? Also, what is he doing to ensure that they work together so that when one service is pressed, another can help and support it?

[Robert Neill]

In fairness, a good deal of work is already being done at local level on closer collaboration and joint working between fire authorities and other emergency services, and I commend that. At the time of the settlement, I wrote to the chairmen of all fire and rescue authorities and their chief officers to set out the way in which closer joint working, collaboration, better procurement and the stripping out of back-office services could save money that could be made available to the front line.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that I have surveyed every fire and rescue service in the country about the impact of this year’s financial settlement. Fire chiefs have told me that his cuts to their budgets will result in fire stations being closed, fire appliances being taken out of service and more than 1,000 firefighters losing their jobs in the next 12 months alone. Is he confident that his cuts will not compromise public safety? Will he accept that the feedback from fire chiefs proves that he has singularly failed to deliver on his commitment to give some protection to fire and rescue services? Will he come clean and admit that his cuts—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Three questions is too many; the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.

[Robert Neill]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition at all. The fire service is protected because its reduction in spending power is 2.2% in the current year and 0.5% in the next year. I have pointed out exactly the measures that many local authorities are taking to save money in the back office and to concentrate on the front line, and I hope that he will encourage authorities to do the same and that he will not engage in scaremongering.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

16. What plans he has to take into account work completed on existing local development frameworks in his proposals for the reform of planning law.

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

Work that has been completed by councils on their development plans remains valid, provided it is based on up-to-date evidence. The reforms set out in the Localism Bill do not contain any measures that will invalidate work on existing plans, but we have included changes to make the process easier and more flexible.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. I recently had the good fortune to attend a village meeting in Caythorpe in my constituency, where local people were concerned that their views should be listened to, as they were not listened to in the context of planning under the previous Government. What assurances can he give me that the views of local people, particularly in rural communities, will for the first time be listened to when it comes to planning?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend’s question. He will know that the Localism Bill will give communities the right to be heard and to set out a vision for their community in future. They have not had that before and when the Bill gets Royal Assent, they will have it for ever.

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

17. What steps he is taking to increase transparency in local government.

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

I want transparency to underpin everything that councils do. All council business should be open to public scrutiny—whether it is expenditure, senior pay, council expenses or voluntary sector funding. I am consulting on a code of recommended practice to enshrine the principles of data transparency and to set out the minimum data that should be published.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating and recognising the Vale of Glamorgan council, which is one of two authorities in Wales that have chosen to publish all invoices in excess of £500? The other authority is another Conservative-led council, Newport city council. What influence can my right hon. Friend bring to bear on the Welsh Local Government Minister to force Labour-run and independent-run authorities across Wales to follow their lead and do the same?

[Mr Pickles]

I am sure my hon. Friend has done more than enough to demonstrate to the people of Wales the desirability of transparency. It is gratifying that every local authority, with the exception of Labour-controlled Nottingham, now trusts the local population with that vital information.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

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

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

First, I commend the work of my officials, led by the chief fire and rescue adviser, who have been working closely with the West Midlands fire and rescue service which is leading the co-ordination, search and rescue efforts following the earthquake in Christchurch. Our thoughts are with the people of New Zealand at this difficult time.

Increased transparency and accountability have been the key tasks of Ministers in recent weeks. We have introduced honesty into the rough sleeper counts. New counting methods reveal that rough sleeping was four times higher than Labour Ministers admitted, with councils such as Labour-run Manchester refusing to report any figures. The plight of the vulnerable will no longer be ignored by the Government. We are also giving local citizens the right to report their local council chamber by blogging, tweeting and online filming. This builds on Margaret Thatcher’s private Member’s Bill in 1960 and the right granted in a local government Act in 1908. It is Liberal Democrat and Conservative local government that is championing openness in government.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I welcome the principle behind the new homes bonus, but if the level is set too high or if local authorities become too dependent on it, could it not become a perverse incentive for overdevelopment?

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

My hon. Friend is pushing at an interesting point. It will be for democracy at a local level to decide what happens. His constituents can rely on him and their own wherewithal to decide to vote for the party that will provide the right level of housing rather than overdevelopment.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

T3. Earlier this morning we heard that HSBC is paying its top banker £5 million. By chance, that is exactly the amount of money needed in my constituency to complete the Decent Homes programme. Will the Minister for Housing meet me to discuss how we might make that happen, so that 1,000 people can live in decent homes?

[Grant Shapps]

Just before the recess I announced a series of spending pledges for the Decent Homes standard which added up to £2.1 billion. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss how best to take the project forward in her constituency.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

T2. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in a diverse area such as South East Cornwall where we have everything from vibrant seasonal coastal car parks, to town centres that need the support of low car parking charges, to small villages that were built before the car and where residents rely on community car parks to park their vehicles, that community ownership and management is better than a holistic one-size-fits-all charging system imposed by a council and covering the whole county?

[Mr Pickles]

In a place as diverse as Cornwall we look for a variety of ways in which council and other car parks are charged. We have removed much of the pressure on local authorities to increase the charges. That is something that the previous Government were keen on, as a way of using the motorist as a cash machine. Local charging best takes account of local conditions.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

On the Localism Bill, 12,000 people in my constituency supported a 1,000-job development, and there was one objector. Guess who the Secretary of State backed. Whatever happened to localism?

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

Under the Localism Bill, local people will have the right to prevail in future. Once the Bill has received Royal Assent, every community will have the right to a local plan that will then govern decisions made in future.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

T5. Conservative-controlled Devon county council has reduced chief executive pay and slimmed down middle and senior management, and it will reduce back-office expenditure by £14 million in 2011-12. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending its efficiency savings? Does he agree that responsible councils should take such actions in order to protect front-line services?

[Mr Pickles]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating that council. He lays out a valuable lesson. One thing we are discovering in those authorities that are cutting libraries, Sure Start and all front-line services is that none of them has attempted any of the things that his local council has so excellently done.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. The severe cuts to the road maintenance budget have led councils throughout the country to warn that in the years ahead they face a pothole nightmare, notwithstanding the announcement of an emergency £100 million, which the harsh winter has made necessary. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that those councils have a case, or does he think that they should stop “bleating” for more money, as the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) disgracefully said at the weekend?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Gentleman has to understand that we are in this position because of the way in which the Labour party left our national finances. The Labour party is apparently happy for us to continue to pay vast sums of money to foreign bankers by way of interest, but we have simply arrived at the point where the country is boracic, and that is a direct consequence of Opposition ladies and gentlemen’s neglect of the economy.

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

T7. In my constituency I have Brent Cross Cricklewood, the largest regeneration scheme outside of the Olympic park. Can the Minister confirm that, when council tenants or arm’s length management organisation tenants move into regeneration projects, their tenancies will continue unbroken?

[Grant Shapps]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right: there is no chance of, or way in which, a social tenancy can be broken or changed for anybody already in council or housing association homes.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T9. Once the financial year has started, will the Secretary of State give us a report on the reduction in local authority employment over the past year?

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

I have already indicated to the right hon. Gentleman that it is for local authorities to decide how best they configure their work force. Let us see what eventually happens. It is important to remember that some of the figures that have been quoted do not bear in mind the fact that the HR1 forms, which are necessary for the purposes of consultation, do not result in job losses. Furthermore, job reconfiguration takes place by many other means that do not result in the figures suggested.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am greatly obliged to the Minister.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

T8. I welcome the scrapping of the previous Government’s top-down housing targets, which caused so much inappropriate development, particularly in my constituency. As the Localism Bill goes through Parliament, however, some developers are land-banking brownfield sites so that they can gain planning permission successfully at appeal on greenfield sites. What are the Government doing to protect such sites in this interim period? Will they consider re-introducing the sequential approach to planning?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is right. The mixture of top-down regional targets, together with the removal of a specific reference to a sequential test in planning policy statement 3, did put pressure on greenfield sites. The Government have already changed the definition of brownfield sites to exclude gardens, and in the Localism Bill we have introduced proposals to abolish top-down targets from the regional strategies. The fact that that Bill is making progress through the Commons is a material consideration for developers to bear in mind.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am very grateful to the Minister.

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

Does the Minister think that having to make a total of £185,000 in cuts to the voluntary sector and £106,000 in cuts to various youth services, as well as having to lose up to 170 posts by March, all because of Government-imposed efficiencies of £15.9 million, are more likely to change and, in fact, reduce the provision of services by North Tyneside council?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. I hope that she recognises that different councils are doing things in different ways. With a maximum cut of 8.8%, there is no reason for any council disproportionately to cut the voluntary sector. I hope that she will look at the examples of positive councils such as Reading, Thurrock, Lancaster, Ipswich, Watford, Stafford, Rugby, Redditch, Crawley and Wolverhampton—10 councils that are either maintaining or increasing their support to the voluntary sector at this time. She should look at them, and go back to her constituency and talk to her councillors.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I recently submitted to the House a petition of more than 2,500 constituents calling on the Government to help to protect the local Kingswood green belt, which is still being threatened by the previous Government’s disastrous regional spatial strategy. What reassurance can the Minister give to my constituents, who are rightly concerned and wish to protect our local green belt?

[Robert Neill]

I warmly commend my hon. Friend for that petition and the work that he has done to protect the green belt in his constituency. As I said in response to earlier questions, the Government propose to remove the top-down pressure of the regional spatial strategies and will maintain statutory green belt protection. Such decisions should be taken by local people to reflect the local needs of their communities.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Today, a bus full of Nottingham people has travelled down to Westminster to highlight the devastating impact that cuts to local authority funding will have on them, their families, their communities and our city. Will the Minister or a member of his team come and meet them in Committee Room 5 after questions to explain how it is fair that a city such as ours with a high level of need is suffering some of the largest reductions in funding?

[Mr Pickles]

No doubt it is essential for the people of Nottingham to get into a coach and travel all this way down here, because Nottingham councillors are so frightened of transparency and the truth that they have refused to publish on their website items costing over £500. It is the only council in the country to treat its electorate with such contempt.

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

In Cumbria and elsewhere, local charities are finding it very difficult to compete with big national charities for council contracts. What steps will the Minister take to allow local charities, which know more and can often do more, to compete fairly?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a great champion of the local voluntary sector. He will know that the Localism Bill will establish a right to challenge, which I expect to be taken up especially by local community and voluntary groups to enable them to do what they do best, which is to know their local community and provide a better way of doing things than what has been required so far.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that as a result of his policies and funding settlement, Hartlepool borough council is cutting much-needed local services and making 89 people redundant, but its chief executive has taken an £11,000 increase in his salary, making his pay £168,000. I have written to the chief executive asking him, in the current climate, to waive that salary increase in back pay, but I have received an unrepentant and defiant response from him saying that

“mob rule seems to have been the order of the day”.

What can the Secretary of State do to curb such an arrogant sense of entitlement from some senior executives in local government with regard to pay?

[Robert Neill]

As I was quoted in the hon. Gentleman’s paper as well, he and I clearly make a fairly large mob. In the Localism Bill, we are proposing to require local authorities to set out a senior pay policy statement that will have to be debated and approved by the full council meeting so that every individual member of the authority must tell the public what their policy is on how much people are going to be paid, and why, and must put their names to it and then be accountable for it.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

My constituents around Burbage and Hinckley have serious concerns about planning applications that have gone to appeal regarding green wedges around the towns. What reassurances can my hon. Friend give me that the Localism Bill will help to protect green wedges?

[Robert Neill]

This is yet another instance in which the pressures of the top-down regional spatial strategies have threatened green areas, be they green belt or green wedge, as it is sometimes called around towns. The removal of those top-down targets through the Localism Bill and the abolition of the regional spatial strategies will place back in the hands of local, democratically accountable authorities the power to decide the spatial future of their areas.

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

What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the chairman of the London fire authority about the 27 missing fire pumps, which the chairman nicked from across Greater London? Will the Secretary of State explain to him that he is putting lives in danger by stealing fire pumps, and tell him to return them straight away?

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman knows about these matters and therefore really should know better. The 27 pumps were kept by the fire authority as part of a contingency reserve at the time of industrial action by the London fire brigade. I am glad that that action has now been settled.

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Conservative-run East Sussex county council, which, after a disappointing grant from the Department for Education, has stepped in with £12 million of capital that it had not planned to give to ensure that the St Leonards academy is rebuilt to provide better education in Hastings?

[Mr Pickles]

I am always glad to congratulate my hon. Friend’s council and have no hesitation in doing so today.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in condemning Labour-run Brent council, which at tonight’s budget meeting proposes to close six libraries and all its day care centres, introduce fortnightly refuse collections, and hammer street cleansing and the voluntary sector, while taking the £2.5 million grant that was meant to freeze council tax and applying it to balances?

[Mr Pickles]

What a tragic council that is. All it needs to do is take a short ride on the tube to see adjoining authorities in London that are protecting libraries, expanding their services and protecting the front line. No doubt it will get its come-uppance.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

As the Secretary of State grows in stature and size, so does unemployment in my constituency. With Haringey council’s announcement of 1,000 job losses, what does he say to the constituency with the highest unemployment in London?

[Mr Pickles]

The right hon. Gentleman looks as though he is no stranger to a mixed grill himself. We continue to ensure that local authorities, including his local authority, have a transitional grant and do not face a reduction greater than 8.8%.

Libya and the Middle East

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

15:32

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

I would like to update the House on the evacuation of British nationals from Libya, the actions we are pursuing against Colonel Gaddafi and his Administration, and developments in the wider region.

On evacuation, we have been working intensively to get our people out. As of now, we have successfully removed about 600 British nationals from Libya. The evacuation has centred on three locations: Tripoli airport, the port at Benghazi and the desert oilfields. At Tripoli airport, a series of six aircraft organised by the Foreign Office and an RAF C-130 Hercules flight have brought out more than 380 British nationals and a similar number of foreign citizens. At Benghazi, HMS Cumberland has carried out two evacuations from the port, bringing out 119 British nationals and 303 foreign citizens from more than 30 countries. The first of those evacuations took place in difficult sea conditions, and the second arrived in Malta earlier today. The evacuations were assisted on the ground by five rapid deployment teams. In total, nearly 30 extra staff from the Foreign Office helped to marshal British citizens in the midst of chaotic scenes in and around the airports and ports.

Clearly, the most challenging part of the evacuation has involved those British nationals scattered across more than 20 locations in the oilfields deep in the desert. On Friday evening, I authorised a military operation to bring as many of them as possible out of the desert. On Saturday, two RAF C-130 aircraft flew into the eastern desert and picked up 74 British nationals and 102 foreign nationals at three different locations. A second mission took place yesterday, bringing out a further 21 British nationals and 168 foreign nationals. One of the aircraft involved in the second mission suffered minor damage from small arms fire. That underlines the challenging environment in which the aircraft were operating.

Britain has now taken a leading role in co-ordinating the international evacuation effort. Our airborne warning and control system aircraft are directing international aircraft that are involved. Brigadier Bashall, who is commanding the UK operation, has established a temporary joint headquarters in Malta to help to co-ordinate the efforts of many countries. I have thanked the Maltese Prime Minister personally on behalf of the country. Not for the first time in our history, we should pay tribute to Malta and her people for the role that they are playing.

The number of British citizens remaining in Libya is of course difficult to ascertain precisely, given the situation on the ground. Many of them will be dual nationals, and not all of them will want to leave. I asked for urgent work to be done on accurate numbers in both categories—those who wish to leave and those who currently do not. Our current indications are that, as of today, there are fewer than 150 British citizens remaining in Libya, of whom only a very small proportion wish to leave. Clearly, that can change at any time, and we will keep the House regularly updated.

We will continue to do all we can to ensure that those who wish to leave can do so. HMS Cumberland will remain in the area, together with HMS York, which also stands ready off Tripoli to assist. We also have military aircraft, including C-130s and a BAe 146, in Malta ready to fly in at very short notice.

The Government will continue to focus on ensuring that our citizens are safe. Cobra has met regularly to co-ordinate the effort, and I personally chaired three meetings over the weekend. The National Security Council is looking at the overall strategic picture, and it met last Friday and again today, not least to look at other risks to British citizens in countries in the wider region. As I said last week, there will be lessons that we will wish to learn from this evacuation, including in respect of the hiring of charter aircraft, the use of defence assets and the need for greater redundancy.

Clearly, an important decision was when to extract our embassy. That decision was taken at the Cobra meeting on Friday and carried out on Saturday, after the remaining civilians had been extracted from Tripoli airport and in parallel with the start of the desert operations, which were of course planned from Malta. Our judgment throughout has been that the risk to British citizens, including our embassy, has been growing, and the Americans, French and Germans have similarly suspended the operations of their embassies. Britain retains a consul in Tripoli and a consular warden in Benghazi, and we have arranged that Turkey, which still has several thousand of its own citizens in Libya, will look after British interests while our embassy’s operations remain suspended.

I am sure the whole House will want to put on record its thanks to all those who have made the rescue effort possible—to the RAF pilots, the Royal Navy crews and all those involved from all three armed services for their skill; to our diplomatic service; and to all those who put themselves in harm’s way to help our people leave safely.

I turn to the pressure that we are now putting on Gaddafi’s regime. We should be clear that for the future of Libya and its people, Colonel Gaddafi’s regime must end and he must leave. To that end, we are taking every possible step to isolate the Gaddafi regime, to deprive it of money, to shrink its power and to ensure that anyone responsible for abuses in Libya will be held to account. With respect to all those actions, Britain is taking a lead.

Over the weekend, we secured agreement for a UN Security Council resolution that we had drafted, which is unusually strong, unanimous and includes all our proposals. It condemns Gaddafi’s actions and imposes a travel ban and asset freeze on those at the top of his murderous regime. It demands an immediate end to the violence and the killing of protesters, access for international human rights monitors, the lifting of restrictions on the internet and media and an end to the intimidation and detention of journalists. It also refers Libya’s current leaders to the International Criminal Court to face the justice they deserve. We were also the driving force behind a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, which started work to eject Libya from the council, and the Foreign Secretary is in Geneva today, along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to see that work through.

With our European partners, we have today secured agreement on freezing the assets of a wider group of individuals and banning them from entering the European Union, and on imposing a wider arms embargo on the Libyan regime. Britain is also leading in implementing those direct measures against the regime. A special Privy Council session was held yesterday, as a result of which we have frozen the assets of Gaddafi, five of his family members, people acting for them or on their behalf, and entities that are owned or controlled by them. The Treasury has stepped in to block a shipment of some £900 million of banknotes destined for Libya. The Government have revoked Colonel Gaddafi’s immunity as Head of State, so neither he nor his family may enter the UK. We have also revoked the visas of a number of Libyans linked to the regime, who are now on immigration watch lists.

We will look at each and every way of stepping up pressure on this regime, such as further isolation by expelling it from international organisations and further use of asset freezes and travel bans, to give the clearest possible message to those on the fringes of the regime that now is the time to desert it.

In addition, we do not in any way rule out the use of military assets. We must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people. In that context, I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone. It is clear that this is an illegitimate regime that has lost the consent of its people, and our message to Colonel Gaddafi is simple: go now.

Everyone hopes that the situation will be resolved quickly, but there is a real danger now of a humanitarian crisis inside Libya. We have dispatched technical Department for International Development teams to be in place at both the Tunisian and Egyptian borders. Currently, the most pressing need is to assist the large numbers of migrant workers into Egypt and Tunisia to get them home. The International Development Secretary will visit the region later this week to assess the situation on the ground for himself, but in the meantime Britain will fly in tents and blankets from our stocks in Dubai for use at the Tunisian border.

North Africa and the wider middle east are now at the epicentre of momentous events. History is sweeping through this region. Yes, we must deal with the immediate consequences, especially for British citizens caught up in these developments, but we must also be clear about what these developments mean and how Britain and the west in general should respond.

In many parts of the Arab world, hopes and aspirations that have been smothered for decades are stirring. People—especially young people—are seeking their rights, and in the vast majority of cases they are doing so peacefully and bravely. The parallels with what happened in Europe in 1989 are not, of course, precise, and there have been many disappointments in the past, but those of us who believe in democracy and open society should be clear that this is a precious moment of opportunity.

While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly and the right to demonstrate peacefully are basic rights—they are as much the rights of people in Tahrir square as they are of people in Trafalgar square. They are not British or western values, but the values of human beings everywhere.

We therefore need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region—at the billions of euros of EU funds, at our trade relationships, and at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies, and we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world. Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.

We should be clear too that now is not the time to park the middle east peace process—quite the opposite. In short, reform, not repression, is the way to lasting stability. No one pretends that democracy and open societies can be built overnight. Democracy is the work of patient craftsmanship, and it takes time, as we know from our own history, to put its building blocks in place. However, what is happening in the wider middle east is one of those once-in-a-generation opportunities—a moment when history turns a page. The next page may not be written, and it falls to us to seize this chance to fashion a better future for the region, to build a better relationship between our peoples, and to make a new start.

As the inspiring opposition leaders whom I met in Tahrir square said to me last week, we now have the opportunity of achieving freedoms that people in Britain take for granted. I am determined that we should not let them down, and I commend this statement to the House.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

May I thank the Prime Minister for his statement? I should like to ask him about the four areas he covered—the immediate safety of British nationals, the future of the Libyan regime and the wider middle east, and the lessons learned from this crisis—but may I first join him in expressing deep and abiding gratitude to members of the British armed forces, who have succeeded with such extraordinary courage and professionalism in evacuating so many of our citizens and those of many other countries from Libya over the last week? Those brave men and women are a credit to our nation. May I also add my thanks to the Foreign Office staff on the ground in Libya for their efforts?

As the Prime Minister said, our first concern must always be the safety of our own people. For obvious operational and security reasons, I would not expect the Prime Minister to discuss future operations, but will he reassure the House that all contingencies continue to be looked at in relation to any remaining UK citizens stranded in Libya? Given the closure of the British embassy on Saturday—I understand the reasons for that—will he assure us that everything continues to be done to keep in close contact with those citizens who remain, and tell us what means of communication are available to them?

On the question of Libya’s political future, I think that the whole House will endorse the Prime Minister’s view that the only acceptable future is one without Colonel Gaddafi and his regime. We welcome what the Prime Minister said about a possible no-fly zone. We also welcome the international isolation of Libya expressed in UN Security Council resolution 1970, including sanctions and an arms embargo, and the decision to refer the killing of protesters to the International Criminal Court.

The resolution imposes travel bans on 17 Gaddafi loyalists and asset freezes on a number of other individuals. Will the Prime Minister tell the House whether he thinks that those asset freezes go wide enough and cover all those beyond Colonel Gaddafi’s immediate family who have decided to stand with him? Will the Prime Minister reassure the House that the Government will make full use of the provision in paragraph 23 of the resolution to nominate additional regime members who should be targeted by travel bans and asset freezes? On the human rights situation, there is clearly a growing humanitarian crisis on the Tunisian border and I welcome the steps that will be taken, which the Prime Minister talked about.

Let me turn to events beyond Libya, in the wider region. The events unfolding across the middle east—the Prime Minister reflected this in his statement—are as significant as the revolutions that liberated eastern Europe in 1989. As he says, our response to them needs to be equally ambitious. There is a popular will in many of those countries for democratic reform, and that movement is in line with the values that we share.

Does the Prime Minister agree that the way to approach this situation is to build a strategic response, including closer economic ties, support for civil society and institution-building in those countries? Will he concede that, although there is much that we can and should do bilaterally, real progress will require sustained will and effort at a multilateral level, including at the level of the European Union? May I also share the sentiment that he expressed that it will be a tragedy if, in this moment of change, the opportunity were not grasped to make progress on the Israel-Palestine issue? May I therefore support his calls for the rapid resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians and his decision to support the recent UN Security Council resolution on settlements? What steps will the UK take to get negotiations moving again?

Will the Prime Minister confirm that the Government will work with EU partners to strengthen both the guidelines and the operation of the rules on arms sales?

May I ask about the lessons to be learned from the immediate crisis response last week? Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have in recent days been dealing with constituents who are deeply anxious about family members stranded in Libya. Does the Prime Minister accept that the Foreign Office should have done more, as other countries did, to ensure that planes were on the ground in Libya on Tuesday, rather than late on Wednesday night, to evacuate our citizens? Will he explain why that was not the case? Given the scale of the emergency and the transparent need for co-ordination across Government, does the Prime Minister now agree that the emergency committee, Cobra, should have been convened earlier than Thursday? Again, will he explain why that did not happen?

Will the Prime Minister share with the House the wider lessons that he personally learned about the running of his Government? I think that the whole country has now, thankfully, seen the scale of response that can be mobilised to help our citizens, but will he promise that British nationals abroad will not be let down in future, as they were by the chaos and incompetence that we saw last week? I am surprised that he has not taken the opportunity of his statement to apologise to the House for the handling of the crisis last week. I hope that, in his reply, he will take the opportunity to do so.

When the inquiry is completed, will the Prime Minister promise that there will be an oral statement to report its findings to the House, along with the conclusions on the lessons that need to be learned?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his praise of our armed forces. They have done a magnificent job, as they always do. As he says, we should also thank the Foreign Office staff and those in the Foreign Office crisis centre, which I visited, which is manning the phones round the clock and doing an extremely difficult job.

On future operations, it is difficult to say much more in the House, but obviously I have given the new figures on the number of British citizens we believe are still in Libya and the number who want to leave. It is a very small number at the moment who still want to leave. Obviously, that can change and, as I explained, we have the assets in place to help where appropriate.

In terms of what replaces our embassy, as I explained, we are going to have a consul in Tripoli, but we will be working with the Turkish Government, who still have thousands of nationals in-country, and I have spoken to the Turkish Prime Minister as well as to many other people.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the travel bans and the asset freezes go wide enough, which is a very important point. Right now, what we want to do is isolate and target the key members of the Libyan regime, with a clear warning that those close to the regime have a choice—they can desert it or leave it, but if they stay with it there is a chance that they will be hit by travel bans and asset freezes, too. That is all part of turning up the pressure.

As for the wider region, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about institution-building and, indeed, making sure that the European Union sharpens its act on its neighbourhood policy. I think that there is room, yes, for multilateral action, but I hope that in this country we can do more in terms of political relations and on building party-to-party relations to try to help to build up the building blocks of democracy in those countries.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about Israel-Palestine. I am proud of the fact that we backed the Security Council resolution. That was the right decision, although it meant a disagreement with our oldest and strongest ally, the United States. On arms sales, I agree that the guidelines need to be clear and need to be adhered to.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked some questions about lessons to be learned. As I said, I think that there are lessons to learn. What worked in Egypt—a combination of scheduled and charter flights—did not work as well in Libya. Lessons need to be learned, including about the use of military assets, but I would make the point that it is not as easy as some people say. The more you rely on charters earlier, the more the scheduled airlines collapse, and you can leave yourself with a bigger problem.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about learning lessons in the wider running of government. Of course, there are always lessons to learn, and perhaps, if apologies are in order, he should think about one for the appalling dodgy dealing with Libya under the last Government.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I agree with the Prime Minister that, in view of the complete chaos that has engulfed Libya, there is a real opportunity, together with our European partners, to expedite the downfall of the present regime and create a post-Gaddafi structure in the vacuum. However, does he agree that, given Libya’s appalling record on human rights, it was a complete misjudgment to enter into a defence co-operation agreement with it?

[The Prime Minister]

I do think that there are lessons to learn from the deal in the desert. The previous Government were correct to encourage the giving up of weapons of mass destruction, but more parameters should have been put on the relationship, particularly— I have made the point before—regarding the release of al-Megrahi. It should not have been the British Government’s position to try to facilitate that. Lessons need to be learned more broadly about that, and I am sure that there will be an opportunity to do so.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I echo the commendations of our forces and diplomatic and other staff who have worked hard to provide an adequate service for British citizens and others stranded in Libya. I commend the other actions that the Government are now taking, but may I ask the Prime Minister to expand on the point he made in his statement about what he described as greater redundancy for responding to future crises, by which I assume he meant greater resilience and greater resources. Does he accept that cutting Foreign Office staff by 450 to save £30 million at a time when its budgets are flat cannot do other than significantly undermine its ability to respond adequately and promptly when the next crisis occurs?

[The Prime Minister]

I obviously listen to the right hon. Gentleman, given his experience. The cuts to the Foreign Office are much less severe than cuts to other Departments, so I do not think that that has had a material impact. As for the issue of redundancy, clearly in the case of Egypt, the combination of scheduled flights and adding in charter flights meant that we led the pack in getting people out. In Libya, the situation was different and more difficult, and we need to learn the lessons about what extra capacity we need to put in place. As I have said, it is not as simple as some people think, because if capacity is added too quickly, scheduled flights collapse—bmi and BA both fly to Libya—and you land yourself with a bigger problem. The lessons should be learned. The only point that I would make now is that, as we stand today, Britain is doing a huge amount to help other countries out of Libya, and is helping more than 32 nationalities.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is strange, is it not, that when we have a defence review, we are told that we are no longer a world power and do not need the Royal Navy, yet as we saw last week we need one more than ever? How ironic it was that the only ship that we could find to send was one on the way to the scrapyard. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that as long as he is on the bridge of state, there will be no further cuts in the Royal Navy?

[The Prime Minister]

We are exceptionally well served by our Royal Navy, and it is good that not only HMS Cumberland but HMS York have been on hand to help in Libya. We are making a reduction in the number of frigates, but we do have the Type 45s coming onstream. In all cases, however, a mixture of military and civilian assets needs to be brought to bear to ensure that we can get people out of countries such as Libya.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has my strong support for the vote that his Government cast at the UN Security Council on 17 February. The previous Government cast a similar vote in January 2009 with cross-party support. However, does he agree that the lessons of the past decade are that the Israelis and Palestinians will not of their own volition negotiate a solution between themselves, that the international community needs to force the pace on the terms and timing of a resolution to that terrible dispute, and that that needs to be led from the UN Security Council?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and it is good to see him in his place. I am trying to ensure that there is a real combination effort between Britain, France, Germany and the United States to try to provide that backing. The only problem is—he will be aware of this—that it is difficult for us to want a solution more than the parties want one. However, we should apply all the available pressure we can, and we should be making the argument right now that the awakening of democracy in the middle east is not a threat to the peace process, but could be an opportunity.

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

President Mahmoud Abbas has called for elections to the Palestinian Authority. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that Hamas, whose electoral mandate has expired, is refusing to allow such elections to take place in Gaza?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. The key thing in our engagement should be to ask those on the Palestinian side to accept the key principles of recognising the state of Israel and former agreements. Then it will be possible to go forward and hold proper negotiations. However, we need that to happen in order to get both parties around the table properly and to hammer out the solution that I think everybody knows is there.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

In his conversations with President Obama, has the Prime Minister emphasised the urgency of the situation and the opportunity that events in the middle east provide to make progress on Israel-Palestine, and has he also expressed disappointment at the American veto of the resolution?

[The Prime Minister]

I have had very frank conversations with President Obama about this. I believe in the special relationship—it is an incredibly close and important relationship—but I also believe that when we disagree, we should be frank in saying so, and on this issue Britain and America do not agree. We think that the resolution, although not ideally drafted, was basically right, which is why we voted for it, and we are very disappointed that it was vetoed. Obviously, we have to persuade the Americans that further investment in the peace process is absolutely worth it, not just for its own sake, but for the wider peace of the region and to remove a great cause of instability and extremism in our world.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The Government have been absolutely right to support the forces of democratic change, but, further to his statement, does my right hon. Friend think that this support will have any effect on future relationships with our other autocratic friends in the region?

[The Prime Minister]

As I hope my hon. Friend will have noticed, I have just completed a trip to the Gulf region, and I was quite struck by the fact that a number of our very strong and old allies, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, are in favour of taking further steps towards democracy and more open societies. Far from being dismayed by our very clear reaction that democracy, freedom and that sort of progress are good things, they were fully in support of them.

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

When he was in Kuwait, as well as promoting arms sales and exports, did the Prime Minister have an opportunity to discuss with John Major, the former Prime Minister, the fact that 20 years ago, a no-fly zone was imposed without a Security Council resolution? Is it not time that the European Union NATO members worked more urgently to ensure that Gaddafi’s regime cannot use helicopters and aircraft to crush resistance to him?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It was a pleasure being in Kuwait with Sir John Major, because it was an opportunity to commemorate the action that he led, as Prime Minister, in liberating that country from Saddam Hussein. To those who question whether it is right to take defence companies on a visit to Kuwait, I would say that 20 years ago we risked the lives of our service personnel to free that country. It seems to me an odd argument, therefore, to say that Kuwait should not have the means of its own defence. On a no-fly zone, of course we must comply with international law, but my argument is that we need to do the preparation and planning now, because no one can be sure what Colonel Gaddafi will do to his own people. If he starts taking that sort of action, we might need to have a no-fly zone in place very quickly.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

The Prime Minister is right to praise the bravery of UK forces and staff in evacuating UK citizens. However, many international companies have lucrative business operations in Libya, working in high-risk environments such as desert oilfields in a country with an oppressive regime. Is he satisfied that those companies have adequate emergency evacuation plans in place, or does business also need to learn some lessons about the safeguarding of employees?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely good point. We should be having this conversation with oil companies. Yes, of course, they have security and transport arrangements, and it is important to work with them when we are trying to get our people out, to ensure that they are playing their part in delivering that. I am sure that there are lessons to learn, and there is probably more that they could have done, rather than being quite so reliant on us.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

May I tell the Prime Minister what a great pleasure it is to see him in his place today, because I have spent the past week trying to speak to a Foreign Office Minister with no success? On the substantive issue of Libya, the fact that the International Criminal Court has been invoked has been a welcome development, but will the right hon. Gentleman make it quite clear from the Dispatch Box that this will apply not only to Colonel Gaddafi and his immediate family but to anyone in Libya who chooses to side with his regime in any future atrocities?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. The reach of the International Criminal Court and of international law applies not only to people in the Gaddafi regime and those in the armed forces who commit atrocities but to any mercenary who goes to Libya and takes part in those activities. As I have said, the reach of international law is very long, and its memory is also very long, and quite right too.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has described a very fluid series of events. If we step back from them, we can see that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encourage democracy to spread across the middle east. He gave a robust message to Colonel Gaddafi. Does he have an equally robust message for the other dictators in Africa who have chosen not to support democracy but to send mercenaries to support Colonel Gaddafi’s dictatorship?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. This is a test for everyone. It is a test for NATO, for the European Union, for the Arab League and, yes, for the African Union as well. The Arab League has, commendably, suspended Libya’s membership, and we should be looking to the African Union to take robust action as well. My hon. Friend’s point about mercenaries is certainly well made, and we should be making that very clear to African armies and leaders who are contemplating that sort of measure.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Should we be pleased, given Gaddafi’s history, that Britain took part in an arms fair in Libya last November at which all kinds of crowd control equipment and sniper rifles were sold to the regime there? Frankly, Prime Minister, is it not time that this country—whichever Government are in office—stopped selling arms to murdering bastards who terrorise their own people?

[The Prime Minister]

I would make the point—I think it is a cross-party point—that this country now has some of the toughest arms control legislation in the world. This Government immediately revoked about 30 licences, covering a whole range of products, to that regime and others in the region, and I think that that was right, but are there further lessons to be learned? I am quite clear that we should be looking at this and seeing what more can be done.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that he has learned the lessons from the failure of the last Labour Government to plan effectively for what happens after regime change?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes the important point that we now need to plan for every eventuality. That is why I mentioned in my statement the importance of planning for a potential humanitarian crisis. We also need to plan for what might happen should the regime fall, or—something we do not want to happen—should it embed itself for a long time, resulting effectively in civil war in Libya. We have to prepare for every eventuality and work with the international community to ensure that we are ready for them.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), may I point out to the Prime Minister that the end user certificate scheme is broken? It does not work. Since the first half of last year, £31 million worth of armaments have been sold to Libya, including water cannon, stun guns, smoke grenades and tear gas—in other words, a panoply of equipment that can be used against civilians, rather than to defend the state against aggression by another.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. If we look at the whole terms of the deal done in the desert, we need to ask ourselves some serious questions about how widely it went and what sort of equipment was involved. Frankly, I am pleased that we have put in place the revocation of these licences, but there are lessons to learn about what was intended by what was agreed several years ago.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the unanimous decision by the Security Council to refer Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court is of great importance because it demonstrates incontrovertibly for the first time that if Heads of State and Heads of Government commit human rights offences, they will be liable to prosecution?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. When Britain—and it was Britain—drafted the text of this resolution, the advice I was given suggested that it would take days or possibly weeks to get through the UN Security Council. It is remarkable that the Security Council has adopted this resolution unanimously with no votes against and that all countries—without naming them—backed it. It is a very positive sign, which I hope means that when we come forward with fresh Security Council resolutions to tighten further the screw on this dreadful regime, we will gain similar support.

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

On planning for the future, has the Prime Minister had any discussions with NATO about whether, if we require further rescue actions, it could play a larger role so that we go beyond bilateral action?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has discussed with NATO today a range of issues, including the one she mentions and military planning for no-fly zones. Although there have been bilateral efforts by countries such as Britain to get into areas such as the desert to rescue our own people, there has also been a huge amount of co-ordination in Malta—I pay tribute to Brigadier Bashall for leading this process—to make sure that, whether the planes are German, British or Canadian, we take each other’s nationals out. I have had a range of conversations with different Prime Ministers and Presidents to make sure that we all help each other in this regard. That is what is being co-ordinated from Malta.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend concerned about the prospect of Gaddafi unleashing his significant war machine against the people of Libya? Will he reflect on properly arming those who are resisting Gaddafi, if necessary, in order to ensure that they are not wiped out, as happened in Srebrenica and Sarajevo?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are trying to establish better contact with the opposition in Libya and to learn more about them and their intentions. What we want—I would argue it is in our interest and in that of the whole world, including the Libyan people—is the swift removal of Colonel Gaddafi from his position. If helping the opposition in Libya would help to bring that about, it is certainly something we should consider.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister confirm that there is nothing new or peculiarly Labour about dodgy relations between the British Government and the murderous Libyan regime? Will he confirm that when Metropolitan Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead from the Libyan embassy in April 1984, the Thatcher Government humiliated the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police by requiring him to provide policemen to escort the murderer to the airport so that he could get back safely to Libya?

[The Prime Minister]

That is a somewhat tortured way of making a political point, and I would make one in return. [Interruption.] We have to comply with international rules, but let me make one simple point. During the last Parliament there was a choice about whether to support the release of al-Megrahi: one party decided that it was the right thing to do, and I am proud to say that my party did not.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

My grandfather was one of thousands of Jews who had to leave Libya because of Gaddafi’s appropriation of Jewish businesses and homes, and he came to this country because of its democracy. He would have been shocked to have seen not only the close relations between the last Government and Gaddafi, but the acceptance by our distinguished universities, particularly the London School of Economics, of more than £1 million from Gaddafi. Will my right hon. Friend take steps to ensure that such a scandal never happens again?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks with great power. What I have said about relations with Libya is that, while of course it was right to try to bring that country in from the cold, the question is whether parameters should have been put on the relationship. I think that it is for everyone to ask what agreements they reached. I heard the head of the London School of Economics on the radio this morning trying to justify one such agreement. Let us hope that at least the money that the LSE has can be put to a good use.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Given the circumstances that the Prime Minister has described, is it not increasingly difficult to explain the behaviour of the UK Trade & Investment special trade ambassador, who is not only a very close friend of Saif Gaddafi but a close friend of the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni? Is it not time that we dispensed with the services of the Duke of York?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not aware of the particular connections that the hon. Gentleman chooses to make, although I am happy to look into them. However, if we are to disqualify friends of Saif Gaddafi from public life, I think that he will be saying goodbye to one or two of his old friends.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am extremely grateful to the Prime Minister for his reply, but may I just say, for future reference, that references to members of the royal family should be very rare, very sparing and very respectful? [Interruption.] Order. We have to be very careful in our handling of these matters, and I hope that we will be.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I thank and congratulate the brave young airmen and women of RAF Lyneham, which is still in my constituency and whose C-130J Hercules played such a crucial role in the evacuation. Does the Prime Minister agree that in future a much greater role could be played by contractors who at present have fairly scant plans for evacuations? If they expanded their own plans, we would lessen the risk to young service lives.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. Obviously there needs to be a deeper conversation and greater planning between companies and the Government. Of course, companies have played an important role, but I feel that we need to ensure that we get this right for the future. Trying to bring people out of the desert across 20 or more platforms is extremely complicated, and I am sure that we can learn some lessons about how to do it better in future.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I think that we all wish to record our tremendous admiration for the courage and tenacity of the Libyan people—men, women and children—who are fighting the dictator with their bare hands. As for learning lessons, we should bear in mind what happened when a no-fly zone was provided for the Kurds of Iraq. That was John Major’s move, and it meant that thousands of Kurds were protected. Obviously there is not a great deal that we can do immediately, but we should consider that as a matter of great importance. I believe that it might save thousands of lives, if Gaddafi were to bomb his own people from the air.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady always speaks about these issues with great passion. I think that she is right to draw attention to what people are doing in Libya, where they are showing extraordinary bravery. As we have seen across north Africa and the middle east, this is not an Islamist revolution but a people’s revolution. People want the sort of freedoms that we take for granted in this country.

I have to tell the right hon. Lady that introducing a no-fly zone is not without its difficulties and problems. Libya is an enormous country. We would be trying to cover a vast area, and a serious amount of military assets would be required to achieve that. Furthermore, it would not necessarily stop all oppression of the Libyan people, because there are ways of carrying that out other than through helicopter gunships and planes. However, I think that it is one thing that we need to look at urgently and plan for, in case we find—as we may well do—that Colonel Gaddafi is taking further appalling steps to oppress his people. That is why the conversations are taking place today.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

It has been good to hear more muscular liberalism this afternoon. The Prime Minister rightly called Gaddafi’s rule an illegitimate regime that has lost the consent of its people. When does he consider that it was last anything other than that?

[The Prime Minister]

I have never supported Colonel Gaddafi or his regime, and I think that his regime is illegitimate. Clearly that prompts the question of how long we are going to go on recognising it in any way, which is why I have requested another urgently needed piece of work. We must ensure that we do everything that we can to isolate it. We must cut off money, cut off supply and cut off oxygen from the regime, so that it falls as fast as it possibly can.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

You will recall, Mr Speaker, that 10 days ago, in an urgent question, I begged the Foreign Secretary to suspend arms sales to the region and to gear up the Foreign Office response. I am very glad that the Prime Minister has got a grip on that.

I welcomed the last part of the Prime Minister’s statement about building on what is being done to create a new approach to democracy. Would he consider creating a British foundation for democracy development? It would include businesses, non-governmental organisations, the media, judges and trade unions. Its work would be similar to the work of the know-how fund, and the work that was done to support people in eastern Europe after 1989 and in the Iberian peninsula in the 1970s. Could some development money be spent on that? If so, we would be able to create something that could help everyone in the future rather than recriminating about the past.

[The Prime Minister]

I am not always in complete agreement with the right hon. Gentleman, but this is one such occasion. I very much support the whole idea of greater party-to-party contacts and political contacts, and building up what I call the building blocks of democracy in terms of civil society and political parties. This is an area in which Britain has expertise and excellence. We have the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, of course, so we need to ask whether there is more we can do with that, or whether we need to build a new mechanism. I am, however, glad to see cross-party support for something that Britain could play a unique part in helping to build.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Given the capability gap that we have had to accept under the strategic defence and security review until we have the carrier strike force and the Type 26 combat ship, and given that on Thursday US journalists were pressing State Department officials to explain why the US was not able to match British evacuation efforts, is the Prime Minister confident that in future years we can rely on the United States to deliver for us and for others we wish to help?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks a good question about the capability gap. I argue, however, that recent events demonstrate the importance of flexibility and the necessity of having a good range of military assets and transport aircraft—as we will have with the future A400M—and large numbers of highly trained special forces, of which we will have more under the defence review. It has also demonstrated that it is necessary to have—as we do in Malta, Sicily and elsewhere—basing rights and the right to overfly. People will put the question about carriers, of course, but although the US has about 12 aircraft carriers, not one of them is currently in the Mediterranean, so it seems to me that flexibility of forces and the ability to get people in and out quickly is more important than obsessing about particular platforms.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and the reconvening of the UN Human Rights Council, which I hope will take centre stage in future developments. However, is he not concerned that in every country in the region—Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen—the security forces that have used weapons against civilians, and that have killed young people demonstrating for their rights and jobs, are using equipment made in Britain, Europe or the United States? We must look to such relationships and our sales of arms that have been used to carry out the carnage against wholly innocent civilians trying to demand what we want for ourselves.

[The Prime Minister]

I shall make two points to the hon. Gentleman. First, we have revoked a large number of licences, including to some of the countries that he has mentioned. I also argue the broader point that those countries that have met those aspirations with reform have a chance of success and progress, whereas those that have met them with repression are finding that that is not the answer. I think that we are going to see that that is the case right across the region.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Many hon. Members are still seeking to contribute, but there is pressure on time as we also have a heavily subscribed debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. Therefore, if I am to accommodate most colleagues, extreme brevity is now required.

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

Returning to the question asked by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on close relations with Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif, was the Prime Minister as surprised as I was to learn that Saif Gaddafi also had many meetings with the previous Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, and described the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as a “close personal friend”?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that highlights the issues that I raised earlier. It was right to restore relations with Libya, but parameters and judgment needed to be brought to bear as well.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

In congratulating the right hon. Gentleman on the vote cast by the United Kingdom at the Security Council on Israeli settlements, may I ask whether he, like Chancellor Merkel, received a reproachful telephone call from Netanyahu, and if so did he, like Chancellor Merkel, reply that he—Netanyahu—is the principal obstacle to negotiations and that he must get on and negotiate?

[The Prime Minister]

As it happens, I did not, on this occasion, get a reproachful phone call from Prime Minister Netanyahu. But if I had done, I am, for once, in full agreement with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that I would have responded robustly in the way that he has suggested.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister think that the relative inability of the west to offer moral leadership to those seeking greater freedom in the middle east owes something to the disastrous policy of regime change by military means, implemented by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair eight years ago?

[The Prime Minister]

I take issue with my hon. Friend, in a way. I think we should stop arguing about some of these points in the past and try to build a stronger argument about what our engagement with this region should be like. Where I agree with him is that what I call the rather naive, neo-con view that it is possible to impose democracy at the end of the barrel of a gun is not right, but it is also wrong to take a hardcore, realist approach of just saying, “We have to deal with what is there.” We should learn from our own history and recognise that it is about putting in place the building blocks of democracy and having elections, yes, but also the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a proper place for the military in society, free association and free speech, many of which are rights that we had years before the vote. That is what we should be focusing on in our relations with these countries, so that we can help to point them to a better future.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

Throughout most of last week, hundreds of UK citizens in Libya felt in grave danger and, frankly, abandoned by this Government. Will the Prime Minister commission an independent inquiry into the shambolic way in which the Foreign Office undertook its duties in the early part of last week?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is being slightly unfair. These are not easy things to get right, and we did well in the case of Egypt. Clearly, there are lessons to learn here, and I do not think it a complicated process. There are a number of steps, as I have said, regarding defence assets, redundancy and the use of scheduled flights, and I think we can learn those lessons relatively quickly. I think it a relatively straightforward and easy thing to do.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Given that Colonel Gaddafi’s recent behaviour is no surprise to anyone, does the Prime Minister understand that the vast majority of people in Britain share his anger that the previous Government, in collusion with the Scottish Government, did all they could to secure the release of al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber?

[The Prime Minister]

I have put this on the record many times: I think it was wrong to try and facilitate that release. The British Government should have taken a clear view that that was the largest mass murder in British history and that that person should die behind bars. It would have been a clear view; it would have been the right view; and it would have taken the country with them.

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

Notwithstanding the brave efforts of our military and consular staff at the weekend, if lessons are to be learned for the future, may I share the experience of my constituent, Mr James Coyle, who was released just last night, and his family? His family and I spent most of last week trying to contact the Foreign Office. Despite numerous phone calls, we were unsuccessful, and when we did get through we were asked the same questions over and over again, despite giving the details over the telephone and by e-mail. The family were repeatedly asked whether James could make his way to Tripoli, despite it being pointed out that he could not because the camp had been looted. If lessons are to be learned and there is going to be an inquiry, will the Prime Minister ensure that the victims in Libya will be included in that inquiry?

[The Prime Minister]

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), is listening to this, and I am sure that he will be able to take up this individual case. I have visited the crisis centre at the Foreign Office and seen the very hard work going on there. Obviously, the Foreign Office was coping not only with the crisis in Libya but with the earthquake in New Zealand, and it was taking calls on both of those. I have to say I have been impressed by its work. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman has a constituency case, the Foreign Office will take it up for him and see what lessons can be learned.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Earlier, the Prime Minister mentioned the African Union, of which Colonel Gaddafi is a former chairman. Does the Prime Minister share my hope that the African Union will in future exclude such dictators from its membership?

[The Prime Minister]

What I can say to my hon. Friend is that we are on the case with this issue. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will be talking to a number of African leaders about what we believe the African Union could do to step up to the plate and make a point about the unacceptable behaviour of Colonel Gaddafi.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister put it graphically when he said that hopes and aspirations that have been smothered for decades are stirring. If we are to build a new relationship with the middle east based on mutual respect, do we not need to get rid of our reputation for double standards? That means not only standing up to dictators, but saying very plainly that the occupation of one country by another is wrong and has to end.

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the case of Israel and Palestine, we should make it very clear that the settlements are wrong—the vote we cast in the UN Security Council was absolutely clear about that. We should also be clear that we want to see the advance of civil society, open societies, pluralism, democracy and freedom in countries across north Africa and the middle east. What I have found from talking to leaders in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and elsewhere is that that is not a message that friends in the Gulf reject; it is one that they accept and see the sense of. As an old friend, this country should be pushing to explain how important this is. That should be done with respect, and we should recognise that different countries have different rates of development and different traditions, but our belief in democracy and open societies should not be negotiable.

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

In light of Colonel Gaddafi’s 40 years of violence abroad and tyranny at home, does the Prime Minister agree that it was morally and ethically wrong for the previous Government to sign those defence contracts? Will he ensure that those contracts are now fully put into the public domain, so that they can be fully scrutinised?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. When you look at the so-called deal in the desert, you find a degree of credulity on the part of the previous Government, who signed it. I am very happy to look at whether the actual documents that were signed can be put into the public domain, so that people can see the mistakes that were made.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not the dilemma in Libya that left to its own resources the least likely option is that the Gaddafi regime will be brought to a quick end? Gaddafi is already enforcing his position in Tripoli, the capital, and, as we have heard from hon. Members on both sides, there are real worries that there will be not only a humanitarian disaster, but a human rights disaster. The Prime Minister has indicated some areas that he is examining, but will he redouble efforts not only nationally, but internationally to ensure that we do not stand by and see that happen?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree that we should not just stand by—if Colonel Gaddafi uses military force against his own people, the world cannot stand by. That is why we should be looking at a no-fly zone; that is why urgent discussions need to take place in NATO; and that is why we need America to be fully engaged in looking at what needs to be done. What we cannot know from here is exactly what will happen next. If someone had predicted a few years ago that half of Libya would be under the control of rebel groups, people would have said, “That is impossible with the security apparatus that Colonel Gaddafi has at his disposal.” What is exciting is that everybody thought that this murderous dictator was fully in control of his country, but part of his country has been knocked over so quickly.

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

I thank the Prime Minister for the personal interest that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has taken in the case of an oil worker from Thirsk, who is now being brought home. We are very grateful for that. I also thank those on board HMS Cumberland. A number of years ago, the ship hosted three lady MPs while it was patrolling the Gulf to prevent Iran from breaking oil sanctions. The Prime Minister is aware of the real threat of an oil price hike in this country resulting from the constant ongoing instability in the middle east. Will he put our minds at rest by telling us that the Government will turn their attention to the implications for this country of the instability?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is trying to get me to prejudge what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor might say in the Budget. Obviously I cannot do that, but she makes a number of good points about how we have helped to rescue people from the desert. May I just say, again, how brave the pilots and crews of those aircraft were, because this extremely difficult mission involved a number of stops in desert areas and they were very uncertain as to what exactly they would find? All credit to them for the incredible work that they have done.

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

Will the Prime Minister tell the House what reports he has received about the killing of people in Tripoli who were celebrating after listening to inaccurate reports from authoritative sources that Gaddafi had fled to Venezuela?

[The Prime Minister]

I have not seen those specific reports, but clearly a number of people have been murdered in Tripoli, in Benghazi and in the rest of the country by that murderous regime. The responsibility for that lies squarely with Colonel Gaddafi and the people who run that regime, not with anybody else.

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

On the broader point about the changes that we are seeing in the middle east, does the Prime Minister agree that it is in Britain’s national interest to pursue a soft power policy, along the lines that he has described, to promote democracy and support opposition movements where people are moving towards a desire for greater democracy in these countries?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with that. In terms of the soft power to which my hon. Friend refers, this country has incredible assets, be it the British Council, the BBC or political relations. All those things should be brought to bear and we should recognise, as I said in my statement, that building democracy is painstaking and patient work. Alongside hard power, those soft power assets can sometimes achieve the greatest success.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Prime Minister explain the procedure used to trigger a meeting of the Cobra emergency response committee? There has obviously been some criticism of the inexplicable delay in that meeting. Was it because the Deputy Prime Minister would have had a role in it, if he had not been out of the country? Will the Prime Minister review this matter and publish that review?

[The Prime Minister]

Typically, as the hon. Gentleman will know, Cobra is triggered by the Prime Minister. Let me make it clear that on Monday the Foreign Office crisis centre was established with Ministry of Defence people embedded in it, so the idea that two Departments of State were not co-operating is wrong. Cobra is normally exercised by the Prime Minister, and it meets regularly at official level as well, as the hon. Gentleman will know, in relation to a range of different activities that we have to deal with. It has been in activity all over the weekend.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Can the Prime Minister say whether the military agreement signed by the previous Government was used to train special forces in Libya and whether those special forces, in what is left of Gaddafi’s regime, have been used against people?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not aware of that, but I think that the full terms of the deal in the desert need to be made clear. Then, those Opposition Members who are calling for the word “sorry” might like to issue it themselves.

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

Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), does the Prime Minister accept that members of his Government need to be very careful before making statements about dictators fleeing their countries, as we have seen murder on the streets of Tripoli as a result of the Foreign Secretary’s foolish remarks?

[The Prime Minister]

Let us be clear: murder on the streets of Tripoli is the responsibility of Colonel Gaddafi and his murderous regime. For Opposition Members to try to make some fake political point on this basis is truly pathetic.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, the successful rescue missions and the leadership that UK forces are showing in co-ordinating activities on the ground in Libya. Given the experiences in Libya and Egypt, will he tell the House what steps are being taken to develop contingency plans to protect British nationals in Oman and Yemen, if the situation in those countries escalates?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We are doing extensive work looking at the number of British nationals right across the region and preparing for all eventualities. Obviously, we do not want to do anything to encourage those sorts of issues, but contingency plans and thinking are going on to ensure that those issues are covered.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

We share the Prime Minister’s objective of having a successful and stringently controlled defence export sector in the UK, but, on reflection, would he not have made better progress toward that objective if he had reconsidered the timing of his trade mission last week?

[The Prime Minister]

I disagree—I would like to make people happy, but I do not agree. It was a long-arranged trip, and it was worth while going to Cairo and being one of the first people to make it to Tahrir square and to meet some of those protesters. Also, going to Kuwait on the 20th anniversary of its liberation and being able to make a speech in the Kuwait Parliament about the importance of spreading democracy and freedom was extremely important. On who accompanied me on the trip, I had a little check and in November 2008 the former Prime Minister took many of the same companies, including British Aerospace, which plays quite a big role in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Companies such as Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace are large employers in this country, and it is important that we help those businesses and make sure that they go on employing people, not least in his constituency.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on their quick action to prevent moneys being exported and on the action at the United Nations. Will the Prime Minister confirm that the Government will take action, and will press the UN to take action, against any country that breaks the UN resolution?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The most important thing is to encourage countries to take action in respect of the UN resolution and to put in place its terms as quickly as possible. We held a Privy Council meeting yesterday to allow us to pass legislation putting in place the asset freeze. We should encourage others to take that step before considering the next step of widening the net and putting even more pressure on the regime.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Before the Prime Minister takes too many cosy trips down memory lane with Sir John Major, perhaps he will recall that the arms that were exported to Iraq under the last Tory Administration were never paid for. As part of his review, will he look into the role that the Export Credits Guarantee Department played in providing cover for arms sales to unstable countries?

[The Prime Minister]

The trip down memory lane that I was taking was to Kuwait with John Major to celebrate the fact that 20 years ago this country played a part in an international coalition to bring about its liberation. Kuwait is not a democracy like us, but it has a Parliament and is taking steps to greater openness. Should we have a close relationship with such countries? I say yes, we should.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I, like most Government Members, thought it immensely impressive that the Prime Minister was in the middle east so early. Will the Prime Minister again pay credit to our extremely brave RAF personnel who carried out the two desert rescues, and will he point out in particular that 95 British nationals were rescued, as well as 270 foreign nationals? Does that not show that we were leading in the evacuation of non-Libyan nationals?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend has an interest in this, because his son is a Chinook pilot and has served bravely in Afghanistan and elsewhere. What the British military has done is outstanding—the Royal Navy in Benghazi and the Air Force in the desert mission. My hon. Friend is right. More than 32 nationalities have been rescued and brought back by the British. There is also co-ordination by the British going on in Malta and our AWACS aircraft are providing much of the air traffic control. Once again, the whole country, with our armed forces, can be very proud.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister once said that the Prime Minister is amazingly flaky on foreign affairs. Flaky or not, does the Prime Minister accept at least that he showed poor judgment last week in prioritising arms sales to the region over helping the Libyan people and our citizens in Libya?

[The Prime Minister]

That question was the definition of flaky. I went to Egypt, an important country whose democratic transition we should be encouraging. I also made a speech in the Kuwaiti Parliament about democracy. Yes, links with middle eastern countries are important. One of the reasons for going was that country after country had said to us that they were ignored, downplayed and downgraded by the previous Government. Making sure that we are building those relationships is important, and the hon. Gentleman’s judgment on this one is wrong.

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

Libya is a wake-up call that Afghanistan is not the only country that matters in the world. It shows that we have not had a balanced, moderate foreign policy. Does the Prime Minister agree that this is a reason to accelerate the draw-down of resources from Afghanistan, so that we can meet the many crises in the world, of which Libya is one, that will confront us over the next decade?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think this is an either/or. I know that my hon. Friend has considerable experience in Afghanistan, but I think that the draw-down should take place. We have set an end date, but between now and then it should be done with our NATO and international security assistance force partners to make sure that we are doing on the ground what we need to do, so that that country can have some chance of controlling its own affairs and its own destiny and providing its own security. But our aim in Afghanistan is no more than that the Afghans themselves should be able to secure that country, so that it does not require the presence of foreign troops. It is as simple as that.

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

The past few weeks have shown that not everything in the middle east is necessarily contingent upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As we move forward, does my right hon. Friend agree that whatever democracies emerge in north Africa and the middle east, it is important to ensure that they recognise the legitimacy of Israel, function as democracies and act as a counterbalance to Iran?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although we should not be pessimistic about the effect of greater democratisation in the middle east and the Arab world on the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. Some of the more autocratic regimes use the Arab-Israel conflict as a way of keeping their own populations happy without having democracy. So, yes, the road between here and there may be quite bumpy and difficult, but in the end, deals between democracies will be stronger.

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

My constituent, Richard Foscolo, was stranded in the desert in Ghani in an oilfield. He returned home last Friday. Initial contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was naturally difficult, partly because of the circumstances on the ground, but the family feel particularly let down by his employers, OPS International, which did not make all the information available to the embassy or to the FCO, so that co-ordination could be brought about effectively. What action will the Prime Minister take to ensure that information is shared as efficiently as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and there are lessons to learn about how information is shared. It is a difficult and ever-changing picture. Let us just look at the numbers of people who we think are in Libya and who want to come out. Even in the age of the internet, the mobile phone, computer databases and the rest of it, getting a real grip of those numbers, as I believe we now have—we will go on publishing more granular information about that—is difficult, but companies working with the Government is clearly an essential part of that process.

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

Does the Prime Minister agree that much of what we have heard from the Opposition over the past week, at the height of the Libyan crisis, has been nothing short of naked political opportunism, and that the deputy leader of the Labour party should apologise for comments that she posted on Twitter, when she said:

“Rapid deployment force not rapid”—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am always interested to hear the hon. Gentleman, who is an extremely keen and assiduous new parliamentarian, but I am afraid he is asking the Prime Minister about something for which even the Prime Minister does not actually have responsibility, so we will leave it there.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We will leave it there.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is obviously right to send assistance to tackle the growing refugee problem on Libya’s borders, but are efforts being co-ordinated with EU partners and others to prevent the turmoil throughout north Africa becoming an immigration problem for Italy and southern Europe?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and there are urgent conversations under way about that. At the moment, the pressure is on the borders between Libya and Tunisia and Libya and Egypt, and a lot of it involves migrant workers from Tunisia and Egypt returning to their countries, but, as I said in my statement, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will visit the region soon. We are sending out technical experts to advise us on what is necessary, but I think that there is a real job for the European Union to work together and make sure that the situation does not turn, as my hon. Friend suggests, into a refugee crisis.

[Mr Speaker]

I must thank the Prime Minister and all colleagues, whose succinctness meant that no fewer than 53 Back Benchers were able to be called to ask questions on the statement. I am very grateful to colleagues.

Points of Order

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

16:41

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw the House’s attention to my earlier declaration of interest. During questions to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Minister for Housing and Local Government said that I misrepresented his policy on the new homes bonus. He claimed that he had equalised the payment for new homes built, but that is simply not the case. The new homes bonus matches the council tax for each new home built over six years. The council tax for each band is averaged; the payment per home is not. The Library has produced research that supports the case that I made with regard to Hull and to Kensington and Chelsea. Will you, Mr Speaker, advise me and the House on how the Minister can correct the record?

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of what she intended to raise and has, indeed, now raised. She has put her point on the record, and she will have other ways of pursuing her concern about the matter. I must advise her, however, that it is not a procedural matter on which I can rule this afternoon.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister, during his statement, referred to a meeting yesterday of the Privy Council, which has frozen Libyan assets. I do not object to the freezing of Libyan assets—quite the contrary—but I wonder whether you, Mr Speaker, have had any notice of any parliamentary procedure to approve that particular motion, because the Prime Minister did not refer to one during his contribution. Clearly, Parliament must have a role in any decision of that magnitude.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. Indeed, it is so important and so deserving of serious consideration that it would be a gross discourtesy for me to respond now, thoughtlessly, inadequately and, from the vantage point of the hon. Gentleman and the House, disappointingly, so I will not. I will reflect on the matter, and I might come back to the hon. Gentleman, who has, on the strength of his nearly 28 years’ experience of the House, put his own thoughts on the matter very clearly on the record.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Of course, I fully agree with the stricture that you laid on us earlier in relation to naming members of the royal family, but I am sure that, in reading “Erskine May”, you will agree with me that the only reference to the matter is:

“The irregular use of the Queen’s name to influence a decision of the House is unconstitutional in principle and inconsistent with the independence of Parliament.”

I presume it must therefore still be perfectly possible for us to criticise members of the royal family when they play a particular role as a trade ambassador for this country on behalf of UK Trade & Investment, and that it will be possible for us to table written parliamentary questions on that matter?

[Mr Speaker]

My understanding, off the top of my head, is that the hon. Gentleman is correct. He is an assiduous follower of the use of language, and I think that he will recall that in making my observation, I emphasised the importance of treating these matters with great care, and said that on the whole it is preferable if references to members of the royal family are both sparing and respectful. I think, however, that the entitlement to raise matters which, in a sense, he is pleading in evidence, is undisputed, and his understanding of “Erskine May” on this occasion—as, I have to admit, it is on most occasions—is notably accurate.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As more and more universities are planning to do the Government’s bidding and charge the full £9,000 in tuition fees, last week the Government announced yet another delay to their higher education White Paper, and also raised the prospect of even deeper cuts to teaching and research funding. That White Paper, which has at its core the future of student numbers, is fundamental to the future financial health of our universities. Although it increasingly appears that it is being written by Walter Mitty, nevertheless it is surely the responsibility of the House to give it proper consideration. Can you bring any clarity to the House, Mr Speaker, as to when we might be able to debate that White Paper?

[Mr Speaker]

The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry is no, but I note that the Leader of the House is in his place. The hon. Gentleman, who has become rather a seasoned professional at raising matters of this kind, the better to advance his case, has obviously decided that today should be no exception. He has registered his concerns very forcefully, and it may be that he will hasten the day when satisfaction becomes his due; we shall see.

If there are no further points of order, for which there has been quite an appetite after the half-term break—I suppose that that is to be expected—we now come to the main business, which is a debate on the big society. Before we get under way, perhaps I can explain a number of things. First, the amendment that was tabled has not been selected. Secondly, there will be a 15-minute limit on the opening Back-Bench speech, as the hon. Gentleman who is about to deliver it is aware. Thirdly, there will be an eight-minute limit on each subsequent Back-Bench speech.

Backbench Business

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[21st allotted day]

Big Society

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

16:48

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House supports the Big Society, seeking stronger communities where power is decentralised and social action is encouraged.

I place on record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee, particularly its Chair, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), who has been such a great advocate of Back-Bench business and so encouraging in the process of bringing forward this debate. I also thank the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who cannot be with us today because she is on official business, for her assistance in making the case to the Committee, and my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and for Hexham (Guy Opperman). It is a great thing to have secured this debate. The big society has been much discussed in the media, and yet this is practically the first proper occasion on which it has been discussed on the Floor of this Chamber.

It is traditional when discussing the big society to start talking about the invention of the telegraph, the growth of centralisation, and the invention of the internet, and then to wind up with a discussion of something called the post-bureaucratic age. That is fascinating to those of a philosophical bent and technocratic in nature, but it does not mean much to my constituents. What I want to talk about is the sense of annoyance that everyone has when an individual feels put off from simply sweeping the snow from the pavement outside their house for fear that they will be sued, or when they are scared to jump into a pond and rescue a drowning child.

How have we got to the situation where individuals do not feel that they can take responsibility, and that rules and procedures stop them doing so? It is important to encourage people to take more action and more responsibility for their own lives and for their communities. People in communities are frustrated, such as the head teacher who cannot decide which children are in his school and feels that he is being told what to do by diktat, and the hospital worker who wants to take responsibility for his area, but who has to follow detailed rules and procedures.

Communities as a whole—big communities such as mine in Dover—want a greater sense of being able to chart their own destiny and future direction, but feel hampered by central Government saying, “No, these are the rules. This is how it is going to be. It is all going to be top-down and what you say doesn’t count for much.” It is that sense of annoyance and frustration, which stalks the land up and down the country, that the big society aims to counteract.

The Prime Minister put the case succinctly in The Daily Telegraph on 21 February 2011, when he said:

“The idea at the heart of this—the Big Society—is about rebuilding responsibility and giving people more control over their lives. But that doesn’t just apply in areas like volunteering. It’s as relevant when it comes to public services and the decentralisation of power. Indeed, I would argue that our plans to devolve power from Whitehall, and to modernise public services, are more significant aspects of our Big Society agenda than the work we’re doing to boost social action…In the past decade, stories about bureaucracy over-ruling common sense, targets and regulations over-ruling professional discretion, and the producers of public services over-ruling the people who use (and pay for) them—became the norm, not the exception. This might have been worth it had it led to dramatic improvements, but the evidence shows otherwise. Whether it’s cancer survival rates, school results or crime, for too long we’ve been slipping against comparable countries.”

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am doing my best to follow what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If there are people who will not jump into a pond to save a drowning child, will he explain how the big society will persuade them to do so?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The central point I am making is that people who want to take charge and responsibility feel put off from doing so by the concern that they will somehow be held liable. The law on rescuers used to be very clear: if a person attempted a rescue but completely messed it up, they would not be held liable. That position has changed in recent years. There is a fear that if one clears the snow on the pavement, one will be sued by someone who slips up because one has done it ineffectively. The balance needs to change so that the individual who takes responsibility, acts and steps up to the plate for the wider social good is encouraged and given the maximum possible latitude to do their best. That is at the heart of my point about individuals.

I will move on and warm to my theme of decentralisation. Something is slightly overlooked in discussing decentralisation. It is often seen as just being, “Oh, let’s get rid of big government.” That point is important because if things are too top-down, they tend to squash the vitality of communities. The benefits from decentralisation and from enabling communities to take more responsibility are not simply social. It is not simply about making people feel that it is worth looking out for their neighbour, or about giving them a sense of belonging and a sense of enthusiasm that they can change things around them in their lives. It is not simply about giving people more of a sense of responsibility and well-being. Decentralisation is also important in the growth agenda because of its economic effects.

If we allow greater decentralisation, allow communities a greater sense of confidence and allow communities to take charge of their direction, they will develop. That has economic benefits. As all Members know, the more confidence, energy and buzz a community has, the greater the economic effects. That is not only true of the private sector. There is evidence from the European Central Bank that the countries with the most efficient public sectors are much less centralised than the UK. The United States, Australia, Japan and Switzerland enjoy an average efficiency lead over the UK of some 20%. To put that in context, if Britain could match those efficiency levels, spending would be cut by £140 billion with no diminution in the standard of public services. That is not un-equidistant with the size of our budget deficit today. We should consider carefully whether decentralisation can be captured in order to produce positive effects on the economy and the public sector.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about a lack of confidence, but in my constituency we have all the volunteering that one would expect. There are community councils, traders associations, crime prevention panels, neighbourhood watch schemes and all the very things that he wants to see. There is no lack of confidence. In Scotland that is normal—it is simply civic society. If the big society is anything other than simply cover for the cuts, why the rebranding of what already happens the length and breadth of the country?

[Charlie Elphicke]

It is in no way, shape or form cover for cuts. It is a vision that the Prime Minister set out well before the crisis that engulfed the public finances and made necessary the tough decisions that the Government are taking. I do not want to focus on the deficit and the current difficulties in reining in the size of the state, because the big society is about much more than that, and it is more important than that. It is about giving people and communities a sense of responsibility.

I shall take the example of Dover, my constituency, which I advance as a case study of the difference that can be made. Before the election, the previous Government were planning to sell off the port of Dover. That proposal was in the operational efficiency report, the so-called car boot sale. There was to be an allegedly voluntary privatisation, but it was pretty clear that there was a desire for the port to be sold. My constituents understood that it would almost certainly go to a buyer overseas, and there was a sense of frustration about that.

That sense of frustration in relation to the port has existed for many years, because the directors have always been appointed by Whitehall and have had very little to do with the local community in their direction or in community engagement. That connection with the community has not been in place. The port is not simply an economic and transportation facility, it is also a social facility, as anyone with a port in their constituency will know. The interconnection between a town and the port in it is deep, and there is a symbiosis between the two. That is very much the case in Dover. With a whole load of directors having been appointed in Whitehall, hundreds of miles away, the people of Dover have been unable to effect positive engagement.

If the port were sold off overseas, we would simply be swapping one remote interest for another, and the community would not be engaged with it. Part of the difficulty in that situation would be that the community would think that the port’s management did nothing for the town and did not engage positively with it. Sadly, the port has gone to war with the ferry companies, which are the key port users for both berthing charges and general relations. There has been a breakdown of the relationship in the heartland of Dover’s local economy. The town and the community are not happy, and the key businesses are not happy. The port is on the block, threatened with being sold off overseas.

What can the community do? Under the traditional model, the solution would be about either the big state or big business. We say that it is time to try something new and different—giving the community a chance to take charge of its future and its destiny. We have been asking why, instead of the port being sold off overseas, the community cannot buy it as a community mutual and run it in partnership with those who use the port, the ferry companies that effectively account for all the port’s money. Many people will ask, “How can you possibly do that? How can these stupid yokels know what they are doing? Either you need big Government running it or big foreign business doing it, but you cannot possibly expect a community to have the intelligence or wherewithal to run an important facility like that.”

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am following my hon. Friend’s speech with great interest, and he is making a powerful case.

Charities lead the way in the big society, and one of the parts of the charitable sector that does best is air ambulance services. My hon. Friend might be interested to know that I have had a letter from Andy Williamson, the chief executive of the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire air ambulance, who states:

“I do hope that the Government will adhere to its ‘Big Society’ agenda and not waver under the current media frenzy seeking the continued protection of a ‘Big State’…we do not seek or desire Government funding; instead we have a solid belief that people will care for and support an organisation like ours that provides real, tangible and visible benefits for all.”

Do not the air ambulances show the way forward?

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Air ambulances play an important role in many communities up and down the country. Such voluntary action to take responsibility and raise money makes such a difference.

That is exactly what the community is up to in the case of the port of Dover. What is the response of the community? It is getting together with the ferry companies to make a bid to buy the port. We are asking the Government to allow us the opportunity to make that bid. The proposal is led not by people who do not know what they are doing, but by people who are extremely experienced. The president of the Dover People’s Port community trust is Sir Patrick Sheehy, who used to run British American Tobacco, the massive cigarettes and tobacco combine, and another director is Algy Cluff, who opened up the North sea to oil exploration. The chairman, Neil Wiggins, who is in the Members Gallery, has expertise in buying, selling and managing ports all around the world.

That is the key point. There is so much talent and knowledge in our communities, which have the wherewithal and ability to take on serious responsibilities. That is why we have been able to go to the City, raise £200 million to buy the port, and put together a business plan that includes investment in the national interest of £100 million over the next five years, plus £50 million for the regeneration of the port. Anyone who knows Dover will see why it needs the big society and why it can be a landmark for the big society.

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

Am I right in thinking that the whole point of the big society is empowering people to determine their destiny? My hon. Friend talks about the port of Dover, but the big society could come down to smaller initiatives in respect of, for example, development and planning, whereby local residents and not bureaucrats determine their destiny.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Exactly so—my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I have said how the big society can be big, but it can also be big in many small ways. Small initiatives are an essential part of the big society. It is not simply about proposals such as the large, eye-catching port of Dover example, but about small things that are done on a day-to-day basis, whether that is the individual volunteering—dare I say it?—to help the elderly lady to cross the road in the example that is so often given, or the small tenants’ association that wants to run its estate, or public sector workers who want to set up a social co-op in the private sector. We should foster such changes by getting the state to back off a bit and by giving communities, individuals and small and big groups room to breathe, and a greater say in, and a greater sense of, their future direction.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for a change in the regime of the port of Dover, which seems to accord with the Government’s vision of the big society. Do the Government support his vision for the port of Dover?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am unable to confirm that, because as my hon. Friend knows, that is subject to a quasi-judicial process. Even if the Government are supportive, they would be unable to say so, lest they attract a judicial review. Nevertheless, I hope the Government review the criteria of the bidding and privatisation process to enable a community bid to go through, and indeed that they will price in social and community enterprise value in privatisations or movements out of the public sector and into the private sector. In that way, communities will have a fair and a good chance to take over assets that are important to them and that matter to them.

I hope the Government produce revised proposals and that they give firm consideration to making that change. In doing so, they will send a strong signal that communities and decentralisation matter, that we want to give the balance of confidence to communities and that we want those economic benefits. Our proposal would give Dover a massive confidence lift and help to drive our local economy.

Regions throughout the UK need more confidence and to be more able to grow, prosper and do well, so that we can heal the divide between London, where all the prosperity seems to be, and the regions, which are left out. The regions will then have much more economic vitality and energy, which will make a massive difference in the future of the big society.

17:04

[Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate because, judging from the press coverage, the big society appears all set to become a national joke. It remains the Prime Minister’s “absolute passion”, so I find it strange that the debate has to be secured through the Back-Bench business route. According to a report in ThirdSector Online in June last year, the Cabinet Office, in its structural reform plan, wanted to set up a Select Committee on civil society, but we are where we are.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing the debate and on his contribution. He has shown a commitment to the future of his port. It appears to have become his absolute passion and I wish him well in that.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Just to let the hon. Gentleman know, the Select Committee on which I sit, the Select Committee on Public Administration, is responsible for civil society and is doing a lot of work on it as we speak.

[Jon Cruddas]

I take it then that the plan for a Select Committee on civil society is suspended for the time being because it is covered by the Public Administration Committee.

I have to make an admission: I quite like the notion of the big society. It returns us to issues of duty, obligation, service and contribution that should be the hallmark of all political parties, so I do not think that a monopoly is obtained by any party. Moreover, I resist the simple notion that the big society is a sham and simply a veneer for ideologically driven cuts, not least because, as the hon. Member for Dover said, the Prime Minister’s attachment to that agenda predates the economic crisis and the onset of the cuts. I have read a number of what are supposedly the key texts in the big society debate. I refer hon. Members to the pamphlets of the hon. Member for Hereford and South Hertfordshire on compassionate conservatism and compassionate economics—his big society book.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am deeply grateful for that wonderful accolade but may I point out that it is Hereford and South Herefordshire, not to be confused with the doubtless equally marvellous county of Hertfordshire?

[Jon Cruddas]

I stand corrected.

There are some points of common ground in the texts that I have seen, which are interesting and add to the sum total of public knowledge. Aspects of the big society could lead to people having more control over their lives and to the creation of a more responsible society. That is a good departure point for the discussion today. Labour should welcome that and support empowerment and social responsibility.

I therefore refer Members to a pamphlet entitled “The Politics of Decency” written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who cannot be here today, a number of years ago, which set out many of the terms of the current debate; her substantive policy proposals predated many of them. However, despite all the warm words that I am offering for the agenda, my reservations start to become apparent when we talk about delivering empowerment and social responsibility on the ground.

I suggest that, for three basic reasons, the Government agenda will not succeed in delivering on its stated objectives. First, it is weak on the role of the state. Witness the amendment that was not selected, which clarifies some of the views of the Conservative party on the matter. Secondly, the agenda does not have a robust enough approach in its criticisms of the private sector. Thirdly, the agenda is essentially silent on central issues of social justice.

Fundamentally, the big society agenda is about a redistribution of power and responsibility away from Whitehall and towards local government, intermediate organisations, local communities and individuals. However, the Government will be unable to achieve that. Consider the argument that the Government are uncertain, to put it in a charitable way, on the role of the state. The Prime Minister regularly acknowledges that the state will have to play an active role in building the big society, but what is happening on the ground? The Government want to encourage giving, but despite lobbying from the charitable sector, they have said that they will drop transitional relief on gift aid, worth around £100 million a year. The Government want to encourage community ownership and management of local assets built around the right to buy in the Localism Bill, but in reality they prefer to flog public sector assets off to the private sector. Witness what happened on the forests. A similar thing is happening with the £500 million of regional development agency assets. There is clear potential for something similar to happen with the £37 billion of primary care trust assets.

Moreover, the Government say that they want more third sector delivery of public services, but the detail of their policies will not necessarily enable that to happen. For instance, where their reforms are most advanced in terms of welfare to work, the scale and cash-flow requirements of the contracts mean that the vast majority will go to very large private sector firms, which then may or may not subcontract to charities or social enterprises, and may or may not do so on a fair basis. I have heard that the welfare Minister in the other place recently said that he anticipated a “perfect car crash” among providers. That is dangerous, because of the human consequences, and because providers will go to the wall as a result. Future examples could include offender rehabilitation and health.

Another example is the way in which the Government want to encourage public sector workers to spin out and form independent mutuals. I was recently told that the Secretary of State wants one in six public sector staff to do so by the end of this Parliament. Under the Labour scheme, those public sector workers could keep their pensions, received significant transitional support, and were guaranteed a three-year contract.

I tentatively suggest that none of that would be the case under the Tory plans. Communities have a right-to-buy asset, but minimal support to do so. They have the right to challenge local public services, but minimal support to do so. Public sector staff have the right to provide or to spin out, but minimal support to do so. We must consider alongside that the inability to deliver because of the cuts. If the big society is about more than informal acts of generosity, we need the infrastructure to provide it: people to train and manage volunteers, and people to win public service contracts and ensure that the services are delivered to a consistently high standard. That infrastructure has been hit. The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations estimates that the voluntary sector will lose £1 billion as a result of cuts, the loss of gift aid transitional relief and the rise in VAT.

The cuts to the sector are beginning to stack up. Charities and voluntary groups in London have been subject to cuts of £50 million in the past 12 months. Council community grant programmes have been cut up and down the country. The list is growing by the day, and includes mental health services, autism charities, rape and crisis support centres, stroke associations, career support services, carers, housing and homelessness charities, YMCA branches, citizens advice bureaux and children’s charities. Similarly, some cuts to benefit services will leave people feeling less in control of their lives, not more. They include cuts to disability living allowance, tightened thresholds for social care, cuts to Supporting People budgets and cuts to housing benefit. That reflects a failure to deliver the big society.

The Government are silent on the private sector. If people feel disempowered vis-à-vis the state, the same applies to their relationship with the private sector. The Government essentially say nothing on redistributing power and responsibility in that regard. For example, they propose to reduce workers’ rights in the “Resolving workplace disputes” consultation, yet beyond praising best practice, they do not appear to have much appetite for doing anything practical to encourage more corporate social responsibility by giving time or money to good causes. Such contributions are significantly lower in the UK than they are in the US, which relates directly to levels of civic engagement and volunteering. For example, 82% of people who do not volunteer but would like to do so cite lack of time as a reason, and research by the Cabinet Office recently found that half of employees would like a volunteering and giving scheme to be established by their employer.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks as if the past 13 years have been a rosy world in which the long arm of the state has been able to deliver all the public goods that we need without any problems. Is it not the case that we have tested to destruction the theory that the state knows best? We should harness the creativity of individuals and communities to partner the state to deliver the services that we need at local level.

[Jon Cruddas]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me for literally one minute, I will come on to a couple of instances that are a hallmark of the previous Government’s record, which should be compared and contrasted with the collapse in infrastructure that will result from providing the big society on the ground.

The Government say little on fairness in talking about the big society. There is a strong correlation between levels of deprivation and levels of civic engagement, with more deprived areas less likely to participate in volunteering. Third sector organisations tend to be more dependent on public money in more deprived areas, and more deprived areas have tended to get a worse deal from the spending review. The cumulative result is likely to be that the infrastructure for delivering the big society will be hit hardest in deprived areas that are less able to deliver the big society vision. To my mind, where the Government’s big society reforms genuinely empower people and lead to a more responsible society, Labour should welcome them. Conversely, where their reforms do not empower people or lead to a more responsible society, Labour should oppose them.

Finally, I want to make a couple of points about Labour’s record. Between 2000-01 and 2007-08, the voluntary sector income grant grew by just over 40%, from £25 billion to £35.5 billion, of which individual giving accounted for more than 40%, and the voluntary sector work force grew by 124,000. Labour set up the Office of the Third Sector, and the current Leader of the Opposition was the country’s first ever Minister for the Third Sector. I think that we can argue that under Labour the third sector thrived. It appears that some define the big society as a national joke, but I have to say that I fear—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call Rory Stewart.

17:15

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

I honour the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for giving a good defence of many of the good elements of the big society, and a good warning on some of its dangers. Much of the debate, however, reminds me of sitting in a room with a group of philosophers looking at some bird and explaining why the bird cannot fly. Again and again, I come to these debates and hear people say, “The big society cannot work, because people do not want to take responsibility”—I take the point from the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) about people not wanting to save a child from a pond—or they say, “It cannot work, because they do not have the resources or expertise”, or they say, “It ought not to work, because if these communities were trusted, they would do the wrong thing.” So there are three kinds of argument: communities do not want to do this stuff; they cannot do this stuff, because of cuts; and they ought not to do this stuff, because they will do something irresponsible. For example, in debates on planning, we hear again and again that communities left to their own devices would build a concrete jungle or act as nimbys and block all development.

There are many good points here. The Opposition are making many good points. The big society is not a replacement for everything; it is not a silver bullet or a panacea. We need a state. I will list three of the many things for which a state is very important. First, we need a state where there are issues of expertise. For example, brain surgery is best left to the state, not a community. Secondly, where massive resources and big strategic decisions are required, such as in the building of highways or high-speed rail networks, things are best left to the state, not individual communities. Finally—this is where I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham—the state is important when it comes to the protection of the vulnerable. Our democracy is based not just on majority representation, but on the protection of minority rights, and for that a state is very important.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that some communities might not want to do these things, despite the fact that some cannot do these things, and despite the fact that some might make the wrong decisions, big society is a wonderful thing. To those philosophers who say that this bird cannot fly, I say that it does fly. They should come to Cumbria or go in fact to any constituency. As was pointed out in an intervention, we can all see again and again exactly what big society is about. It is not about the state; it is not even about the voluntary sector, although it does a wonderful job; and it is not about individuals or businesses. It is about communities and community action.

Why does it work? Why, if someone comes to Cumbria, can they see in Crosby Ravensworth a better affordable housing project built by a community than would have been built by the county council on its own? Why, if someone comes to Kirkby Stephen, can they see a really smart neighbourhood plan—not one pushing for a concrete jungle or a nimby objection to any development, but one sensitive to the vulnerable and imaginative in how it does its development? And why, if someone comes to Appleby, can they see wonderful renewable energy projects? It is because those projects are different from those done by the state in exactly the three ways I mentioned—in the degree of knowledge, in scale and in their relationship to the risk to the vulnerable.

These are projects in which communities have a competitive advantage over the state because local knowledge matters in those projects. It is very important to live in a place in order to produce a really good plan for that place. The people who live there know about the place and care about it. They come up with creative solutions, street by street, on where to place a school, on how much housing to allow and on who will live in the affordable houses and where they will be located.

It also really matters that people care about these projects. Communities want their children to have a house in a way that a distant expert does not. Finally, although it is difficult to quantify, I think that all of us—as politicians, as opposed to civil servants—understand the will and the desire in communities to make things work in a way that a distant expert might not.

This debate should be familiar to the Opposition. There is a very distinguished tradition on the left of believing in people, of not being pessimistic about them, and of not being over-optimistic about technocratic, centralised expertise. There is a tradition of understanding that there is of course a place for the state, but that there is also a place for the community, and that that does not just involve mowing the lawns. A patronising idea is sometimes expressed that communities can be trusted to do only small, limited things.

In Cumbria, we bang on about what we have done with broadband because it is an example of communities, not the state, delivering a highly technical, highly challenging engineering project for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time that the state would have taken. That has happened because the parish can ask people to do things in a way that the state cannot. The parish can ask communities to take out loans to pay for some of their own broadband, it can ask farmers to waive their way leave in order to get the fibre optic cable to the houses, and it can ask the church to put the transmitter on its roof. In that way, the price can be reduced fivefold. And this is just the beginning.

There should be a resonance between both sides of the House over our scepticism of expertise, and over our understanding that there are forms of knowledge, not theoretical knowledge, but “knowledge of how”—“capacity knowledge”, forms of caring, of will and of desire that are not a replacement for the state but that, in the right place and the right circumstances, can achieve miracles.

All the points that hon. Members will make in this debate are true. They will be worried that a project might not be sustainable, or that it has not been the subject of sufficient research or strategic planning. They might also worry about whether it would fit into a global planning framework. All those objections are important and valid. Nevertheless, to return to the bird that I mentioned earlier, some people will stare at it and try to analyse it anatomically, wondering how it will ever get off the ground. I say to them: “Come to Cumbria and see the bird fly.”

17:23

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

In listening to the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), I had great difficulty in finding any connection between what he was saying and the subject of the debate. He cited three splendid initiatives, but presumably they all took place under the last Labour Government.

[Rory Stewart]

They are three examples from the big society vanguard project in the Eden district of Cumbria, initiated by this Government, and the hon. Gentleman is very welcome to come and see them.

[Paul Flynn]

I am glad to have heard that explanation. I was also relieved to hear from the hon. Gentleman that we are not going to have volunteers doing brain surgery.

We should all beware of Prime Ministers bearing three-word gimmick policies. I have served in this House under six Prime Ministers, and I remember “the cones hotline”, “the third way” and “back to basics”. Now, we have “the big society”. I think that the big society has most in common with the cones hotline. These were all pet subjects of various Prime Ministers who were willing to distort their own priorities to find money to plough into them over and above their general policies. There will be a degree of cynicism, when the cuts are taking place in all directions, if money is available to employ volunteers—

[Jesse Norman]

For some unaccountable reason, the hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten the third way, which was possibly the most bankrupt of all these ideas.

[Paul Flynn]

I mentioned the third way. The hon. Gentleman has only recently joined the House, but he might know that I was not the most enthusiastic supporter of the previous two Prime Ministers. The third way was a candyfloss and vacuous policy, as is the big society, and no one ever knew what the first and second ways were, let alone the third way. I am sure that my Front-Bench team will reinforce the point, but a host of initiatives have already taken place over many years.

[Robert Halfon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Flynn]

Yes, of course.

[Robert Halfon]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Is he aware that the author of the third way idea—none other than Anthony Giddens—recently wrote for The Guardian a paean of praise to Colonel Gaddafi? Does the hon. Gentleman think that that might be one reason why the third way did not succeed?

[Paul Flynn]

I am grateful for the accolade of being regarded as the hon. Gentleman’s “Friend”—we sit on the same Committee together—but he provides a fascinating insight with his comment.

Let us think about what has happened to these initiatives. The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) described one of them in an Adjournment debate, in which he raised a constituency point, which he is entitled to do. If, however, he is looking for an example on which to build his “enterprise” in Dover, he should look at the Tower colliery. A group of people got together— notwithstanding the fact that everyone, including the previous Government, said that there was no chance of the pit becoming economic at any time—and provided a wonderful example of a co-operative enterprise that was successful, made money and provided employment for a long period. All that happened without Government intervention and without any top-down support from any Government body. Such initiatives have taken place.

I do not know what sort of nightmare world is inhabited by many Conservative Members. The idea that people will not jump into ponds to rescue children or that the last Labour Government, with all their deficiencies, did not want laws to encourage people to help old ladies to cross the road is absurd. This is to go along with the tabloid view of the last Labour Government: despite all his deficiencies, Tony Blair was certainly not a Ceausescu or a Joseph Stalin.

We have all advocated the outcomes of the big society; we have all supported them for many years. We have backed volunteerism, for example, and we had a year of the volunteer. I asked every Minister in the previous Government what they were going to do to volunteer, particularly how many days they were going to give for volunteering. I asked two Ministers who came before the Select Committee the other day the same question of how many days they were going to devote to volunteering. The responses were very weak, although I understand that the responsible Minister in the other place talked about giving three days a week, which he rapidly reduced to two. Anyone supportive of the big society and who is serious about the joys of voluntary work should tell us what they are going to do to lead by example rather than provide mere exhortation.

Volunteerism has always played an important part in, and has contributed to, our national life. The current danger is that the big society might send that process backwards because it is an attempt to nationalise volunteerism. Those who give out of the goodness of their hearts because they want to help their own society are suddenly going to be part of a Government scheme that will promote the aims of, and give credit to, the Conservative party. It might well act as a disincentive to those thinking of volunteering.

The Welsh Assembly Government developed a Communities First programme, which had more or less identical aims to much of what the big society is about—giving small groups some pump-priming money to assist their schemes, for example. As to whether this has been an unqualified success, some schemes were very successful, some less so. This idea is not new, however; it has been tried before, and it has proved to be a limited success. We have had no details from the Government about what will happen to the bank that is currently in an embryonic state. There is talk of it having about £200 million. I asked the Minister whether it was true that the Government’s take from the charitable sector could amount to £5 billion a year or £3 billion a year, or whether it would be £1 billion this year and then £3 billion. The amount of money that is going in each year is nothing compared to the amount that is being taken out. The Minister denied that the amount was £5 billion, but he could not give me a figure. If he does not know what the amount is, he will not be able to tell me what it is not, but I should be glad to be given a figure tonight so that we can make a comparison.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I hate to obtrude on the hon. Gentleman’s fascinating speech, and I accept that he has never knowingly supported a Prime Minister for as long as he has been in this place, but is he not being a little uncharitable about the cones hotline? The big society is about a bit more than just volunteering; it is largely about rebalancing the role of the state and the role of communities. Will he not give that some credit?

[Paul Flynn]

I think we all agree that the aim of creating a society in which people are empowered is desirable. One industry has suffered chronically from the dependency culture. It has been given handouts for many years, which has resulted in a lack of innovation and a habit of expecting everyone else to solve its problems. It has looked to the Welsh Assembly, to Europe, and to the British Government. That industry is the farming industry, and I doubt that that point will meet with much enthusiasm from Government Members. It is not people in working-class areas who feel that they are part of a dependency culture. It is those who are supported by huge subsidies which have a debilitating effect on their industries.

I return to what was said by the Select Committee. We should consider the reality. For instance, the Government are destroying a quarter of the Members of Parliament in Wales. I am sure that it will cause you some distress, Mr Deputy Speaker, to know that someone in my position, on the threshold of a promising parliamentary career, may find that his constituency has disappeared. Is that part of localism, of taking power down to the people? The truth is that power is being destroyed at that level.

Let us consider the idea that a Minister who is the son of a former Cabinet Minister, and who represents leafy suburbs somewhere in Surrey or Essex, will suddenly waltz down to my constituency—where employment in the coal mines was destroyed for the senior generation and where employment for the younger generation is now being destroyed by cuts—and tell people that he will rescue them from their misery by allowing them to work for nothing. The idea of working for nothing is very much a millionaire’s view of helping society. If millionaires do not work, they still have their sustenance and their accommodation. Life does not change for them. Do they realise how deeply insulting it is to expect people to work for a long period with no wages at the end of it? It is fine if people do it because they believe that they are helping society, but if they find that they are doing it to help a Government project or advance the career of a Prime Minister, they will turn against the idea.

I believe that we are seeing nothing very new in the big society. Its aims are desirable, and we wish it well in the context of the worthwhile developments that may come of it, but it is wrong to pretend that it represents a revolutionary development in our society. I look forward to seeing—along with many other members of the Public Administration Committee—what advantages there are in it, and I am sure that we will reach a fair and balanced decision; but we may well decide that the big society is very little other than a big cop-out.

17:33

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). I agreed with what he said about the role of Communities First in Wales. I could take Members to see deprived rural wards in west Wales, in Ceredigion, and in urban wards as well. The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) spoke of engagement, social activism and volunteerism in deprived communities, and of the mismatch that often occurs. Communities First has given such communities the leadership, resources and facilities that will enable them to become more engaged, and I think that that is as valid in Ceredigion as in Newport West.

I welcome the debate. I suspect that by the time it ends, at 10 pm, we shall have been given 30 definitions of what the big society is. People are increasingly familiar with the phrase, but they are still somewhat baffled about what it means. We have a chance to address that this afternoon. The concept is not well defined and neither is it understood yet. Sadly, it has come to be seen as synonymous with big cuts in public spending. That is inevitable, but it is also regrettable given the many positive points that we have already heard in this debate about encouraging the third sector and volunteering, which I will discuss in my speech.

Volunteerism is alive and kicking in our communities. The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) made that point first, when he mentioned everything that is already happening, and the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said the same in respect of his constituency. Last week I was at the university in Aberystwyth in my constituency. It was hosting student volunteer week, an open day with 23 different organisations in attendance, encouraging students to volunteer and offering them work experience.

We cannot, however, ignore the fact that many charities face a reduction in their core funding, whether through cuts in direct funding or in local authority funding. In questions earlier today, we heard about the funding priorities that certain local authorities are setting, and I endorse what has been said, but we are still looking for a lead from Government, to ensure that many of our charities are not hit by the loss in core funding. The Government have had some positive news on that, but I would like to hear a little more from the Minister. I also hope that this debate is a discussion not of ideology, but of practicalities and the good delivery of services. [Interruption.] There is a note of dissent from the Opposition Benches, but I am concerned about the delivery on the ground of good services to my constituents.

Concern has also been expressed about the transfer of functions from quangos to voluntary organisations through the Public Bodies Bill, which is being debated in another place. In principle, if a charity can deliver a service that is being provided by a public body, it is preferable that the charity does so. That varies depending on what service we are talking about, however, and the key difficulty lies in ensuring that the resources and expertise are provided to do the job. It is all well and good talking about handing responsibilities from Consumer Focus to citizens advice bureaux, but the Minister needs to reassure us that CABs are sufficiently well equipped and financed to undertake those services.

[Rehman Chishti]

The Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that there will be sufficient resources, with 5,000 extra professional community organisers and 4,200 extra health care visitors to ensure that families get the support they need and communities can come together. There will also be £200 million for the big society bank.

[Mr Williams]

I welcome those resources, of course, but let me go back to my point about the CABs. I was at a meeting last week, and there was genuine concern about the ability of volunteers to carry on doing the work they are doing if resources are cut to such an extent that the training courses they undertake are no longer available.

It is crucial that we address the concept of the big society correctly if we are to achieve its potential in helping to deliver services. As we have heard this afternoon, there is support for giving individuals and groups more power and opportunity to help their communities. I have no difficulty at all with the motion—although I would have perhaps a little more difficulty with the amendment, which was not selected.

What sets the concept of the big society apart is its recognition not simply of the contribution that charities and voluntary groups can make, but of the difference that can be made through allowing groups and individuals to make decisions and take control. St David’s day is coming up, and I want powers and responsibilities to be devolved further to the National Assembly; I want them to be devolved to the community level—to our counties and our communities and our individuals. That may be about minor things such as garden exchange schemes or bigger things such as community energy projects and community broadband.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that in talking about communities we should also consider businesses? In my constituency, we have set up Teignbridge business buddies, under which businesses help each other with small individual problems for free. That is not addressing a state role, but it does show that community is bigger than just individuals; it is also about the businesses within communities.

[Mr Williams]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, in whose constituency I was briefly at the start of this week. I can testify that there are some very good businesses there, and the ethos she alludes to is very important.

I want to mention one or two projects in my constituency, such as the community-led project Transition Llambed, which works to challenge the issues of peak oil and climate change and to give Lampeter transition town status. That is a perfect example of an organisation run and led by the community for the community that aims to have a positive impact on the world around it. It epitomises the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” Formed four years ago, Transition Llambed has been extremely well received. It has 400 members—drawn from a town with a population of just 2,500 people—and has support from the town council, the university and local organisations.

Lampeter is also home to the excellent Long Wood Community Woodland group, which I had the pleasure of meeting last week, and which is in the process of securing 300 acres of woodland for local community use. I do not want to reopen the debate about forestry sales and the Government’s climb-down; however, that very good project in Lampeter involves many different groups in the community.

I am never quite sure whether the tentacles of the big society extend beyond Offa’s Dyke, but I do know there have been discussions between the Wales Office and Ministers in the National Assembly. I want to cite last November’s excellent report from the Welsh Assembly Enterprise and Learning Committee, which discussed the role of social enterprises in the Welsh economy. It recommends that

“the potential of social enterprise should not be viewed as a means of mopping up services that need to be developed more cheaply but as a way of developing new, innovative and more effective methods of delivery”.

That committee was dominated by Labour and Plaid Cymru Administration Members—there was a Liberal Member as well—and I very much endorse that view, which is not at odds with what is being suggested from this side of the House. That issue goes to the very heart of this debate.

The committee also called for an improvement in the quality and coverage of business support and advice for the social enterprise sector—a relatively new sector that has sometimes been ignored. All Government Departments must be thinking of ways of fostering volunteerism and social enterprise, and that should mean the availability of advice and support as recommended by the committee. It might mean in some instances relaxing some of the regulations that make life difficult for many of our charities; the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) might agree with that, given her interest in small businesses. It might mean enforcing some existing laws and regulations more stringently.

The Government have made progress on this issue. For instance, they are looking again at the provisions under the vetting and barring scheme. Although there is of course a need to ensure that children are protected from those who use voluntary groups as an opportunity to gain access to children, those rules must be sensible and proportionate and should not hinder the many volunteers who do excellent work in the youth sector.

There is also the Government’s recent pledge to put money aside to assist mountain rescue teams, who have to pay VAT on equipment. Again, that is money to allow volunteers the breathing space they need to enable them to be more effective.

Many of us will have received representations from Sue Ryder Care, which is concerned that once services are transferred from the public to the voluntary sector, there will be an increased cost for the charity because it will be unable to reclaim much of the VAT. It has been suggested that section 41 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 should be amended to include charities providing services transferred to them by the NHS. Another charity in my constituency, the Beacon of Hope, would very much empathise with that call.

There is good news. The big society bank is coming, the funding for which is being provided from dormant bank accounts and as part of Project Merlin. I welcome that.

I end with a request. Much of what this debate is about is already happening in our communities. What I am looking for from the Minister and the proponents of the big society—I rather prefer the word “community”, however—is that add-on, that extra. The engagement is there; it needs to be built on.

17:45

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. The issue that we are discussing goes to the heart of what I believe politics is about: how to secure a just and fair society, where everyone has the freedom, power and opportunity to fulfil their potential and thrive. There has and always will be a strong strand within the Labour movement that believes that self-help and community action are the foundations of a good society and the route to a good life. During the industrial revolution and earlier, ordinary working people came together to form co-operatives, mutuals and friendly societies. Those organisations were owned and run by their members for the benefit of one another, and were established to protect working people from the consequences not of an overbearing state, but of unfettered markets that treated people as mere commodities to be bought and sold for financial gain. Generations of working people learned to help and develop themselves by taking roles in those organisations. They learned how to read and write by running a trade union branch or got health insurance from friendly societies in case they had an accident at work.

The modern Labour party was born out of those organisations and we then went on to create the welfare state, so that the security, opportunities and other benefits provided by those organisations were made available to all. The values of community, self-help and mutual aid remain strong in the Labour party, as our record of the past 13 years shows. Government-funded programmes such as the new deal for communities have helped to transform the most deprived areas in my constituency, such as Braunstone, by empowering local residents and community groups. Labour councils have opened up local services to the voluntary sector. In Leicester, organisations such as Streetvibe now provide fantastic youth services, which young people themselves help to shape and run. In Rowley Fields, in my constituency, residents who campaigned to save the Manor House community centre are now running and developing community services that better meet local people’s needs.

Some of the biggest changes that Labour made were in the NHS. We created foundation trusts and backed pioneering new social enterprises, such as Central Surrey Health, so that local staff, patients and the public can now own and run their local health services. However, we did not just harness the skills of voluntary and community groups to transform public services; we empowered those groups to help change markets, too. For example, we increased support for credit unions and updated their legislation, so that more people on low incomes can now save and get access to affordable loans denied to them by the commercial market.

Those are just a few examples of Labour’s good society in action. They show, first, that the state and civil society are not mutually exclusive, but inextricably linked; an enabling state is vital to supporting civil society, and vice versa. Secondly, they show that securing the good society is as much about changing the economy and markets as it is about reforming the state. The Government’s big society fails to acknowledge either of those crucial points, which is why it will fail to empower individuals and communities to take control over their own lives.

Let us consider the Government’s proposals to encourage more volunteering, which is an important and laudable goal. The real issue is not that people cannot or do not want to volunteer because of work or family constraints; it is that securing the good society requires more than kindness and charity alone. Giving people real power and real control depends on far deeper and more powerful principles and values: solidarity and reciprocity; taking common action to achieve common goals; and knowing that your fellow man will share the burdens as well as benefits that life inevitably brings.

The Government say that the big society is about not only encouraging volunteering, but opening up public services so that the voluntary sector can play a bigger role, but some of their plans are likely to achieve the opposite. The Prime Minister says that the new Work programme will make up to £700 million available to the third sector, but organisations are to be paid only after they have got people into work and kept them there for some time, which will mean that many small and medium-sized charities cannot get involved because they simply do not have the resources necessary to put in this money up front.

I have long championed the idea of giving people more choice and a greater say over their public services. As the former director of the Maternity Alliance charity, I have always thought that different providers have an important role to play in public services, but that must be done within a properly managed system so that the benefits of choice are felt by all, with genuine accountability to users and the public. That is not this Government’s approach. They want to drive a full market and full competition approach through the whole public sector, regardless of any evidence about whether competition works in particular fields and without the vital checks, balances and accountability that Labour had in place. That is not the way to improve the quality of our public services or to give users and communities greater control.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Lady has spoken very eloquently about the barriers to volunteerism in relation to resources, and about solidarity, but what about regulation? In my experience, the main barrier that people tend to complain about is that they are prevented by regulation from doing what they want to do, so a lot of this is about clearing regulation out of the way, not about giving people resources.

[Liz Kendall]

I think that is an important point, but it is not the issue that people in my constituency raise with me about volunteering—it is about whether they have the time and the resources to do it because they have family, caring and work commitments. That might be the hon. Gentleman’s experience, but it is not mine.

Whatever the Government’s plans for reforming public services, the more immediate and pressing issue is the speed and severity of their public spending cuts. There is no getting away from that. Two weeks ago, in my constituency, I met a whole group of charities, which told me that the cuts threaten their very existence. I am talking about brilliant organisations such as Lighthouse Learning, which has played a huge role in reducing the large number of young people not in education, employment or training in Leicester. The Government say they have recognised this problem and provided transitional funding, but groups in my constituency tell me that the funding is available only to charities that are “undergoing change”—for example, merging with others—and not to fund existing work, salaries or rent. If the Government support the voluntary sector so much, why do they refuse to provide transitional funding to continue that work? Unless other funding is found, the very voluntary and community groups that they claim to want to support will have no choice but to close. I do not doubt for a second that Government Members support the voluntary sector and want it to play a bigger role, but their economic policy threatens the existence of many voluntary and community groups because their public spending cuts go too deep and too fast.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Has the hon. Lady reflected on why the country has an historical high deficit and a difficult financial situation?

[Liz Kendall]

I am sorry but I did not hear the hon. Gentleman because of comments from my hon. Friends. Will he repeat what he said?

[Henry Smith]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again. Has she reflected on why we are in such a difficult financial predicament? I suggest that it is not just because of the badly regulated banks under the previous Administration.

[Liz Kendall]

Yes—because of the failings of the market, which is the point I am trying to make. If we want a good society, we have to acknowledge that while there can be problems with an overbearing state, some of the problems created by markets are far greater than those created by the state.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Lady says the situation is because of the market’s failure, but was there not a failure of policy? When this Government came in, one in five 18 to 24-year-olds were unemployed; that was a failure of policy by the previous Government, not of markets.

[Liz Kendall]

I return to my earlier example about why it is important to support credit unions—some banks were not giving credit, loans or bank accounts to some of the poorest and most deprived people in my constituency. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) has rightly been highlighting the need to take on some of the illegal—and legal—loan sharks who prey on such people, including my constituents. That is down to a failing of the law, yes, but also of markets, and it needs to be tackled.

In conclusion, the Government claim that their big society is about empowering local people, but in reality it is about rolling back the state and using markets alone to drive change in our public services. That will leave too many communities to fend for themselves. That is okay in areas with huge resources and people who have time to volunteer, but in my constituency where people are struggling to find work and get on the housing ladder and have real problems and issues, I do not think that will work. Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour party, believed that the role of the state should be to enable people to choose the life they want to lead, and that markets should serve the people, not the other way round. He wanted to create a society based on the inherently human values of solidarity and community and not on those of the market or an over-powerful state. Hardie’s vision is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. The Government’s big society will not achieve it, but I hope and believe that Labour’s good society will.

17:54

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this valuable debate.

Let me start by looking at the origins of the Prime Minister’s conviction, which is driving the big society forward. It goes back to shortly after he was elected Leader of the Opposition six years ago. At that time, his commitment was very much informed by the work of the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and his founding of the Centre for Social Justice. In 2007, the Prime Minister stated clearly that the task of the next Government would be to reverse decades of social decline and that that crisis of social decline was every bit as great as the economic crisis that confronted the new Conservative Government in 1979. It is completely disingenuous of certain sectors of the media and of certain interests to suppose that the big society concept is some sort of cynical cover for spending cuts, and I am glad that some Opposition Members have acknowledged that that is not the case.

The difference between now and 1979 is that this Government confront both a social crisis and an economic crisis, which the Prime Minister probably did not foresee back in 2007. Those two crises are two sides of one coin, and one will not be solved without the other. This country has been living beyond its means for some considerable time—at least a decade. Throughout the boom years, we spent vast and increasing amounts of money on social problems that still persist, such as the 2 million or so people on out-of-work benefits, while new jobs were created but mostly filled by newly arrived immigrants. More and more money was spent on schools every year, but that did not reverse the relative educational decline of Britain compared with other countries.

Why do we have so many problems and what will the big society do to address them? I acknowledge the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), which was in many ways excellent, and I agree that the state and civil society are inextricably linked. However, I argue that things have got out of kilter and that over the past 10 years there has increasingly been a dominance of the state and a “Government know best” mentality. Let me give a few examples of the adverse effect that that has had. The Criminal Records Bureau is a laudable organisation, but it has become quite extreme in its intervention, affecting people who want to volunteer to drive one another’s children around. I am on my third CRB check, and I am just a school governor and a volunteer with an FE college.

Health and safety has got out of control, and I am delighted that the Government are going to tackle the excessive approach that prevents teachers from taking schoolchildren on much-valued trips. The risk of finding oneself on the wrong side of the law for intervening in a street situation is a problem, as is the fact that families are prevented from hiring carers or agency nurses to support their elderly relatives in hospital—I have argued with my hospital in Dudley about that. We have heard the reports about the treatment of older people in our hospitals, and if people want to hire additional support, they should be allowed to do so.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case against health and safety legislation, which many of us know to be extremely onerous. Does she agree that another issue is the no win, no fee legal environment—the compensation culture—in which we operate, which puts an undue cost burden on voluntary organisations seeking to help in their local communities?

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention; I certainly agree. The compensation culture has grown up over many years—to a certain extent, we have imported it from the United States. I hope our Government will address that significant problem.

The bureaucracy of the grant and contracting process at local authority level has put off a number of smaller organisations, which, every year, have to make their case afresh for the same grant or contract for the same service. They cannot get any core funding. We are committed to changing that, and change is long overdue.

Some charities have become overly dependent on the state, particularly at a local level, so that too much of their money comes from local authorities. They almost cease to exist as voluntary bodies, which takes away a great deal from their esprit de corps and the motive that drove their passion in the first place. In many ways, the tail starts wagging the dog. Small voluntary groups are tailoring what they do to meet the criteria of the next grant body that they approach.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some good points, including the one about the proportion of income that charities are getting from statutory governmental sources. Should the Government consider stripping the charitable status from organisations that achieve 80% of their funding from the state?

[Margot James]

I would like to consider that suggestion more fully. It is a laudable one, which would address the problem of over-dependence, although I fear that too great a bureaucracy would be required to oversee such an idea, resulting in two steps forward and one step back.

[Liz Kendall]

What other sources of income should the voluntary sector turn to, if the hon. Lady believes that it is too reliant on council and central Government funding?

[Margot James]

There are many voluntary and charitable organisations that derive no income whatever from the state, such as the air ambulance, which one of my hon. Friends mentioned earlier. It raises £48 million a year through a lottery and fundraising volunteers. A dear aunt of mine aged 88 has a standing order for the air ambulance, which is how such organisations get their money. The hospice movement is another case in point. My local hospice, Mary Stevens hospice in Stourbridge, receives only 18% of its funding from the primary care trust and raises the rest of its money itself. I am very much in favour of grants from local authorities. When I was a local councillor, I served on the board of a charity that received virtually all its income from the primary care trust and the local authority, which was detrimental.

[Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

rose—

[Margot James]

I shall make progress, if my hon. Friend does not mind, because I do not think that I will get any more credit on the clock.

Let me make a few points in conclusion. It is the Government’s and the public sector’s attitude to risk that bedevils many of their good intentions. There is an attitude that risk can be and should be eliminated, and we must get away from that mentality. We have to manage risk, of course, but no Government, private organisation or charitable organisation can eliminate risk completely, and we lose a great deal by trying to do so.

The monopolistic provision of public services will be challenged by the big society. I am delighted to see so many of the Government’s proposals coming out now in concrete form. Several hon. Members have mentioned the big society bank. Other proposals include transitional funding for charities facing hardship following a sudden drop in a grant, the training of 20,000 community organisers and the national citizenship scheme for young people, which is a fabulous idea. We have some corporate funding for that, so it does not rely on taxpayers. Leadership and a culture change are needed to encourage more philanthropy.

We must leverage the good will of business. Many large and small businesses have a sense of corporate responsibility, which should be tapped. I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State for Justice is looking at what business can do to rehabilitate and train people in our prison system. There is so much that business can do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) has pointed out, and we must not forget that individuals, communities and corporations can all contribute to the big society. I congratulate the Government on getting as far as they have done already with this initiative.

18:05

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee for initiating the debate.

I shall focus on volunteering, which in many ways is the keystone of the big society. I started my career 25 years ago as a volunteer with the citizens advice bureau. I have to say that I never thought of myself as part of the big society. Indeed, I gained so much from my time as a volunteer and from the support from the paid staff that I wanted to remain in the voluntary sector and work to provide the same service with both volunteers and paid staff. However, in the 23 years that I did that, the demographics of volunteers and the type of support that they needed to enable them to have a positive experience and to be of value to the organisation changed dramatically.

When I began, the majority of volunteers were, to put it kindly, older ladies with time on their hands. They wanted to volunteer for three hours or so a week and anticipated remaining with the organisation for quite a long period. The volunteers worked extremely hard and were very dedicated but, as we all know as Members of Parliament, life has become more complicated, the public’s expectations of any service have become much greater and family life has changed, causing the pool of volunteers to change, too. People are retiring later, and many women work until retirement age and then want a break or become carers as people live longer. Younger people, particularly women, are returning to work as two incomes are a necessity, and grandparents are pressed into service.

The expectations of services have been raised and volunteers have become younger, more short term and often use volunteering as a route to work. All that increases the need for paid support to ensure that the expectations of clients, volunteers and organisations are met. There are a number of different and diverse volunteering opportunities, and it is important that prospective volunteers are matched with the right organisation that will give value to both the volunteer and organisation. That is why I was appalled to hear that my local council for voluntary services in Wigan has lost £100,000 from the involved scheme, which provides volunteering support and brokerage for 16 to 25-year-olds, and the other non-age specific project performing the same function. This has led to an overall loss of the entire volunteering infrastructure within the borough, which is more important now as the big society is introduced and people are encouraged to volunteer.

People who want to volunteer will now face the choice, as used to happen in the past, of approaching an organisation that they may have heard of, without knowing how suitable that choice is for them and the amount of time that they want to give, or not bothering. If they find a place and discover bad practice, which exists in some voluntary organisations, there will be no one to report it to, to improve the practice and to work with the organisation to ensure that the volunteers are working in a healthy, safe and supportive environment.

I want to speak about that supportive environment. Volunteers give their time freely, but they, in return, can expect adequate training and support for the roles that they take on. A paid employee would not be left to get on with the job, and neither should a volunteer. Particularly in these days, when people of working age are volunteering to improve their CVs, volunteers demand a development plan and ongoing training and support. Volunteers’ time is given freely, but the support costs and the money for infrastructure costs is ever more difficult to find. In some cases, I cannot see where they can get it, apart from state bodies.

I turn to the example of citizens advice bureaux. I ran a citizens advice bureau, and we had almost £1 million of funding. One third came from legal aid, about one tenth came from the local authority, and there was primary care trust funding, Government funding to increase face-to-face advice in communities and Government funding from the financial inclusion fund. Citizens advice bureaux do not have popular appeal, however. They are not a “fluffy bunny” charity, so people do not give large amounts to them. Furthermore, volunteer turnover is increasingly rapid, and money needs to be made available to train and replace volunteers as they leave. Any responsible employer has a budget for recruitment and training, and how much more urgent and necessary that is when working with volunteers. I have referred to larger voluntary groups, but even small community voluntary groups need money.

Stubshaw Cross residents association started a teenagers disco when young people who were hanging around the park and causing a bit of trouble said that they had nowhere to go. The association volunteered to staff the sessions for nothing, but it needed access to a small grant to buy some sound equipment, to heat and light the building, to clean it and, as they said, to buy some earplugs. Those young people now run their own disco, with some support, but they still need ongoing funding. Without the support of the local council for voluntary service and the council’s funding officer, and without the availability of the small grants pot to help them to look for that funding, the disco would never have happened. Those teenagers would not have been part of the local community, and they would not sit on the residents association as they do now.

The big society is not new, but most of all it is not free. It is a partnership between community and voluntary organisations and the state, and to unbalance one side either by removing state funding or by restricting access to state funding and to grants, is to threaten society. It will leave people disaffected and dissociated. A true big society does not replace the state and public sector jobs; it works together to support and to empower the most vulnerable. To expect volunteers to replace public sector workers is to undervalue both, and it will unravel the fabric of society. It is by working together, with adequate funding, that the two sectors will become more than the sum of their parts.

18:12

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

I congratulate hon. Members on securing this debate. I am delighted that we are discussing the big society, because its principles got me where I am today. I relied upon them during my 16-year career in the charity sector.

Much of what is great about this country stems from the social action that the individuals, groups and movements of the past provided. For too many years, however, we have come to rely too much on the state. Too often these days we hear, “The council should do x”, or, “Why doesn’t the Government do y?” Society has become too small. Instead, we should encourage people and communities to do x and y, where they can, and that is why I fully support the Prime Minister in his desire to make the big society a big part of our political agenda. If nothing else, he has got the whole debate going—one that has been too quiet for too long. As Kennedy famously put it:

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Those who are cynical and critical of the big society all too often talk about money. Yes, it is important and as a fundraiser I knew that, but the trouble is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said, some charities have become too dependent on a single income stream. That was a dangerous precedent which we in my charity avoided, but I welcome the fact that the Government are providing £100 million to help those charities that might be struggling.

In my job, I realised that the most important and greatest commodity that any charity or organisation can enjoy is people: people caring for the community, being neighbourly and having civic pride. That is all incredibly expensive; indeed, we could not buy it with all the money in the world. Such people inspired me as a young boy on a poor council estate to do my bit, and two individuals spring to mind: Iorwerth Rowlands and Jackie Waddicar. Our estate had little money but bags of spirit, and those two people led it to build the facilities of which others became proud and envious. They did a fantastic job despite the low incomes in the area, and that belies the patronising idea that some communities cannot do so because they are poor.

The hospice movement is an exemplar of the big society, and it was my privilege to work in it for more than 12 years. The movement all started thanks to the inspiration of Dame Cicely Saunders, a person who saw the glaring need to care for people at the end of their lives—and did something about it. Today, we see hospices throughout the country, and remarkably the vast majority are funded thanks to the generosity not of the Government but of the public. Most draw on the considerable help of thousands of volunteers to care for patients in both hospices and our communities. Such community ownership, and the community’s relationship with its hospices, mean that people are responsive to patients’ needs.

The hospice movement has had many inspirational leaders who have helped it to evolve and develop over the years. Indeed, Sister Frances Dominica recognised the glaring need to help children through the movement. I spent the previous seven years working for Martin House children’s hospice in Yorkshire, which cares for more than 300 terminally ill children and more than 100 bereaved families every year, at a cost of more than £4 million. Almost 90% of that money comes from the public, and it is a credit to the good people and businesses of Yorkshire that it keeps coming, even in these most difficult financial times. The care that the hospice provides is second to none, and, as one family said to me, the trouble is that it is the service against which all others are measured, and they can barely catch up. The hospice would of course like more public finance, because nobody would say no to extra money, but too much state involvement would dilute the wonderful facility that is Martin House, and heaven spare it top-down targets from Westminster.

Throughout my career in the charity sector, I saw how the big society is working, but I want to see it become bigger. Many politicos who are sceptical about the big society ask, “What does it mean? What does it stand for?”. They want that all-important buzzword to describe it, but they should take it from someone who has spent their working life in it: the big society is so big that no word could possibly do it justice.

18:17

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is no longer in his place, on securing this debate. We on the Opposition Benches are enormous fans of the big society, not least because it cost the Conservatives an overall majority at the general election. Well, we thought it did until we saw their friends on the Liberal Benches.

I was happy to put my name to the motion, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) suggested, the big society is absolutely fundamental to the Labour vision and to the Labour traditions of mutualism, co-operation and associationalism. However, there is a strong case for saying that we have lost sight of many of those traditions. We lost sight of them in the early 20th century, when we allowed clause IV to be written as it was, and we lost sight of them in the later years of our period in government, when we became over-regulatory and over-zealous in our admiration of the state. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) cited some of the Criminal Records Bureau’s activities, and that is an example of exactly where we began to go wrong.

As I think about how the Labour party begins to renew itself and ask questions of itself as we prepare for our speedy return to government, I think about our relationship with the big society and the tradition re-emerges.

[Mel Stride]

Before the hon. Gentleman processes on his speedy return to government, may I ask him something, as someone who has an interest in history and knows that he has an acute interest in history? That aspect of the state crowding out private and mutual endeavour was highlighted by William Beveridge in his report. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that Beveridge would look back now and say that the state had become too big, and that Labour Governments had played their part in that?

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is an acute question. I do not always accept the notion of crowding out, although there are times at which one can point to that.

The Labour tradition, as it has evolved, has sought to create a critical relationship with local government and central Government, and that is the difference between ourselves and Conservative Members. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West suggested, the enabling state is part of the Labour tradition. When we look back to where we have come from, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) will imminently explain in beautiful prose, we can go right back to the late 18th century to the traditions of Paine and of critiquing the functioning of the market while believing in market principles. This was based on a belief that the state was not always a force for good. As Adam Smith argued, the state in the late 18th century was often a force for arbitrary activities, clamping down on the rights of working people and interfering in proper market practice.

[Jesse Norman]

I am thrilled by the robustly Conservative —indeed, Burkean—tone of the hon. Gentleman’s comments. However, I am interested in his support for Paine. Does he really believe that a person who backed the French revolution and its support for abstract rights over and above the legal privileges of the free-born Englishman deserves his support, and that he can be invoked in the context of the big society?

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The wonderful thing about Paine is that he can be invoked on almost any issue, and in this particular seminar we are talking about the associationalist Paine rather than the Jacobin Paine.

Another part of the Labour narrative is the Owenite tradition, which was about co-operation rather than competition, and about man’s character being formed through his interactions with others rather than through being born with original sin, which was the Conservative position. We can also point to the Liberal tradition of the Rochdale pioneers—this, too, is part of the Labour story of co-operation, self-help, mutualism and self-improvement. We have to ask why these institutions and forms came into being. Why did working people club together in friendly societies, trade unions, burial societies and other associations? It was because of the failings of the mid-Victorian big society—the failings of noblesse oblige, Lady Bountiful, the night watchman state, and the attacks that we still hear today, whether on health and safety or over-regulation. It was a Tory vision which failed for millions of working people, and that is why our tradition of mutualism, associationalism and the big society came into being.

[Jesse Norman]

I noticed the subtlety with which the hon. Gentleman moved from a critique of Victorian society to a critique of the Victorian state. Can he outline the terms in which the state was able to support the development of these priceless independent institutions which we all now celebrate?

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is right in one sense: part of the brilliance of the British tradition is our ability to create all sorts of forms of associational activity, be it limited liability companies or co-operatives. However, Labour Members point to our particular tradition of mutualism and associationalism, which comes from a failure of the Tory approach.

I would happily wax lyrical about the Labour tradition for many minutes to come, but I suggest to my hon. Friends that we cannot be too romantic about the past. Many of the worst actors in the recent financial crash were mutual organisations with co-operative governance structures. There is no inherent virtue in these modes of organisation that protects them from the kind of activities that we saw. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) said, we need to think innovatively about how we take these forms into the 21st century. We need to think about tax advantages for employee benefit trusts, the right to request the mutualisation of public services—as well as what that means for pay and conditions—and systems of asset locks. A relevant and credible example of this was announced by Ministers today regarding the future of British Waterways. The Government seem to be heading towards the charitable model, but many Labour Members will think that a co-operative model, with all the differences that that entails, would be the best way. I am more hopeful about the hon. Member for Dover’s plans for Dover harbour.

The difference between Labour and the Conservatives as regards the big society is about the history of co-operation with forms of government—first, in the mid-19th century, with local government, again following Tory failures. In Manchester, in Birmingham and across the country, there was a coalition of the associationalist, mutualist tradition and local government. Then, in the early 20th century, when the new Liberals actually believed in progressive politics, it was a coalition with the central state based on the belief in an enabling state and a relationship between forms of civil society and forms of the state. That continues today in relation to the big society and our politics. We believe in a relationship with a progressive, activist, enabling state.

That brings me to the crux of the issue. Various Conservative Members have pooh-poohed us for suggesting that there is an ideological element to the Government’s thinking and said that because the Prime Minister wrote an article six years ago in which he might have hinted at some of these ideas, we should think that there is some noble tradition involved. The big society is being used as a vehicle for justifying some of the major cuts and assaults on the state that we are seeing today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out, voluntary institutions—the building blocks of civil society and of many of our communities—will be undone by the Government’s cuts, which are going too far and too fast. Some of the communities that we represent need capacity building, capability building and investment building. I say that not because, as the hon. Member for Pudsey suggested, we believe that poor people cannot organise themselves, but because we believe in investing in those communities to achieve better outcomes rather than ripping away support for citizens advice bureaux, youth services and all the other developments that are taking place. I took a delegation of organisations from Stoke-on-Trent, including Chepstow House and the citizens advice bureau, to see the Minister, who kindly listened to us as we pointed out the serious troubles that they will face—that the big society will face—as a result of this Government’s plans.

There are confusions in the Government’s belief in the big society. We are seeing, on the one hand, their ripping away of the capacity building that is necessary, and on the other, as in the case of the NHS and what they tried to do with the Forestry Commission, a neo-liberal belief in the market that has very little to do with an organic state-civil society relationship. The mixed social economy is best, with the virtue of the state and the virtue of civil society building up communities, but also reforming the state and, crucially, reforming markets as well.

18:19

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

We live in acute political times. We have a coalition Government for the first time in a generation and, as has been said many times in this Chamber, we have an historically high peacetime deficit. That makes for a somewhat sceptical political environment. I do not necessarily think that that is such a bad thing, as scepticism in our political system has stood this country in very good stead. Right hon. and hon. Members will be well aware that the great British public do not let us get ahead of ourselves too much. That great tradition has served us very well. However, with policy initiatives such as the big society, my concern is that scepticism has become something more destructive—cynicism. That is a great shame.

In our privileged position as key members of our local communities, right hon. and hon. Members from across the House experience the big society in action on almost a daily or certainly a weekly basis. That is my experience in the Crawley constituency. This morning as I was preparing what I would say in the Chamber, I happened to glance at my schedule for the past couple of weeks. Although it did not surprise me, I was struck to see that it was packed with visits to voluntary organisations and community groups, and telephone conversations with the chairs of local action groups. In addition to helping individual constituents, that is the fundamental work of hon. Members.

I will give a few random examples from my diary. Early last week, I met with Jack Doors, a local voluntary organisation in my constituency. It was started by Jackie Rose, who is disabled and has mobility issues. She realised that it was difficult for many disabled people to get out and about. Off her own back, working from her home and using her own resources, she established a group to arrange transport for disabled people so that they could get out on a fortnightly basis to visit the seaside, go to a garden centre, or to have tea or lunch somewhere. That provides a vital link for many people with mobility issues and it has made a huge difference. It is not something that the state did, but something that was done by an individual with passion.

At the other end of the spectrum, my experience of St Catherine’s hospice in my constituency echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) said so eloquently about his experience of the hospice sector. It has minimal funding from the state and a great amount of funding and voluntary effort from individuals. With their support, it creates a massive difference for people in my constituency and the surrounding counties.

There are other examples. About a year ago, residents in my local ward were saying on a web-based community discussion forum where I have an e-surgery that the neighbourhood looked a bit unkempt and untidy. Through the online discussion, they organised a community litter pick. We all turned up on a Saturday morning—fortunately it was sunny and dry—with our black bags and the health and safety regalia of high-visibility jackets. For three hours, mums, dads, kids and all members of the community picked up litter, which made a significant difference to the neighbourhood and made it just a bit more of a pleasant place to live.

There are many more examples. I have am proud to have been a governor at three schools. It is important, like other hon. Members, to pay tribute to school governors who work hard—and freely, of course—to create the ethos in our schools and to ensure that those most important of institutions for our young people are successful.

The other weekend, I spoke at the annual general meeting of a gluten free society that was set up in my constituency.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Good on you.

[Henry Smith]

Thank you.

[Chris Ruane]

I bet its butties were awful.

[Henry Smith]

Things have moved on a lot in the food available to coeliacs, and a lot of that is due to the work of individuals in the community. That is certainly the case with the Crawley Gluten Free Group, which has come together to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

I met another disabled access group and spoke to its users, in particular those with learning difficulties. They have been meeting almost every week for more than 10 years to improve their lives by discussing ideas and common issues and problems.

I contend that the big society is out there and is operating. The trouble is that it has been increasingly stifled by big government. To me, the conclusion seems straightforward. The way in which we can encourage greater services and far wider participation is for big government to become a little smaller and to become an enabling government who create the right environment for the voluntary and community sector to flourish. If the voluntary sector and individual carers who care for elderly relatives and disabled children ceased to exist tomorrow, the state would not be able to provide those services. We all know that that is true. It is important that the state is there. I think that the state is well meaning. I do not believe that it is malicious; just that its bureaucratic nature often makes it inefficient. It therefore often stifles innovation unintentionally.

Margaret Thatcher has been infamously misquoted as saying that there is no such thing as society. I am glad that our current Prime Minister has said that there is such a thing as society, but that it is not the same thing as the state.

[Tristram Hunt]

I am unclear what the misquotation of Lady Thatcher was.

[Henry Smith]

What Margaret Thatcher said has been quoted out of context. I am pleased to say that our current Prime Minister very much believes in society. I repeat that it is not the same thing as the state. It is important that we make that distinction.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I think I am right that the context in which Margaret Thatcher said those words was that one could not talk about society in terms of grand blandishments, but that one could talk about families, communities and people working together—that is not the same as society as a general term.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is correct and I am grateful for his intervention.

Finally, I will mention one more group in my constituency that was started by an individual. It is the embodiment of the idea that if people are given hope and opportunity, they will respond with innovation and ideas that make a huge difference to people’s lives. Donna Nevill sadly lost her child early in life due to congenital heart failure. As a result, she set up a group that supports parents who are going through bereavement. Those are obviously difficult and traumatic circumstances. I am sorry to say that it happened to me, and I was privileged to be asked to become a patron of the organisation. Donna set it up out of a desire to help other parents who go through this difficult situation. I regret to say that all the obstacles she found came from government—in this case local government. Her leaflets were not displayed in the library until I intervened. The group could not get a meeting room because its availability was made difficult until there was intervention from elected representatives.

I believe that many more such groups will flourish and make a huge difference to people’s lives if we let go of power at the centre. I am delighted that the Localism Bill has been designed to do that, and that that is the whole thrust behind this Government.

18:39

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

I am delighted to speak in this debate and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who unfortunately is not here, secured it.

Many hon. Members have set out the historical traditions behind this debate, but I come at it from a slightly different angle—as a psychologist analysing participation, the proposals that have been put forward for the big society, and the evidence base. From that angle, it seems that we start with a puzzle. In the points put forward by Government Members about the problems that they have experienced with public services and regulation, there is nothing to suggest that the removal of the state and the propagation of the voluntary and private sector will always achieve better results. Nor have we have seen any evidence about what shape the commissioning may take at either local or national level, and who will make the decisions or participate in that process.

Above all, many Labour Members, and I believe some on the Government Benches, wonder how a concern for increasing social activism fits with a Government who want a cut in spending in and of itself. That appears to many of us to be not so much nudging as shoving people into volunteering through a cut in public services, and that is likely only to destroy the social fabric with which we are all concerned. It is not often that I find myself on the same side as Phillip Blond, but we agree that making radical change is hard at the best of times and near impossible at times of extreme austerity.

I come to the big society, then, not with stories of jobsworth local officials or quotations from Burke, or perhaps even Paine, but with a more fundamental problem facing the Government. It is impossible to ally a Conservative ideology—the prejudice that personal liberty and the role of markets are undermined by collective action—with the recognition that when people work together to fund, run or do something, it has the power to change the world.

With that in mind, I wish to set out four problems that I see with the big society, and an alternative proposal based on the principles of fellowship that I see emanating from the left. The four problems are simple. First and foremost, it is a process-focused philosophy, and as such its purpose cannot be set out. Secondly, its shows a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary voluntary sector organisations. Thirdly, it shows a misunderstanding of the nature of modern communities and communal bonds, and fourthly, it takes no account of the lives that people lead or the willingness of the public to engage.

The question of purpose goes to the heart of political ideologies and public office. The big society, as currently articulated, seems to be very much about processes, not purposes, so it is about the process of volunteering or social action rather than the ideas behind it. Fundamentally, therefore, it cannot tell us what explains or sparks volunteering. A vague sense of shared interest and neighbourliness is not enough to hold and sustain involvement. Anybody who has had neighbours that they have not got on with, or been in voluntary organisations with people to whom they would not necessarily send a Christmas card, can explain that to us.

[Jesse Norman]

I think that is quite wrong. There is a large literature—I am sure that, as a psychologist, the hon. Lady is aware of it—showing that people are happier and live healthier, more contented, longer lives when they are able to link with other people and exercise compassion. The big society draws on such emotions, and it is simply nonsense to say that there is no substance behind it. Her own discipline contains a vast amount of evidence for it.

[Stella Creasy]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s passion for the subject, but if he lets me continue, he will hear that I am not saying that there is no substance behind it. I am saying that by not setting out the purpose of the big society, the Government leave themselves open to acknowledging a whole range of volunteering activities that they may not want to support. Taken to extremes, for example, the Ku Klux Klan and the English Defence League would be seen as wanting to bring people together for a particular purpose in their local community, but I am sure that none of us would want to promote such organisations and their values.

[Jesse Norman]

One marvellous thing about the set of ideas behind the big society is precisely that it is not subject to any overwhelming social purpose. A purpose for society, and a plan to put it on a purposeful basis, is a recipe for totalitarianism.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I therefore disagree about the value of purpose. I believe that purpose, and particularly people coming together with a common bond and for a common purpose, is how we get social change to happen. That is where there are disagreements between us about the value of the big society.

[Jesse Norman]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I am going to press on, because I do not have much time.

We on the left have always understood that for any organisation to work, it needs a sense of purpose and a common goal. It needs to know what it is trying to achieve, not just how it will try to achieve it. People can then be brought together around that current goal.

That leads me to my second point about why purpose is so important in the big society. It seems to me that in the points that are being made about it, a whole series of objectives are conflated, whether democratic engagement or increasing volunteering. We all understand that volunteering is not the same as voice, but the conflation of more meetings at a local level with encouraging more people to volunteer and looking to commission more within the voluntary sector seems to reflect a lack of purpose.

[Richard Fuller]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I am not going to give way, because the clock is ticking. I do apologise.

Either the big society is a programme about the devolution of power, with single, double or treble participation, or it is about encouraging more people to be involved in running services. A lack of purpose comes from not having a mechanism to ensure that the purpose of those processes is fair and balanced. We on these Benches are very clear that all the purposes of Government should be about achieving a more equal, fairer society.

Equally, there is no mechanism in a process-driven purpose for judging value for money. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I look forward to seeing some of the reports that will come to us. Above all, there can be no clarity about the tough choices that any Government or any public may have to make about the type of services that they want if there is no sense of what those services are intended to achieve. Why are free schools and encouraging people in the voluntary sector to work together more seen as the same thing? It seems like apples and pears.

That leads me to the second problem with the big society, which is that it does not show an understanding of the voluntary sector as it is currently constructed. The focus on processes obscures as much of the work as it illuminates and shows a misreading of the fact that civil society is intricately connected with the public sector as much as it works with the private sector. Many charities are little different from businesses, as I believe the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) set out earlier, and many people who work in the public sector do so with an ethos of care and concern for their communities. Taking the argument for reform of the state and using it to call for its abolition like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

The history of the co-operative movement proves that. It was set up as a form of protection against the absence of publicly provided services—to fill a gap rather than to replace those services. The modern voluntary sector is intricately interconnected with the state, whether through the funding that it receives or the people with whom it works. The voluntary sector organisations that many Members have mentioned having in their communities will struggle without a sense of purpose to draw people together.

We have to be clear that the voluntary sector in itself is not a panacea. Some voluntary sector organisations work well and others do not work so well, so there needs to be a sense of purpose and a series of tests to set against it. We must also consider the type of volunteering that people are prepared to do. We are seeing a rise in what people call “episodic volunteering”, and there are many questions about whether such volunteering can deliver the purported goals of the big society. There are questions about whether there will be the sustained involvement and participation that people wish to see, or whether people will be willing to turn up for a day to volunteer on a stall but not to volunteer in the long term.

That leads me to my third concern about the big society, which is that it shows a misreading of the nature of community. Basing our view of community on the “little platoons” that people are so fond of talking about makes little sense in a contemporary era when we can know and feel the consequences of riots on the streets of Libya, poverty in Asia or earthquakes in New Zealand. Connectedness happens in many different ways around the world, locally, nationally and internationally, and through many different life stages.

I appeal to Conservative Members to learn the lessons that we on these Benches did about the danger of reading too much into communitarianism and the work of Etzioni. I found it fascinating to find out over the weekend that Robert Putnam and Colonel Gaddafi had once met to talk about whether there was a connection between “The Green Book” and social capital.

If we are to secure change in contemporary society, we need a better way of understanding how and why people connect. We also need a better reading of how and why people are connecting in their current societies, given that nearly 40% of people already currently volunteer through formal organisations and a further 56% volunteer in informal ways. The idea that Britain is broken or a nation of people who are alienated from their communities is simply not true. Furthermore, there is a danger in forcing our vision of what community looks like on communities that may have many social networks but are not connected to the public sector. The big society needs a better analysis of the nature of community and community bonds than it currently offers.

That leads to my fourth concern about the big society, which is that it does not show an understanding of the resources that communities have to give to volunteering and public service. We can learn not least from the experience of the big society ambassador himself, who found that he did not have the time to be involved in the way that he wished to be.

Anyone who has worked in the voluntary sector knows that time, money and confidence are critical factors in securing the contribution that anybody can make. The big society needs a better articulation of how that time, money and confidence will be shared out more equitably among society, so that we can unlock the potential that many people have. Asking people to do so much in such a short period does not allow for the time and effort that is required to allow that potential to grow.

I urge Members to look again at a case such as Porto Alegre and see that it took 20 years for people to be involved in the delivery of public services in Brazil in the way that many now want here. Perhaps they should learn from New Harmony, a colony set up by Robert Owen in Indiana that for 20 years developed libraries, community centres and hospitals, and then fell apart because all the people involved decided that they hated each other. That is the reality of trying to get people to work together—it is complex, messy and difficult, and without a sense of purpose it is destined to fail.

That is why I urge the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) to read a little less Burke and a little more William Morris, who understood that fellowship is life and a lack of fellowship is death. We on the left understand from Morris’s work that fellowship was about not just asking people to work together but about the conditions under which they worked. He understood the tyranny of inequality and the ability to bring people together to work in co-ops.

I also encourage the hon. Gentleman to read Tawney, who talked about fellowship being expressed not only through relationships between people but through institutions. We see the national health service as the best social insurance policy that the nation can have, and we work together at many different levels to achieve such goals. We look to the purpose first, and then to the different models for delivering it, rather than starting with the process of volunteering and asking what it can do. I hope that in this short time I have set out some alternative suggestions, and I would be happy to discuss the matter further.

18:49

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and others on securing this important debate.

I disagree with a number of the conclusions of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), although it is with a little apprehension that one follows the speech of a psychologist—I am a little nervous of any analysis she would offer me. I should, however, pick up on one of the hon. Lady’s points. She said she was concerned that there is no clear definition of the big society. I do not need a clear definition. I want people to be aware of the big society, and I want it to work, which brings us to some of the fundamental philosophical and political differences that have been aired this evening. I do not need strict rules and regulations, or to compel people or boss them about. I want to make people aware of what is important to the Government and to me, which is how we go about making our society bigger and better.

Human rights have been much talked about recently, but another issue that arises from the debate is responsibility, which is just as important. Inspiring young people to take responsibility for their actions and to contribute in the widest possible sense to our community is rewarding for them, gives them a broader outlook and helps with their self-esteem and confidence. The big society is therefore relevant to young people and we should make them aware of what they can give back.

Many hon. Members have volunteered in various capacities for many years. I started my volunteering when I was still at school, which was an extremely rewarding experience. It does not matter whether someone helps out at the local school or visits elderly people; what matters is that people participate and contribute, because that gives them a wider perspective of their local community.

I have some varied examples from my constituency of the big society contributing to my community. In Stanton-by-Dale, sadly, the post office was closed three or four years ago, but it is now a thriving café and shop. Immediately after the closure, the local community and local volunteers rallied around. The village needed such a local resource, without which pensioners, for example, would need to take two buses to collect their pensions. We needed something local to support people, and that is a brilliant example of what the big society means to me.

A slightly different example is the local football club in Ilkeston. Sadly, it ran out of money last year and a new buyer had to be found. The local community got together to put in a bid to create a supporters co-operative club. That immediately took root and grew organically into a successful local campaign. Ultimately, it was not successful in its bid to buy the club, but it brought the community together. Since that time, the new owners of the club, who are off to a really good start, have done their best to embrace the supporters and the community to ensure that they are a central part of the new club structure. Everybody is relatively happy at the moment. The supporters co-operative may not have won in their bid, but they raised the issue and kept the community together. That is a success story.

Church and faith groups do so much valuable work in our community, including St Laurence’s church in Erewash. Arena church in Ilkeston does absolutely brilliant outreach and support work for vulnerable young people. It creates a safe environment where they can go and chat and do whatever they want, such as listen to music and so on. The beauty of that structure for helping young people is that it came almost from nowhere, and evolved organically rather than from outside pressure, which is probably why it is so successful.

Few hon. Members have mentioned the difference between the voluntary sector and volunteering, but there is a difference between the many individuals who volunteer and the voluntary sector, which is a valuable sector in its own right. A couple of years ago, I was a very small cog in a large wheel at the Centre for Social Justice, where I did some research into family breakdown and the voluntary sector. I met people from a range of fantastic organisations, from national organisations that work hand in hand with statutory organisations and social services to provide top-level professional child protection support, right down to a small, strong local group in south London that supports Muslim women victims of domestic violence. That organisation was set up by an amazing lady who, in the classic scenario, was sitting in her front room, thinking about how she could help her local community. She knew, as a Muslim woman, that she had the power and the strength to communicate most effectively, so she set up her organisation, which flourished.

One theme that united the large charity and the small local charities was their concern about the time it took to apply for funds, and the overwhelming amount of bureaucracy and paperwork. Both large and small organisations struggled with that, because the volunteer and staff time that was taken up to deal with it was disproportionate. Will the Government consider how to reduce the time scale for applications and—bluntly—produce some shorter forms?

Finally, we also need to look at the time it takes to go through Criminal Records Bureau vetting and barring checks to encourage people to get involved. If we can encourage people to volunteer, we will all benefit.

18:57

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to contribute to this evening’s seminar on the big society. I find myself rather under-prepared intellectually given the marvellous speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I look at the big society and find myself wondering what is not to love. Anyone who puts themselves forward for election is saying to the people who live around them that they want to do something for them. In some part, there is—or should be—a strong altruistic motive.

There are many projects in Darlington that will now no doubt be described as big society projects on every funding application. As a local councillor, I was often asked to look at funding applications from local groups. We would see, “This is an example of partnership” absolutely everywhere on such applications, and now I expect that people will say that their project is “big society”.

About three or four years ago, I was involved with one such initiative. A young lady called Ashleigh Trevarrow, a keen music fan, turned up at a local music venue, which incidentally is a social enterprise, but was turned away because she was only 16—people had to be over 18 because there was a licensed bar. She decided that she wanted to find somewhere to put on live music nights for young people. It would offer a safe environment. There would be an alcohol-free bar and it would all be run by young people for young people. One cannot get more big society than that. She found that what was needed was the co-operation of the local council, of a local business that would be prepared to host the evenings, and of the parents of the young people. That took some months. A lot of fundraising, co-operation and support from the local youth service were needed to enable her to achieve that. I am certain, and I think that she will agree with this, that that could not have been done without the support of the local council.

The issue with the big society is that some people see it as a national joke. I am a fan, but there is a difference between what the Government are saying and what they are actually doing. I took a delegation of people from the voluntary sector to meet the Minister, who is well regarded by them, but if one spent an hour in the company of some chief executives and chairs of voluntary community organisations from Darlington, one would be left in no doubt about some of their doubts about what the big society can achieve. In some ways, the voluntary sector in Darlington feels that it has been led a merry dance, because we have gone from a year ago, when we were told that we had a broken society, to now, when we are told that we have a big society. People in that sector are looking at their own situations, their volunteers and their budgets. They are trying to plan for the next year or two and they see not a world full of fresh opportunity but a world full of fear and threat. That is the big problem. There is a difference between telling people that we want them to take part and engage in the big society, as we all do, and showing them through our actions how they are able to do that.

Two weeks ago in Darlington, the best of Darlington awards were held. I can recommend such an event to anyone. The business community, the voluntary sector and residents come together. Nominations are taken and we have a wonderful evening of fellowship. We are able to celebrate community work in our town. This year’s winner of the Darlington citizen of the year—

[Chris Ruane]

Jenny Chapman.

[Mrs Chapman]

I can only dream. The winner this year of the Darlington citizen of the year award was Gordon Pybus. He is one of those tremendous people of whom I am sure there are examples up and down the country, including in Surrey. He is a real community champion; he has worked for years championing the needs of disabled people in the town. He heads the Darlington Association on Disability and works with local businesses to improve access for disabled people. He does advisory work and, if he has not been before a Select Committee before, he should have been.

One of the major funders of the association is Darlington borough council. It gives Gordon long-term contracts and spends about £5 million a year in the voluntary sector. We are hearing from Gordon and other voluntary sector representatives that there is a big threat to their organisations because of the cuts to the budgets of local government by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. There is a perception out there that the Minister here today understands very well the needs of the voluntary sector, and I am sure that that is true, but that that understanding does not permeate the whole of Government. That is one of the big problems. When we have a Government who want to sell off the forests and then say that we have a big society, we can understand the cynicism that exists in some communities.

There is another example in Darlington of how success can come from a failure such as the proposal to sell off the forests. It is the community cohesion that we have built around a campaign against a local skip hire company that, in the minds of residents, and I agree with them, has been committing environmental crimes at an estate in Darlington. The group has come together, meets regularly and campaigns to prevent some of the worst abuses of the local environment by that company. That group, without any funding, which is obviously seen as a bad thing by certain Conservative Members, comes together, complains together and will be a real champion of its local area. I say to the Government that it is great to have this big society idea. We all support that, but we do not want the Government to say one thing and then do another.

19:05

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am fortunate indeed to live in Herefordshire, which is the very model of the big society in action. I congratulate colleagues on both sides of the House on sponsoring this important debate. I agree with the insight of the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) that we are all motivated by a sense of public duty, and it is on that ethos of public duty that the big society seeks to draw.

I remind the House of something that is easy to forget. The big society is the most important idea in British politics for a generation. It is not like the so-called third way, as was acknowledged by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). The third way was a piece of triangulation designed to allow Mr Blair to have his political cake and eat it. This, however, is a fundamental rethinking that tries to lay the groundwork for our social and economic renewal as a nation. As such, its natural span is not over days and weeks, but years and perhaps even decades.

The Labour party helped to dig the huge hole of indebtedness that this country now finds itself in. It is a great shame that it is now trying to use the present economic crisis to take cheap political shots at the idea of the big society itself. This is an idea which it should support, not disparage—many Labour Members have already shown that, in some cases, it supports the idea.

At its deepest, the big society seeks to correct some glaring flaws in our most basic political assumptions. Ever since Hobbes 350 years ago, we have been taught to think of politics in terms of just the state and the individual; to see individuals as basically self-interested and financially driven; and to ignore the independent institutions that populate our lives and give them point and purpose. Those assumptions have been the basic drivers of Government policy for the 20th century.

The big society rejects those dogmas. Its focus is precisely on what they leave out: first, the value of free institutions, from the family to the school to the village pub, the city and the nation state; and secondly, a generous conception of human beings as social animals seeking to express their capabilities and to trust and to link with others. That is why volunteering, for all its value, is just one part of a far bigger picture.

[Tristram Hunt]

Does the hon. Gentleman have any sense that he is slightly over-selling this particular project? He talks about Hobbes casting a shadow for 300 years, but the trade union movement, associationalism and mutualism—all those elements of human capacity—have been a part of the Labour tradition for the past 200 years.

[Jesse Norman]

I think that those elements have been in British society for 200 years, but they have been very far from the ethos of the Labour party, as I will shortly demonstrate.

The big society is not itself either a left or right-wing idea. For one thing, it contains a deep critique of the market fundamentalism of the past three decades, and the past decade in particular—the idea that free markets by themselves are the solution to all of life’s ills. But, crucially, it also repudiates, as William Morris himself would have repudiated, the state-first Fabianism of the modern Labour party.

I am not an enormously ideological person, as the House will know, but I will waive my scruples in this particular case. In 1900, the political left was a teeming mass of different political traditions, encompassing guild socialism, religious non-conformism, civil dissent and suffragism, many shades of Marxism and communism, and mutuals, co-operatives and unions. There was no reason why that astonishing plurality had to yield a political party which for over 60 years has emphasised centralised state provision of public services above all else. On this point, I agree with the fragrant hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). [Hon. Members: “Fragrant?”] I use the word advisedly. That happenstance was the result of an intellectual takeover of the Labour party by Fabianism—the doctrine that intellectuals can make over society according to scientific principles using the spending and legislative powers of the state. Labour’s Fabian leadership—let us not forget that every Labour Prime Minister has been a Fabian—quickly made common cause with the unions, and that trend has worsened.

Under its present leader, Labour is even more in thrall to the unions than it was then, with £9 out of every £10 coming from union support, which effectively sets a massive dilemma for the Opposition. On the one hand, their leader can stay within the Labour comfort zone, and remain the darling of the unions and of the left of his party, trying to use the economic recession to political effect like the shadow Chancellor.

[Tristram Hunt]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jesse Norman]

Yes of course. [Interruption.]

[Tristram Hunt]

I apologise for my colleagues. During his wonderful speech, is the hon. Gentleman at some point going to tease out his pre-history in Barclays bank and the role of market fundamentalism in driving us to the crisis and hence the cuts and hence the veneer of the big society.

[Jesse Norman]

That point is ad hominem, but I am delighted to do so. I went to Barclays having run a charity in eastern Europe during the communist period giving away educational materials and medical textbooks to hospitals. I joined Barclays to work in eastern Europe, and I did so.

As I have said, the Labour leader can try to use the economic effect like the shadow Chancellor, who has attempted to rewrite the history of the deficit and his own role in it. The trouble, as we know, is that that is not a credible position, and the public know it. Alternatively, the Labour leader can reach out and seek to build a political coalition, as Blair did before him. He will know that a purely sectional appeal has cost the left roughly seven years in government since Labour became the official Opposition in 1922, but that more ambitious approach carries its own risks: it requires a more nuanced approach to the economy; it requires him to face down the unions, as Blair did over clause 4; and it requires Labour to rediscover its older, non-Fabian traditions—the traditions of Morris, Robert Owen and many of the people who have been mentioned today—and make them live again in its policies.

Which alternative is it to be? The truth is that the Leader of the Opposition is a little confused. In November, he said that Labour must reclaim the “big society” concept, and he made that the task of a major policy review. Just this month, however, he said that the idea is doomed, so we must ask whether he will recall his policy folk as a result. Must his squadrons of wonks return to barracks? What is his policy review to do, if the big society is, as he suggests, both doomed and a concept that Labour must reclaim.

In fact, the Leader of the Opposition was closest to the truth in his speech to the Labour party conference last year, when, under the influence of Lord Glasman and perhaps the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), he said:

“I believe profoundly that government must play its part in creating the good society. But our new generation also knows that government can itself become just such a vested interest. That unless reformed, unless accountable, unless responsive, government can impede the good society.”

His union backers may wish to look again at those words. Accountable, responsive government—government which is not a vested interest or an impediment to society. I congratulate the Labour leader on those remarks, which were spoken like a true Conservative.

19:13

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to be called to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing the support of the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. It is a pleasure, too, to follow the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), whose book I enjoyed reading in preparing for this debate. I am afraid that I would be accused of misleading the House if I said that I enjoyed his speech just a little less than I did his prose over the weekend, but he made an interesting contribution.

There is a degree of consensus across the House that increasing levels of social capital in our communities should be a Government priority. There is also a sense, I detect, of shared purpose that local communities should be involved in the design of public services, where possible. Similarly, it is recognised that social change is best fought for and achieved from the grass roots up. The campaigns led by women for the right to vote and by trades unions for better employment rights and welfare at work are powerful historical examples. In the US, from the 1950s onwards, Saul Alinsky developed community organisation projects that delivered radical social change in excluded communities.

There is vast gulf between the Government and the Opposition about the means to achieve improvements in social empowerment, and huge uncertainty as to whether the Government view that in the context of greater equality and liberty, as we do, or simply seek to share the responsibility for the Chancellor’s excessive and overly hasty cuts in public expenditure. The Opposition note the progress made by Government Members in acknowledging that there is indeed such a thing as society, but the execution of the concept of the big society risks being characterised by incoherence and confusion at its core.

Social action plays a crucial role in generating social justice in my constituency. People in Glasgow North East are not mere collections of individuals co-existing by chance in a state of mutual indifference; they live in vibrant communities with shared ambitions to improve their environment and schools and to care for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and they are prepared to work together to achieve those aims. I urge hon. Members to consider the work of these organisations: the disability community in Possilpark, one of the most deprived places in the country, provides meals, social interaction, and shared activities for disabled people in north Glasgow; Royston Youth Action works to reduce the impact of territorial gang disorder and the lack of organised social activities for young people in Royston, Germiston and Provanmill; the Alive and Kicking project in Balornock provides advice, activities and low-cost meals for the elderly; and the integration network in Petershill and Sighthill gives the many asylum seekers in Glasgow North East the opportunity to train for new skills, if they are awarded refugee status and are permitted to work in the United Kingdom. Those are examples of people coming together to organise day trips or social activities that they simply could not afford, if they had to do it alone. As Robert Putnam, a strong supporter of the theory of social capital, might have put it, it is about people choosing to bowl together, rather than bowling alone.

What all those great voluntary organisations have in common is the requirement for a willing partner in government at all levels, whether at local, devolved, or national levels. They have all received funding and support from the state over the past decade. Social action groups in Glasgow North East and across the country need a hand up, rather than a handout, but the Government’s approach on the economy and on funding for local and devolved government threatens to snatch away this helping hand just when it is most needed. Voluntary groups are being hurt by the pressure on costs from the hike in VAT to 20% from 4 January this year, and the uncertainty over the continuation of local government support. Charities are also suffering through the £3 billion in cuts to be imposed over the period of the comprehensive spending review.

The previous Government had a good record in supporting the third or voluntary sector. Funding to the sector more than doubled from £5.5 billion in 1997 to £12 billion in 2009. At the end of 2010, there were approximately 62,000 social enterprises in the UK contributing at least £24 billion to the economy. Some of the initiatives pursued by the Government originate in the plans of the previous Government, including social investment bonds and the social investment bank. The Financial Times leader asked on 10 February:

“But can these new forms of investment, and the Big Society Bank, possibly plug the gaping holes left by the spending cuts? In the short term, absolutely not.”

Where the Government’s vision is limited is in its refusal to challenge some of the real inequalities of power and wealth that persist in the country today.

There seems to be little appetite on the part of the Government to respond meaningfully to many of the grass-roots campaigns supported by thousands of people in the past few months. Let us take the issue of capping the total costs of credit to end the abuse of high-cost, short-term credit faced by the poorest in our society, which is an approach championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), or even the fairer taxation of bonuses paid to highly paid employees in the banking sector. Both are policy areas where a genuine redistribution of power to people would see government action follow social action.

The Government’s version of the big society sees no role for communities seeking to organise to challenge concentrations of power where people believe that markets should better serve them, not the other way around. The rhetoric of the big society is indeed ambitious, but the scope of its vision in reality is disappointingly small. What the country needs is a strategy to deal with the unacceptable levels of social disengagement and inequality of wealth, opportunity and power that still scar our society. That is the essence of the good society. Failure to tackle these issues will mean that the Government will fail in their ambition to create a society with more liberty and more equality—the two concepts are inextricably linked. If the Conservative party cannot meet these challenges, Opposition Members will make it their task to do so in the months and years ahead.

19:21

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the great contributions that have been made, particularly the one by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who provided a fantastic intellectual framework for the concept of the big society. If I can add anything to it, I hope to illustrate what that intellectual framework means on the ground for all our constituents outside these walls. He hit on the heart of a debate that is not new in this Chamber: the relationship between the state and the individual and society. Because “the big society” is a new phrase, people expect to see a new thing, but of course it is not new; the big society has been going on for as long as this country has been great—indeed, it is what made this country great. I cannot pass from that point without mentioning amateur sports clubs and other things that often go unmentioned in the big society debate.

A great man posed the question:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.

Of course, that is already happening, but it is not wrong to say that although the big society is already very much in place in this country, it is possible to detect a shift in which people are beginning to ask less what they can do for their country and are more inclined to ask what their country can do for them. This is interesting, because the population of our great country has not changed. It is not the people who have changed, but the circumstances around, and it is important that we look at those circumstances to see what has brought about this shift—a shift that becomes very apparent if we talk to the older generation. Many people express it to me in terms of the shift from responsibilities to rights, and from a view that sees rights as the product of collective responsibility first, towards one that sees rights as a concept somehow dislocated from anything else. That is very interesting.

If the big society had another name, it might be “power to the people”. This concept of empowerment hits very much on the question of why there might be a shift towards a concept of rights, and away from one of responsibility and the question of what we ourselves can do. No one can be a candidate in a marginal seat—or any seat—and not find multitudes of situations in which normal people want to do normal, neighbourly, everyday things, but find themselves unable to do them because of a piece of well-meaning legislation—often vetting and barring legislation or something like it.

When someone who wants to do something good, such as driving their elderly neighbours to the next nearest post office because their previous one was shut down or helping a child who has fallen over in the street but worrying that it might be misinterpreted and so cannot do so, there are two reactions. The first is disbelief: they say, “This is nuts. In what way is this common sense?” The second reaction, when they find that they still cannot do the intuitive thing, is despair: “If I cannot do this, because I need to go through endless paperwork and CRB checks, what is the point in even caring?” When people get to the point of asking, “What’s the point of even caring?”, we realise why the concept of taking responsibility begins to mean less. What is the point of trying to take responsibility, if at every point there are small well-meaning reasons why we cannot? I am beginning to see a fundamental shift in this country, and it is fundamental to who we are.

On that note, I would like to bust a few myths that perhaps divide the Chamber on this issue—an issue on which we are very much of the same heart in a lot of ways. The first myth is that people do not want to get involved. One Opposition Member said that we would need a stick to get people volunteering. Well, people want to volunteer, whether formally or informally, but too often, instead of saying, “We’re going to help you”, the state, however well meaning it might be, puts up barriers. The second myth is that people are not competent. I have been involved in a free school bid in my constituency, and I heard all the criticisms from people saying, “We can’t have parents running schools. They’re not going to know how to do it.” But I have news. Those parents are absolutely capable of organising the set-up of the school. Of course they are not going to run it or teach, but over the time they have been involved, they have developed and proved that, if we trust people, my goodness they are more than capable of reciprocating that trust and delivering.

The idea of the big society matters for another reason. The very fact that cuts have been brought into this debate illustrates how dependent on public funding the idea of civil society and normal people doing good things has become. I know that we had a Prime Minister and Chancellor who perhaps honestly believed that he had abolished boom and bust. Of course, if we believe that we have abolished boom and bust, it makes no sense not to hose out public money to every good cause that in an ideal world we would like to, but the fact is that the economic cycle carries on, and there is boom and bust. We need to change dramatically the balance in our voluntary sector to ensure that it is safeguarded against what will inevitably always be a turbulent economic cycle.

Two things that I have come across in the past couple of months have given me great cause for concern. The first was when I was talking to some providers of youth services—in many areas, they do a fantastic job—about the inevitable lack of public funds. While we were discussing how they might get around this, I mentioned something that I had done in my constituency when a group had wanted to set up street dancing classes but the money was not available. Part of the youth activity of the street dancing group was raising the money themselves, and I mentioned this to the providers. They said, “Oh yes, we give our young people an identity and control over their activities by letting them decide how the grant is spent.” I said, “No, that’s not the point. That is not making the money; it’s spending someone else’s money.” It was that fundamental conceptual barrier that gave me cause for great concern.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does that not exactly highlight the need to encourage people to take charge, to raise money, and to not be so dependent on public money being handed out to them?

[Charlotte Leslie]

Very much so. I thank my hon. Friend for that point. A belief has grown up that there is no money except state money. Were there limitless state money, that would not matter, but as we can see, state money is limited. A Government organisation that I will not name, but which does fantastic work, came to me and said, “We are very concerned about the cuts. We won’t be able to carry on.” I am no genius on this front, but in the half-hour meeting that we had, I suggested four ways in which it could seek alternative funds. They might not have been very good ways and they might not have worked, but I said, “Have you thought of these ways?”, and they said, “Oh no, we hadn’t thought of anything like that.” That to me was a great signal for concern.

Finally, this debate matters because we need the state to do what it has to do. The big state, small state debate sometimes misses the point. I want a competent state that is strong where we really need it, not a panicking, out-of-control, flabby state that interferes in areas that it should not be in at all because it is worried about how things are going and does not have control. Where people have been victims of crime, for instance, I want to see a strong state to ensure that they are looked after properly.

T. S. Eliot defined the difference between the views of those on either side of this House when he warned against people who talked about

“devising systems so perfect that nobody needs to be good.”

I am a Conservative because I believe in devising systems that are so perfect that they enable people to be good.

19:30

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), his party and his Government to the big society, which is something that we on this side of the House have been involved in since birth. It was what brought many of us into politics. Reference has been made by Members on both sides to Burke, Paine and Hobbes as the people who invented the big society, but it goes back a long way beyond them. It goes back to the time when man was a hunter-gatherer on the plains, when co-operation, camaraderie and esprit de corps mattered because people’s lives depended on them. This was reflected in all the great religions. Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all make reference to the concept. They all declare that there is such a thing as society, that the worship of mammon works against society, that we are our brother’s keeper, and that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.

The Prime Minister had a Damascene conversion five years ago, and I welcome that if it was a true conversion. If, however, it was about countering the Tory dictum that there is no such thing society, about domesticating the rabid right of his party for the purpose of electoral gain, or about airbrushing his party’s past, it will not wash. The Conservatives’ philosophy in the 1980s was that greed was good, that unemployment was “a price worth paying”, and that people should get on their bikes when they became unemployed. Many people on this side of the House, and in the community and voluntary sector, find it hard to believe that they honestly believe in the big society.

We remember the Conservatives’ record of voting against measures to promote unity, cohesion, equality and inclusion. Many of them might have changed their position over the past 10 years. Let us take the issue of gay rights. Where did the Conservatives stand on that, 10 or 15 years ago? I do not think that there are any Conservative Members here tonight who voted against that measure; those here now are mainly new Members. Where were the Conservatives on the issue of the minimum wage? Where were they on the issue of help for the most persecuted and the poorest in society? The Conservatives coined the term “broken society”. We remember Lilley’s list, and his singing and vilifying single mothers. We remember the damage done to mining, to the steel industry and to inner city communities. We remember hooray Henrys awash with money and champagne stepping over the homeless in the west end. That is the historical perspective.

I shall turn now to the present big society. The Minister’s Department has made a number of big mistakes in introducing the concept of the big society. The first was the terminology that it used. The term “big society” does not resonate with the person on the street. People do not live in a society; they live in a community. Perhaps the Conservatives used the term “big society” because it had some resonance with the term “broken society”. Perhaps they thought that the big society could heal the broken society. It sounds so simple and easy, but it is so trite.

The Department’s second mistake involves the need to apologise for past actions and show a little contrition. It was the Conservatives who broke society in the 1980s. It was they who increased inequality and gave the green light to greed. It was they who denied the very existence of society. I shall give the House an example. The story from the holy book of the Good Samaritan was perverted when Mrs Thatcher said that it was not about being good but about being rich. She suggested that if the Good Samaritan had not had the money to pay the innkeeper, the poor man would have died. That totally misses the point.

The Government’s third mistake was to party politicise this agenda without even having the support of their own Back Benchers. Where are their big beasts? I do not want to disparage anyone sitting on the Government Benches tonight, but they are all newcomers. Where are the big beasts? Many of them do not support this agenda.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

They are having several suppers.

[Chris Ruane]

Indeed—[Interruption.] Ah, I see a big beast there.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is more beast than big.

[Chris Ruane]

He is indeed.

The Government are presenting the big society as a simple solution to a highly complex issue. There are big issues out there around which we can build consensus. It can be built around defence, for example, or around Northern Ireland or Iraq. Those issues can be depoliticised. Another example is pensions. We all came together over pensions, except that the consensus was broken by the Conservatives just before the election when they tried to make party political points on the matter. There was also consensus on the constitution in Scotland, when we had the convention.

That is how this important issue should have been approached. It is probably the biggest issue that western society will face this century. The fact is that, across the western world, we are atomised and alienated. There are many theories to explain that. They have been put forward in cogent arguments with statistics to back them up. Oliver James, in his book “Affluenza”, traces the cause of the problem to advertising and the promotion of an ideal that we can never attain. When we get on to the treadmill of trying to attain it, we lose our sense of direction; we lose contact with our families and communities as everything becomes about ourselves.

Robert Putnam’s fantastic book, “Bowling Alone”, identifies television as one of the biggest reasons for the problem. He found that an individual today spends more time in front of his TV than he spends at work. That has consequences for the amount of time he can allocate to his community, to his family and to society. Wilkinson and Pickett’s book traces the causes of the present situation back to inequality, which increased rapidly in the 1980s. Are we going to be able to get on top of the issues of advertising, TV and inequality without coming together? The Government think that they have come up with a great idea, but we have known about it for thousands of years. They have party politicised it.

The Government’s fourth mistake was to introduce this idea at the wrong time, when they knew that they were going to make cuts. Some of those cuts are necessary, but many of them are ideological. The budget for the voluntary sector last year was £36 billion, of which £6 billion came from local authorities alone. Labour doubled the amount going to the voluntary sector over 13 years. If the present Government are going to cut that budget and make voluntary sector workers unemployed, they are not going to win the argument with the Churches, with the trade unions, with the community and voluntary sector or with the Labour party. They need to build consensus.

19:30

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

So far in this debate, we have heard Government Members give a huge list of examples of people’s personal experiences of how they have seen the big society work and the difference that it makes to their communities. I might be exaggerating slightly, but it seems that what we have heard from the Opposition is the theory that we have made the big society up or that, if it already existed, it was created by 19th-century socialist thinkers. Alternatively, Opposition Members seemed to suggest that it could survive only if it were funded by huge amounts of public subsidy, and that the argument that rules, regulations and bureaucracy get in the way of the big society does not exist.

I believe that the situation is much simpler. I believe that communities sometimes come together to act to improve their lives, and that they are better at doing that, because they understand the problems more acutely, than any Government could ever be. The role of the Government should be to support those communities in taking those actions, to give them a framework in which they can take them, and sometimes to give them some financial support so that they can deliver them.

When I think of the big society, I think of a number of people and organisations. First, I think of my grandfather, Tyrell Barnes, who worked for 50 years as a toolmaker at the Pianoforte Supplies factory in Roade, Northamptonshire. In 1963, he and a group of his fellow villagers came together to form the Roade and Quinton Old Folks Fund, which raised money for the elderly and for pensioners in that community. The fund provided a free annual holiday to give the old folks a break, as well as a hamper of goods at Christmas. The fund continues to this day, and it has helped many hundreds of people. In my grandparents’ case, they went from first being involved in the fund, through selling the Tote tickets door to door to raise money for it, to benefiting from it themselves.

I can think of a project in my own village of Elham. Play for Elham is a group that was set up by three mothers who lived in the village and thought that the play facilities in it were not good enough. They could have written letters to their MP or the council; they could have lobbied, but instead they went about designing a plan for what the village needed and sought to raise the money to make it happen. They were successful and the play facilities have been transformed. I know that that project would not have taken place and would not have been successful without the action of those three mothers who came together to make it happen.

Yes, they received some public funds—from the lottery—to make it happen and some people say, “Ah, we can see that the big society is still underpinned by public money.” The big difference is that the project was designed by local people with an understanding of local need. Some of the money was raised by the community and some of it came from the lottery fund: there was a partnership. If we look at other big society projects where a community has taken over the running of a swimming pool or the running of a library service, what is the first thing that happens? The people who use the relevant facility are asked how it can be done better, how the opening hours can be made more suitable for the people who use it, how services can be provided that are more in touch with what people need. That is what makes the difference.

I thought that the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) provided a good example of groups trying to put on live musical events to raise money for their work. Of course raising money is very important for the work of voluntary and charity groups, but within that story, there is also an example of the Government’s role to deregulate and get rid of unnecessary and complicated legislation that puts people off.

[Mrs Chapman]

Although there were licensing rules for that project and rules specifying that there must be a dry bar, that a certain number of volunteers had to be trained and Criminal Records Bureau had to be done on them, that bags were to be searched when people come in and so forth, the project was successful because the parents had confidence in it. They knew that in its three years of operation, that project had not seen a single incidence of violence, antisocial behaviour or drinking abuse. That happened because those rules were in place.

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, but she made a point in her speech about the importance of having help and support so that people can navigate their way through all the rules and regulations. There is a concern among a number of people in the music industry about the provisions of the Licensing Act 2003, passed by the last Government, which made it necessary for smaller venues to apply for licences to put on live music events. Many Conservative Members hold the view, and the Government are looking at it, that those regulations are too onerous and impose an unnecessary burden. We could free up the voluntary groups to put on more of such events and also free up the time of council officers simply by getting rid of an unnecessary piece of legislation.

Anyone involved in community groups trying to put on events to raise money for their own funds or to draw attention to their activities will have come across many stories of woe about regulations on putting up banners and notices, the requirement for different types of insurance and the costs of obtaining it. There is much we can do to deregulate this work and make it easier for the big society to step forward and for people to take charge of the events they want to put on and take charge of raising money for the community and for the projects they want to advance.

Sometimes it is a matter of impetus. In Folkestone, the main town in my constituency, a group was formed, which called itself “Go Folkestone”. It started as the Go Folkestone action project, which was launched by the Folkestone Lions club. The Lions and similar clubs do a fantastic job of raising money for their local communities. That was simply a group of people coming together with an ambition to change their town and a feeling that the usual political processes were not the best way of achieving that. A work programme was launched, which led to the formation of a town council in Folkestone for the first time and within a number of years it took action to deal with some of the dereliction caused by absentee landlords letting buildings fall into abeyance. It created a new sense of civic purpose within the town. That was not designed by politicians or the Government. It was people coming together with a shared vision to change their community.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) spoke of a lack of purpose and a focus on process, but I think she is completely wrong, as it is the other way round. When communities come together to change things, they know what their purpose is. The problem they face is that they are quickly pushed into a world of process in which they are told that if they want to apply for funding for their project, they can apply, but they might need to redefine what the project is for and money might be made available only if they can prove that they are advancing a gender project or one targeted at a particular part of the community. That process often serves to make them lose sight of the core purpose of the original project. There are far too many of these rules and regulations in place, which undermine the big society and people’s fundamental belief that by coming together and acting together they can really change the society in which they live.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Some of the hon. Gentleman’s points highlight the importance of the independence of voluntary and community groups. Does he share the view of the famous red Tory Phillip Blond that at a time of such large Government cuts, the big society cannot come about? It simply will not work. People who, like me, have worked in the voluntary sector for 15 years and engaged in charitable fundraising are likely to welcome comments about the independence of the voluntary and charitable sector, but we fear that much of this talk of the big society is an ideologically driven smokescreen for large-scale Government cuts.

[Damian Collins]

The vision of the big society—including the understanding of Conservative Members of the importance of communities, volunteers and groups in transforming their society—has been articulated by Members of all parties for many years and by the Conservative party for a number of years, certainly predating the recession. The hon. Lady is right to say that to deliver our plans at a time when there is less public money around creates challenges, but it would also be wrong to relegate the voluntary sector to being simply an arm of the state that is totally reliant on state funding. This applies not just to the voluntary sector that she mentioned but across the arts and heritage groups as well. There is a danger of over-reliance on state funding so that people do not look beyond it and end up simply chasing the state subsidy and state money. Rather than work for a philanthropist or corporate entity that is providing all the money, they work for the agency of the state that is providing it instead. That, I think, perverts the essence of what the big society is all about.

There was much talk earlier about the role of 19th century thinkers, politicians and leaders in shaping what the big society was about. One good example was overlooked, however—the role of Tory reformers such as Lord Shaftsbury in pushing through the factory reform legislation. One consequence was the creation of leisure time for the working classes, which they had never had before. That is what led to the birth of popular sports, including football. The set-up and success of football clubs and the football league programmes throughout the country and the birth of organised sport can be traced back to those industrial reform Acts passed by this House. There was no Government pathfinder programme that dictated which sports should be set up or that football should become a national sport. That happened through volunteers and working groups made up of communities across the country with a shared vision of what they could do with their new time. That provides a good example of how Government action and legislation created the time and space for communities to come forward and create something new for themselves and was then followed up by a massive response right across the country.

I therefore think that the big society is akin to the aspirational society. It is a marriage of the aspirations people have not only for themselves and their families, but for their community. This reveals an understanding of how by working together and achieving together through common goals, there is no limit to what communities can do together. The role of the Government is to act as a facilitator and an enabler and not to stand in the way. We have seen plenty of examples today of where Government regulation and bureaucracy are hindering the big society rather than taking it forward.

Finally, I thank my Kent neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) for securing this debate. On behalf of myself and my Folkestone constituents, I say that we are fully behind his plans for the mutualisation of the port of Dover. We wish him every success in that venture.

19:48

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who articulated well the relationship between the Government and the voluntary sector in delivering the big society. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing this debate.

The hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) reminded us of the comments of the noble Baroness at the height of her power as Prime Minister when she said that there was no such thing as society. There is a danger and a fear that the big society is nothing more than the rebranding of the Conservative party by an excellent public relations manager. Across the House, there is agreement that, as the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) said, the big society is not new, but is something that makes this country great. Community spirit and community action have always been at the heart of British society.

In her excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) gave us great insights into the nature and effectiveness of volunteering but, as she said, the big society is neither new nor free. As we were told by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), it is alive and kicking. In my constituency, in the last fortnight, I have been in contact with the scouts and guides, the women’s institute, Lindsey Lodge Hospice, the Magic Moments charity for autistic children, Voluntary Action North Lincolnshire, Church and faith groups, town and parish councils, school governors, retained firefighters and Alzheimer’s support groups. On Saturday night, I had the privilege of meeting the winners of not the Darlington but the Kirton in Lindsey civic award, Jenny Cripps and Penny Hoey, who received it for raising £1 million to restore the town hall to its old diamond jubilee glory. Last week I met a business man who had had the enterprising and imaginative idea of developing a community enterprise partnership to run the Humber bridge, removing the debt from the state. That may not be the right answer, but it is worth examining.

There certainly is a society, and there certainly are great communities. We see that in our constituencies, and their strength has been demonstrated today in contributions from Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friends the Members for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) reminded us of the grand traditions of community self-help and mutual support, which have a long history on which we can build a great future. Over the last 20 years, government at all levels and of all political persuasions has encouraged the voluntary and community sector to grow and prosper. At national and local level it has supported capacity building, recognising that in wealthier, more prosperous areas people have more time, money and expertise, and that support is necessary if more disadvantaged communities are to realise their potential.

As was spelt out so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), we need an infrastructure to deliver the big society, and that is now at risk. Those great communities are now threatened by a Government who, I fear, speak with forked tongue: a Government who say that they believe in communities and in a big society, but who are presiding over the biggest attack on communities for 30 years. We see that in the spending cuts that are being made throughout our communities at this moment.

We can judge how big a society is, how big a people are and how big a Government are by the way in which our young people are treated. The hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) reminded us of the key role played by volunteering in that context. Studies have made it clear that long spells of unemployment in youth can create permanent scars, which will imperil any realisation of the big society. Youth unemployment has returned to the level of the 1980s, the number of young people not in education, employment or training is at a record high, and the education maintenance allowance is being scrapped. I know from personal experience that EMAs have been highly beneficial in providing a ladder to aspiration. Kicking away that ladder will undoubtedly increase the number of NEETs and the level of youth unemployment.

Initial research by the Department for Work and Pensions has indicated that the future jobs fund has been a success. This week a constituent, Jan Williams, who had written to the Prime Minister kindly sent me a copy of her letter. She wrote:

“I am Managing Director of Crosby Employment Bureau a not-for-profit social enterprise based in Northern Lincolnshire. We are involved in a number of employment and training programmes that aim to help people from deprived communities back into work. We also get involved in a range of other projects that help benefit the local community. I would go as far as to say that our organisation can be taken to embody your idea of the Big Society.”

Jan Williams drew attention to the successes of the future jobs fund that her organisation had been managing. Eighty long-term unemployed people were currently serving in or had completed placements with local organisations. Twelve of the first 21 had completed their six-month placements and were in full-time, long-term employment. The young people themselves had made comments such as

“the Future Jobs Fund has changed my life”.

However, Jan Williams also pointed out that all that was in peril because of the Government’s actions.

The way in which we treat our young people is a good measure of whether we believe in the big society or whether it is little more then rhetoric. The way in which we treat the members of society who are least able to look after themselves is also important. Another letter that I received this week came from Ian Millard of Lincolnshire House, who drew attention to the problems of disabled people in his care. He wrote:

“Taking the mobility allowance away from disabled people in care will have an adverse effect on the quality of their life. How do they fund taxis, go on holiday or just go for a day out with family or friends?

Maybe the high rate of mobility needs to be addressed, but some allowance needs to be considered to replace the income…disabled people…cannot live on £22.30 per week. If this change is implemented disabled people will become prisoners in their own homes.”

That is not the big society, and we must not let it happen.

If the big society is not just rhetorical cover for cuts in public services, the Prime Minister must demonstrate through actions rather than words that he cares about the real people in our society. He can start with three big society actions: he can restore EMA, he can restore the future jobs fund, and he can restore the mobility component of disability living allowance. I hope that he listens, I hope that he cares, and I hope that he acts before it is too late.

19:56

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to this excellent debate. Let me say first, as a member of the Backbench Business Committee, that it was a pleasure to make the successful bid for the debate. It was pointed out that the whole country was talking about the big society, from a number of different angles, and a compelling case was made for the House to debate the subject.

I want to focus on two aspects of the big society debate, and, if I have time, to make a request for practical support. The first of those aspects is the potential of wider community involvement in the delivery of services to drive social mobility in communities that have become excessively dependent on the state, sometimes over several generations. The second is the power of volunteers to generate much greater enthusiasm and support for projects than can be generated by national or local government.

During my short time as a Member of Parliament, I have become very concerned about families who look only to one or another arm of the state for financial support and services. That has a potentially deadening effect not just on people’s ability to solve problems, but on the responsibility that they take for the lives of themselves and their families. I fear that the delivery of services and activities solely by the state can reinforce the disadvantages of such families, and, in particular, can reinforce the lack of social mobility that troubles many Members.

Far from seeing the role of volunteers and community groups in delivering services as a threat, I see it as an opportunity. I represent an area that contains extremes of wealth and poverty as well as all that is between those extremes. Tonight my local council is discussing an innovative plan to run a local library serving many disadvantaged children and young people with support co-ordinated through a local private school’s charitable foundation. Irrespective of the financial aspects of the plan, I welcome it. Rather than viewing their involvement with suspicion, I hope that some of those professional parents and other middle-class people who will contribute their time—supporting, for example, homework clubs and study groups—will, in due course, be inspired to offer some of the young people mentoring, work experience and internships. In this instance, involving volunteers in the delivery of services will bring together members of my community who would probably have never met otherwise. I think that that has the potential to drive social mobility.

Many Members have spoken of the enthusiasm generated by their local voluntary groups—an enthusiasm that cannot easily be replicated by the state, although I agree with many Members on both sides of the House who have pointed out that it can often be enabled by the state. We have not heard much about support from business, but I think it important to see it as a potential force for good. I encountered a classic example on Christmas day last year, when I attended a traditional festive lunch for elderly people in my area run by Battersea Park rotary club. It has done that for a long time, and the idea is that no one need be alone at Christmas. There were so many volunteers there that I briefly wondered whether quite a lot of them were keen to be away from their own families at Christmas, but I quickly banished that cynical notion and instead looked on admiringly at the effort, with volunteers such as me being marshalled by experienced Rotarians, many of whom brought professional experience to bear. Publicity and transport support was co-ordinated through the council, and the venue and food was supplied by public-spirited businesses. It was a perfect example of all these good things coming together, but I doubt that we would have had the same response if the council had put out the call for volunteers on Christmas day.

As this debate has at times been very philosophical, I hesitate to introduce a practical note by turning to a matter that has long been a concern of mine. I can only echo the words of Members who have expressed frustration at the barriers put in the way of voluntary groups who are just trying to do good in their community. I shall mention one barrier in particular, in the hope that the Minister will address it: the often ridiculous requirements of public liability insurance. Some years ago I co-founded a community music festival in north London, and I still remember the moment when I was told that I needed to take out £2 million in public liability insurance to enable a junior school band to take a turn around the local park. I wondered to myself how much damage eight-year-olds with drums could really do. The only person on that occasion who came anywhere close to endangering the public was me, when I briefly unplugged a nearby bouncy castle to plug in the band’s accompanying piano, but it was a mistake quickly rectified.

The fear of vexatious claimants and of being sued, and the disproportionate cost of public liability insurance, are among the factors that drive small voluntary groups out of action and discourage those who just want to do good. I hope the Minister will give practical consideration to tackling this barrier and some of the others that Members on both sides of the House have spoken about in the debate.

20:02

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Like the two previous speakers, I do not want to talk about the theory of the big society. Instead, I want to talk about the reality of what is happening now. How can anyone argue with the notion of a big society—a society of stronger communities, where decisions are devolved to the most local level possible and where social action is encouraged? The problem is that the Government fundamentally do not understand that the big society already exists and they are hell-bent on destroying it.

There are already millions of people volunteering in this country. They run youth clubs and lunch clubs for the elderly. They run community centres and mentor offenders. They run churches and work with the homeless. They support battered women and provide meals on wheels. However, there is a common theme that runs through the circumstances of almost every voluntary and community group: they receive grant aid or other support from local authorities and, somewhere along the line, they are supported by paid staff. These may be people working directly in their organisation, such as in my Horwich and Westhoughton visiting services, where part-time co-ordinators recruit and train the volunteers, seek the elderly who need visiting and do the administration such as paying expenses to volunteers, thus leaving the volunteers to do what they have signed up for: visit elderly and disabled lonely people. It may be the paid person in the council for voluntary service—CVS—or the council who helps the group get funding or set up and organise itself, or it may be the paid people working in the group’s headquarters, such as at the Scouts and Guides. All of these people are essential for the voluntary sector to survive and thrive.

The Government also seem to ignore the need for professional workers to work alongside volunteers—for people to train volunteers, to mentor them, to ensure that the work undertaken is safe and appropriate, and to deliver the work alongside them. Volunteers are not, and cannot be, a substitute for them. Groups also need funding for room hire and equipment and resources, and an endless list of other things. Of course the voluntary sector fundraises, but many groups find funding hard to come by. Those rooted in poor areas, and especially those dealing with unpopular problems such as alcohol and drug misuse or offending or mental health issues, find fundraising difficult and sometimes impossible.

Volunteers and the community and voluntary sector are not free; they are not a cheap alternative to the maintained sector. They need Government support. Instead of giving support, however, the Government are destabilising the sector through cuts to direct grants and to local authority budgets. Fledgling organisations will not now get off the ground, and organisations such as Bolton Community and Voluntary Services will not be able to support them. I hope the Minister does not respond by saying that local authorities should protect the voluntary sector, because Bolton council is doing what it can to protect voluntary groups, but the Government have chosen to cut too deeply, too fast. Bolton will lose a quarter of its budget over the next four years. The Government are making the choice—the wrong choice—and leaving the local authorities to implement their cuts.

An example of Government madness is the cut to vinvolved, the national youth volunteering programme, whose funding will be cut at the end of March. This project is the big society in action, with young people being trained as volunteers to work in every sort of project we can imagine. Vinvolved provided fun, exciting and eye-opening volunteer experiences for young people. It provided one-to-one tailored, sustained support. Most of the young people engaged in the project were experiencing difficult social and economic circumstances; indeed, many were at risk of social exclusion. Volunteering enhances young people’s employability, gives them the opportunity to gain experience to put on their CVs, and allows them to get references and to develop contacts to help them find full-time work. It enables them to give back to their communities and, perhaps most importantly, gives them confidence and self-respect. What is the Government’s replacement? It is an eight-week summer programme for 16-year-olds.

I have spoken before in this House about the honour I had of presenting the volunteer of the year award for Greater Manchester to Matthew, a 21-year-old from Bolton. Matthew has multiple disabilities, had no confidence and was doing nothing. His Connexions adviser referred him to vinvolved, and he was offered a number of volunteering opportunities, which he took up. He became a dedicated and valued member of the team at StreetWise Soccer, and teaches soccer skills to a range of people several times a week. He is now taking a coaching course so that he can teach football to disabled young people. He would not be doing any of this if it were not for vinvolved.

Who is going to support young people into volunteering now? The Greater Manchester v team award was won by Bolton YMCA’s youth council. It is involved in fundraising, project planning, decorating, writing funding bids and supporting individual projects and users alike. It was said to be

“dedicated, energetic and a credit to the YMCA”.

However, without local authority funding and Government grants, the YMCA will not be able to employ the youth workers who support young people and other voluntary youth workers. They are the big society in action, but they are in jeopardy because of the Tory-led Government.

If we need further evidence, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services has stated that three quarters of youth charities are cutting projects, and 80% of them are being cut because of the end of targeted help from the Government. The Government’s decision to front-load cuts is also creating chaos for the voluntary and community sector, leaving groups no time to find alternative funding. At present, 6% of the work force of Greater Manchester is employed in the sector. I will be very interested to see what that figure is after April.

I visited Moss Bank Park animal world last Thursday. The council is having to withdraw funding because of the £60 million in cuts it must find over two years, with £42 million to be found this year. A group of volunteers is forming who would love to take over animal world and the butterfly house, but who are in a race against time to get organised and to get funding in place. If the council had to cut only £18 million this year and £42 million next year, the group would have a better chance—but, no, the Government are going ahead, too deep and too fast.

The coalition parties want to take the state out of support for our society and want to do away with any targets. However, targets are the device that ensures that the vulnerable—such as teenage mums and homeless addicts, and young scallies hanging out on street corners who are unwelcome in the voluntary youth club—get the services they need. The state has a duty to ensure that our citizens get the support they need, and that cannot just be left to possible voluntary action.

The big society exists, but this Government are destroying it. The big society can never be a replacement for local authority services, however. The big society works best where there is a partnership between local authorities and the voluntary and community sector. Volunteers are not a replacement for paid, qualified, professional staff; they complement them. This Government must stop this destruction before it is too late.

20:10

[Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I am very pleased to speak in this debate today, which is yet another triumph for the Backbench Business Committee and a tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who instigated it. I know that dozens of colleagues would happily have called for this debate and signed up to say that it should happen.

It is apt that we are having this debate at the start of Fairtrade fortnight. Fairtrade is a great organisation that is very active in my constituency. There has been much mention of the noble Baroness Thatcher and her infamous quote. One of my colleagues said that she was misquoted, but I think it was more a case of her being selectively quoted. I honestly was not a geeky teenager reading such things under my bedclothes, but I do so hate misquoting, especially where Baroness Thatcher is concerned. [Interruption.] Let me keep going—you’ll enjoy this.

It was Baroness Thatcher’s conference speech in 1987 in which she used that phrase. She said:

“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the Government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant’, ‘I’m homeless, the Government must house me’. They’re casting their problem on society. And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no Government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

If any hon. Member disagrees with that statement, they should not be on the Government side of the House; they should certainly be on the Opposition side, and I guess they probably are.

It is becoming predictable to hear colleagues say, “While others talk about the big society, in my constituency we’ve been doing it for years.” I am sure many of us have uttered those words at AGMs and meetings this past weekend, not least me. However, it is not merely “predictable” to say that in the case of my Winchester constituency; rather, it is most definitely true. Nevertheless, the use of the word “predictable” misses the point. For me, as others have said, the big society is not a revolutionary new idea, but a renewed mission for troubled times. Passing power from state to citizen and encouraging people to be empowered in their own communities and to take responsibility for their own lives is an idea as old as the hills. It is an idea that has always been at the core of what my party believes, of how it shapes policy when in government in good times and bad—and, it must be said, in surplus and in deficit.

In the infamous “sermon on the mound” in May 1988, Margaret Thatcher—I am becoming obsessed with her—said:

“Intervention by the State must never become so great that it effectively removes personal responsibility.”

I cannot disagree with that. There are others. Addressing the Labour party conference for the first time as Prime Minister, the former right hon. Member for Sedgefield said:

“I tell you: a decent society is not based on rights. It is based on duty. Our duty to each other. To all should be given opportunity, from all responsibility demanded.”

Excellent, as always! Our current Prime Minister, on the eve of the general election last year, said that the big society was his “mission” in politics. Of course, there is also the great man John F. Kennedy and his inauguration address in January 1961, which has been quoted twice today, so I will not go there again. For me, those approaches all have one common thread: they present a positive vision; they all have optimism at their core; and they all believe in people over the state. That is not a bad thing.

I believe in the big society—I always have—and I do not think that that is a political risk; nor do I think it is “cover” for clearing up the appalling mess left by the Labour party. For me, it is a principle of faith—a way we want to govern in a country we want to live in. I am happy to stand under that banner, now and at the next election, in this House and outside it.

I understand why some people want to talk down the big society idea—we have heard that plenty of times today—just as they want to talk down our economy and, ultimately, our country. It suits their argument, and I suspect that for some, that has “traction”, as the pollsters call it, outside this place. However, ultimately it will not serve them well. What a very dark place it must be for those who think that Government know best and that only the state can guarantee fairness, when all they seek to do is undermine those who believe we can be better as a society. Politicians, and especially Prime Ministers, have to lead and to believe in something bigger than simply managing Government Departments better than the last lot, passing legislation and bringing about our economic recovery, vital as the latter is right now.

This coalition Government do not want the story of this Parliament to be just one of economic recovery; we want it to be one of social recovery, too. If I look at my own constituency, in the city of Winchester and the villages and towns that surround it, I see a strong society already thriving, but I also see a big state keeping far too many people in their place.

Here is the good part. According to the Charity Commission, we already have 524 registered charities in Winchester, a thriving voluntary and community sector and a sense of community involvement in the form of public consultation, meetings and—dare I say it?—e-mails to the local MP. That hardly constitutes being uninterested. We have dozens of active residents associations, and we have busy community groups that get stuck in. There are groups such as the Alresford Society, the City of Winchester residents association and the Hiltingbury community association. Numerous rotary groups have been mentioned today, and they do great work in my constituency. There is also the Alresford Pigs Association, which will love a mention, and the Dever Society. We have big charities such as Trinity Winchester; the Churches Nightshelter, which I was volunteering with just last week during the recess as part of student volunteering week; and Naomi House, the children’s hospice. We have heard some very good things from my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) about hospices. There also the smaller charities such as Young Carers, Wells for India and the mental health charity the Olive Branch, all based within an infrastructure company called Winchester Area Community Action, or WACA, which recently came here to visit the Minister. I pay tribute to their team, who do so much to make our society in Winchester strong.

Not a week goes by when my office does not receive a request for me to sponsor or help publicise a charity bike ride or some other event to raise money for charities at home and far away. Just this weekend, I was at a dental practice in Winchester to help it launch a bike ride across Tanzania in aid of Bridge2Aid, a dental charity. There are many other such examples.

On the “work to do” side, I had an e-mail just before the recess from a constituent of mine. It said:

“I would like to tell you of my experience yesterday at Winchester Hospital. I have become a member of The League of friends and offered my services as a volunteer. I had helped out one morning on the desk on the Nightingale Wing and decided that I could help on other occasions. I was then told to register and given 4 forms to fill in asking all manner of personal questions. I am just telling you this as many…will be…as I am, put off applying.”

That is a small example, but I bet that hon. Members in all parts of the House can provide similar examples.

There are many other such examples, and one of the biggest misconceptions about the big society remains the idea that it is all about the voluntary and community sector and how much grant central or local government gives to individual charities. Perhaps it is our fault as a Government—our communication failure. Either way, I hope this debate will help in that regard. The big society is about a culture change in volunteering, yes, but it is also about a revolution in the culture of giving and public service reform. Above all, it is about responsibility. We have to reject the perverse and pitiful message we are teaching our children that nanny—the nanny state—knows best.

20:17

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr Brine), who was quite right when he said that the Backbench Business Committee has shown the diverse range of opportunities that it provides. Like the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is not in his seat, I represent a coastal and port community, and I wish him well in his campaign on behalf of the port of Dover.

The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) was right to say that the big society is not about ideology—left, right or centre. I consider myself a communitarian first and foremost. I live in, was brought up in and have the privilege to serve the rich, resilient and diverse community of the Isle of Anglesey. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) make a contribution on the Isle of Anglesey. Like me, he was born there and brought up on a council estate there, although not the same estate. He rightly mentioned the late Iorwerth Rowlands, who died recently. He was a Conservative, and someone with whom I worked before I was elected to this House of Commons; indeed, when I became a Member of Parliament, he lobbied me.

I have roving surgeries in Anglesey, and I use the Iorwerth Rowlands community centre for that purpose. I was proud to be there on the day when that centre was opened in Iorwerth Rowlands’s name. One thing that he would have agreed with is that that would not have happened had it not been for grant aid. I helped him to get the money to build that community centre, which is in the heart of the community of Beaumaris.

I want to stick to the issues that have been discussed today and the big society. As the hon. Member for Winchester has said, it is predictable that we give examples from our own constituencies. I lived through the big society just this week. On Thursday, I attended a very special launch of the lifeboat at Trearddur bay, which attracted a crowd of 1,000, as well as the world’s media, who came from places ranging from Japan to Australia and the United States. The fact that two prospective constituents of mine, Prince William and Kate Middleton, were also in attendance made the launch a special focus of attention for the world’s media. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is an example of the big society, although I declare an interest because I am a member of its general council.

The following day, I had the privilege of being the guest speaker at the Llangefni rotary club on its 50th charter. I am an honorary member of the rotary club and the Lions, and I acknowledge the work that they do for communities across the United Kingdom. Again, that is an example of the big society in action. On Sunday, I attended a St David’s day celebration. We are not being given the opportunity to have a Welsh day in this House this year, but I was able to participate in an excellent celebration of St David’s day with voluntary groups, the RAF, the private sector and everybody else who came together to put the event on.

I also believe in devolution, which has also been mentioned in the debate, and in localism. I want to talk not about the devolution of power from Westminster to Cardiff bay or to Edinburgh, but about real devolution that helps empower people to run their own activities. In the 1980s, prior to coming into this House, I worked as a manager of a centre for the unemployed. Society was very fractured in the 1980s, and it needed help and attention. As manager of that centre, I worked with the public sector, the private sector, the third sector and community groups to help people in society. We worked together and we built up many achievements, not the least of which was educating and training people for the world of work. That was the big society and the community coming together. We have heard some quotes from Mrs Thatcher and some defence of what she said. I can tell hon. Members that no matter whether or not she believed in society, we had hard experiences in my constituency and my community at that time, and the big society coming together helped alleviate much of that hardship.

In order to create a better society we need to work together. Hon. Members have talked about partnerships, but I am still struggling to understand what the big society is and nobody sitting on the Benches opposite has really explained it to me. We can all give examples of what we think it is and what we think it should do, but we have never heard a definition.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Albert Owen]

Before I take an intervention from my hon. Friend, may I say that he was right when he said that the Government probably picked the wrong term with the “big society”? I was surprised that the Prime Minister chose the term “big society” and was unable to market it or explain it to the public, given his public relations skills. The “big community” would have been a better idea and concept to sell, had he chosen it.

[Chris Ruane]

One of the 300 questions that I have tabled on the issue of the “big society” asks the Minister to define what it is. The answer has come back, and I have been told that there is no definition.

[Albert Owen]

The Minister is a very decent man, and I am sure that he will find 300 answers somewhere up his sleeve to say what the “big society” is, but we have not been given clarification in this debate. As I have explained, I am a communitarian. I live and work the big society, yet I am struggling to explain to people exactly what it is.

I wish to cite another example of the big society with a link to my constituency. The women’s institute was formed in Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesey, in 1915, and a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to the annual general meeting. The membership in my area is 500, and the institute mustered almost 200 of them to attend a meeting to listen to their Member of Parliament speaking. Again, that is the big society in action. The agenda that the women’s institute had in 1915 is the agenda that we are still running today; it talked about food security in 1915. So, fantastic examples can be given of the big society, but it is difficult to explain this concept and we need to make progress.

Some hon. Members have asked why cuts should be brought into a debate about the big society. I have worked in the private sector, the public sector and the voluntary sector. I still visit these groups and they raise the problems that funding cuts cause them in creating the community ethics that they wish to promote and in running groups and activities in the community—it is they who are talking about cuts. It would be a big mistake for anybody who has contributed to this debate to say that the cuts will not have an impact on those services in the community, which is what concerns me.

I wonder whether this is the wrong time to talk about a big society in many ways. We need to work to help communities, but we also need to get the right balance between state funding, community spirit and looking for finance from the private sector. I did that and still do it, and I help groups to do it. By working together, we will create not only a big society, but a better society—a society that people really want. As a communitarian, I believe that the Prime Minister rightly talks about “bottom up”, but then tries to lecture from the top about what the big society is, which is where the confusion arises. Do not just take my word for it; take the word of members of the RNLI, the women’s institute and rotarians, who tell me that they do not understand this situation. The Government talk about localism, but we see many measures that are centralised. So a confused message is being sent out, and it is difficult to understand. I hope that the Minister will answer my one question, not the 300 that have been posed. I hope he will tell me what the big society is and whether we live in a broken society.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Just before I call the next speaker, may I say that 15 Members still wish to catch my eye and that their speeches are going to have to finish just before 9.35 pm?

20:27

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

As many Government Members have said, empowering citizens and local communities to take more control over their lives is at the heart of the big society idea. I am delighted that this key philosophy of returning power to the people is a core feature across the Government’s policy agenda, be it in education, local government or health. Under the previous Government, we developed a culture of government knows best, where individuals and communities often felt helpless to bring about local changes. Thankfully, that is changing and the big society agenda is playing its role in encouraging more local community engagement.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is not in his place, made an excellent opening speech, in which he gave the example of individuals being concerned about the possibility of being sued if they cleared snow from pavements. It is a sad state of affairs that after 13 years of Labour that is where we had come to. It was clear that the pendulum had swung too far in the wrong direction in terms of the role of the state versus the role of community. Fostering a spirit of community engagement and social responsibility starts at home and school. I suspect that many hon. Members have been struck, as I have, when schoolchildren come to visit Westminster or when speaking at local schools, by how engaged our young people—seven and eight-year-olds—are when talking about things in their neighbourhoods that they want to change. We need to capture that enthusiasm and engagement and nurture it into adulthood, so I welcome the Government’s national citizen service, which is aimed at 16-year-olds and will help to deliver that.

Our charity and voluntary groups are the face of the big society in our towns and cities and form the backbone of civil society in our communities. Reading is no different and has a vibrant and diverse voluntary sector. Church communities play a big role in our town, providing services that are open to all, such as support for the homeless, debt counselling advice and schooling for children who have been excluded from mainstream education because of behavioural difficulties. Earlier this month, I spoke at a local voluntary and community sector networking event in Reading, at which there were well over 100 participants representing just about all the key community and voluntary sector groups in the town. The event was billed as a

“cross section conference involving all agencies interested in growing a genuine Big Society in Reading”.

It is absolutely clear that the voluntary and community sector in Reading is keen to grow the big society. It wants to do more and believes in community empowerment. Many in the sector welcome the Government’s agenda of seeking to increase the role of charities and voluntary groups in delivering public services. Locally, I am very pleased that we are supporting such groups. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that now runs Reading borough council has increased funding for voluntary groups and there is much more flexibility in getting funding throughout the year. There is now clear recognition, which was not there before, that voluntary groups should not be treated as a branch of Government that is there to deliver on Government targets, but that they are there to deliver for local communities. The Conservative-run West Berkshire district council, which also covers part of my constituency, recently wrote to the Department for Communities and Local Government to apply to become a big society vanguard area following Liverpool’s withdrawal. In my part of Berkshire, we certainly know what the big society is all about and we are supporting it.

More widely, the beneficial effects of the Government’s policy agenda of empowering local people and communities to take control over their lives can be seen across our constituencies. I hope that my constituency will have one of the first free schools in the country in September—the Reading free school. That initiative, which is led by a local parent group called the All Saints Action Group, came about because there is huge pressure on school places in Reading. Local parents saw an opportunity to set up a new school, which is fantastic news for children across the town. Most importantly, it represents real collaboration between the local community, local parents and the local authority. This could never have happened under the previous Government.

The Localism Bill is another great example of how the big society concept is being furthered, whether through the community right to buy, the community right to challenge or communities being allowed to decide how their neighbourhoods should look. As a result of the Bill, I have been approached by members of the community who want to do more to save local pubs and who want to work out how their neighbourhoods should look. All that should be welcomed. Above all, the Localism Bill is about trusting local communities and letting them take the lead in creating neighbourhoods of which they can be proud. We should welcome that.

I know that many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall draw my remarks to a close. I fully support the motion and I welcome all that the Government are doing to advance the big society and return more control to local people and local communities over their own lives.

20:32

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

I believe that all hon. Members in the Chamber recognise that these are difficult economic times that require us to make tough choices and to change our way of life. It is tempting to focus on the negative, but we should also focus on the positive. We are presented with an opportunity to show the very best in our national character and to call upon the values of responsibility, public spiritedness and compassion, which are intrinsic to a strong and vibrant society. Those ideals are not new, but have been woven into our politics for as long as any of us can remember. We are ultimately seeking to address the most fundamental question in politics: what does it mean to be a citizen? For me, the big society is an attempt to answer that question and to create a new, more balanced and more positive concept of the citizen. For that reason, I support the motion.

The big society is novel because it recognises the importance not only of people but of institutions. There is a clear role for the state in the facilitation of a stronger society. In some ways, that will be rhetorical—pushing people forward, persuading them that it is good to do more and giving them a reason to feel part of a wider social project. That is why it is so important that senior members of the Government keep talking about the need for people to get involved and continue to spur people forward. The idea of a civic service which the Prime Minister outlined is an important part of achieving that.

I welcome efforts by Ministers to change perceptions of volunteering. Our education system should do more to develop a new generation of citizens. The national citizen service represents a fantastic opportunity to bind young people together and encourage them to participate as much as possible in the wider community.

As Members of Parliament, we need to get into our local communities. We should be advocates for social action, galvanising people to do more and championing local causes. In my constituency, we have a fantastic array of organisations which I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with, both as a candidate and now as an MP. They work tirelessly to help the wider community and the most vulnerable within it.

In some ways, the state’s role is institutional. We need to change the way in which our public services are delivered and how our priorities are set in order to engage our communities and ask local people to do more, whether that is by helping to set priorities through referendums or giving local people the right to challenge. We need more diversity in public services to break open monopolies and to give the best organisations, whether they are voluntary, public or private, a chance to take on our social challenges. We should say, “If you have a good idea to solve these problems, and if you have a clear financial plan to achieve it, we will help you.”

We must use the power of the voluntary sector, social enterprise and socially responsible business to drive forward better quality in our public services. I am trying to play my part with my private Member’s Bill which, I am sure colleagues will be pleased to know, will shortly reach its Committee stage.

The role also has a financial aspect. The state has at its disposal hundreds of billions of pounds, which it collects in taxation with the aim of supporting our society through welfare, investment, infrastructure, law and order and public services. Although some of my colleagues on both sides of the House might like to debate how little or how much we should raise in taxation, that debate is for another day. We need to use the public resources to achieve the maximum public benefit. That means taking a long-term view of social issues, not being afraid of investing in social projects because they cannot generate results within one financial year, and not cutting small-scale local projects in order to save large-scale prestige ones.

There are examples across the country and in every constituency. I am reminded of organisations such as the Warwickshire community and voluntary action group, which helps individuals to find out about the voluntary and community organisations in their area and how they can help, which is vital. Our community centres are hubs of local activity. They help to give local people the space to host events and support local causes. Communities need assets and locations if they are to do their good work, and we need to ensure that they are maintained. In my constituency, assets such as the Bath Place community venture could become the catalyst for a range of social action projects. We need to recognise their importance and use local community spaces as effectively as possible, empowering local people, not hindering them with unnecessary red tape or through lack of assistance.

Voluntary and community groups also need funding. I agree with the Government and with my colleagues on the Government Benches that we must do more to encourage charitable giving and create innovative methods of funding and investment. The big society will be an important development in this respect. The grants from local and central Government are important. We spend as little as 2% of public money on the voluntary sector, yet it can have a huge impact.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right. In Gloucestershire we are benefiting from a sensible and forward-thinking county council paving the way for local people to take over libraries. That is excellent. Does he agree that we should encourage more such initiatives across the piste?

[Chris White]

Indeed. Such ideas should be promoted. We should look at the models that work and make sure that other constituencies adopt them.

Although reducing funding today might seem like a quick saving for local authorities, ultimately they should remember that the small amount that those groups and organisations cost could save them far more costly interventions in the future.

The big society needs all the tools of the state at all levels. Ultimately, however, we keep coming back to the citizen and their role in the community. No idea, no vision, will take root in our society unless people decide to keep up the challenge themselves and own their own change. It cannot be imposed from the top down; it has to come from the bottom up. We have to nurture, incentivise and fund it, but above all we have to recognise that all the resources of the nation—economic, political, social and environmental—need to be directed to achieving it.

The economy has rightly been the main focus of attention for much of the debate in this House and throughout the country, but it is no good having an economic recovery if there is no social recovery. It is important that all sides engage constructively in that, because ultimately it is in all our interests to see it succeed.

20:40

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate and a particular delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), who counts my mother, father and brother among his constituents. They routinely tell me what an excellent job he is doing as their Member of Parliament.

[Stephen Pound]

Get on with it.

[Richard Fuller]

I shall, indeed.

It has been interesting to hear people’s different perspectives on what the big society means, so at least we know that the big society is something. We might not agree on our perceptions of it, but I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) in being quite comfortable with that difference of approach. For me, however, the point of the big society at this moment is about building institutions—other than state bureaucracies—that can deliver effectively the social goods and services that we all desire.

The bureaucracy was, as we have heard, always only one model, not the only model, for the provision of social goods and services, but over the years it has come to dominate the space in social goods provision. In so dominating that space, it has created other organisations that are less sustainable and resilient because of their dependence for their continuation on state funding.

Under the previous Government, new forms of charitable organisations evolved, and in fairness institutional forms will evolve over time. It takes time to create institutions; we have only to look at the construction of different forms within the private sector and other aspects of organisational theory.

It is also important to recognise the imbalance between bureaucracies on the one hand and charities, social enterprises and so on, on the other. Over the past 10 years, charities have in many ways been co-opted by the Government. If we look at the earned income of charities in 2000, we see that 40% came from statutory Government sources. Within just seven years, that percentage had risen to 52%. How does that help the independence of those institutions? How does it help to create resilience within them?

Not all charities are the same, however. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) heralded the women’s institute as the paragon of a big society organisation, but as Government Members know, women’s institutes do not claim Government money at all. Smaller charities have a far greater reliance than larger charities on individual donations: 64% of the income of very small charities comes from voluntary donations and private sources, and only 5% comes from statutory sources. For the large charities, those that are pretty good at cosying up to the Government, 34% comes from individual sources, and 38% comes from Government sources.

That mirroring of the state can also be seen in senior executive pay. On many occasions in the House, we have heard people talk about the growth in senior executive pay in local and national Government, and, as we look to the big society, people will have questions about whether the chief executive officer of Barnardo’s should be paid £166,000 a year, whether the chief executive of Action for Children should be paid £130,000 and whether we should really allow the chief executive of World Vision to sneak in at £99,994 a year without pointing to it. These are areas where we have to say that we need change. Do we see these social organisations as institutions in their own right or just as agents of the Government? If it is the former, we need to enhance their institutional strength.

I have some suggestions, many of which are already emanating from our Government. It is sometimes argued that giving people a tax deduction for their charitable donation will have the same result as gift aid, but I think we should change the system. People will respond more positively if they know they are going to get a tax deduction for their charitable donation. We do it for venture capital trust contributions and for the enterprise investment scheme, so why cannot we change the system to do it for charitable donations too? We need to look at ways of simplifying the rules and regulations. In particular, can we ease the rules on mergers and acquisitions between charities so that they can be done more effectively? Looking at the big society bank, can we ensure that we limit its scope to focus on those who are most important for society as a whole?

Most importantly, can we use this opportunity to create centres of excellence for non-profit bidding expertise? ConsortiCo in my constituency has brought together 35 charities to help them to bid for local government contracts. That is important, because many charities find it hard to access Government contracts. These organisations will become the platforms for outcome-based financing in future, and we need local centres of excellence to appear with their local government authorities in order to gain the experience of writing contracts that can be used for outcome-based financing. Fundamentally, the fight between charities and bureaucracies is not fair because bureaucracies hold all the cards. If we do not give charities the strengths to compete effectively with bureaucracies, we will not achieve the big society at this time.

It is a challenge for Conservative Members to implement the changes of the big society in this period of office, and it will govern and colour the context of our time. For Labour Members, however, the challenges are even more significant. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) said, they have to decide whether they want to continue to move forward with the reform agents in social enterprises and charities or to remain as guardians of the status quo.

20:47

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I am grateful to have been brought into this seminar, as it has been called, on the big society and what it means. I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), who was keen to get involved earlier when there were endless discussions about what Baroness Thatcher said and did not say; I know that he has quite positive views about that. I am going to have to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who so brilliantly introduced the debate and got it off the stocks. He said that we would be talking about the post-bureaucratic age—well, I, for one, do not understand the post-bureaucratic age. I have learned from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) about episodic volunteering, which I think must be a psychological disease.

I will deal with one or two facts about my constituency and what we are trying to achieve in making the big society play out a bit further, particularly in terms of regeneration. I also have a suggestion to top some of the practical suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford about what may help in increasing volunteerism.

We are all agreed, across the patch, that there is nothing new about the basis of the big society. As Members of Parliament, whether new or old, we all have a great deal of admiration for the voluntary groups that we meet, the numerous people we see volunteering, and their involvement in the committees that they sit on. I have often thought that one of the great defences of this country is that if Parliament fails and we get a dictator, no dictator would ever be able to cope with the quantity of committees and voluntary groups and control them across the country. Even getting on to the agenda of some voluntary groups would be difficult for any dictator. They stand there as a bulwark against future takeovers of this country, and they do a brilliant job.

I want to mention a couple of examples from my constituency. On Friday, I went to St John’s church, which is a redundant 18th-century church in the middle of Lancaster—a beautiful building that I knew nothing about, and to which I had been invited. Mary Halton, a neighbour of the church, singlehandedly created the Friends of St John’s and singlehandedly checks to ensure that the clock is working every day. She is not religious, but she lives near the church and values it. She opens it to other groups and is working actively with what was the Redundant Churches Fund to get things moving. She has not been compelled by the Government or asked by the council; she did it herself. We can all recognise such people in our constituencies and what they have done.

The Opposition have rightly asked what is new about the big society. I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Stourbridge (Margot James) and for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) that all that is new is the recognition that there needs to be a rebalancing between the state, community and the individual. I am not talking just about the past 13 years and I am not going into the history of the Labour party, although I have learned from this debate or seminar that the left is still alive and kicking in the Labour party. That a Labour Member can stand up and say, “We on the left,” has taught me something valuable: we now have a real ideology to play with. Congratulations should probably go to the new leader of the Labour party for allowing that to function; it has not been allowed in the past 13 years.

My party agrees that the Government clearly play a valuable role and we do not underestimate that. However, individuals and communities feel that over the past 40 or 50 years, whichever party has been in power, the state has got bigger and bigger and has squeezed them out. I think that there is some truth in that.

[Stephen Pound]

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting, even for a moment, that ideology plays any part in the modern Labour party? I ask him to weigh his words with great care before making such assumptions or—dare I say it—accusations.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I thought that I was being positive. I take the hon. Gentleman’s strictures and accept that ideology does not play a part in the whole Labour party. I was saying that I am pleased that it now seems to play a part in part of the Labour party, and I regard that as novel.

I will give an example of what I was saying about the state. All that we have heard about from the Opposition is cuts, cuts and cuts. I hope that Opposition Members who criticise the Government will put the same criticisms to the Labour council leaders who are responsible for the balance of the present budgets. I remember from London politics in the 1990s, when apparently we had all the money, the massive amount of regeneration money that was poured into the east end. As a councillor in Hackney and as a member of the Greater London authority, I saw endless attempts to deal with problem estates when there was real money. Usually, that meant that outsiders came to the estates and that consultants were appointed. The Government passed the money to the development agency, which passed it to the council, which appointed administrators, who went in and sorted out what had to be done. I am not saying that no good was done, and there was certainly a lot of good capital work. I am talking in particular about the social regeneration schemes.

In particular, I remember one social regeneration scheme on a problem estate because it was examined by academics at East London university. It had the laudable aim of training the youth of the estate to use computers so that they could get better jobs. It took three to four years, the outsiders came in, the hardware was brought—it is probably still at the back of the estate community offices somewhere under lock and key—and the money was spent. The council ticked off the scheme as having done a good job. The development agency ticked it off as a good job with everything done. The Government who had spent the money—I think it was Department for Communities and Local Government money—ticked it off. Academics then chose it at random as a scheme to look at. When they went through the statistics of what had been done, the only conclusion they could come to was that either there were twice as many young people on the estate as the census said, or every young person on the estate had been trained twice on the same computers. They could never reconcile the figures.

To me, the big society is about the message that we missed in the ’50s and ’60s with the great slum clearances and again in the ’80s and ’90s with regeneration. That is the fact that however bad an area seems from the outside, it still possesses something of the big society and there is some community there, however bare it is. We have to work with that community, not introduce something from outside on top of it. We as a Government have to learn that lesson.

Labour Members say, “You can’t do this now, because times are bad”. I would put it the other way around. We want to be in such a position that when times are good, we have the structure on the ground to avoid the same mistakes. That is the purpose of the big society, and it is why it more important now than ever before that community organisers train volunteers.

The big society can be described as plain common sense—shall I say Lancashire common sense?—or localism, or whatever. I have tried to think of an alternative term to “big society”, but I cannot, so I will go with it, because it means the restoration of the balance between communities and individuals.

20:56

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

As many Members have said, it is a pleasure to contribute to this terrific debate. It happens at a time when several million Libyans are trying to find their way to a future without their great dictator. We are debating a motion on something that they, and many others around the world under the barrel of state power would dearly love—the pursuit of stronger communities and decentralised power and the encouragement of social action.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who gets out more words per minute than anybody else in the Chamber, said that the trouble with the big society was that it had no purpose, but what other purpose is there than creating stronger communities? That is surely at the heart of all political activity by all parties. Is there really anyone in the Chamber who would vote for weaker communities, state monopoly of power and the discouragement of social action?

There was a time, of course, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) said, when his party arguably led on those beliefs, with the co-operative movement, the formation of credit unions and the role of the trade unions in training. What has happened since? What happened to self-help and mutualism? Today there is more enthusiasm for, and I suspect there are more members of, credit unions on the Government side of the House. I do not just talk about co-ops, I worked for a mutual insurance group. We are the party that leads on apprenticeships and is changing British Waterways from a state-owned entity to a charity and the Post Office from a state-owned company to a mutual.

Somewhere along the line, Labour Members have, first, mistaken new Conservative Members—that is what those of us here today are—for 1980s Tories and, secondly, have lost confidence in their own roots and in anything except the state or state-funded voluntary organisations. In fact, the hon. Members for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) even asked how their charities could survive without Government funding. Surely everyone in the House is aware of, for example, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a charity that fulfils its statutory duties without a penny of Government funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who spoke so eloquently, is here and available to help explain how to raise funds for charities. If need be, the Minister can help, with his transition fund.

For Opposition Members, the word “cuts” invariably means “worse service”. It does not need to if the community is involved. I shall illustrate that briefly with two examples from wards in my constituency that are among the most deprived in the south-west of England. The Podsmead Community Association has a building at a peppercorn rent from the city council, and it has 400 members, 20 volunteers and masses of activities. It has funding from both its bar and local businesses, and not a penny from the state. Nor can the 20 volunteers be remotely classified as millionaires, which was a particularly outrageous suggestion made by an Opposition Member.

Not far away, in Matson, we have an isolated library building, with two parking places, two staff—for health and safety purposes—and an inefficient, larger-than-necessary building that costs £54,000 a year. That is an important service in the wrong place and the wrong building, and it could be provided much better for rather less money. By contrast, the community offer could give the ward a library service and nearby community centre with lots of parking, plus sports, dancing and arts next door, and possibly a café, to be run by a charity formed by three religions, at a cost to the county council of £20,000, or slightly more than a third of cost of the current facility. In that way, there would be a better library service at slightly more than a third of the cost.

Many Opposition Members have called the big society a fig leaf for cuts, candyfloss, a big cop-out and a national joke, but for me, it is no laughing matter. Those are my most vulnerable wards, and I want to ensure that our communities are stronger and that we can continue the services that matter most to the people who live in them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) was right to list the bureaucratic obstacles that I hope the Minister will commit himself to hack away at, so that more people will join the big society, volunteer and help to make our communities stronger. Of course the big society already exists—look at what the Civic Trust did in Gloucester and many cities around the country. I am committed, as all Government Members are—I hope Members of all parties are so committed—to working with anyone who wants to improve and strengthen their community. I have no idea how my community leaders vote. That is the least important thing. As Deng Xiaoping said, it matters not whether a cat is black or white, but whether it catches mice.

The motion defines the big society, which we were elected to do, and I encourage all hon. Members to support it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have eight speakers to get in and there are 34 minutes.

21:01

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I will try to abide by your advice, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and the great dose of common sense that was injected into the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw).

I wonder how many Opposition Members would be in the Chamber, compared with the few who are here now, were this debate entitled, “The Big State”. The Opposition do not care for the big society or what it stands for, because they prefer society to be based on the premise that the state must work its way into every nook and cranny of life. Those who prefer the big state approach do not in any way shape or form like any type of competing provision, which is perhaps why, over the past few years, the previous Government encouraged a large number of organisations, including charitable and non-governmental organisations, to take funds from the centre, so that they were that tiny bit more reliant on what the central Government hand gave them. I wonder how much money is taken by charities from central Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) described. Perhaps that is why Opposition Members are more focused on dependence on the centre.

There are many hindrances to the big society. We live in a society with a “Make a mistake and I’ll sue mentality”, which the previous Government encouraged in legislation. We therefore need massive public liability insurance. I am a soccer referee, and I must have extra public liability insurance just to put on my kit and blow a whistle every Saturday afternoon, in case a player injures himself while under my control and tries to sue me.

We need proposals to fix health and safety requirements, the massive number of Criminal Records Bureau checks, which I believe we are beginning to sort out, and the bureaucracy that many hon. Members have described. We also need to simplify gift aid to make it easier for everyone to give, and to encourage businesses to allow their staff to volunteer—DHL has a fantastic policy on that.

In my time in the House, I have been constantly surprised by the fact that those who work the hardest in society, and who have the least net disposable income—the “squeezed middle”, as I have heard someone call them—are the ones who go out of their way to give time to and help their communities. Those people are the big society. A number of Opposition Members asked who they are, and what the big society is, and then managed to define it in individual cases.

In my constituency, it is dead simple. The big society is a lady called Fiona Tompkinson, who is spending 10 days walking the great wall of China for Springboard, which is a charity, or it is Eydon village community soup kitchen, which raised money last week for the upkeep of a local church, or it is Nigel Smilie and Trevor Rowden, who are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for the Daniel Worrall Memorial Trust, which was set up after a young lad aged just 20 was killed in a road accident. He was a keen sportsman, and he would love the fact that the trust in his name raises money for better sporting facilities for young people in his village. The Phoenix Centre, hospices, rotary clubs, Home-Start, Take Time to Make Time, which is a time bank, Diversity Fitness 4 Life, Brushes and Spades, which will make an old lady's garden look a lot better in springtime, are all wonderful organisations. If one scratches the skin of the society of Daventry, one comes to the wonderful rich fabric that is the big society, which does exist. There are national organisations such as the Special Olympics that are sponsored by big business, including Coca-Cola and the National Grid, but contribute massively to the betterment of life for those with a learning disability.

Therefore, there is a big society out there and I welcome the motion and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing it.

21:05

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

This debate is ideological. It was a Labour Cabinet Minister who said that the man in Whitehall really does know best. What we are talking about here—it is one of the reasons the Liberal Democrats are such an important part of the coalition; it is one of the biggest areas where we agree—is the philosophical split between those of us in the coalition who believe that the state is built bottom up, and our socialist friends who think that the state is created top down.

If we go back to the beginnings of society—man in a state of nature—we see that there is no government, but there is society. Man is a political animal. There is society in our earliest history and forms. Government comes later. The problem with government is that, when it comes, it binds. Let us recall the image of Gulliver when he is bound down by the Lilliputians. Thousands of little people have crawled all over him and tied his hair to the beach. They have put ropes over him so he is stuck—he is tied down. That is what we saw in 13 years of socialist Government. The view was that, if it was not done by the state, it was bad.

We have heard a great array of examples from my right hon. and hon. Friends of what that means: the insurance policies for referees; and my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) needing £2 million of insurance. We have heard about the CRB checks. Bell ringers in my constituency are worried about having any children come to ring bells. Although large numbers of them ring together, they are frightened that the big state may not approve and may not say yes. We have data protection. I know that fellow rotarians are here in the House this evening. My own rotary club, Midsomer Norton and Radstock, takes old people shopping—a good thing to do, one would have thought. Members of the rotary club go around to local churches and ask, “Are there any elderly people who might need a hand?” What is the response? It is, “We are not allowed to give you the names of the old and the lonely because of data protection, because the man in Whitehall, who knows best, is fearful that you have evil intent and he will not allow that to happen.” That is why the big society is so important.

If we believe that society is built by individuals, their families, through communities, they are the ones who should make the decisions, raise the money and spend it according to the needs of their communities. One of the great cankers of socialism was that it took over the funding as well. Then we get into the argument about cuts, which is the great confusion in relation to the big society. It is a bad idea for charities to receive most of their funding from Her Majesty's Government because, as soon as they do, they become agents of the state and lose their independent action. They become subject to the rules, regulations and disbursement requirements that are set upon them by Governments. All that must be swept away. The Minister must cut Gulliver free. Gulliver’s hair must be released. He must be unbound. He must be able to stand up and stride forth.

[Stephen Pound]

As ever, the House is so much in the hon. Gentleman's debt as we move from the noble savage to “Prometheus Unbound”, spanning as we do Somerset rotary clubs. The logic of his comments would appear to be, and I speak as a proud member of Greenford rotary club, that we should, for example, get rid of the Charity Commission, because surely the dead hand of the state would apply just as much to that commission. Is he suggesting that it be cast into the dustbin of history?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman and fellow rotarian makes an excellent point. I hope that the Minister will consider thorough reform of the Charity Commission—set the people free!

21:09

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is relatively easy to draw up legislation to increase taxation on the banks, but it is much harder to draft a big society Bill. Unlike my hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), I am quite a simple man. I am not a philosopher, so I am going to offer a doorstep definition of the big society. First, the big society says that social capital—the glue that strengthens community and binds us together—is as important as economic capital. We cannot have one without the other, because capitalism works best with strong communities.

Secondly, the big society believes that people power is as effective, if not more so, than state power, which means devolving power to individuals to make decisions. Lower taxes, for example, give us more economic power and direct political devolution for individuals and communities means more social power. Thirdly, the big society gives as much impetus to social entrepreneurs—those who use social action to transform their communities—as it does to economic entrepreneurs. Social action is as essential as economic action, and it must be incentivised. I want to deal with those three factors in turn.

First, if economic capital is about the level of wealth, social capital is about the level of community. Robert Putnam has been mentioned this afternoon, and he defines social capital as the

“collective value of all social networks, and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other.”

That means strong families, strong ties between neighbours, vibrant voluntary associations, and schools as the focal point for community endeavour. We cannot find a better example than the market. When we think about old-fashioned street markets, of course they were about buying and selling, but they were an essential part of social capital too, as they brought people together. The internet is a modern market and online community.

Secondly, the big society believes that people power is as important, if not more so, than state power, which means devolving power, not just to local versions of Whitehall but directly to individuals to make decisions. Just as lower taxes give individuals more economic power, direct political devolution to individuals and communities means more social power. Something that will make that a reality is the mutualisation of the state, as touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), which could lead to a fundamental shift of power, because people power is Robin Hood politics. A new wave of co-operatives will shift ownership from the Whitehall bosses to the workers; from the inherited monopoly of the establishment to the striving classes.

Thirdly, on social entrepreneurs, if the state cannot legislate the big society into existence, it can create the conditions to make it flourish. My own local council in Harlow has launched a big society team and is working with the umbrella Rainbow Services charity to nurture civic action in our town with over 160 smaller charities and community organisations. We must break the state monopoly on the provision of services. Instead of “Tesco charities” with £1 million budgets that have become indistinguishable from Government Departments, funds must cascade down to the grass roots. In the UK, just 6% of charities receive almost 90% of the total annual income, and much of that comes from the state, so I urge the Minister, as we open up billions of pounds of Government contracts, to give the fairest chance to the smallest charities.

We must also do more in partnership with the trade unions. Setting aside the Bob Crows and the militants for a moment, what are trade unionists, if not members of friendly societies and social entrepreneurs? I am a member of Prospect, and I believe that, as Conservatives, we should embrace sensible unions because, at their best, they are examples of the big society in action, as voluntary associations that work for their membership.

In conclusion, it was the architect of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who said:

“Vigour and abundance of voluntary action…, individually and in association with other citizens…, are the distinguishing marks of a free society.”

Social capital, people power and social entrepreneurs—this is the big society in action. As has been said, the big society is not new, but has been thriving for years. However, we need a Cabinet-level enforcer to drive implementation through Government, and we need an impact assessment for all new legislation on how it will help to build the big society. There are many other possibilities, however, such as turning the big society bank into a big credit union that could work with local credit unions at a grass-roots level, asking websites such as eBay and JustGiving to offer matching services for big society donations, or even helping communities to set up labour exchanges.

Last week, I attended a public meeting with a group called Harlow Council Watch. The people there were worried that the big society would be all about the great and the good, and large charities operating on a regional scale. The big society is not just a part of the national conversation. It will work only if it builds the little society as well. I hope that the Government’s policies are designed to reinvigorate the small charities and community groups—the little society that is the bedrock of social capital in the United Kingdom.

21:16

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I want to start by addressing the criticism of the big society that it breaches the principle of additionality—that it treads on the state’s turf and requires the public to perform do-it-yourself public services. The debate on additionality is not a new one. We started this debate by hearing about air ambulances, and if we go into any hospital around the country we will probably find that the curtains around the beds have been purchased by the League of Friends. Furthermore, many health charities are providing services, including patient and health care education, care and support. Mention those services to the general public, and we will get a very mixed reaction. Some people will think that the state is providing those services, some will think that it should be providing them, and others that the state is claiming that it is doing those services.

When charities breach that principle of additionality and step in to provide those services, it is they who get criticised. They are being criticised sometimes by their own organisations. The head office phones up a local branch that has just bought something for the local hospital and says, “You are letting the Government off the hook. This should be provided under a national service framework.” A focus is not put on what the state has, or has not, been doing, and there is very little focus on why the state has failed to deliver those services. I hope that a side effect of a debate about the big society will be that we get more focused on what the state should be doing.

We have a reality gap. We have an NHS constitution that is supposed to enshrine and guarantee treatments approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and in certain circumstances access to non-NICE-approved treatment. However, we know from our mailbags that that sometimes does not happen. We pay our taxes to support an education system that is supposed to provide education to every child according to their need, but the parent of a special needs child will know how hard it can be to get the right provision for their child. The list of what we want our local authorities to fund—whether flowerbeds or community centres—is year on year becoming less fulfilled. That is the case no matter what the colour of the Government of the time or, very often, the colour of local authority government.

I think that local and national Government need to do fewer things better. At a time when we are cutting services for people with dementia, we could probably do without the local street-naming team in my local authority. In areas where the Government take responsibility, they should be working to meet all the needs out there. In my local authority’s budget this year, under budget pressures, much was made of the ageing population and the prediction that, over the next five years, there would be 200 additional adult social care clients for whom the authority would have to provide services. However, there was not a squeak about the existing 1,500 people with dementia, but no access to services. If we are going to focus on and address that need, and close that gap, we have to enable charities to be on both the demand and the supply side of those services.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) mentioned, we need to create a level playing field. We need to ensure that charities hear about the opportunities for them to tender, and that when they submit bids according to best practice, having costed for full cost recovery, they are not the only bidder doing so. We need greater scrutiny of tenders to ensure that we are comparing like with like, and that organisations are not undercutting charities, only to pile on the costs once they have won a bid. There should be penalties for organisations that do that.

We should also allow organisations that are on approved provider rosters not to bid, without penalty, if they do not think that they are the best outfit for the job. Penalising people for not bidding is completely wrong. As we build capacity in the charities sector, I urge the Minister to look at organisations such as Community First that are already doing a tremendous amount of work in this area, and to give them some resources so that they can speed up their work.

We also need to build capacity in our communities. I want briefly to mention Wymering in my constituency, which has already been short-changed to the tune of £400,000 of section 106 money. Its community centre has been burned to the ground, but the resulting insurance money was not spent on those services. The historic buildings in the vicinity are continuously under threat, the most imminent case being that of the Wymering Arms, which will go before the local planning committee this Wednesday. We have a plan to take over some of those community buildings and refurbish those that are derelict. Some of them are listed buildings. There is great support for the plan from the community, but to date it has not really felt that it can step up and do those things. The people do not feel that they have the resources to do them, but if we were to introduce them to high-value donors, business leaders and charity fundraisers, that work could become possible. In addition to the big society enabling us to meet the wish-lists of our communities, which has never been achieved by any Government before, it should also be a catalyst to enable the Government to do their job better.

21:22

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing it and on shamelessly promoting the port of Dover throughout his opening address. Before I became a Member of this House, I knew that the port of Dover was important. After two months here, I knew that it was very important. After tonight, I know that it is perhaps the most important entity in the entire country, if not the entire world. I thank him for educating me on that.

There are some on the Opposition Benches who I believe also need educating, particularly having heard their rather thin arguments against the big society, including, first and foremost, that it lacks any clear definition. That charge was levelled by the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). We have heard many Members today speaking eloquently about community empowerment, about opening up public services and about social action. Those are very clear definitions of what the big society is about. I accept, however, that the Government need to get better at communicating this message succinctly, particularly when we are in front of left-wing journalists from the BBC or the newspapers. We have to roll it out in a snappy two or three-sentence version in order to get it right.

We have heard a great deal about the big society simply being a fig leaf for cuts, yet many Opposition Members have accepted that the Prime Minister was talking about the big society well before there was any obvious need for cuts of this size due to the profligacy of the previous Administration. The big society is about a great deal more than simply resourcing. It is about the way in which society is organised and the way in which organisations are structured. It is about getting rid of top-down command and control, and replacing it with the empowerment of individuals, families and communities. It has also been suggested that we are on some kind of ideological crusade to attack the state. We are not on any such crusade, but implicit in a belief in the big society is an acceptance that the state has, in part, failed, that it is not perfect and that it has its limitations.

I want to dwell briefly on some of the work that was carried out after the second world war by a gentleman called Michael Young, who might be familiar to some Opposition Members. He was one of the authors of the 1945 Labour party manifesto. He went into Bethnal Green in the east end of London and sought out the deprivation that was to be the subject of his study. He interviewed members of every 36th household in the area. He certainly found deprivation there, but he also found something even more important—something he had not expressly sought to find out. What he found was best exemplified by an interview with a young boy who lived outside the area, who came home from the local school and said that his teacher had asked him and all the other children to draw their families. He said, “I drew myself; I drew my mother; and I drew my father”, but all the other children had drawn their mothers and fathers, nannies and aunties, grannies and so forth. Of course, what he was led to enunciate at that point was the big society—the extended family, the communities living in the east end at that time.

The socialist top-down approach to that problem was to destroy it all, bulldoze it and build the high-rise buildings that the socialist planners wanted to build, yet many of them were subsequently destroyed—exploded in the ’70s and ’80s. It seems to me that one of the most important things to grasp about the big society is the need to get away from that command-and-control, “we know best for you” mentality and to empower individuals, families and communities to take those decisions for themselves. That is why I particularly welcome the Localism Bill as part of the big society idea. I will conclude there to allow other Members to speak.

21:26

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I welcome this debate, highlighting as it has the excellent community work done across constituencies that are represented on both sides of the House. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has recently returned to his place, on securing the debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister who has remained steadfastly in his place throughout the almost six hours of this debate.

I hope that the debate will serve to deter critics of the big society from making political points by wilfully misunderstanding what the big society is all about. Such attitudes denigrate and disrespect those who, day by day, help to make our society worth living in by giving communities a quality of life that would be otherwise unattainable. I use the phrase “quality of life” advisedly. For some years in the recent past, we have increasingly associated quality of life or success or someone’s individual value in our society too closely with material accumulation, social status, fashionable glitz and glamour, brash business attitudes, career ladder climbing and so forth.

Some of those measurements of success are not necessarily bad in and of themselves. If, however, they are used as disproportionate yardsticks of what it means for an individual to be successful and to have value in our society and for us to be a strong, healthy and successful society together, then I suggest that it is time for a robust re-evaluation of what quality of life means. The current debate about the big society across the country offers, if we grasp it, a real opportunity to do so. For that reason, I welcome today’s debate.

Striving to attain today’s so-called aspirational lifestyles, which are held up as exemplars particularly to our young people, sadly all-too-often involves not only disposable material possessions, but also disposable relationships. That poses the often raised question of whether, as a result, we are any happier or more fulfilled as a society today.

High levels of alcohol and drug abuse, self-harm, a lack of self-esteem, relationship breakdown and profound loneliness across every generation provide at least part of the answer to that question.

I believe that somewhere along the way, we have lost something of the essence of the values which really make a society work: values like care, commitment, sharing and a place where every individual is given the opportunity and the capacity to play their part, whatever it may be—a part for which they are uniquely skilled and that only they can play.

Somewhere along the way, too, we may have forgotten that our most basic human need is to be loved and to feel that we matter to someone or, ideally, to a group of people. Linked to that is the need for us to feel that within that group of people, we have a purpose and a role. Is a premier league footballer worth any more or less as a person than, Dave Mairs, who several times a week coaches in the Cheshire boys league and has for years supported, encouraged and cajoled—and sometimes had to discipline—a football team of young boys? I do not think so.

Why do I say all this now? I say it because I believe that the big society holds the key to many of our contemporary challenges. Our understanding of what success means in a strong, healthy and positive society, and the positive contribution that each individual can uniquely bring to it, is, I suggest, largely what the big society is all about.

21:30

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Every voluntary organisation and charity that I know relies on people of all political persuasions and none. I therefore regret the attempt by some Members on both sides of the House to make party-political claims for the voluntary sector. In my experience, some volunteers are members of political parties, but some—in fact, most—are not. However, the political parties of which we are members could be described as voluntary organisations. None of us would be Members of Parliament if it were not for volunteers, so let us give a hurrah for all the volunteers in our respective political parties.

Because we are short of time, I suggest that my colleagues read the report of the excellent Adjournment debate on the voluntary sector that I initiated about 10 years ago.

Finally, let me mention St Helena hospice in my constituency, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in April and which relies on 800 volunteers. Let me also mention the Colchester Gazette, which, along with Colchester Trinity rotary club, is inviting people to nominate community champions. I suggest that other local newspapers throughout the country do the same.

21:31

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Let me say in the short time available to me that I welcome the emphasis that the Government are rightly placing on the promotion of even more community action and volunteering, and their focus on enhancing such participation. We have had an incredible debate, which has raised the need to give recognition where it is due and to celebrate the long-standing culture of community engagement and participation throughout our country.

Regardless of who is in charge—at Government level, or even in our local town halls—and regardless of the financial climate, many organisations are clearly improving the quality of life of our constituents. I pay tribute to them for their sterling work, and the praiseworthy way in which they participate as individuals and give their time selflessly to making a tremendous difference to our communities and local lives. Shortage of time prevents me from naming them all, but I invite the Minister to visit my constituency and meet many of the people who work for them, as well as representatives of some of the businesses at the heart of my constituency which contribute through charitable giving and allowing their employees to work for those organisations as volunteers.

My constituency contains many vibrant organisations, including citizens advice bureaux covering the borough of Colchester and the district of Braintree and Maldon, and charities such as Brainwave, Home-Start, Crossroads Care, St John Ambulance, my local rotary club—Witham Lions club—Tiptree youth club and an organisation called Mid Essex Talking News. As I have said, businesses give money to and support such organisations, but Government could clearly do more to assist them.

I echo the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) in referring to the tremendous role played by local newspapers in publicising the importance of community engagement and local groups such as charities and voluntary organisations. They are part of the glue that binds many community groups together and an outlet for reports of engagement and participation.

Last week, the recess gave me a fantastic opportunity to meet groups in my constituency, which have been local champions when it comes to issues that matter to them for many years. We have heard much about the role of the state, and the essential rebalancing of the relationship between the state and community groups, but these organisations know their communities best. They do not need a state-run agency or a bureaucracy to determine the right outcomes for them, which is why I welcome the Government’s steps to empower communities further.

21:35

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing today’s debate on what is clearly an important issue. There has been a degree of cross-party consensus, but there are also a number of points on which we have diverged, and I shall deal with them shortly.

Although the Government coined the term the big society, they did not invent the concept. Many hon. Members have pointed to the fact that this is not a new idea. The truth is that for volunteers and for charitable and voluntary organisations across the country, the big society already exists and has done for a long time. They know that, because every day throughout the country they are delivering the big society in our communities. Indeed, much of the language of the big society simply builds on a rich tradition in this country of community, localism, co-operation and building a better society for all.

Many hon. Friends have highlighted that in their contributions. My hon. Friends the Members for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) highlighted the need for the state and civil society to work together to tackle social problems, improve services and empower our communities. They demonstrated an outstanding grasp of the need for voluntary sector organisations and communities to have a framework of support, and not to be just left on their own. We also heard a number of erudite speeches demonstrating our strong philosophical basis for encouraging active citizenship.

Many Government Members, including the hon. Members for Dover, for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), for Stourbridge (Margot James), for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), for Erewash (Jessica Lee), for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and for Battersea (Jane Ellison), rightly paid tribute to the excellent work undertaken by volunteers in their constituencies. However, they failed to grasp the notion that the state can facilitate voluntary activity and community enterprise. We heard only about the repressive nature of the state, not that it could support communities in being more vibrant.

The previous Labour Government understood the voluntary sector, particularly its expertise and ability to be flexible and innovative, and we worked hard to support it. How much we valued the sector is highlighted by the fact that in our 13 years in office we more than doubled funding to it and created the Office of the Third Sector—now the Office for Civil Society—in the Cabinet Office. Labour was not content to rest on its laurels, however. Before we left office, we set out radical plans for boosting funding, volunteers and asset transfers to the third sector. We also designed the social investment bank and launched the first social impact bonds. We used the asset register to begin identifying assets to transfer to the third sector, and we announced that we would mutualise British Waterways. We pioneered community service for young people, which was established as “v”, and began a census on volunteering so that areas would know about the nature and extent of volunteering locally.

The current Government are to some extent continuing what we started in office through their broad direction of travel, such as by encouraging volunteering, supporting and seeking to expand the number of social enterprises and third sector organisations, and looking at ways to enhance the role of mutuals and employee-owned companies. That is why we support the motion—encouraging a greater sense of community and more partnership with the voluntary sector is something we should all support.

Even before this Government took office, they trumpeted the big society, and in office they point to it as a central tenet of their policy agenda. Yet earlier this month, the Prime Minister had again to defend the notion against persistent criticism, even though he has declared the big society his central “mission”. Given the six years that he has apparently been thinking about this idea, one can only wonder why, in office, he is not clearer about how to execute it. There is a gaping chasm between the well-meaning intentions of the hon. Member for Dover and his motion, and the reality of his party’s economic policy.

When the Minister, whom we will hear from shortly, was asked two weeks ago on the radio if the big society was in trouble, he flatly denied it, saying:

“I don’t think there’s a problem”.

However, the truth is that the Government are in danger of undermining the big society if they do not pay more attention to three things, the first of which is developing an infrastructure of support for the voluntary and community sector. The Government have not given enough time for the voluntary sector and communities to develop new models of operation or to plan effectively for their futures in the new world. They should be working together in partnership with the voluntary sector and constructing frameworks of support, rather than adopting the “sink or swim” mindset we have seen so far.

The Opposition see a key role for social enterprises and mutuals in improving service delivery. This means supporting social enterprises and mutuals and helping them to improve service delivery, and seeing a key role for community organisers in helping communities to articulate their needs and shape services. The Opposition also recognise that new jobs can be grown, including in disadvantaged areas, in order to promote employment, and that this can be done through the social enterprise model. We see this as a partnership approach, with the state acting as a key player in helping voluntary activity to flourish. That contrasts with an approach, much seen of late from the Conservative party and demonstrated in a number of speeches today, that advocates a withdrawal of the state and a characterisation of it as overburdening and a barrier to voluntary activity. The state can sometimes act in a way that is not helpful, but that is not always the case, and it can be encouraged to behave differently.

[Damian Collins]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Very briefly, because we are running out of time.

[Damian Collins]

On that point, are there any areas of deregulation that the hon. Lady can identify where she thinks we should move back from the agenda established by the previous Government?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and we can always look at ways in which the state or central Government can better facilitate voluntary activity.

Our approach is based on the view that involving the voluntary and community sector more in public service delivery helps to create more responsive public services that are better geared to meet the needs of the communities they serve. This is not simply an ideological rejection of the state, as we often hear from the Conservatives and as exemplified in the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and others, which was not selected for discussion today. Our partnership model, therefore, does not require an abandonment of the belief that the state should be the ultimate safety net in delivering vital public services.

We, too, recognise the need to make commissioning more community-oriented, and we therefore welcome the debate that has already begun in government about how to commission services with greater involvement from local communities. This is an important step forward, although much of what has been written and said so far does not seem to reflect the complexities existing in our neighbourhoods and the diversity of voices they contain. It is essential that commissioning involves more than listening to those with the loudest voices.

We also recognise the need to expand philanthropy and individual generosity, but that should not be the whole story. We need a sensible alliance between Government and the voluntary sector to encourage entrepreneurial activity in a way that promotes social values and empowers our communities. Labour recognises that the Government are starting to do this with the big society bank—taking over our idea of a social investment bank—but we also know that it is not going to be operational until much later this year and that the money it will dispense will not make up for the huge amount being lost to the sector through cuts to central and local government funding. So the Government need to address how the big society is being undermined through the cuts

The Government also need to look at how the big society agenda is not really engaging with the equalities agenda. That is important, because communities do not start from a level playing field, and the Government need to do more to recognise that some of the cuts have fallen disproportionately on the poorest communities, which therefore need additional support.

In conclusion, we should all recognise that where we have unresponsive or poor public services, they should be changed and other providers brought in, but we also all need to recognise that the state has a role to play in mediating the vagaries of the market and tackling social injustice and inequality. We need the state and civil society to work together. Simply withdrawing state services and funding before leaving voluntary and community organisations to pick up the pieces will not make our society bigger or better.

21:46

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

We have heard 39 speeches—I did count them—which were often lofty, sometimes earthy and always interesting; I thank the Backbench Business Committee and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). In the short time available, I wish to make three quick points in response to an excellent debate.

First, I wish to express a personal conviction. I really believe that we have barely scratched the surface of what can be achieved in this country if we strike a more effective and balanced partnership between government, business and civil society, including active citizens in our communities who want to get more involved. That is what we are working towards, because we need a new approach to tackle the entrenched social challenges that we face. As many speakers have said, relying on big government and “Whitehall knows best” just has not worked well enough, and it must be time to make better use of the talents and resources of this country. Of course this will involve a big culture change and it will not happen overnight, which brings me to my second point.

The new approach requires strong leadership from government, and not a traditional top-down programme; to make this work we have to redistribute power in a bold and genuine way, to allow communities to take more control and to recast government so that it supports community action, rather than stifles it. That is now happening and it is being built on three core strands, the first of which is the transfer of real power to communities.

First, power is being transferred in the form of information. Whether we are talking about crime maps, departmental business plans or detailed breakdowns of local authority spending, our constituents already have more information than ever before on what is being done in their name. With that comes the power to act and challenge, and the Localism Bill offers people new rights and opportunities to take more control, not least in the planning process. That is being supported by a new attitude from government which asks, “How can we help?”, rather than saying, “You can’t do that.” That is why it was right to review the health and safety regulations and the vetting and barring regime. It was encouraging to see the Department for Communities and Local Government immediately set up a new bureaucracy-busting service and challenge communities to tell it what is getting in the way, and 140 communities have already engaged in that process.

The second strand of Government action is fundamental public service reform. Yes, we do believe that we can deliver better public services by opening up the market to competition and new providers, including social enterprises, mutuals and the voluntary sector. We do believe in giving communities and front-line professionals much greater freedom to meet local need. We also want to get the public more involved in shaping the services they use, whether that be through personal budgets or greater involvement in how resources are allocated and services are commissioned. We will soon be publishing a White Paper on public service reform, which will set out our plans in more detail. All I will say for now is that when one visits social enterprises such as Zest in Sheffield, which is delivering public services in a fantastically fresh way, the two senior nurses who have set up their own social enterprise in Leicester or a group of public agencies in Calderdale working together to shape a new service on debt advice, one has a strong sense of how much better things could be if we gave people at the sharp end much greater freedom and responsibility.

The third strand of action is about encouraging more social action in our communities. Of course we are not inventing anything new: this is about building on the fantastic work done in constituencies across the country by dedicated people who know the value of giving time and/or money to help others. We want to encourage a step change in attitudes to giving both time and money. Our recent Green Paper set out how government can help in traditional and non-traditional ways, such as by setting up new match funding schemes to encourage local endowments and private sector support for volunteering projects or by encouraging civil servants to get more involved in community service, thereby setting an example to other employers. The national citizen service has enormous potential to connect our teenagers with their power to make a contribution to the community. Our Communities First programme will give more deprived neighbourhoods access to a new grant programme that will help them to implement their own plans, supported by community organisers whose job will be to build local networks and leadership, encouraging people to come together and take action.

[Albert Owen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

I am afraid that I have no time for interventions if I am to give the last Back Bencher the chance to wind up the debate.

We are going further than the three strands I have discussed. The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) talked about business having a bigger role. On 2 December, the Prime Minister made an important speech to business, setting out a new deal, Every Business Commits, challenging business to step up and play a bigger part in helping to tackle the social challenges of the day. Since then, the biggest banks have pledged £200 million to help to capitalise the big society bank, and businesses in the community are actively developing, in response to that speech, a network of business connectors—individuals who can make connections between local businesses and local organisations that need support.

That brings me to the role of the voluntary and community sector and the need to support it through what is, as many hon. Members have pointed out, an extremely difficult and challenging time. We should not forget that the majority of the voluntary sector does its valuable work with no help from the taxpayer at all, but many of our constituents will be surprised to learn that the sector receives almost £13 billion in public money, before the benefits of gift aid are counted. Faced with the monstrous legacy of a deficit that costs us £120 million a day in interest alone, we have always been clear that the sector cannot be immune from the need to find savings on that scale.

I know from my everyday contact and conversations with the sector that it is most anxious about cuts at the local level. We cannot control local authorities, but we have given a very strong steer that we do not expect them to cut the sector disproportionately. Many local authorities, such as Reading and Wiltshire, have confirmed that they will be maintaining or even increasing their investment. However, many have taken a different course. With our new transparency requirements, local communities will be able to see how their council has responded to the tough choices before it and to make their own judgments.

We are not laissez-faire about this issue. We see the voluntary and community sector as a key partner in this new partnership and we are actively trying to help it manage a very difficult transition by making it easier to run a social enterprise or voluntary sector organisation. Lord Hodgson will soon report to me with ideas on how to cut red tape for small charities, and we will continue to invest in the infrastructure that exists to support front-line organisation, trying to make it more effective. We have set aside £100 million as a transition fund to give a lifeline to the organisations that are most vulnerable to cuts. We are actively considering what we can do to encourage giving and a White Paper will be published after the Budget.

We are in the process of setting up the big society bank with £200 million of capital from the private sector and an expected £400 million from dormant bank accounts. Our recently published social investment strategy document sets out the role we see for it in growing the social investment market, thereby making it easier for social entrepreneurs to access capital. We want to make it easier for charities and social enterprises to work with government and we will soon publish our response to a consultation on the changes to the commissioning process needed to level the playing field and reduce the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy in the system.

There is no getting away from the short-term pain that a number of charities and social enterprises are feeling, but we want to work with them and help them to take advantage of the serious long-term opportunities that the big society agenda offers. They include the chance to deliver more public services, the chance to mobilise people and win arguments at the local level about what priorities should be and the chance to benefit from the time and money that we hope people will give more of in future. The Government are doing a huge amount to create the right conditions for this rebalancing of power and responsibility.

My final point is that this is not a Government programme, however important our lead is. It depends on a grass-roots local response from organisations and individuals who see a chance to do things in a better way. It is too early to say how high or far the bird that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) described will fly. It will take time, but we believe that we are going with the grain of what people want—more open, efficient government, better connected communities with people looking out for each other, more respect for the voice of the citizen, giving people real power to make a difference to the things that they care about, and a greater sense of togetherness at a tremendously challenging time for the country.

Whether we call it big society or stronger society, there ought to be more common ground on the need for a new approach, one based on a wholly positive vision of a better partnership between all elements of society, and a genuine belief in what people can achieve if they are trusted and given the power to make a difference to the things that they care about.

21:55

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is rare to have three mentions of John F. Kennedy, or for the philosophers Hobbes, Paine and Burke to feature so heavily in such a debate, for T. S. Eliot to be quoted at will, and for Deng Xiao Ping and Gulliver to slide in at the end, as though important to that part of the debate. It is meant to be about free schools and the Localism Bill. The internet creates an environment that makes it possible for this option to be the way ahead, and for a national citizens service, as well as all the other matters that we are concerned with.

My hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and for Crawley (Henry Smith) spoke at length about their background in help for hospice care. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey talked about his seven years working at a hospice which had 90% of its support from the public. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said that big government must be an enabling Government. Four Members took us on an intellectual high road. The hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), and my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) traded frameworks, criticism, 300 years of history and the extent to which Paine did or did not belong to them. It was an education, to say the least.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central accepted that the Labour Government were over-regulatory and over-zealous in their last few years. It was noticeable that the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) made clear her love of the organisation but posed constructive alternatives, as did the hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and for Leicester West (Liz Kendall). They all spoke at length and with great bravery and concern of their views on the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) came up with a couple of prize comments, such as that we should trust people, as they are more than capable. She wanted a competent state, not a flabby state.

This was a cross-party debate. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) described how some of the regulations had been relaxed. The Government have made progress. Only two weeks ago I held a debate in Hexham, where 150 people came to talk about the big society. Ten organisations fronted up and several deserve particular citing. I name just one—Humshaugh village shop, which won the Countryside Alliance award for the whole of the north-east for the way it went forward.

We are grateful to the Backbench Business Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) deserves great credit for bringing the matter before the House. Interestingly, he was supported by Members from all parts of the House. Everybody should support the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House supports the Big Society, seeking stronger communities where power is decentralised and social action is encouraged.

[Mr Speaker]

We come now to the Adjournment. There may be a pregnant pause at this point, but I do not want to keep the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) waiting for very long. I should be grateful if Members who are leaving the Chamber would do so quickly and quietly, extending the same courtesy to the hon. Lady as they would want to be extended to them in similar circumstances.

Library Services (Walsall South)

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

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

22:00

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this Adjournment debate about the libraries in Walsall South. I also thank our own House of Commons Library, which is staffed by qualified professionals, not volunteers. They are experts in their field, and the whole House values the service that they provide.

“Once upon a time” is the phrase used in countless books that children pick up in a library, and for many the library is their first encounter with a book. For parents with young children, it is a social place where they can meet other parents. Children have access to books and toys, librarians suggest books to try and some have even started clubs for young children. For older children, staff run “Children in Summer” reading challenges.

The National Literacy Trust surveyed more than 17,000 pupils and it reported earlier this month that those who use the library are twice as likely to be above-average readers as their peers who do not—18% compared with 9.5%. Furthermore, those who visit libraries are more than twice as likely to read outside class every day—47% compared with 22%. Indeed, Members might be aware of a recent poll, showing that seven of the top 10 most borrowed authors are children’s authors.

If we carry on with the threats to our libraries, we will deny the next generation not only the right to be whatever they want to be in their imagination, but their access to knowledge through books. A book first encountered in a library might then be bought as a personal favourite, just as I did when I discovered with my daughter Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”. If there is to be joined-up government, the Secretary of State for Education should also be concerned about libraries disappearing or changing. Nationally, almost 750,000 people visit a library every day, and, according to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, that costs each person through local and national taxation 40p a week.

I shall touch on the statutory duties, because enshrined in the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 is

“the duty of every library authority to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof”.

There is also a duty to encourage adults and children to make full use of the library service, and the relevant Secretary of State has a duty to promote the improvement of libraries. Does the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport have plans to repeal the 1964 Act?

The local authority must also make a statement of what the service is trying to achieve, along with a description of local needs, including the general and specific needs of adults and children who live work and study in the area. So, you can imagine, Mr Speaker, the outcry in Walsall South when the council earmarked six libraries for closure.

In Walsall South there are libraries at Pheasey, Pleck, which serves Alumwell, Darlaston and south Walsall, and the central library is also in my constituency. This issue is not just about books; it is about a way of life and what the libraries represent. With unemployment increasing, they are needed more than ever as a support for development and new skills, and as a free public space for community cohesion.

That is what I found on 5 February outside Pleck library, where the local people wanted to present a petition—now 650 signatures strong—to save their library. Young people, senior citizens, people in work or resting, the local vicar and adults and children with diverse backgrounds and interests, from chess to internet shopping, were there. All were there using the library and protesting against its closure. Inside were a grandparent reading to a two-year-old, a hub of local people engaged in activity, and Councillor Dennis Anson’s advice surgery. I, too, have held advice surgeries in the library at Pheasey and in the central library.

In all the libraries in Walsall, there were more than 1 million visitors and more than 1 million books lent out in 2008 to 2010. The Minister has said that people have a right to campaign for their local libraries. Clearly, the council has failed to consult and to make an assessment of local needs.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has secured this Adjournment debate. Does she accept that there is also much concern in my constituency about the possibility that a number of libraries will be closed there? In view of the very large-scale cuts, announced last Friday, that are now being undertaken by the council, does she agree that there is a fear that further libraries will be closed, be it in her constituency or in mine, and that we are bound to be very concerned about that on behalf of our constituents?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree. There is a threat of closures across the whole of Walsall, including in his constituency and that of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd).

Consultation should be at a local level with the staff and the users, and it should not just be about how the service is changed to make savings or about how we use different technology. A few days after the Pleck protest, the council said the libraries would be safe for a year, but who knows what is in store for the future? An inquiry into Wirral’s library service in 2009 said there was strong case for reviewing the decision on services earmarked for closure when they were located in an area of significant deprivation and when they had interdependent links with schools and children’s centres. That could be a description of almost all these libraries. In Walsall, the librarians have to travel from one end of the borough to another, and the cost of travel time and schedules should be looked at as part of the consultation with the staff.

So what of the future? My constituents want libraries to be in buildings that are stand-alone, not part of another service, because they are places to work, to revise—just as I did in Richmond library—and use reference books, and to become skilled in information technology and to discover different types of music. My constituents want the staff to be professionally qualified people who provide them with expertise and support. Volunteers like Hitesh, who set up a chess club for young children, have their place, but they too are not free and would cost money to manage; all volunteers need supervision and training. My constituents want their libraries to be needs-driven, not demand-led, and to remain free. If libraries did charge, this would be a breach of the statutory duty to provide books free of charge for those who live and work in the area. My constituents said to me that they do not recall the closures as being part of any political party’s manifesto; they knew nothing about this at the election.

I could have come up with many statistics to make the case for keeping all the libraries, but it is about more than that because libraries are part of our heritage and part of the fabric of society; people have paid their taxes for services such as parks, hospitals and schools for the common good. Everyone, I am sure, has been into a public library at some time in their life. They are not just about borrowing the popular books. The most borrowed classic author was Roald Dahl, but Jane Austen and Shakespeare are also on the list. When the first library in Manchester was opened in 1852, Charles Dickens said that libraries

“will prove a source of pleasure and improvement in the cottages, the garrets and the cellars of the poorest of our people.”

I would add that they are not just for the poor but for everyone.

There are, on one count, 59 Members of this House who have written books. I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you will remember the joke: what is black and white and read all over? Yes, a book, and one hopes those books by my hon. Friends will be read all over—in all the public libraries. Sadly, the Minister is not on that list yet, although his esteemed parents are, but he did have the title of librarian as vice-president of the Oxford Union.

Finally, I would like to remind the Minister of famous librarians, who include politicians Golda Meir and Mao Tse-tung, the philosopher David Hume, and others such as Lewis Carroll, Benjamin Franklin and Jacob Grimm. As with all the best of Grimm’s stories, I hope that this one has a happy ending. With apologies to Mr Grimm, I would end as follows: “So the children and adults laughed and cheered as the Minister said, ‘Have no fear—your libraries are safe for the future’, and everyone in the kingdom was glad. The end.”

22:09

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am grateful for the chance to respond to the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I am grateful to her for calling for this Adjournment debate, which allows me to talk specifically about library provision in Walsall and about library provision in general, about which she made a number of points.

I begin by saying how much I regret that I am not on her list of 59 authors. I am afraid that I took the more relaxed approach to authorship in deciding to be an editor rather than an author. I have edited three volumes: “A Blue Tomorrow”, “The Blue Book on Health” and “The Blue Book on Transport”. “A Blue Tomorrow”, which as you know, Mr Speaker, was the start of the process of Conservative modernisation, reached the dizzy heights of the 20,046th best seller on Amazon. I will, perhaps when I leave my ministerial position or when I leave this House, become an author when I publish my memoirs. I have already thought of the title: “Fun While It Lasted”.

The hon. Lady made a number of specific points about libraries. I share with her and the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who is in the Chamber to support her, a passion for libraries. I am a champion of public libraries and I think that we all share a desire to see libraries thrive and survive not only in this tough economic climate, but for ever and a day. We recognise that libraries are neutral spaces and community hubs where people can go. They are not just places for lending books, although that is their essential central function, but places where people can access the internet and music, as the hon. Lady said, and where toddlers, youngsters and adults can access education and information.

To have a sensible debate about libraries, one has to define its terms. One cannot pretend that no library should ever close. In opposition, I never tied myself to a position of opposing every proposed library closure. The previous Government’s proposals on the modernisation of libraries, which were published last March, a month before they called the election, stated that

“the Government recognises that library closures may sometimes be necessary, but closures must form part of a strategic approach to service provision”.

We share that position.

The hon. Lady opened her remarks by praising the excellent service of the House of Commons Library. She implied that it is an excellent service because it does not use volunteers. As I am sure she is aware, more than 16,000 people across the country volunteer in their local libraries. I am sure she is also aware that the previous Government’s document that was published just in March last year stated:

“All libraries should consider how best to attract, nurture and utilise volunteers, to complement their workforce.”

Again, we share that position. Volunteers are an important element of library provision, but they must never take the place of professionals and must work with them.

What do we mean by a professional? During the important debate that we have had on libraries throughout the country for the past few months, an impression has perhaps been given that libraries should be staffed only by professional librarians. The Government’s position is that professionals should work in libraries, but that they do not necessarily all have to be professional librarians. The previous Government’s review of public libraries stated:

“Library services are best when staffed by a mixture of professionals including librarians and people qualified for work in other fields.”

Given the advent of technology and the provision of community services, it is important to have a mix of professionals in our library services.

Before the hon. Lady spoke specifically about library provision in Walsall, she asked whether the Government plan to repeal the statutory provision for libraries contained in the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. I can tell her categorically that we have no plans to do so. The previous Government did indeed put that statutory provision up for consultation when they reviewed their library plans, but 80% of respondents said that they supported its continued use. The statutory duty remains a very important safety net for the provision of libraries.

Let us be under no illusions about the fact that the library service has suffered over the past decade or so. The number of visits to libraries and the number of adults borrowing books have dropped, and library provision throughout the country has been patchy. It is a local service, and it is up to local authorities to provide a good and comprehensive library service, but some are better than others. The power that I and the Secretary of State have is the statutory duty, which allows us to intervene in the most extreme cases.

One of the things of which I am most proud is that in opposition I encouraged the then Secretary of State to intervene in the case of the Wirral, where the closure of more than half the libraries was proposed. Thanks to that intervention, not only were the library closures halted, but, even more importantly, the report that was produced by Sue Charteris set out some important guidelines on how local authorities should go about their statutory duty. I genuinely believe that those guidelines have put a brake on the number of library closures being proposed. Indeed, I am confident that most local authorities are taking their duties under the 1964 Act very seriously and are examining the Wirral guidelines closely before taking decisions. Library provision in Walsall is no exception to that rule.

Of course, difficult choices are having to be made. Walsall council, like councils up and down the country, is tackling the legacy of the budget deficit left to us by the previous Government. We are having to reduce spending, which is leading to very difficult choices having to be made, and Walsall council is no exception. However, I believe that it is approaching the provision of the public library service in a positive way. I am told, for example, that it plans to invest more than £200,000 in radio frequency identification systems in libraries, which will allow people to check out library books and check them back in again without a librarian having to be present, delivering substantial administrative savings. There is also the possibility of sharing services with other library authorities in the region, an option that I believe is currently being discussed and that I am keen to see encouraged throughout the country.

What is encouraging about the situation in Walsall is that the questions being asked are not about how services can be cut and branches closed but about how services can be maintained and improved, with branches kept open even on a reduced budget. Indeed, I believe that the local authority has announced that there will be no branch closures in the next year, because it has chosen to consult the public on the way forward. I know that the hon. Members present this evening will lead that consultation, hand in hand with the local authority.

The public, whether they are library users or not, will be fully involved in the decision-making process in Walsall, and they will look to their civic leaders to guide them in that process. I understand that the consultation will involve traditional methods, as well as discussions on social networking sites and even by text message. Walsall council appears to be a thoroughly modern local authority, and I do not think many would disagree that that is an admirable attitude to adopt when looking to address budget reductions.

It is all very well for people to talk about their fears for the future of the library service, but I hope that the hon. Member for Walsall South will embrace in good faith the approach that Walsall library is taking. I hope that when she works with her local authority on the future of the library service, she will look around her at the myriad good examples up and down the country of fantastic, forward-looking, dynamic library authorities.

In the previous debate on the big society, I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) say that it had been a cross-party debate, and I believe that the debate about libraries should be such a debate. We should recognise and celebrate the good practice of local authorities, whatever their political complexion. For example, Barking and Dagenham council, which is not as far as I am aware a Conservative local authority, has announced that rather than cutting and closing library branches, it will review its service to explore where efficiencies can be made. I am told that the decision to spare the library service from closures has galvanised enthusiasm in the community, with more volunteers coming forward.

Slough has put its library service out to tender and Essex county council is now due to help to run that service, which will reduce Slough’s administration costs. Last September in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, work began to transform the site of an old cinema into a new library learning centre. In Luton, the new Marsh Farm library opens in just over a month, having been relocated to the local school.

Authorities around the country have library construction and refurbishment projects on the go. Of course, that is happening in places where a review of the library estate may result in fewer library buildings overall, but, like the previous Government, we have always been clear that closures do not signal an automatic breach of the 1964 Act. Sometimes a library authority will close or consider closing a library to ensure a more efficient service in its area.

Leeds, which again is not a Conservative authority, has just consulted on such proposals. Following a strategic assessment of its service, the council proposed redistributing services to provide much better value for money and an improved service offer. As its plans put the viability of a number of low-use, high-cost, small buildings into question, the authority engaged in a meaningful consultation with its communities, so that everybody understood what is proposed and how it could affect them.

Members of the London Libraries Consortium are achieving better value for money. Shared contracts have saved them roughly £1.5 million over five years. Havering, the lead authority in the consortium, has extended opening hours within existing budgets. Being part of that consortium means that those boroughs have 148 branches and nearly 6 million books in stock. With no tender process, no legal fees and support from shared specialists, new partners in the consortium save nearly £50,000.

The fact that authorities are improving their library buildings demonstrates that I am not the only person who still believes not only that our public library service can survive the current climate, but that it can blossom during and after it.

[Mr Winnick]

I am grateful for the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who initiated the debated. If the future of libraries in the borough that my hon. Friend and I represent turns out to be somewhat different and less optimistic than the Minister has stated—let us hope not—and if library closures are proposed over the next 12 or 18 months, can we come back to him and meet him, with a delegation if necessary? Obviously, as my hon. Friend has said, this is very serious issue indeed.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am delighted to meet any Member of the House who wants to discuss their local library service. As I said, my first priority is excellent local library services across the country. I believe that the key to that is sharing best practice across local authorities. I truly admire how Walsall is going about its business, because it is genuinely consulting and not rushing to judgment. It is determined to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for the people of Walsall, which takes its culture very seriously. I was privileged to visit its new art gallery to see its superb collection. I do not want to reinforce the impression that I am an entirely frivolous figure, but my abiding memory of my visit is the fact people in the lift are told what floor they are on by the voice of Noddy Holder, a former resident of Walsall—[Interruption.] I am delighted that you know with which band he plays, Mr Speaker.

Such innovation is going on elsewhere. In Barnsley, for example, a new lift library is opening at Great Houghton later this year in a building that will co-locate a GP practice and a pharmacy, and facilities for district nursing, adult and social services. I heard what the hon. Member for Walsall South said earlier about the need for libraries to be libraries, but I also passionately believe that co-locating with other community services can secure a library’s future. Indeed, having a library in a local building can secure that building’s future.

Stoke’s local service centre and library is also a fine example of what can happen when services are based in a single building. The centre incorporates training and conference rooms and a customer contact facility. I could go on. I could talk about how Windsor and Maidenhead is not closing its libraries but turning all 12 of them into a community service.

Let me also say something about the national debate about library closures. At times it has become very passionate, which is completely understandable. In a slightly perverse way, it is welcome because it reminds not just hon. Members but local councillors how passionately local people care about their libraries. Perhaps it reminds all of us not to neglect a service that perhaps we have taken for granted in the past.

There is genuine work going on behind the scenes. It cannot always be the subject of a press release or statement, but the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council works with a range of local authorities. I will not name them here, but those local authorities have hit the headlines with the number of headline closures that they are proposing, and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is having a significant influence on those authorities. I have received calls asking me or the Secretary of State to call in particular proposals. The reason we have resisted that is that we are confident that the MLA is engaging with those local authorities and working with them before they reach a final decision.

May I use this opportunity to put on the record my support and admiration for the leadership of Roy Clare, the chief executive of the MLA? He has been a fine public servant. He served the previous Government incredibly well, thoughtfully and with energy and dedication. Few people in the country know and understand the library service better than he does. I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with him in government.

I said repeatedly in opposition and many more times in government that I am a champion of libraries. I stand by that. My first speech as a Minister was on libraries. My first initiative as a Minister, long before library closures became the subject of national debate, was to put in place the future libraries programme, which is designed to share best practice with local authorities and to raise the profile of library services with local authorities. Campaigners are right to hold their councils to account if they think what is happening in their community is wrong or unfair, but I am confident that local authorities will listen and work closely with the MLA and that, despite some of the pictures of doom and gloom that we read about in the press across the country, in many local authorities there is a thriving, innovative local library service.

I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me the chance to talk about libraries in the Chamber. She is absolutely right to bring to the attention of the House her concerns about the future of library provision in her community. Let us have a sensible and reasoned debate about library provision. Let us not rule out for ever any closure of any library, provided that it is in context and part of a strategic overview. Let us not do down the work of volunteers—the tens of thousands who work in our libraries. Let us have a range of professionals working in our libraries. Let us have libraries that are lending books, helping to educate children and adults, providing safe community spaces, access to technology and to council services. Let us work to encourage local authorities to see libraries not just as an add-on but as central to their provision. As I say, I am confident that that is the case in the vast majority of local authorities up and down the country. Let us tell the good stories about libraries, while maintaining a watchful eye on what is happening in some of the more difficult cases.

Question put and agreed to.

22:29

House adjourned.

Written Ministerial Statements

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

Monday 28 February 2011

ECOFIN (15 February 2011)

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

The Economic and Financial Affairs Council was held in Brussels on 15 February 2011. The following items were discussed:

Economic Governance

The Council held a first discussion on a package of legislative measures intended to strengthen economic governance in the EU, particularly in the euro area, in order to address the challenges posed by the sovereign debt crisis, and prevent the emergence of similar problems in the future, while fully respecting the provisions in the UK’s protocol to the treaty. In line with the deadlines set by the European Council, the presidency’s intention is to reach agreement on a general approach on all six proposals at the 15 March ECOFIN.

Savings Taxation Directive and Anti-fraud Agreements with Third Countries

The Council held an orientation debate on proposals to strengthen the provisions of the savings directive on the taxation of savings interest, and on anti-fraud and tax information exchange agreements with Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Switzerland. The Government support the presidency’s aim to maintain momentum on these proposals, so as to enable the Council to make progress as soon as possible.

Preparation of the European Council (24-25 March 2011)

a) Macro-economic and fiscal guidance

The Council adopted conclusions on macro-economic and fiscal guidance for the EU, under the new European semester. The Government believe the reform priorities set out in the conclusions are important and necessary steps to help promote economic growth in the EU and its member states.

b) Appointment of an Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank

Ministers adopted a recommendation on the nomination of Peter Praet (Belgium) as an executive board member of the European Central Bank to succeed Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, whose term of office expires on 31 May.

Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact

The Council took note of a communication from the Commission assessing action taken by Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland and Denmark in order to bring their government deficits below 3% of GDP. It was agreed that these member states had taken effective action regarding their deficits, and that no further steps under the EU’s excessive deficit procedure were required at present.

Preparation of the G20 Meeting of Finance Ministers and Governors (18-19 February)

The Council endorsed EU terms of reference in preparation for a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and central bank governors to be held in Paris on 18-19 February. Discussions are expected to focus on the global economy and the G20 framework for growth, the reform of the international monetary system, commodities, financial regulation, and other issues such as development.

Discharge procedure in respect of the implementation of the 2009 EU budget

The Council adopted a recommendation to the European Parliament on the discharge to be given to the Commission for implementation of the EU’s general budget for 2009. The Dutch, Swedish and UK delegations, withheld their consent on the discharge. This marks a step change in the UK Government’s approach to financial management in the EU; the Government consider it unacceptable that the European Court of Auditors has not been able to grant a positive statement of assurance on the EU budget as a whole for the 16th year in succession.

Together with the Netherlands and Sweden, the Government also submitted a joint declaration, setting out concrete actions that would improve financial management (see attached).

Budget guidelines for 2012

The Council adopted conclusions setting out their priorities for the EU’s general budget for 2012, which will serve as the basis for negotiation with the European Parliament and the Commission later this year. The conclusions emphasise the need to take into account economic and budgetary constraints at the national level. The Government believe that the efforts made to curb the EU budget’s growth in 2011 must be stepped up for the 2012 budget.

Joint declaration signed by the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom

With reference to:

The European Court of Auditors’ annual report on implementation of the 2009 EU budget;

Discharge to be given to the Commission in respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2009;

Draft Council recommendation 5891/11 FIN 47 PE-L 14, + ADD 1, + ADD 2;

The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom are concerned that:

For the 16th year in succession, the European Court of Auditors has been unable to grant a positive unqualified statement of assurance on the EU budget as a whole;

The slow pace of reforms to the financial management of EU funds is detrimental to the credibility of the EU budget as a whole.

The Netherlands, Sweden and United Kingdom highlight that independent EU-level audit is a crucial function and we therefore strongly support the work of the European Court of Auditors;

The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom agree with the European Court of Auditors that improving the quality of spending should be a high priority in order to attain significantly better results in the annual report on the 2010 budget.

The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom want to see concrete steps towards achieving the following specific objectives before the Council debates discharge of the 2010 budget:

Member states are responsible for implementing the majority of funds from the EU budget in co-operation with the Commission. Member states are responsible for conducting checks and for putting in place an effective and efficient control system. As part of a closer dialogue with member states, the Commission is invited to make proposals and to strengthen member state responsibility. Member states should account for the administration of EU funds at national level, including the proper functioning of internal control systems;



For reasons of transparency and in order to incentivise sound financial management, member states’ annual summaries should be made publicly available. At the same time member states should be obliged to provide analysis of financial management data as an integral part of the annual summaries;



In support of a risk-based approach to auditing, a more structured dialogue between the Court of Auditors, the Commission and member states is necessary. The Commission should bring forward proposals to enable a stronger focus on the audit of larger projects and institutions which have a proven track record of risk.

The forthcoming negotiations of the financial regulation provide an opportunity to take forward these proposals.

Counter-Terrorist Asset-Freezing Regime

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)]

The Government are committed to reporting quarterly on the operation of the UK’s terrorist asset-freezing regime. We believe this is essential to ensure transparency and accountability of the regime. The Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 has enshrined in law the commitment to report quarterly to Parliament on the operation of the regime mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1373.

This report covers the period October to December 2010¹. It is the last to cover the operation of the regime under the Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order 2009, which was repealed on 17 December when the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act came into force and it also covers the first two weeks of the operation of the new Act.

The new Act strengthens civil liberties safeguards and makes the new regime fairer, more proportionate and more transparent.

A copy of the Act can be found on the HM Treasury’s website:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/fin_sanctions_terrorist.htm

This report also covers the operation of the UN al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime.

As of 31 December 2010, a total of just under £280,000² of funds relating to terrorism were frozen in the UK. This covers funds frozen under the UK’s domestic terrorist asset-freezing regime, mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1373, and also funds frozen under the UN al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime, mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1267.

(1) UK’s Domestic Terrorist Asset-freezing Regime

As of 31 December 2010, a total of 91 accounts containing just under £140,000 were frozen in the UK under the domestic terrorist asset-freezing regime mandated by UNSCR 1373.

Operation of the Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order 2009 (prior to 17 December 2010)

Asset-freezing designations

In the quarter October to December 2010, the Treasury gave no new directions under the 2009 order.

Reviews under the 2009 Order

The Treasury keeps domestic asset-freezing cases under review and completed 38 reviews in this quarter. As a result of these 38 reviews, six persons had their designations revoked.

Licensing

Maintaining an effective licensing system is important to ensure the overall proportionality and fairness of the asset-freezing regime, whether the individuals concerned are subject to an asset freeze in accordance with a UN or EU listing, or domestic terrorism legislation. A licensing framework is put in place for each person on a case-by-case basis. The key objective of the licensing system is to strike an appropriate balance between minimising the risk of diversion of funds to terrorism and meeting the human rights of affected persons and their families. Licences contain appropriate controls to protect against the risk of the diversion of funds for terrorist finance.

Four licences were issued this quarter in relation to four persons subject to an asset freeze under the 2009 order.

In addition to issuing licences relating to a specific person, the Treasury may also issue general licences, which apply to all persons designated under a particular regime or regimes. Licences are granted where there is a legitimate need for such transactions to proceed and where they can proceed without giving rise to any risk of terrorist finance.

One general licence was issued this quarter to allow third parties to pay a designated person’s legal expenses under both the Act and the al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime.

No licences were varied or revoked this quarter.

Legal Challenges

Two legal challenges against designations made under the 2009 order were ongoing in the last quarter.

Operation of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 (after 17 December 2010)

The Act contains a transitional provision that ensures that all designations and licences made under the 2009 order remain valid as final designations under the Act until 17 March 2011. All UK asset freezes are therefore currently under review to consider whether they should be renewed under the new Act. The review process will be completed by 17 March 2011.

No new designations or licences were made under the powers of the Act between 17 December and the end of the quarter.

The Independent Reviewer

Under the Act the Treasury is required to appoint an independent reviewer to review the operation of the domestic terrorist asset-freezing regime. The independent reviewer will report on the first nine months of the regime and every 12 months thereafter.

The Treasury has decided to appoint David Anderson QC to the role of Independent Reviewer. He has recently been appointed by the Home Office as the independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation.

(2) UN al-Qaeda and Taliban Asset-Freezing Regime

The UN al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime is implemented in the UK through EC Regulation 881/2002. Enforcement measures are provided for in the UK’s al-Qaeda and Taliban (Asset-Freezing) Regulations 2010.

As of 31 December 2010, a total of 112 accounts containing just under £140,000³ were frozen in the UK under the al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime.

Designations

During this quarter, the EU added five people to its list made under EC Regulation 881/2002, implementing the UN al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime established under UNSCR 1267.

Licences

One licence was issued this quarter in relation to one person subject to an asset freeze under the al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime.

No specific licences were varied or revoked this quarter. The general licence referred to above also applies to the UNSCR 1267 regime.

Proceedings

In the quarter October to December 2010, no proceedings were taken for breaches of the prohibitions of the 2009 order, the Act or the al-Qaeda and Taliban (Asset-Freezing) Regulations.

¹ The detail that can be provided to the House on a quarterly basis is subject to the need to avoid the identification, directly or indirectly, of personal or operationally sensitive information.

² This figure reflects the most updated account balances available and includes approximately $64,000 of suspected terrorist funds frozen in the UK. This has been converted using exchange rates as of 12/01/11.

³ Includes approximately $64,000 of suspected terrorist funds in the UK.

Social Housing

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

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

I am today publishing a paper which sets out the next steps in the Government’s reform of the social housing system, in light of the responses we have received to our policy document, “Local decisions; a fairer future for social housing”, published in November last year. The paper which I am publishing today also contains a summary of those responses and a copy has been placed in the Library of the House.

The reforms to social housing which are being taken forward in the Localism Bill will give local authorities far greater freedom and flexibility in the types of tenancies they can grant to social housing tenants; in the way they allocate their social housing; and in how they discharge their main homelessness duty. The reforms will also significantly improve mobility for social tenants. The reforms to tenure will only affect new social tenancies. We will ensure that the security and rights of existing social tenants continue to be protected in law.

I am publishing the response earlier than the usual three-month deadline from the end of consultation as I believe it will be useful to inform debate on the social housing provisions in the Bill.

The response to the consultation was overwhelming. Nearly 700 responses were received from individuals and organisations. There was a very strong response from local authorities and other social landlords who, in the main, welcomed the new freedoms and flexibilities which the Government are giving them.

The Localism Bill will give the Secretary of State the power to issue a direction to the regulator of social housing on a tenancy standard and a direction on mobility. I am taking the opportunity presented through the paper I am publishing today to set out the Government’s thinking on what we believe should be contained in both of these directions. I intend to publish a full technical draft of the directions on tenure and mobility later this year, when they will be subject to a full consultation.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Constitution Committee’s eighth report summarised its inquiry into the Bill and I am grateful to the Committee for the careful scrutiny it has given the Bill. Today the Government have responded to the Committee’s report by means of a Command Paper which has been laid before both Houses of Parliament.

Rural Development Programme for England

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I am today announcing a series of changes I will be making to the operation and delivery of the socio-economic elements of the rural development programme for England 2007-13 (RDPE), which are currently delivered by the regional development agencies.

Future responsibility for delivery of support for farming and forestry competitiveness, diversification of the rural economy and rural quality of life under axes 1 and 3 of the RDPE, and for management of the community-led Leader approach, will transfer from the eight existing RDAs to DEFRA. This will ensure continuity and consistency of delivery for customers, and compliance with the relevant European regulations.

As responsibility transfers to DEFRA, I shall be looking to move as quickly as possible towards a more consistent national approach to delivery of the programme, with a clear focus on the Government’s priorities for farming and forestry competitiveness and the needs of rural areas: managed nationally and delivered in a way which provides locally accessible support. So I have decided that we should aim to locate the RDPE teams in their existing towns or cities initially where that is cost-effective. In order to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, I will be introducing changes to the administration of the programme on a staggered basis from 1 July. These will deliver a more consistent national approach and efficiency savings for the taxpayer, including moving away from existing regions as the key governance tier.

We will engage further with stakeholders and customers about changes to the programme, building on the existing programme governance at the regional and national levels.

I have now informed RDAs of their indicative budget allocations for 2011-12. I am pleased that, following the spending review, we are able to continue to deliver funding under axes 1 and 3 and Leader over the remainder of the programme period. But budgets are constrained and I have asked RDAs to ensure the funding available is focused on delivering against our key priorities for competitiveness and rural areas, while also beginning the process of putting in place the new nationally consistent approach to delivery in 2011-12. RDAs will inform applicants and local action groups of the position within their region. Customers should continue to remain in touch with their existing contacts within the RDAs for further information about the position on individual projects or applications.

New Waterways Charity

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

On 21 June 2010 I made a statement about inland waterways policy for England and Wales, Official Report, column 4WS. I said that we were considering the appropriate civil society model for British Waterways, including the possible inclusion of the Environment Agency’s navigations. On 14 October, the Government subsequently announced their intention to move British Waterways in England and Wales from being a public corporation to a new waterways charity—subject to parliamentary approval.

As a result of work undertaken by the Government, British Waterways and the Environment Agency over the last few months, I am convinced by the compelling vision of a national trust for the waterways that includes the British Waterways and Environment Agency navigations. However, I wish to take a phased approach to the delivery of this vision, so that assets and liabilities can be transferred sustainably. In phase 1, the liabilities and assets of British Waterways in England and Wales will transfer into the new charity, alongside an “endowment” consisting of the property portfolio owned by British Waterways in England and Wales. In phase 2, the EA navigations would transfer to the new charity, if sufficient funding can be found in the next spending review to enable the charity to take on the liabilities associated with them, and subject to the agreement of the charity’s trustees.

The Government’s proposed approach, which will be subject to public consultation as part of the forthcoming consultation on setting up the new charity, is that the EA navigations should transfer to the new charity in 2015-16 in the next spending review period, if it is affordable to do so. To maintain momentum, a review will be undertaken in 2014 to assess the progress and achievements of the new charity and to consider the options for the transfer of the EA navigations.

The Government are absolutely committed to delivering their exciting vision for a national trust for the waterways over the coming years and consider that over time the new waterways charity offers the most sustainable future for both the BW waterways and EA navigations.

Afghanistan: Monthly Progress Report

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, is today publishing the third progress report on developments in Afghanistan.

The report focuses on key developments during the month of January.

January saw a greater tempo of operations than in previous winters because of the high number of International Stabilisation and Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers and Afghan security forces, the milder than usual weather and the insurgents’ continued attempts to intimidate the population through asymmetric attacks. Attacks such as the suicide bombing of a Kabul supermarket on 28 January and the assassination of the deputy governor of Kandahar province by a suicide bomber on 29 January show that the insurgency has little respect for the safety of civilians or legitimate governance.

ISAF will continue to seek to protect the population from such acts and build up Afghan security forces to ensure that they are ready to take responsibility for security across the country by the end of 2014. Progress continues to be made in developing the Afghan national security forces (ANSF). By the middle of January the Afghan national army (ANA) had reached a total of around 149,500 personnel and the Afghan national police (ANP) around 117,000. Both are still on track to meet the targets agreed at the London conference in January 2010.

ISAF’s monthly assessment in January highlighted progress in several provinces, including central Helmand. ISAF confirmed that security transition remains on track to begin early this year. President Karzai said that he intends to announce the first phase of transition in his Afghan new year address in March. The new Afghan Parliament was inaugurated on 26 January, marking the completion of the 2010 electoral process. The new parliamentarians convened for the first time on 29 January and began the process of electing a new Speaker.

On 1 January the Helmand provincial Government and elders from the Alikhozai from the Upper Sangin valley agreed a peace accord. The Helmand Provincial Government are working to establish a 15-man shura of elders who can represent local communities to consolidate and expand the agreement. Helmand provincial governor, Gulab Mangal, also established a five-man provincial reintegration secretariat to support the delivery of reintegration policy across Helmand.

The UK, through the Helmand provincial reconstruction team (PRT), supported a three-day conference in Lashkar Gah for 85 community elders and mullahs from seven districts to learn about the relationship between community-based and statutory justice systems.

In January, 984 communities elected community development councils that support local community-driven development projects. DFID contributes to the Government of Afghanistan’s community-driven development projects in rural and insecure areas: 1,431 project proposals were approved in January, and 372 projects were completed. These included improvements to water supplies and sanitation, the building of rural roads, the rebuilding of irrigation networks and electricity generation. Over 1,000 Sangin residents, nearly a third of them women, took part in a health education event in Sangin district centre. The Helmand PRT provided Afghan health workers with 8,000 home medical kits to distribute during such health training events.

Members of the High Peace Council, leading the Afghan Government’s reintegration and reconciliation strategy, visited Islamabad in January. They discussed Pakistan’s role in Afghan peace efforts with Pakistani leaders.

The drugs trade remains a threat to the stability of Afghanistan, has a corrosive effect on governance and provides financial and logistical support to the insurgency. Progress is being made on counter-narcotics: the first 50 Afghan interdiction operations of 2011 seized 1,985 kg opium, 61 kg heroin, 1197 kg cannabis, and 338 kg chemical precursors. Fifty-eight suspects were arrested. Additionally, almost a tonne of bomb-making equipment was found during these operations: a clear reminder of the links between the insurgency and the drugs trade.

I am placing the report in the Library of the House. It will also be published on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website (www.fco.gov.uk) and the HMG UK and Afghanistan website (http://afghanistan.hmg.gov.uk/).

Charging for Immigration and Nationality Services 2011-12

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

I am announcing proposals to change the fees for immigration and nationality applications made to the UK Border Agency. The Government review these fees on a regular basis and make appropriate changes as necessary. I will shortly lay regulations for fees that are set at levels above the normal administrative costs of the service. We have continued with our strategic approach to charging setting certain fees above cost on the basis of the value of the service.

These fees must be set out in regulations before both Houses of Parliament and are subject to the affirmative procedure. The fees allow us to generate revenue which is used to fund the UK immigration system and to set certain fees below cost recovery to support wider Government objectives. The revenue generated will contribute towards securing our borders and controlling migration for the benefit of the UK. I will lay another set of regulations in Parliament for the fees for immigration and nationality services that are set at/below the cost of the service.

A table with details of all the proposed increases is set out at annex A. The table includes indicative unit costs for each application for FY 11/12. The unit cost is the estimated average cost to UK Border Agency of processing each application. Although our unit costs are not fixed over the course of the financial year, we publish unit costs so it is clear which fees we set over cost and by how much. Further details of all fees changes will be outlined in the explanatory memoranda accompanying both the regulations.

Given the need to reduce public spending, we have had to carefully consider our fee levels, to ensure we can maintain good service levels to our customers and secure the border for the general public. In principle it is the right time to ask migrants to make a greater contribution to funding the UK Border Agency than was previously the case. Therefore we should continue to seek a shift in the funding provided by migrants to deliver the border and immigration system with a consequent reduction in the burden on UK taxpayers.

In developing these proposals, we have sought to limit increases so as to avoid any broader economic impact (particularly on the most economically sensitive route of all, short-term visit visas).

I believe these proposals continue to strike the right balance between maintaining secure and effective border controls, and ensuring that our fees structure does not inhibit the UK’s ability to attract those migrants and visitors who make a valued contribution. It is right that those who benefit directly from the immigration system should pay to meet the costs of securing the UK’s borders. This will help to support the immigration system, maintain public confidence, and ensure that migration is managed for the benefit of the UK.

Full details on how to apply for all of these services will be provided on our website, www.ukba.homeoffice. gov.uk.

Turks and Caicos Islands

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

Further to the written statement by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) of 9 December, Official Report, columns 40-41WS, and the Department for International Development’s minute of 3 February notifying Parliament that the Secretary of State for International Development had approved in principle a loan guarantee to the Turks and Caicos Islands Government (TCIG), I would like to update the House.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has now finalised a guarantee in favour of Scotiabank (Turks and Caicos) Ltd to provide TCIG with access to a maximum capital amount of US$ 260 million over the next five years. I confirm that TCIG will immediately repay DFID its loan of £29.9 million plus interest.

This level of commercial borrowing is vital if TCIG is to turn around its dire financial situation. It will provide the time TCIG needs to implement budget measures which will lead to achieving a fiscal surplus in the financial year ending March 2013. As the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk, and I reported to Parliament on 9 December 2010, this is one of a number of key milestones to be reached before a date for elections can be set. Once the territory is in fiscal surplus it will be able to start to pay off its debt and should, after the five-year period is over, if not before, be able to secure new and reduced bank lending without the need for a UK Government guarantee.

The guarantee is intended to cost the UK taxpayer nothing. It will ensure that TCI does not fall victim to financial ruin and it is in line with DFID’s responsibility to underpin the reasonable needs of all British overseas territories.

The current chief financial officer has done an excellent job in getting a grip on TCIG’s public finances. To ensure that the financial plan stays on track to achieve a fiscal surplus DFID reserves the right to require TCIG to retain the position of chief financial officer for as long as the guarantee is in force and to nominate the holder of this post who shall then be appointed by the governor.

Robert Hamill Inquiry

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)]

In my written statement of 31 January 2011, Official Report, columns 35-36WS, I informed the House that following an announcement by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland that it planned to prosecute three individuals in connection with the death of Robert Hamill, I would not publish the report of the Robert Hamill inquiry until these legal proceedings had concluded. Publishing the report while proceedings are ongoing would jeopardise the individuals’ right to a fair trial.

I also set out the checking process which is required to meet the obligations on me in relation to article 2 of the European convention on human rights and in relation to national security. I can confirm that this checking process has now been completed and I have received advice from the checking team which confirms that there is nothing in the report which, if published, could breach article 2 of the European convention on human rights by putting the lives or safety of individuals at risk, or put national security at risk. I am therefore satisfied that once legal proceedings have concluded, the report can be published in full. I have advised Sir Edwin Jowitt, the chairman of the inquiry, of this.

I have also asked Sir Edwin to retain formal custody of the report in a secure location until the legal proceedings have concluded and it can be submitted to me and be published. The report has not been shown to me or to any other member of the Government, or to any officials except the two members of the team who carried out the checking process. I have not been briefed on the contents of the report, nor have any officials other than those in the checking team.

Again, I reassure the House that once the legal proceedings have concluded, I intend to publish the report in full and as soon as practicable. Once a timetable for publication becomes clear, I will update the House accordingly.

High-Speed Rail

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)]

Today, I am launching the consultation on the Government’s proposals for a national high-speed rail network. “High Speed Rail: Investing in Britain’s Future” sets out the Government’s case for this network, the details of the Government’s strategy, and the proposed route for an initial phase from London to the west midlands. It will be one of the most extensive national consultations ever undertaken.

I believe that a national high-speed rail network from London to Birmingham, with onward legs to Leeds and Manchester, could transform Britain’s competitiveness as profoundly as the coming of the railways in the 19th century. It would reshape Britain’s economic geography, helping bridge the north-south divide though massive improvements in journey times and better connections between cities—slashing almost an hour off the trip from London to Manchester.

But the proposed high-speed rail network would do more. It would address Britain’s future transport capacity challenge—providing a huge uplift in long-distance capacity and relieving pressure on overstretched conventional lines. It would bring around £44 billion of net monetised benefits and support the creation of thousands of new jobs, as well as delivering unquantifiable strategic benefits. And it would help us to build a sustainable economy—by encouraging millions of people out of cars and off planes onto trains. Our competitors already recognise the huge benefits of high-speed rail and are pressing ahead with ambitious plans. Britain cannot afford to be left behind.

The Government’s support for high-speed rail was set out clearly in their programme for government, published in May last year. Since then, we have built upon the work already done by HS2 Ltd to consider the case for high-speed rail in the UK. Last October’s spending review settlement reaffirmed our support and provided over £750 million to fund the development of our national network proposals over the next four years.

Since then, the Government have received additional advice from HS2 Ltd on options for a national high-speed rail network and on direct links to Heathrow and the High Speed 1 (HS l) line to the channel tunnel.

The Government understand the concerns of those living near the proposed route. Following a series of visits I made along the proposed London-west midlands line, we have altered around half the original route—significantly reducing the potential local environmental impacts.

In the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, all but 1.2 miles would be in tunnel, cutting, or close to the A413 road corridor. Since HS2 Ltd’s original report to Government was published in March 2010, the number of properties where high noise levels would be expected to be experienced has fallen from 350 to around 10.

In December 2010, I set out our proposed high-speed rail strategy, our preferred route and our approach to delivering a wider high-speed network.

However, we recognise that decisions should not be taken on a major infrastructure project of this scale until all those with an interest have had their say. So this consultation—which will run until 29 July—seeks views on: the case for high-speed rail; our strategy for a national high-speed network; the proposed route for an initial line from London to the West Midlands; and our options for providing assistance to those who are detrimentally affected by any new line. Responses can be submitted through the HS2 consultation website, or sent to a freepost address.

Copies of the consultation document have been placed in the Library of the House and are available on the DFT website. I am also publishing a number of more detailed supporting documents, including a detailed economic case, a full appraisal of sustainability and a route engineering report.

My Department will be conducting a series of regional seminars to inform the strategic debate, together with a series of roadshows along the line of the proposed London-west midlands route. These will give people the chance to discuss our plans and the specific local impacts and mitigation proposals with the engineers and other specialists working on the project.

This is a once-in-a-generation infrastructure investment that would have a transformational effect on Britain’s economy. Civic leaders of all political persuasions and business leaders from all parts of the United Kingdom support it. I urge all hon. Members with an interest to encourage their constituents to participate in the consultation. I will announce the outcome of this consultation process and the Government’s decisions on their strategy for high-speed rail before the end of 2011.

Local and Regional Rail Services

Monday 28th February 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

Local authorities and integrated transport authorities from time to time wish to develop proposals for new or enhanced rail services where, in their view, they offer the best way of meeting the transport needs of their area. They have the necessary powers to secure the provision of such services but they are sometimes inhibited by the risk that significant revenue funding may need to be committed over the long term. I am keen to encourage local bodies to identify the best solutions for identified local needs and therefore wish to ensure that they are not deterred from considering an improved rail service where it clearly offers value for money.

The Government’s priority remains one of reducing the budget deficit and, therefore, careful consideration has to be given to any proposal that might increase the cost of the railway, either in the short or long-term. However, we recognise the arguments put forward by promoters that regional and local rail services need to adapt to population, housing and economic growth in localities. Therefore, it is only right that, once they have demonstrated value for money after a trial period, new or improved services promoted by local authorities are treated in a similar way to the more established services which are currently funded as part of the national network.

I would therefore like to announce to the House that the Government still intend to fund the provision of new or enhanced services promoted by authorities which have rail industry support, but in view of the tough financial decisions made as part of the spending review, no such funding will be provided prior to April 2015 (the start of the next spending review period).

It is important that the promoter demonstrates that a rail scheme is the best way to address regional and local transport issues; hence promoters would still be expected to fund a new or enhanced service for the first three years to demonstrate its commitment to the service and show that it delivers value for money in the light of actual experience.

Schemes which the Department would consider funding in this way would be subject to a number of conditions, details of which have been deposited in the Library of the House and will be made available on the Department for Transport’s website.

Grand Committee

Monday 28th February 2011 Grand Committee

Monday, 28 February 2011.

National Insurance Contributions Bill

Monday 28th February 2011 Grand Committee

Committee

15:30

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)]

Good afternoon, my Lords. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting in Committee, we will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Debate on whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, presumably the Minister hopes that the Committee stage of this Bill will not be as protracted as another Bill that has been before the House over the past few weeks, and I think that I can give him that assurance. However, we want to debate whether Clause 1 should stand part for the obvious reason that this is by far the most significant clause in what is an important Bill.

As the Minister will appreciate, we support the increase in national insurance contributions but our proposals were very different. He must recognise that, during the course of the detailed discussion on the clauses of the Bill that we will have this afternoon, we will identify some of those points of difference. We hope that he will be in a position to answer some of the questions that were adumbrated in general terms at Second Reading and will be dealt with in rather more detail today.

To put the Bill in context, there is a difference in perspective between the Government’s strategy and the one that my party would pursue. The Minister and the Committee will recognise that last year there were three consecutive quarters of growth followed by a quarter of negative growth, which looked marginal when the first set of figures came out but rather more serious following the subsequent revision. We are concerned about the impact of the Bill and of the Government’s general strategy on the broader economy.

We would put jobs and growth first. That is why we are concerned that the increase in national insurance contributions will prove to be difficult for growth and particularly for the protection of employment, given that the increase in NICs is being supplemented by a very significant increase in VAT. Expert opinion identifies that the increase in VAT could result in the loss of three times as many jobs as might be lost by anything to do with national insurance increases, which were the subject of considerable debate at the last general election.

We are concerned that there is no protection for those earning less than £20,000 per year. We would have sought that protection by raising the primary threshold. The Government are imposing increases without fully increasing the secondary threshold for employers. That presents obvious difficulties. Can the Minister confirm that employers will suffer nearly £1.5 billion extra in terms of commitment of resources as against rather modest savings on the secondary threshold? The Minister will say that the secondary threshold is not meant to compensate for the impact on employers because personal tax allowances will help to some degree. The trouble with that argument, which the Minister vouchsafed to the House at Second Reading, is that it takes no account of the balance on personal tax allowances, namely the very severe benefits cuts and loss of income to many of the less well-off in our society. That is why the Bill needs to be put in that broader context.

We are concerned that the Bill is being promoted against a background of government policies that threaten the recovery. We had some indication of the difficulties just before Christmas. That coincided with adverse weather conditions, which was the reason given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time and looks pretty threadbare now. One cause of anxiety about the recovery is the cuts in public expenditure, which will lead to significant job losses and a severe loss in confidence among employers and consumers. The Government propose—something that they criticised the previous Administration for—to increase national insurance contributions, but they have also increased VAT and have other strategies on the economy that are the source of great anxiety.

We look at the Bill in the context of the importance of growth in the economy and strengthening employment. Declining employment, when people lose their jobs, reduces demand severely in the economy and does enormous damage to the Government’s receipts from their various forms of revenue gathering. That is why we shall be using this Committee session for detailed examination of the Bill. However, we wanted to make this series of comments on whether Clause 1 should stand part because of its significance in the Government’s wider economic strategy, on which this side has very serious doubts. I hope that the Minister will be able to give some response. I beg to move.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, for confirming that the Committee might move more expeditiously through this Bill than some other recent Bills.

I think that the noble Lord said that I would understand why he opposes Clause 1 standing part of the Bill, but I could not quite work it out and I am even more confused now that he says that the Opposition support the 1 percentage point increase, which is the import of Clause 1. However, I guess that I will eventually get used to the way that the House operates on these things. If the purpose of this discussion is to put the Bill into a bit of context, I am certainly very happy to do that.

The Government face the twin challenges of dealing with the inherited deficit and getting the economy growing again. In this wider context, the Bill goes to the heart of those challenges. I have repeatedly said that the recovery is likely to be choppy, and so it is proving. It is not easy to stimulate growth while bringing the deficit under control. The case of national insurance exemplifies the dilemma and the challenge. The 1 per cent increase in national insurance produces revenue of the order of £9 billion to £10 billion, which is necessary to deal with the deficit. Although we will put 70 to 80 per cent of the weight of deficit reduction on spending, nevertheless increases in taxation will bear part of the burden. Therefore, we start by accepting some of the changes that the previous Government proposed. We do not know what they had in mind on VAT. There were strong indications from Ministers in the previous Government that had they been returned to office they might well have increased VAT.

In the context of national insurance increases, offsetting measures that go hand in hand with the Bill—although they are not in the Bill—will increase the secondary threshold by £21 a week and the primary threshold and the lower profits limit by £24 a week. This will significantly offset the rises in the Bill. The increase in income tax personal allowances and the reductions in the basic rate limit and in the national insurance upper earnings and profits limit will, as a combined package, go a substantial way towards offseting the effect of the national insurance rises. Compared with the plans that we inherited, employers will be more than £3 billion better off next year, and that figure will rise in future years. As I said, we are fully compensating for the £9 billion increase in labour taxation that the rate rise represents.

The threshold rises will mean that the burden that the Government add to labour costs will lessen, and there will be more to share between employers and employees so that both will benefit. As a result of the way in which we are doing this, some of the benefit will be switched from national insurance contributions to income tax, so the net rise in national insurance contributions payments will be compensated for by a larger fall in income tax payments. Employers will be better off in respect of employees earning up to £20,000, while employers who have staff among the highest earners will pay more in national insurance contributions.

We are agreed that the 1 percentage point increase is appropriate. Where we diverge from the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, is in seeing the proposed increase as a significant tax on jobs at a time when the recovery needs to be encouraged and bolstered. That is why we have made the offsetting increases in limits, and the increase in the income tax personal allowance. I am grateful to the noble Lord for enabling us to start our discussion by putting the Bill in a wider context, because that is important. Having explored the issue, I hope that we will now move on to the detailed points that he intends to raise.

15:44

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, of course, I am grateful to the Minister for his general response. He referred to choppy waters, but choppy waters can be uncomfortable and people in boats can feel unwell in choppy waters. We are concerned that those waters may have sufficient movement to swamp many people. We are worried about the rate of job loss and the loss of income among many sectors of our community, which will be reflected in the overall state of the economy. Indeed, we may already have seen signs of that. The Minister is fully entitled to adopt his optimistic stance at this point but I hope that his words do not come back to haunt him given that his Administration’s proposals may lead to excessive job loss. We think that it is easy to read the signs of the very great difficulties that we shall face on the employment front and, therefore, in the economy.

The Minister will also know that there is a difference in perspective between my party and the Government. Other significant Governments in the world—not least that of the United States—take a rather different perspective on what needs to be done in policy terms in relation to the present position as compared to the policy that he has adumbrated. Nevertheless, I am grateful that the Minister has been as constructive as he always seeks to be in response to my opening remarks. As we get into closer detail on the Bill, I do not have the slightest doubt that he will enjoy being even more constructive.

Clause 1 agreed.

Clause 2 agreed.

Clause 3 : Increased product of additional rates to be paid into National Insurance Fund

Amendment 1

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

1: Clause 3, page 2, line 5, leave out ““50”” and insert ““75””

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 2. Amendment 1 seeks to probe why 50 per cent, rather than, say, 75 per cent, of the product of the additional primary rate and additional class 4 percentage rate form part of the health service allocation. Amendment 2 poses the same question for a 100 per cent—the existing percentage—allocation.

The main features of the contribution system are helpfully set out in appendix 2 of the Government Actuary’s Department report on the Social Security Benefits Uprating Order 2011. For the NHS allocation it sets out, as partly provided for in the Bill, the rates of 2.05 per cent of earnings between the primary threshold and the upper earnings limit and 1 per cent of earnings above the UEL. From April 2011, the UEL, as we have just heard from the Minister, has reduced and the primary threshold has increased. That would appear to mean that for any given level of earnings, the 2.05 per cent of the allocation will be lower because the band is narrower, and the 1 per cent will be greater because the starting point is lower. However, overall, with constant earnings, this part of the NHS allocation would appear to be reduced. Similarly, the constant 1.9 per cent NHS allocation from employer contributions would appear to be less because it starts from a higher secondary threshold. The same issue arises in respect of class 4 contributions.

Given that GAD assumes the number of jobs to be the same next year as this year, with earnings increasing by just 2.1 per cent, what estimates have been made of the overall NHS allocation? Will the Minister let us know the estimated figure for the current year and how this would change if the percentage of the additional rates applied was variously 75 per cent and 100 per cent? These issues are important in seeking to understand the projected outcome on the National Insurance Fund in the context of the funding that has been allocated to the NHS. On this matter, in responding to the Second Reading debate, the Minister said:

“I hope it is completely clear to noble Lords that nothing in the Bill affects in any way the commitment to increase NHS spending in real terms in each year of this Parliament. We can afford to do this without additional funding from national insurance contributions”.—[Official Report, 2/2/11; col. 1429.]

Anyone who followed the debate in another place, which I will not replicate today because there will be other opportunities, will understand why the Government are effectively failing in this pledge; I refer to the switch in funding to cover social care budget shortfalls, the consequences of the VAT increase on the NHS given the inflation in the costs of treatment, and the costs of the reorganisation.

Perhaps the Minister will tell us, if the Government are to struggle to reach their NHS spending commitment, where the money will come from if the moneys allocated from the National Insurance Fund are not to be used. Will he also let us know how the additional moneys retained in the National Insurance Fund and not allocated to the NHS have contributed to its balance, which is projected now to be £53 billion by 2015-16? Clearly, if the NHS allocations were greater, the balance of the fund would be less and the investment income less—but what would the other ramifications be? We probe with these amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I hope that I did not give too much encouragement with my remarks on Clause 1 to indicate that I would be in too accommodating a mode this afternoon. As regards the two amendments, I find this split of the proceeds between different allocated funds rather confusing and arcane. The relevant questions are the big picture ones asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, about the impact, if any, on NHS funding.

The point is that although for government accounting purposes—which are important—the moneys need to be allocated, the allocation does not and will not have any impact on NHS funding. It is absolutely not part of government policy to cut NHS funding automatically if, for example, global conditions lead to a reduction in national insurance contribution receipts. The Government would simply make up any shortfall from lower than expected national insurance contributions from other sources.

Even though the noble Lord questions it, the overriding commitment is the one that has been given on National Health Service spending. The amendments do not have any bearing on how much the NHS will have to spend because if the money does not come out of one fund it will come out of other sources of general government expenditure. We are maintaining the level of national insurance contributions allocated to the NHS and taking the additional revenues from rate rises to the National Insurance Fund. That is what is happening here although, as I have said, it will not have any impact on the NHS but merely maintain the previous level of funding. However, putting the additional revenue into the National Insurance Fund will help to ensure that plans for the payment of pensions and other contributory benefits will be sustainable in the long term. Through that funding we can protect pensioners by the new triple lock that guarantees a rise in the basic state pension every year in line with earnings, prices or by 2.5 per cent, whichever is the greater. In ordinary circumstances we would expect contributions to rise broadly in line with earnings, and therefore to rise in real terms.

Under the Government’s proposals, we expect allocations to the NHS to rise in real terms in a typical year. I do not have the breakdown of the split under different percentages. I could get my calculator and work it out but the main point, as I have tried to explain, is that the split itself is not relevant. We are maintaining the allocation and ensuring that the National Insurance Fund continues to grow, and National Health Service expenditure is protected by the commitments that the Government have given in their broader expenditure plans. I hope that I have adequately explained what is going on and that noble Lords will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Of course we will withdraw the amendment; as he knows, that is the practice in the Moses Room. I understand the broad thrust of his point about funding for the NHS, but we shall have to agree to differ on the Government’s performance in that regard. We shall have the opportunity to debate that fully on other occasions.

The Minister said that in the event of a shortfall in contributions, the Government would make up the difference. One point that I was probing concerned the respective levels of the NHS allocation for the current year and for the year we are about to enter. I accept that the Government are preserving the 1 per cent and 2.5 per cent rates. However, the bands on which they are operating are changing; the bands for next year will mean that the UEL is reducing and the primary threshold is increasing. All other things being equal, if there were constant earnings between the two years, you would expect a lower contribution to the NHS allocation than was the case before the changes were introduced. With great respect, I do not think that the Minister has fully responded to that point—but it looks as if he may be about to do so.

[Lord Sassoon]

I apologise for not responding earlier, but I see that the noble Lord has the Government Actuary’s report, from which the Committee can see that the NHS allocation for 2010-11 will be about £20.5 billion, and pretty much the same for 2011-12. The figures in appendix 6, towards the bottom of page 25 of the GAD report, show that the expectation is £20,608,000,000 for 2010-11 and £20,437,000,000 for 2011-12. That is after the bands change; the amount is very close.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I had not reached that appendix, so I thank the Minister for those figures. I accept that they are very close. Nevertheless, there is a reduction year on year. Had more than 50 per cent been allocated, the outcome would have been different. It is not just a matter of comparing one year with the next. Dealing with the rates is one thing, but if the bands are changed there will be consequential effects in subsequent years as well.

I will press another point that I raised concerning the impact on the balance of the National Insurance Fund. The actuary’s report shows an increase to some £53 billion over the years to 2014-15. The effect of not allocating more to the NHS is to build up that balance, which will also have implications for the investment in the fund. If more were allocated to the NHS, what would be the effect, other than reducing that balance and changing the investment income?

16:00

I remember in the past seeking answers from officials on what happens to that balance. I was told that it was partly invested back in gilts and that one could not use it for other expenditure, but I never clarified how the two answers sat together. Perhaps the Minister will say what would be the consequences of a greater allocation to the NHS and the long-term impact on the fund, given that its balance is due to increase over the next few years after a period when receipts are less than payments? Will the Minister also bear in mind contributory benefits, because it is in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that these will feature less prominently in the universal credit system than they do currently.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, clearly, if there was more in the fund, a greater part of NHS expenditure could come via that route, but I am not clear that there would be any significant consequence in terms of the outcomes we are talking about. NHS expenditure will be determined by the allocation that has been given in the spending review. The noble Lord may quibble about the nature of the numbers and what is covered by them, but they are set out with great clarity in the review. For this purpose we are talking about some relatively simple arithmetic in terms of what would happen if there were to be any shortfall. If there is a surplus, funds that do not go to the NHS go to the National Insurance Fund; that is what has led to the considerable current balance. We are talking about a process where a fund has accumulated over the long term and we need that surplus, although it is predicted to fall, in order to fund future pensions.

In summary, one way of looking at it is that in the short term a high balance will help to tackle a deficit. Indeed, as the noble Lord heard from his officials in the past, and as has been explained to me, that balance is invested with the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am grateful to the Minister and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Amendment 2 not moved.

Clause 3 agreed.

Clause 4 : Holiday for new businesses

Amendment 3

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

3: Clause 4, page 2, line 13, after “started” insert “and throughout the period when the appropriate amount is deductible or refundable”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 3 and to speak to Amendments 8 and 9. The purpose of this group of amendments is to probe a little the boundaries of the national insurance contributions holiday. As I think we made clear at Second Reading, we see merit in the scheme as an incentive to encourage employment by new businesses but wonder whether the parameters of the scheme are driving a bureaucracy that will considerably lessen its impact.

We acknowledge that the wider the scheme is drawn, the further the resources have to go but the level of take-up referred to when this was debated in the other place suggests that the Government are falling far short of their anticipated take-up. Without praying in aid the report that is due to come more officially in due course, perhaps the Minister might give us some update on the take-up to date. The scheme has effectively been under way for something like nine months. Is the expectation that this incentive will still reach 400,000 businesses over the relevant period? By limiting the holiday to new businesses, the complexity of the legislation inevitably increases as it has to address the avoidance possibilities of people recasting an existing business as a new enterprise. We will come later to the validity of the excluded regions but we accept that if they are to be part of the scheme, the boundaries of the non-excluded regions must be secure.

The purpose of Amendment 3 is straightforward: to secure that,

“the principal place at which the new business is carried on … is not in any of the excluded regions”,

not only when it is started but “throughout the period when” the benefit of the holiday is being enjoyed. There is an argument that the requirement should be satisfied throughout the relevant period, but if that were imposed you would not be able to grant the holiday and the benefit of the cash flow until the end of that period.

Amendment 8 seeks to probe why six months has been chosen as the cut-off point in determining whether a business has effectively been recycled. The Minister might explain why that is considered a more appropriate period than, say, the 12 months that the amendment suggests. Perhaps he would also take the opportunity to expand on some of the terms in Clause 5. A business is not a new business for that clause’s purposes if a person has, within the defined period, carried on a,

“business consisting of the activities of which the business consists”.

That might be abundantly clear in many circumstances but not, we suggest, in others. Will a retail business—say, a grocery store—conducted in one part of a non-excluded area consist of the same activities previously carried on by that person if the business were a retail business in a different location selling the same type of products? What if the product range were different—children’s clothing, say—but trading were from the same location and, possibly, under the same name?

The purpose of Amendment 9 is to test whether there is any leakage of the benefit of the holiday where P genuinely starts a new business which is run alongside an existing business of P. In part, that depends on whether it is a single business or there are two or more separate businesses. Organising an expansion as a branch of an existing operation would presumably not be a new business; organising via a separate company or partnership could be. What, in the arrangements in the Bill, would prevent employees being employed by the new business with some recharge to the other businesses? Does Clause 6(1)(a) require employment wholly for the purpose of the new business?

I would not expect the Minister necessarily to respond in detail to all of these points this afternoon. They are raised to highlight the fact that focusing on new businesses and having excluded regions complicates matters—sometimes, I suggest, considerably. It certainly complicates the legislation, notwithstanding the general anti-avoidance provisions of Clause 10, which we thoroughly support. It will inevitably be the case that when boundaries to a scheme are set down, there are those who will seek to circumvent them. I am not sure whether the Government have been wise in offering so many of these opportunities.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I apologise if my newness to the institution shows in my bobbing up at the wrong time. I wish to make a couple of small comments on the amendments in this group, although my comments are less about the detail and more, in a sense, about questioning the underlying principle.

For all of us, the notion that new business can be stimulated to be a fountain of growth and of new jobs is obviously highly desirable, so an effective take-up of the programme would, I suspect, be met with pleasure on every side of the House. However, given the potential for a review period as we move through the Bill, might it not be good to keep in the back of one’s mind that even new jobs that come from existing businesses can be valuable, even if the take-up does not reach the targets of the initial programme? It strikes me that that would not be a failure, given that economies are volatile and take-up can take time but that jobs are beneficial even if they originate from business that is already under way. It might be important to ensure that this whole category of issues is critical in any review that might come one year after the initiation of the programme so that the Government can consider whether they would be wise to expand the categories in order to achieve the underlying intention of the Bill.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lord, those two interventions go to the heart of why it is necessary to strike a difficult balance—this is where judgments have to be made—between, on the one hand, providing some tight and suitable anti-avoidance provisions and, on the other, ensuring that we do not make it excessively difficult for people to take up the holiday in the Bill. Of course we need to ensure that the scheme is affordable. That is why it has been targeted at new businesses, with a cap on the number of employees. Yes, we want to stimulate and encourage employment right across the areas of economic activity, but to do so through an across-the-board national insurance holiday would be extraordinarily costly. That is why we have come up with a scheme that is targeted in this way. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, we need to have appropriate anti-avoidance provisions.

When I first saw the amendments in this group, I had considerable sympathy with Amendment 3, which seems to be aimed at ensuring that new businesses that benefit from the holiday must not only have their principal place of business in an area that is not excluded but remain outside the excluded areas for the entire period during which holiday deductions or refunds are claimed. The amendment seeks to prevent a new business that relocates to an excluded area from enjoying any further holiday. The Government certainly agree with that objective. In fact, the Bill already provides that if the new business, having made a successful application for a holiday, relocates to an address within an excluded area the holiday will cease automatically.

The necessary provisions are found in Clause 7, which provides for the appropriate amount of secondary class 1 contributions that a new business can deduct or request to be refunded under the holiday. The appropriate amount is calculated by reference to a qualifying employee’s relevant earnings. Clause 7(3) provides that:

“‘Relevant earnings’ are earnings paid to”,

an employee who is employed,

“for the purposes of the new business, at any time during the holiday period when the principal place at which the business is carried on is not in any of the excluded”,

areas. Therefore, if a new business were to move to an excluded region, any earnings paid to a qualifying employee would cease to be relevant earnings and there would be no appropriate amount to be deducted or refunded, so the protection sought by the amendment has already been provided within the Bill.

16:15

However, it might be worth noting that the amendment would go further than the current protection. If accepted, it would mean that a new business that decides not to operate the holiday in real time, but instead to claim a refund later, would not be entitled to that refund if it relocates its principal place of business to an excluded area at any time before the refund claim period expires. Clause 8(5) provides that an application for a refund can be made up to four years after,

“the day on which the last deduction could be made in respect of the qualifying employee”.

At the risk of going into excessive detail, the main intention of Amendment 3 is covered, and, as I say, it might inadvertently go further than its strict intended purpose.

Amendment 8, if accepted, would amend Clause 5 so that the period for which an individual must have ceased carrying out a similar previous business would increase from six to 12 months. The Government believe that that would present an unnecessary restriction on individuals who set up new businesses. I return to my noble friend’s point: we are trying to encourage people to set up businesses. This is clearly a matter of judgment, but we concluded that six months would be an appropriate gap to defer any mischief by individuals who may try to game the system by closing an existing business and starting another. Our view is that extending the gap to 12 months would deter genuine businesses from being started. For example, someone who used to own a hotel but bought a restaurant instead might be prevented going back into the hotel business if the restaurant business did not succeed. We would not want to deter such perfectly genuine attempts at starting businesses in succession by having too long a period.

I have gone on for some time on these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, was kind enough to say that he did not expect me to answer all his points in forensic detail. I was interested in his analysis of Amendment 9, on situations where he thought that there were still loopholes. I will ask officials to look at whether that is so, but I do not believe that it is. Amendment 9 would amend the definition of a “new” business in Clause 5 so that anyone with an existing business would not be able to benefit from the holiday where they also set up a new, unrelated business. The Government believe that that would be an overly restrictive measure. While I am assured that the anti-avoidance provisions are sufficient, the noble Lord makes one or two specific points, which I will ensure are checked out.

In conclusion, we have made sure that the holiday has been carefully targeted. Yes, as is recognised, there need to be anti-avoidance provisions and although it is helpful to be reminded of some of the key ones I believe, having looked at the amendments, that they go beyond what is necessary to achieve the purposes which I think we broadly share.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Again, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I would like to reflect a little on what he said on Amendment 3 and the application of Clause 7(3) but we see the import of that response. Of course, I shall not press any of these amendments this afternoon. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, about the take-up of the scheme as conceived; if it does not use the resources and if there is a view to possibly recasting it, the value of new jobs for existing businesses is certainly something that the Government might consider including. I entirely accept, as we all would, that you have to strike a balance on the cost of these things and on where you draw the line. I would hang on to my point and spend a little time trying to bust the anti-avoidance provisions. By and large, I think they are pretty secure. The more targeted it is, the greater the risk of avoidance arrangements and people trying to take the benefit of something which is not intended. Obviously, the broader the scheme, the less likely that is to happen. In the interim, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, before calling Amendment 4, if Amendment 4 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment 5 due to pre-emption.

Amendment 4

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

4: Clause 4, page 2, line 24, leave out “Greater London,”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. As we discussed at Second Reading, and as was pursued in another place, we have concerns that the national insurance holiday is targeted by crude geographical area and not by any more objective assessment of need. These amendments variously look to remove Greater London, London, the south-east and the eastern region as excluded regions. As we have just discussed and as we shall discuss further under the next grouping, there are practical ramifications and administrative costs in excluding certain parts of the UK from the benefit of the holiday.

The Government’s chosen method of targeting is to look at those areas with the greatest reliance on public sector employment and to do that at regional level. Given that the RDAs are being abolished—that is about to be debated in another place—and that different economic groupings are being established through LEPs, can the Minister say on what basis the analysis has been undertaken at a regional level? We certainly acknowledge that the scale and speed of cuts in public spending will have devastating effects on unemployment, both public and private. If the basis of targeting is reliance on public sector employment, perhaps the Minister can say a little more about how this measure is determined.

For example, does the Minister accept that direct employment in the public sector is only part of the story? Parts of the private sector are as heavily reliant on public expenditure as perhaps those in the public sector that provide direct employment. That can be for a combination of reasons, including previous outsourcing of functions of central or local government and the reliance on public sector construction contracts. For instance, the Building Schools for the Future programme would have provided significant employment opportunities. For example, we know that the Government have been recruiting via agency companies in order to keep head counts down. Perhaps the Minister can say whether those arrangements are included as part of the public sector.

Another issue to consider is the extent to which spending cuts are borne fairly and proportionately across areas. In devising this policy, what analysis was undertaken of how spending cuts are being borne across the country? Have the Government sought to differentiate between front-line and other staff? We certainly accept that levels of public sector employment are one measure of vulnerability to spending cuts, but by taking a regional perspective the Government are averaging out high reliance on the public sector in some parts of the excluded regions. Debate in another place highlighted a number of constituencies in the excluded regions which were in the top 10 for public sector employment. These include Oxford East in the south-east, Lewisham East in London and Luton North in the eastern region. It was highlighted that Newham has a public sector employment rate of 33.6 per cent but is excluded from the holiday, whereas Macclesfield, with a rate of 11.8 per cent, is included. The Government’s approach does not recognise differences within regions and could be giving rise to significant deadweight costs. However, at a regional level, London has a higher employment rate than three regions which are not excluded. It is difficult to see the sense in that.

The east of England is the region that I know best. Currently, the east of England business start-up rate is below that of London, the south-east and some international comparator regions. The region requires a skills base that better meets the needs of regional businesses. It is also underperforming in terms of levels of GVA compared with London and the south-east and has a marked east-west split in economic performance. Workplace earnings vary acutely, with workers employed in Suffolk, Norfolk and Southend-on-Sea being the lowest paid in the region. Despite the region’s overall high employment rate, areas of high and persistent unemployment remain. This has a major impact on levels of deprivation and health inequalities. While some districts in the region are among the most prosperous in the country, 11 districts are rated among the most deprived in England.

The February labour market statistics are very worrying, particularly the 66,000 increase in the unemployment rate among 16 to 24 year-olds. It appears that the benefit of the holiday is simply not available to some of the worst affected areas. Two of the top 15 constituencies in the UK with the highest unemployment rates are denied—both Luton constituencies, ranked 168th and 269th, are excluded. A detailed analysis of deprivation data suggests the same picture. Some areas of greater affluence are included in the scheme ahead of others with greater levels of deprivation.

We accept that public sector employment is in some measure a proxy for vulnerability to spending cuts and that an incentive for private sector businesses can help. It is also accepted that if there are to be geographical exclusions and inclusions, the broader these are the less likelihood there is of displacement activity. However, the scale of the exclusions fundamentally calls into question the fairness of the policy as cast. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I rise to speak because I grew up and have spent much of my political life in Greater London. Like most Londoners, I would defend to the last any opportunity or benefit that might come to London. However, I recognise that if areas such as Greater London, the south-east and the eastern region—I know the latter region less well—were included in this scheme, they would suck up the overwhelming majority of funds that the Government could make available. At a time of great prosperity that might not matter, but at present those of us who live in the better-off regions have to be conscious of how seriously difficult life can be in other parts of the country, particularly those which are losing a significant number of public sector jobs and are dependent on those jobs.

16:30

In recognising the situation in places like London and the south-east region, where I hope there will be many new start-ups that would have happened under any circumstances and therefore do not need this extra support, we should also recognise that there are areas of serious deprivation and that the Government should look at programmes that, for example, will work with the mayor and the Greater London Assembly to make sure that the capacity is there to generate new business start-ups, particularly in areas of deprivation where training and job opportunities have not reached the necessary levels. This is an important part of the picture, but we must find mechanisms to come to the aid of the pockets of deprivation in areas of affluence. I understand that this programme deals with areas that have pockets of affluence amid more general poverty and job shortages. We must we find a way to ensure that, through the collective network of programmes, areas of deprivation, no matter where they are, have a mechanism to stimulate an effective future.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Kramer for answering the main thrust of the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. This measure does need to be targeted. It cannot be targeted in a way that picks out pockets of deprivation—of which there are a significant number in London and elsewhere. However, the basis on which we came up with the holiday includes a relative regional effect. Of course, if we were to sweep away all the geographic exclusions, the thrust of the holiday, which will be to have a relative regional effect, would disappear. On the other hand, as my noble friend says, unlike other measures, this would not be an appropriate measure to target in a subregional way—that would not be feasible.

We have gone with a broad regional analysis. The simplest way to explain the basis for doing this is through the numbers for public sector employment as a percentage of total employment by region. The latest available data when the policy was formulated showed that against a national UK average of 25.1 per cent public sector employment, the three lowest regions were the south-east with 22 per cent, London with 22.5 per cent and the eastern region with 23.1 per cent. That was the principal basis on which the exclusions were made.

My noble friend made the critical point that I was going to make about cost and targeting the money. If the three excluded regions were included, that would increase the total cost of the holiday by some two-thirds. To put it another way, out of the total holiday cost, two-fifths of the benefit of the holiday would go to those regions that are least dependent on government employment, and only three-fifths would go to those regions that are more dependent—in some cases considerably more—on government public sector employment. At the heart of this measure is the belief that the funds available should go to the regions that most need them on this metric.

Indeed, the evidence in the public evidence session on the Bill supported that. For example, representatives from the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce made it clear that the south-east is more resilient than the rest of the UK and new business formation would not be significantly harmed because the holiday was not available in these regions. It is worth reminding the Committee that all new and existing businesses in the south-east will benefit from the increase in the employer national insurance contribution threshold and in the reduction in corporation tax rates. Therefore, considerable benefits go to the region through our wider package of measures.

There were questions about the different definitions of regions and so on. The LEPs do not have geographic boundaries that equate to the regions and, in theory, could cross the regional boundaries that we are using. In effect, they are groupings by local authority boundary. Yes, there are other ways of doing it. We have taken the regions as defined for the purpose of public sector employment, which we think is the most cost effective way of targeting the benefit.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I thank the Minister for that response and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her contribution. I do not think that we will totally see eye to eye on this issue. The noble Baroness referred to better-off regions, but that does not address the point that regions are not homogeneous. For example, there are huge disparities across the eastern region, but because of areas of particular prosperity in aggregate the area is counted out. As a result, those areas where there is deprivation and high unemployment lose out. I agree that it is to be hoped that there are other arrangements which would enable jobs to be created via one mechanism or another, but I believe that the regional focus is producing unfairness in the scheme.

The Minister said that the measure could not operate at a sub-regional level. I am not quite sure why not. Exactly the same rules will apply. There simply will be a different set of boundaries and descriptions. He referred to the fact that all businesses are benefiting from the national insurance changes to the threshold and corporation tax deductions. I guess that they are all equally suffering or all suffering from the impact on consumer demand of the VAT increase. But that is probably a debate for another day. I do not think that we will make progress on this issue. Accordingly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 4 withdrawn.

Amendments 5 to 7 not moved.

Clause 4 agreed.

Clause 5 : Starting a new business

Amendments 8 and 9 not moved.

Amendment 10

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

10: Clause 5, page 3, line 32, leave out paragraphs (b) and (c)

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, Amendment 10 focuses on the inclusion within the term “business” of “property business” and “investment business”. Section 263(6) of the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005 includes a UK property business and an overseas property business within the definition of “property business”. This would seem to open up the possibility that the principal place at which a new business is carried on is overseas with subsidiary business activities in the UK. Obviously, those overseas operations would not be within an excluded area.

Furthermore, even if those subsidiary activities were in the excluded regions, the national insurance holiday would still seem to apply. I ask myself whether this was what was intended. I looked again briefly at Clause 7(3), which the Minister prayed in aid in response to an earlier amendment. If you have a business where the principal place of that business is outside the excluded region, but nevertheless there are employees operating in excluded regions, what in the Bill would stop a holiday applying to them? Having just argued that I do not want any excluded regions, I might seem to be arguing against myself. However, in terms of the integrity of what is proposed here, it may be that I am missing something. Perhaps the Minister would respond to that. Even if the subsidiary activities were in the excluded region, the national insurance holiday would, I suggest, still seem to apply. There seems to be nothing which precludes a new business being carried on in any of the excluded regions or indeed for the national insurance holiday to be available to employees based in the excluded regions so long as the principal place at which the new business is carried on when it started is not in any of the excluded regions. Is that how the Minister reads the legislation?

The principal place at which the business is carried on will often be very clear, as the HMRC’s very helpful note suggests. However, for an investment business or a property business, it might be much less certain. The core of such businesses might be based on the judgment of a few individuals; it would not necessarily be where the portfolios, especially investment portfolios, are located or indeed where the back-office functions are located or where the contracts for the investments or property portfolios are executed. Where the business is primarily carried on could be quite nomadic or easy to place in a favourable location, perhaps where the guiding minds of the business meet periodically to receive investment reports and make decisions about changes to the portfolio. Does the Minister have a view on this? The noble Lord may feel able to say that it has to be determined on a case-by-case basis and I accept that that may be so. Would he accept that this probing amendment highlights a layer of potential complexity which is introduced into the scheme again by having excluded regions? I beg to move.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, in relation to what we are trying to achieve through the holiday scheme, it is important to create employment. The question of the nature of the activity which is being engaged in is one where again we want to be as permissive as we can be, consistent with the nature of the scheme. Although the noble Lord raised a number of other points going back to the question of boundaries between excluded and non-excluded regions, what we are principally talking about in the amendment is the type of trade or business which the activity is engaged in.

In that context, as well as making the general point that what we are focusing on is maximising employment growth from a broad range of sectors, it might be worth saying a word or two about what property business includes. It covers activities including property rental, land rental and furnished holiday lettings; for example, I believe that the holiday could be particularly valuable in relation to furnished holiday lettings which, of course, would typically operate in rural areas and often provide employment where there are not other significant job opportunities. I would certainly like to think that the noble Lord, in proposing this amendment, was not intending to remove businesses from relief if that could, for example, prevent people or discourage people from providing holiday lettings, furnished cottages, apartments and so on.

Similarly, on investment business, the Government’s view is that making investments and deriving profits from them is no less inherently a business than buying and selling any other tradable item. As the noble Lord says, there will be case-by-case determination by HMRC if there are questions about the validity of the trade or of boundaries.

16:45

On the question of boundaries, the figures I quoted earlier were from the annual population survey statistics. I believe that, technically, the policy was founded on the national accounts statistics—which I could read out if the Committee was interested—which present the same picture. Indeed one set of numbers supports the other, but the annual population data, which I read out, gave a greater breakdown by the subregions. They present a similar picture, but I am advised that we looked at the national accounts statistics in coming up with the policy. This goes back, as the noble Lord said, to the question of a business being located in one place but jobs being created somewhere else. For simplicity, it is the place of the business that determines eligibility, so there could be some jobs located elsewhere, for which there is a benefit. This is true of all types of business and there is nothing particular to property and investment. If a business employs staff, they are likely to be located in or close to the main place of business. That issue is not strictly related to these particular amendments. As I have explained, the Government would not want to see perfectly valid and valuable categories of business—whether in property or investment—being excluded from the creation of good and worthwhile employment in the targeted regions.

In view of that explanation, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I thank the Minister for his response. We propose to withdraw the amendment. The purpose of framing the amendment and focusing on property and investment business is to highlight again the particular conundrums that arise in respect of businesses of that nature, which often—particularly for smaller businesses—would be controlled by one person or two people. Where that business is principally located would often be where that individual or individuals are, and the substantive back-office-type operations could be completely separate and different. It just highlights the sort of problems that come from having these definitions and having to guard the boundaries of them.

The Minister has confirmed one point that surprised me when I happened upon it. He has confirmed that so long as the principal place at which the new business is carried on is not in any of the excluded regions, other parts of the business could be carried on anywhere including in the excluded regions, and if the employees in the excluded regions happened to be part of the first 10 they would be eligible, or count towards, the national insurance holiday. I see nodding from the Box—perhaps I have been going on too long and they are nodding off—but, if that is right, it looks a bit daft in terms of the definitions we have been probing this afternoon.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

Amendment 11

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

11: Clause 5, page 3, line 35, at end insert—
“( ) a non-trading charity”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, from the perspective of opposition I always rather approve of Bills starting in our House, the upper House. It gives us a first shot at the Minister and a chance to develop our own argument without in any way having been influenced or prejudiced by any discussions elsewhere. In opposition and in government I often found it quite a challenge with Bills starting in the Lords because Members come well informed, with their own perspective, and set the scene which is then followed elsewhere.

On this occasion, however, the amendment that we want to press the Minister on with regard to non-trading charities was dealt with extensively in the other place in Committee but I must say, and I hope the Minister will bear this in mind, we did not think the response of the Government on this issue was particularly convincing. It seemed to rest on why the Opposition were introducing charities to a Bill which is all to do with the wealth-creating sector. That may reflect a rather narrow perspective on what is called, and should be defined as, wealth in our society, but I will not go into too many philosophical—not to say economic—arguments on that.

What it does raise for us, however, is a very odd perspective indeed. As we understand it, the Government in their more benign moments are extolling the virtues of the big society—that we are all in it together and we can all contribute to it in our various ways. Among those various ways there is no doubt at all that there is an expectation, and indeed a hope, that what will be generated is greater activity by those who work in charitable activities, rather than other more formal wealth-creating organisations or public institutions.

The Government, of course, need this encouragement. After all, they are about significantly reducing the public sector. I know that the noble Lord will say—I am almost word perfect on these matters—that that is because of what they have inherited. There is never a suggestion that what the Government have inherited has perhaps nothing to do with the deficit of the last Government but is an inheritance of the philosophy with regard to society; namely, that big government is bad and small government, by definition, is inevitably better.

Small government means that functions are not going to be carried out for people with various needs by government, and those needs are going to be unrecognised. It is not often that Ministers present themselves entirely in that harsh light, although on occasion I must say there are notable exceptions to that kind generalisation. Ministers expect tasks to be done, not by public institutions but supported and sustained by public revenues. In other words, they want someone else to do it.

I recognise, of course, that wealth creation is of enormous significance to our society at all times, but particularly in the present economic situation. However, the idea that we should exclude the active contribution of other institutions seems to me to require a pretty substantial defence. Why so? Why should a non-trading charity not fit within this framework? Why are we not inclusive on the institutions that can contribute to the nation’s welfare and the employment of individuals? Why are the Government saying that in this respect, as far as charities are concerned, there is no room in the inn? That does not seem to be based upon any economic perspective, nor one outstandingly of cost, but upon the presumption that here we have a measure that is overwhelmingly concerned with business and the wealth-creating area.

I am very far from decrying that; I am all in favour of that which encourages new businesses to develop and flourish. However, I cannot see why one should just slam the door in the face of those developments which will contribute to the common good but are non-trading charities. If the noble Lord is just going to fall back on the stance that was presented in the other place, I can only say to him that sufficient time has elapsed to consider the responses made at that time. They were unsatisfactory on that occasion to many Members, certainly to my side of the committee considering the matter in the other place. They appear manifestly unsatisfactory to us at this stage and I hope that the Minister can give a response to these points.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I have a factual question to ask the Minister on this. During my life, I have been involved in setting up one or two charities where the legal basis of the charity has been a company limited by guarantee which has then got charitable status, so that we have been filling in returns to Companies House as well as to the Charity Commission. What I do not understand is: if a charity’s legal basis is corporate and that charity is then employing staff, whether trading or not, why does it not mean that it would be covered by the normal income tax and national insurance rules?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, in answer to my noble friend Lord Newby’s point, my understanding is that there is indeed no distinction within the normal income tax and national insurance rules but that it is all a question of trading versus non-trading. I believe that is a test which is independent of whether it would be a company limited by guarantee with share capital, a partnership or anything else. If I am wrong on that point, I will correct myself but my understanding is that the question is independent of the structure of the business.

That trading/non-trading question—to express the issue in another way—goes to the heart of what we are trying to achieve by this holiday: an objective to encourage new businesses and new entrepreneurs and for those individuals to set up businesses, as we have already discussed, in areas with a high proportion of public sector employment. It is not that it could, in a wider sense, be a good thing to provide all sorts of other benefits to worthy causes, including non-trading charities. The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to encourage new entrepreneurs to set up businesses. In that context, if those business activities are structured and are charities, it is important and quite appropriate that the trading activity should benefit from the holiday in the Bill.

Of course, the Government value the important work that charities do. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, talk about the Government in their benign moments valuing the big society. We value the big society at all times. Therefore, by extension, this is indeed a benign Government and I am grateful to him for recognising that. Nevertheless, very tough choices have to be made, benign or otherwise. One of the choices we have made is to continue to provide substantial support to charities. So the total relief which charities and charitable giving get are something of the order of more than £3 billion each year. Of course, charities will also benefit from the increase in the employer’s national insurance contribution threshold.

We certainly do not forget charities in many other ways. They are a critical component of the big society. For a scheme that is intended to target a particular direction, we believe that it is appropriate for the holiday to apply to, say, a new charity business, which may be setting up a charity shop or an entrepreneurial activity, but that it should apply only in those particular circumstances. I am sure the noble Lord did not intend this, but the tone of his remarks sounded, at some points, as if we were depriving charities of something. It is not that charities in regions of the country, whether the eligible regions or the excluded regions, are being deprived of anything that they now have; it is simply that, with the resources that we now have, we believe that it is appropriate and indeed the purpose of the Bill to encourage the setting up of new businesses in areas with a high proportion of public sector employment.

17:00

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I am grateful to the Minister. I was looking at Hansard and I see that the framework in which I used the word “benign” for the Government was extremely limited and confined. I think I am unlikely to use that adjective again in our debates. It was a one-off.

I appreciate that charities enjoy various advantages for the work that they do across the range of the taxation system. Here is an opportunity which the Government seek to encourage. Of course, I recognise the prime purpose of what they define as the wealth-creating sector but surely the Minister should appreciate how limited the opportunities are for legislation. Certainly, as a Treasury Minister, he will know that although the Treasury is in an advantageous position compared to other departments, when it can identify available resources—the Minister shakes his head and is engaging my sympathy at this stage, but I will not use the word “benign” again—it is not replete with opportunities to legislate any more than any other department. With its Bills, it is in some degree of competition.

Here is a very modest little Bill with a clear objective. I do not decry the clear objective, the main purpose, of the Bill. I am merely saying that within the framework of that main purpose, not a great deal is necessary to provide some opportunity for non-trading charities. I merely say that it is recognised on all sides that charities always have an important role to play, but this Government are placing increasing emphasis on the third sector in those terms. Therefore, it ill behoves them to take a negative view on what they can do to help within the framework of this modest little Bill.

Of course I shall withdraw my amendment today, but I am by no means certain that we have seen the last of this issue.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

Clause 5 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen)]

The noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, told me that we were going to have a comfort break. Is this so, or shall we carry on?

[Noble Lords]

Carry on.

Clause 6 : Qualifying employees

Amendment 12

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

12: Clause 6, page 3, line 43, leave out “10” and insert “5”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

The Minister will be somewhat shocked by the fact that I am being constructive at this juncture. We have a later amendment that asks the Minister to address himself to a modest change to the Bill, which he might define as an extra demand on resources, so I am being constructive with this amendment. Given the fact that we know that the vast majority of new businesses in their first year employ not many more than two persons, I think that the Government may be excessive in their proposition of 10. I suggest five against a background where the Minister will already have sniffed the air and decided that there must be an ulterior purpose. Indeed there is. As he knows, with the later amendment I want to talk about apprenticeships and to extend the definition a little more.

We think that the vast majority of new businesses will benefit from what is on offer from this measure if we restrict it to the first five employees. We have tabled the amendment to see whether the Minister agrees with us.

[Lord Newby]

It is a pity that Amendment 14 is not grouped with these two amendments as they clearly fall together. While everybody supports promoting apprenticeships, it seems to me that the Bill is simpler than what the noble Lord proposes. While it is a good thing to promote apprenticeships, if I am starting up a new business and am not necessarily going to employ apprentices, I could envisage a situation in which I might well employ 10 people. I raise this while declaring an interest. I formed a community interest company a year ago, which will start trading in this coming financial year. It is likely to be based in Birmingham. I do not know whether the company will qualify for this measure, given it was formed but not trading last year, but we will be employing both part-time and full-time people in the area of education and sport. It may well be, if we are successful, that we will be employing more than 10 people within three years. If some of those are coaches or if some of them are already qualified as teachers, they will have skills. They will be working for us where they would not otherwise be working in an area covered by the Bill, but technically they will not be apprentices.

I think that you would lose the opportunity to encourage companies which are employing people who would not be eligible for apprenticeships by reducing the limit down from 10 to five. Of course, if the limit stays at 10, Amendment 14 has virtually no impact because the number would go up only from 10 to 12. Therefore, partly in a self-interested sense—I have no idea whether our company would qualify and this is not the reason that I am doing it—it seems to me that you may damage employment prospects by these amendments in a way that is not really intended.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as ever, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby for pointing out some of the logic of what the Government are proposing. But in this case it is not principally to accommodate up to 10 employees that we have put the limit where it is. We recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, says, that the average number of employees that businesses typically hire in their first year is around two. Yes, it would be nice if a business, such as that which my noble friend Lord Newby may be starting, pushes up against the limit. We would welcome lots of that.

We have set the limit at 10 rather than five for two reasons. It would enable more flexibility to accommodate staff turnover, so that although most new businesses employ only two employees in their first year, those two employees may often be different and come and go on a temporary basis. This is a way of accommodating a rolling number even if at any one time there might be only two, three or four employees. Nevertheless, within the period of the holiday, we allow 10 within the Bill.

On a similar point, we need to think about part-time employees, a point to which we will come later. Certainly, it might have been helpful if a number of these amendments had been grouped. This is the Government’s proposed way of addressing the issue of part-time employees without the need to introduce potentially complex definitions of eligible employees based on full-time equivalents. For example, some employers do not remunerate their staff by reference to the number of hours they work, but they might be remunerated according to the amount of work that they produce—piecework. Again, providing for up to 10 qualifying employees ensures that employers with part-time staff or with staff whose hours are not predictable are not disadvantaged and that such employers can take full advantage of the holiday.

As I anticipated, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, is thinking about where savings might be made in order to extend the scope of the scheme in other directions. It is perhaps worth saying that because of the distribution of new employers’ staff numbers, restricting the number of eligible employees from 10 to five would make a disproportionately small reduction in the cost of the scheme. That is not the main reason, as I have explained, for resisting the amendment. The benefit of the amendment would not be anything like what it might seem on the face of it—relevant to the headline numbers. On that basis, I would ask the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.

17:15

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I will certainly withdraw the amendment, although I am not sure that I entirely accept the arguments made against an amendment that I have not yet even moved. I am afraid that the Committee will have to endure that burden in a moment when I come to apprenticeships. I accept the Minister's point that the number of new employees is likely to be very limited, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said about his ambitious proposal. I wish him well in personal terms while preserving strict neutrality towards the Bill.

The number of new companies will not be as extensive as he indicated. The Minister is right to call in aid that point, and to refer to the limited savings represented by the amendment. I hope that it will be accepted in the spirit in which it was intended, namely as preparatory to the marginal addition to the Bill contained in the next amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

Amendment 13 not moved.

Amendment 14

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

14: Clause 6, page 3, line 45, at end insert—
“( ) A new business which offers apprenticeship opportunities which are taken up during the period of the holiday period shall be allowed to extend the number of qualifying employees to 12.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, apprenticeships are a good thing. I know that I will get nods from all sides of the Committee when I say that. We have made progress in recent years and it is important that we make greater progress. One dimension that ought to worry us all is unemployment. It is a potentially greater problem across wide ranges of our society but unemployment visited on young people is a particularly pernicious burden. We should not be surprised if we have difficulties with the attitudes of young people to our society if it is impossible for them, whatever their talents, to land a job. Apprenticeships are an important way in which people can come within the framework of work, and I suggest that our modern society will reflect rather more the significance of old-style apprenticeships.

When I say “old-style”, I refer to our great and glorious industrial past. A predecessor of mine in Oldham used to boast of there being 20,000 engineering employees in plants in the Manchester and Oldham area, and of hundreds of apprenticeships being available. Young people streamed out of education—in some cases, they might have been better advised to stay on to earn different qualifications—into guaranteed opportunities as apprentices in those big engineering works. Those days are long past; we all appreciate that. However, what may be becoming more significant in our society is the development of skills and crafts that mirror a period prior to the great industrialisation. I refer to small-scale businesses and crafts that often do not need many full-time employees to justify an apprentice who in his or her turn learns their role. That is of very great importance.

In all my time when I was greatly involved in further education, one thing that drove me to distraction was our inability to sell work experience in relation to the education experience in college. This was particularly true for young women. There might be a course leading to a career with the cleanest, most attractive technology imaginable—for example, providing the electronic back-up for pop groups, which should lighten up the heart of every youngster—but one would see engaging in those activities exactly the same proportions of men to women and boys to girls as we had in our traditional pattern in the world of work. We have to move away from that.

Apprenticeships, particularly those in small companies relating to the operations that we are defining in the Bill as worthy of support, potentially provide opportunities to break the mould of some dated employment practices. The Minister will tell me that this is a limited Bill and that the gains that will come from it are necessarily limited when viewed against the broader perspective of the Government’s policies. I recognise that all too clearly but the Bill nevertheless seeks to help a particular sector of small businesses. We should surely try to link that to the importance of developing apprenticeships in our society and, accordingly, I beg to move.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, apprenticeships are certainly important to this Government. Since the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has talked about them at some length, as he may know, it was National Apprenticeship Week three weeks ago. I met electronic engineering apprentices working on the rebuilding of Blackfriars station and its railway bridge. It was enormously encouraging to see the enthusiasm of those apprentices, who fully understood how their apprenticeships could be the start of a very worthwhile and remunerative career path and that they had a very supportive employer—a much bigger employer than in the scheme we are discussing. However, when I asked them whether their south London schools had encouraged them down this path, it was depressing to be told that there had been absolutely no mention of apprenticeships as a route to go down on the part of those schools. Therefore, I can see that there is work to be done on fully encouraging young people to take up apprenticeships, but it will not be for lack of government money. In 2011-12, we will provide £799 million for apprenticeships in the 16 to 19 age range, which is an increase from the £780 million in 2010-11. This money will fund 230,000 apprenticeship places for that age group. Therefore, the importance of apprenticeships is absolutely not lost on me.

Apprentices and their national insurance are covered by the Bill in the same way as any other employee. On previous amendments we have talked about the number of employees that small businesses typically take on. That is a critical point. The ceiling that we have left in the Bill of 10 employees provides sufficient headroom to take on apprentices. A feature of apprentices is that there is not normally the turnover that we talked about and it is not a question of part-time work. One or two apprentices being taken on by a business should be accommodated within that headroom limit of 10. We think that is a sufficient and appropriate way to accommodate what I completely agree is a critical part of the thrust needed to rebuild the nation’s workforce with the appropriate skills base for a thriving economy in the 21st century. With that explanation, I again ask that the noble Lord follow the convention of withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that concerted response and, of course, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 14 withdrawn.

Amendment 15

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

15: Clause 6, page 3, line 45, at end insert—
“( ) A new business shall be able to treat two or more part-time employees, up to the value, in terms of hours worked, of a full-time employee, as a single person for the purposes of the relief available.”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, to a certain extent the Minister has already pre-empted this and given us a response which will be, I think, that in a sense there is room for part-time workers within the headroom that the count of 10 will provide. Nevertheless, I will seek to pursue the argument.

The technical note issued by HMRC in August adds some clarification on the maximum number of qualifying employees. In particular it makes clear that employees earning below the secondary threshold—that is the start of national insurance obligations—still count towards the 10, even if they are part-time or casual employees. Even if there is no employer national insurance due and no benefit from the holiday, they still count against the number 10.

The purpose of this amendment, which I accept would need some tidying up to be acceptable, is to enable part-time employees to be aggregated when determining the first 10 employees of a new business. It may well be that individual part-time employees do not earn above the secondary threshold so that, irrespective of their employment, a holiday would not produce a benefit for the new business, but it may allow the eleventh or twelfth employee to be counted in and the employer to enjoy the benefit of the holiday. Clearly there would need to be rules about what counts as part-time, and who gets added to whom, as it were, to determine a full-time equivalent, and what happens if a part-timer leaves, but these should be capable of being drawn up fairly simply.

Part-time working has been an increasing phenomenon of the UK labour market in recent years, although it dipped slightly in the last quarter to December 2010. Over the last year, it has increased by some 8 per cent for men and over 1 per cent for women. Nearly three-quarters of those employed part-time are women. Job sharing, especially for women, is an increasing way of balancing caring responsibilities with work, and a removal of the default retirement age, which we thoroughly support, will lead possibly to older people working longer but on a part-time basis.

Taking on part-time workers in the early stages of a new business could help lower risk to the business and increase its survival rate. There is clearly a tension between this and having full-time employees who could generate a benefit from the national insurance holiday. Being able to aggregate part-time employees on this basis would go some way to ameliorating the tension between those two positions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I want to speak particularly to this amendment because it is, in a sense, a real request. Part-time working and job sharing are really important. The Government have done a great deal to promote, indirectly, part-time work through, in effect, a pupil premium that now goes down to the age of two. This for many women means that there is a form of very attractive childcare available from the age of two, even for disadvantaged families, making part-time working far more feasible than it might have been in the past. The culture, however, needs to change, and it seems to me that this Bill, because it resists using the language of part-time work and job sharing, falls into that ongoing trap of not challenging the culture and pushing that change forward. Part-time work is often seen as a temporary accommodation, and as the lowest skilled work—that is not always true, but it is the general image—rather than as something that can be embedded permanently into the way that a company functions.

17:30

I will give a simple example. When I was on the board of Transport for London, we had to put together an urgent and complex project to introduce the congestion charge. The managing director role to achieve that required all kinds of complex engineering and marketing skills and was done as a job share. Two highly professional people who preferred not to work full time managed an exceedingly complex project with very tight timelines and carried it through brilliantly. It was a very good example of how many jobs lend themselves to a job share or part-time structure without it being career limiting. It would be great to see the Bill—and all other legislation—used to open up that potential and possibility, and to underpin the language of part-time work.

The Minister says that with 10 posts there will be scope for part-time work, but more explicit recognition and underpinning of part-time work and job sharing would be exceedingly valuable, and no additional costs would be attached to the programme.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I echo my noble friend Lady Kramer’s view of the importance of job sharing. I, too, could introduce a small reminiscence. I have had job-sharing personal executive assistants working for me, and I know that the arrangement can work extremely well. It gives people who, for example, have children, more opportunities to work. I have seen this in action and I and the Government encourage it.

The difficulty in this Bill is that they will be working in the technical framework of tax and national insurance legislation. One feature of the NICs and tax framework is that there is no distinction in the HMRC construct between full-time and part-time work. Therefore, we decided that the way to accommodate this was through the relatively high limit on the total number of employees. Putting together a construct for this piece of national insurance legislation that distinguished between full-time and part-time staff would be enormously challenging. This was recognised in the public evidence session by the Federation of Small Businesses, which concluded that it would add complexity for the employers who were affected.

There is nothing here that discourages part-time employees, and the 10 employee limit should fully accommodate the likely demand, except in the very marginal case of the few thousand firms—perhaps 2 per cent—that would be restricted by the limit. Again, I ask noble Lords to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I will certainly withdraw the amendment in due course. I am grateful to both noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, spoke with authority and passion about the importance of part-time work and of job sharing. She made a hugely important point about cultural change and recognising that part-time work is not simply temporary work in low-level, low-paid jobs. As she explained, very senior job shares will increasingly form part of the system.

I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, said about the difficulty of constructing this within the Bill, and I take the point about NICs and the tax system not making a difference between part-time and full-time employees. We will have some debates tomorrow on the Pensions Bill, and on the attempt to get some aggregation of people in part-time jobs for national insurance purposes so that they get credited at least for pension purposes—but that is a debate for another day.

I recognise that the level of 10 employees gives some headroom to deal with this, although I am disappointed that the Minister could not explicitly cater for part-time workers if for no other reason—it is not really the one that I had thought about—than to push the issue of the cultural change that is needed so that we properly value and encourage, where appropriate, part-time working and job sharing. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

Clause 6 agreed.

Clause 7 agreed.

Clause 8 : Making of deductions or refunds

Amendment 16

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

16: Clause 8, page 5, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) HMRC will ensure that all staff dedicated to the administration of deductions or refunds under the terms of Part 2 of this Act are additional employees and not taken from other tasks necessary for the continuation of the other functions of HMRC.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have no doubt that Amendment 16 may cause a slight flurry in the dovecotes. I hope that the Administration recognise that we are seeking to guarantee the success of the scheme by offering protection for the administrative resources devoted to it. However, I also see significant figures in the Treasury, not least the Minister himself, looking somewhat askance at the fact that we might have in public statute a definition of who should do the job of the Inland Revenue with regard to this issue.

This is a probing amendment and I do not expect the Minister to accept it on this occasion, although in due course he may be persuaded. The intention is to identify one obvious factor. We fully recognise that the public service is under considerable challenge at present, that lots of posts will be lost and that an awful lot of people are under pressure. Yet this scheme not only requires additional resources but has particular complexity built into it. There is no doubt that the Bill would be regarded as a matter-of-course administrative exercise if it covered all regions of the country and the excepted areas were brought in. We all appreciate the complexity and difficulty of the position, and the amount of resources that will be required to ensure that the scheme works. Of course we share with the Minister the ambition that this will prove to be successful. However, there are clear administrative implications. I am sure that the Minister has thought about these very seriously and will give me all the reassurances that I could possibly want.

[Lord Sassoon]

It is a high bar to be able to give the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, all the reassurances that he could wish for, but I will attempt to give him some reassurance. The way in which HMRC is going about administering the holiday is that it has devised new processes for dealing with the holiday alongside the other day-to-day tasks in its casework. Additional steps have been incorporated already in its day-to-day caseworking, so it has not been necessary to employ new staff. The training has already been done. It shows how HMRC is able to adopt a flexible approach to allocating its resources as and when schemes in tax and national insurance change. HMRC staff have been engaged in this work since September. It would not be possible to use new employees, if that was being suggested. I understand the probing nature of this discussion but using new employees would not technically work as staff are already trained and running the scheme alongside their other responsibilities without the need to employ additional staff.

I hope that the noble Lord has the reassurances he seeks, such that he might be minded to withdraw Amendment 16, as I think he said that he would.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I feel somewhat encouraged. I did not have the slightest doubt that the issue was expressed entirely in his own words and was not drafted for him by a senior official. If that had not been the case, I would have had a few doubts. I am very grateful for the response that he gave. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

Clause 8 agreed.

Clauses 9 and 10 agreed.

After Clause 10

Amendment 17

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

17: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Consideration of extension or modification of scheme
( ) The Treasury shall, by a date no later than six months after Royal Assent, and then again after a further 12 months, review the operation of the regional holiday scheme under Part 2 of this Act to assess if it should be reapplied to different areas of the country.
( ) If a recommendation is made to extend or modify the application of the scheme, the Secretary of State shall bring about such changes by order, to be subject to the approval of both House of Parliament.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

In moving Amendment 17, I shall speak also to Amendment 18. They clearly have the same thinking behind them; namely, the scheme’s advisability in circumstances where we recognise the challenge that the Bill presents. The noble Lord was good enough to indicate a moment ago the administrative arrangements that have been put in place regarding the Bill. It needs to succeed and we need to be able to identify its success. As we have indicated, we have real reservations about certain parts of the operation, particularly the concept of the exempted regions.

Therefore, we want a full evaluation of the virtues of the scheme. Amendment 17 proposes that we should get an early report from the Treasury on its operation and Amendment 18, which is linked in the discussion, proposes that there should be a full report on the impact of the scheme. The measure has its exempted regions, but it has a highly specific and particular approach to an important issue, which is bound to affect particular areas. As the exemptions have been made on a clear identification of where the economic need is for this stimulus—that is why the stimulus is partial rather than national—it is only right that we are in a position to evaluate whether that strategy proves to be successful. Amendment 18 seeks a report that will give us the fullest evaluation of a scheme that has its controversial elements as well as carrying a principle to which the Opposition also subscribe. I beg to move.

17:45

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I support the principles behind these amendments. This is a very specific scheme and it should be possible to tell whether it has worked. If it does not work—we hope that it will—the Treasury will be in the happy position of not forgoing revenue that it had expected to forgo. There would be an unused pot, as it were. If, as I fear may be the case, the scheme as outlined does not yield the number of new jobs that the Government hope, it would be very useful, after a year, to see how—to the extent that funding is available for job creation in the regions—it might be more effectively deployed.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, an obvious extension to the scheme would be to provide a modest ability for existing businesses in the designated regions to employ additional staff and qualify for a holiday. In those circumstances, it would be perfectly possible to say that every small business in the designated areas could employ an additional person and qualify for the holiday, so that the scope of the scheme is extended but keeps within the expenditure envelope already set aside for it. Whether that is possible will depend on whether the scheme works as intended. The only way we will know that is if we have a report as set out in these amendments.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we certainly agree that generally tax policy-making and the effects of tax measures should be more transparent. It is for that reason and because of the commitments given in another place, which I shall run through in a moment, that we do not believe that Amendment 17 is necessary. However, we completely share the commitment to transparency. Therefore, it may be helpful to the Committee if I echo the undertaking given by my honourable friend the Exchequer Secretary in another place to provide Parliament and the public with updates after the end of the tax year on the operation of the scheme, including information at regional level, although the precise requirements set out in the amendment could raise legal issues, for example on confidentiality of taxpayer data.

The factual report that we envisage would cover, regionally and nationally, the number of new businesses applying, the number of applications rejected, the number of qualifying employees for whom a holiday has been claimed and the amount claimed. The main difference between the commitment that the Government have made and this amendment is that the latter would require a constituency level breakdown even though the scheme is regional in England and will not cover every English constituency.

I remind the Committee that during proceedings in Committee in another place, amendments put forward with the aim of altering the holiday to a constituency basis were discussed at some length. My honourable friend the Exchequer Secretary said then that the Government do not believe that a constituency-based scheme is either appropriate or feasible. Since we have a regional scheme including the whole of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it does not seem logical to provide a constituency level breakdown even if it was possible to do so. A regional scheme and a regional analysis at the end of each tax year will be available for scrutiny. Therefore, we do not think that it is necessary to enshrine that in an amendment to the Bill. I refer to Amendment 18—I said Amendment 17 at one point, and will come to that in a moment.

A technical point in the amendment refers to a budget for the scheme. For the avoidance of doubt, businesses can be confident that there is no budgetary constraint. The holiday will continue as proposed, regardless of the number of applicants. The expected costs of the scheme were set out in the policy-costing documentation at the time of the Budget last year.

Amendment 17 is aimed at providing flexibility to modify the holiday. As I have explained, the Government want to target available resources on the regions most dependent on public sector employment. We want to do so in the way that we have discussed at length with regard to the qualifying businesses, the numbers of employees and so on. However, introducing flexibility to change the details of the scheme, as proposed in the amendment, would increase uncertainty for those who might potentially benefit and would risk inhibiting decision-making for those who need to know with some certainty what the holiday permits. I hope that I have provided considerable reassurance on the questions of transparency and of the ability of the House to scrutinise the way that the scheme will operate in practice, and that noble Lords will withdraw their amendment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I am grateful to the Minister; half a loaf is better than none. The extent to which he defined how far he was able to go in response to the amendment was some consolation. I appreciate his remarks. I am well aware of the fact that no one in Committee is particularly concerned about constituencies. I am also well aware that the issue was raised in the other place, where concerns were extensive. The Minister will forgive me for seeking to identify that this might be the basis for a degree of transparency that would be welcomed by all those who are directly answerable to the electorate. I am grateful for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 17 withdrawn.

Amendment 18 not moved.

Clause 11 : Interpretation of Part 2

Amendments 19 and 20 not moved.

Clause 11 agreed.

Clauses 12 to 15 agreed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Committee adjourned at 5.54 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Monday, 28 February 2011.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool.

Independent Commission on Banking

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:36

Asked By

[Baroness Kramer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the progress of the Independent Commission on Banking.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the Government set up the Independent Commission on Banking to consider reforms to the banking sector. We welcome the progress that the commission has made and look forward to receiving its report in September.

[Baroness Kramer]

Does my noble friend agree that strengthened regulation supervision and stronger capital requirements are welcome but that neither of them deals with the underlying structural problems of “too big to fail” or “too interconnected to fail”? Will he commit the Government to act on any recommendations from the ICB for reform in this area, even if it means splitting the banks or ring-fencing activities with functional subsidiarity?

[Lord Sassoon]

I certainly agree with my noble friend that there were two areas that the Government needed to address urgently resulting from the failure of the previous system of regulation and the over-leveraging of our banks. The first one on which we have brought forward proposals is the system of regulation, although I completely agree with my noble friend that that is not sufficient, which is why we set up the independent commission to look into the structure of banking. I am certainly not going to pre-empt either the conclusions that it comes to in its final report or the Government’s response, but I am greatly encouraged by the papers that it put out and by the recent lecture by Sir John Vickers, which indicate that the commission is tackling all the major issues and stimulating a vigorous debate.

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, in light of the agreement on Project Merlin, do the Government now regard bank bonus practices and numbers as acceptable?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, this afternoon we are talking about the Independent Commission on Banking. Questions of pay structures have not been set by the Government as part of the commission’s remit and it is sticking to a series of other questions.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on having set up this independent commission, which must produce the right result. I agree with the remarks of my noble friend Lady Kramer, and the speech of Sir John Vickers the other day very much echoed the identification of those problems. I hope that we can get international agreement but does my noble friend agree that it is important to do the right thing even if we cannot get that agreement?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I certainly agree with my noble friend. He has been thinking about these things for many years and I very much value his thoughts on them. I absolutely agree that the UK wants to do the right thing, but the remit that the commission has been given also reflects the international and global contexts, of which we have to be mindful. I wait with interest to see what the commission says and repeat that I do not want in any way to prejudge its thinking.

[Lord Eatwell]

My Lords, the Statement that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made on bankers’ bonuses contained a peculiar sentence about the Independent Commission on Banking. It said:

“I should make it very clear that nothing that I will say today about the settlement that we have reached with Britain's banks … in any way prejudges the outcome of the commission”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/2011; col.310.]

What was peculiar about this sentence was that he was answering a question that nobody had asked. Will the noble Lord confirm that in recent weeks there have been threats of resignation from the commission if its remit is in any way constrained?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am attacked one week for not answering questions that have been asked, and now my right honourable friend is being queried as to why he answers questions that he has not been asked. He wanted to make it absolutely clear, which he did in the Statement on Project Merlin, that nothing there pre-empted or in any way cut across the independent remit of the banking commission. I think the position remains clear.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the issues that the Vickers Commission is looking at is how to reduce risk within the banking sector and risk taken by individual institutions? In light of that, do the Government support the decision by Northern Rock to increase the proportion of loan-to-value on mortgages to 90 per cent, which many people see as the first step towards a return to the bad old days?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that risk and the stability of the system go the heart of the remit of the commission. However, the individual product sets which are offered by individual banks is at the moment a matter for the Financial Services Authority, and I am sure that it will be taking its responsibilities very seriously in relation to the business models and products of all the banks it regulates.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, whatever the final recommendations of the commission, what work has the Treasury done with regards to splitting? Would it be helpful to the certain sale of our shareholdings? If it turns out to be bad, will the Minister be acting, as the noble Baroness asked, on a potential splitting?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, there are a lot of hypothetical questions bound up in this. We will not see what the commission is proposing until September and then it will be up to the Government, in light of all the circumstances, to decide what to do with its recommendations. I can confirm that the separation of retail and investment banking is one item which goes to the heart of the remit of the commission.

[Lord Tomlinson]

As the noble Lord has now had plenty of time to reflect on the question that he was asked by my noble friend Lord Eatwell, will he now, as there seems to be plenty of time, get around to answering it?

[Lord Sassoon]

I see the clock is advancing because of the length of that question. I gave the answer I wanted to give.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Are not 90 per cent mortgages dangerous in conditions where the property market might decline by 20 per cent?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, it is up to the banks to decide what products they offer. They have to do that within a set of rules that are set down by the regulators. It is not for me to comment on either the business model of an individual bank or the regulation and supervision of the regulators on this point.

Prisons and Young Offender Institutions: Education and Training

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:44

Asked By

[Lord Sheldon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements are in place to provide education and training for those in prisons and young offender institutions.

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

My Lords, the Government believe strongly in giving offenders the skills and training they need to get and keep jobs. That reduces their likelihood of reoffending and is of clear benefit to society. A review into the efficiency and effectiveness of offender learning led jointly by DBIS and the MoJ is nearing completion and will report shortly.

[Lord Sheldon]

My Lords, I look forward to that response in due course. Is it not clear that education and training can reduce prison overcrowding, and that those who have not had proper education and training are three times more likely to be convicted? The overcrowding in prisons limits valuable education and training, so what action will be taken to reduce that overcrowding?

[Lord McNally]

The noble Lord will know that it is our intention to try to bring down the prison population in the next few years, partly by following his line of argument: that if there is a proper rehabilitation strategy for prisoners, they are likely not to reoffend, which will take the pressure off the prison population.

[Baroness Sharples]

How many prisons have writers in residence?

[Lord McNally]

I am afraid that that is not in my briefing but I will write to the noble Baroness and put the information in the Library. It is important to engage prisoners of all ages into the concept of learning, and I am sure that a writer in residence will be a spur to that end.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, considering the sizeable percentage of prisoners with mental illness, can the Minister tell us what the Government propose to provide the necessary education and training to meet the unique and challenging needs of this population?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I hate to keep saying “Shortly a paper will be published”, but the Department for Education is about to publish a Green Paper on special education needs, which will look again at the special education needs of prisoners. One of the things pointed out in the Green Paper published by the MoJ—it is still open for consultation for another four days—is that far too many prisoners have undetected mental problems. We are making every effort to ensure that opportunities and facilities are in place to detect and help to treat those problems.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, going back to the noble Lord’s answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, can he confirm that the Government value the broad educational opportunities created by the use of the arts—including the performing arts—in prisons? Will he also confirm that the Government will not fall victim to the strident voices telling us that that kind of opportunity in prison is going soft on prison life?

[Lord McNally]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. Often our media like to leap on an initiative and present it in a way that, as she says, suggests it is soft on prison. The whole rehabilitation strategy tries to break into the ludicrous situation of people going through the prison system and reoffending shortly after being released. If we can find ways of engaging them in cultural interests by providing education, we will save public money and avoid further crime. That is plain common sense.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, education and training has a direct impact on the rehabilitation of offenders, so will my noble friend ensure that this part of his department’s budget is ring-fenced? Will he also look at the possibility that, any time non-custodial sentencing options are considered, training will form an essential part of that programme?

[Lord McNally]

I am reluctant, particularly with a Treasury Minister at my shoulder, to make commitments on ring-fencing of any budget, but the kind of campaign that my noble friend has led and with which he has been associated on the rehabilitation of offenders is very much in our minds. There is illiteracy, innumeracy and a lack of various other aspects of education and training among prisoners, so it is a no-brainer to see that if we can break into that we can also break into the circle of crime.

[Baroness Trumpington]

The Minister has just talked about illiteracy. Does he agree that it is very difficult to get a job when you leave prison and you cannot read and write? Can he explain why the farms and gardens are closed? They provide very suitable work for people who may have a great love for that kind of work but who cannot read and write.

[Lord McNally]

Across the Prison Service we are trying to identify opportunities for people to be trained. As the noble Baroness says, for somebody who lacks literacy—although I hope we address that in our programmes—gardening and similar park activity may quite often provide rewarding and worthwhile employment.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, does the Minister recollect that the prison rules still express the reformation of the prisoner as the main purpose of incarceration, and that adequate educational and training services are central to that very concept?

[Lord McNally]

Again, I could not agree more. Of course punishment is an aspect of prison, as is protection of the public from dangerous prisoners. However, as I mentioned, with issues such as homelessness, dysfunctional families, lack of education and lack of a job when leaving prison, if you can intervene while people are in prison and prepare them for life outside with a proper policy on the rehabilitation of offenders, then you break into the cycle of crime, lower the numbers in prison and make it a win-win situation for the public and the taxpayer.

Child Trust Fund

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:52

Asked By

[The Earl of Listowel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to replace the child trust fund, abolished in the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Act 2010, for children in the care of local authorities.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the Government announced in October that we will create a new tax-free children’s savings account, which is likely to be known as a junior ISA. We expect the new accounts to be available later this year. It will be possible for local authorities to open junior ISA accounts for eligible children in their care. We are also exploring the possibility of facilitating a voluntary scheme for financial institutions and the third sector to contribute to the junior ISAs of children in care.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and indeed, the meeting with Mark Hoban, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and Tim Loughton, the Minister for children, to discuss this matter. Does the Minister agree that for our own children we would seek wherever possible to ensure that they have a capital asset so that when they move on to independent living they have money for a deposit on a flat or a car to assist them? Does he not further agree that we should ensure that children leaving care have a capital asset to put down for a car or to buy a new suit to get a job? Does he recall the strength of feeling around the House at Second Reading about the need for these young people to have such a capital asset? Given that, will he understand and consider the need to put on a statutory basis the funds that he has described, so that children can be assured of a capital asset as they leave care?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I very much appreciate that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, keeps these important issues under discussion and alive in our thinking. It is important for all children to understand how to handle money, to be able to make the decisions that they need to start making as soon as they leave school and move on. This is not just a matter of amounts of money that are put aside, but of making sure that the mechanisms are there for all children to learn how to handle their finances as they progress through life.

As to the question of a statutory basis, as and when we come up with the detailed plans for the junior ISA, of course draft regulations will be issued for comment. I cannot confirm that there will be special provision other than in the terms that I mentioned whereby accounts can be set up for children in care to which local authorities and others can contribute.

[Lord Soley]

Does the Minister accept that one reason for having the child trust fund was to encourage the culture of saving? It affects not just children in care but children from families which are poor or where the parents are not that competent, and who may leave school without any savings or culture of savings. Will the Minister get all the Ministers who are dealing with this to think how much money they have given to their own children to make sure that they survive in future life, and then to ask themselves how a child coming from such a background as described is expected to survive without the help of the child trust fund or the savings culture that it inspired?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, very difficult choices have to be made at a time when we have been left with the biggest deficit in our peacetime history.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Sassoon]

Noble Lords opposite may groan and make all sorts of noises, but those are the facts of the situation. Regrettably, the child trust fund cost £500 million in a full year, and it is one of those things that we as a nation simply cannot, in these difficult times, afford. There are indeed questions about the efficacy of the scheme, but even on the assumption that it was doing all that it set out to do, that is a very large sum which unfortunately the nation cannot afford.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, while welcoming what the Minister has said about the junior ISA, I encourage him to go just a little further in relation to looked-after children. It strikes me that there is an opportunity here for philanthropists, charities and the third sector, as well as local authorities, to put money into savings accounts for looked-after children. Will the Government consider developing a scheme to encourage that sort of big society giving?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend, because we are working on that. We have been talking, for example, to potential junior ISA providers. They have been showing some interest, I am pleased to say, in contributing to a scheme in that way. We need to continue to work on that, but if any financial institutions, charities or other groups are interested in being part of that, we would be very pleased to discuss it with them.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords—

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross-Bench.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

The Minister will be aware of local authorities’ inconsistent fulfilment of their duties under the Children (Leaving Care) Act and the inconsistent provision, particularly as regards accommodation, made for children and young people leaving care. What will the Government now do to make good the deficiency in provision for that particularly vulnerable group, whose vulnerability is at its greatest at the point of leaving local authority care?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we are straying a bit from the Question and from my area of responsibility, but I appreciate that difficult issues are involved with those who are leaving care, which is why additional funding in the “children in care” line of the new local government formula is there to encourage local authorities to use the staying-put models of practice. From April 2011, we will be implementing provision in the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 that allows young people to resume entitlements to leaving care support up to the age of 25, where they take up education or training.

Local Government: Big Society

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Question

14:59

Asked By Lord Dubs

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effect of cuts in local government spending on their big society proposals.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham): The challenge the country faces from the public finance mess left by the previous Government means that local government has had to take its share of the burden required to reduce the deficit. Local authorities, however, now have control over virtually all of the grant that they receive from central government. Therefore, they have choices as to how they manage their budgets, the areas that they protect and the priorities that they set. The big society is a wide concept of social action, community empowerment and public service reform that is embedded in localism.

[Lord Dubs]

Does the Minister agree that many people find it difficult to understand how the whole idea of a big society can survive the many devastating cuts that are taking place particularly in the most disadvantaged areas of our country? Can the Minister explain how voluntary organisations, many of which are now under threat and might not be able to survive, can provide the services to the poor, to young people and to the mentally ill when their money is being cut from under their feet? It is not a tenable way of approaching the big society and it will not work.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, as I made clear in my original reply, local authorities are now almost entirely responsible for the money that they receive from government. They are responsible for their budgets and, therefore, have their choices to make. However, it seems to me to be an inescapable fact that local authorities ought to continue to support the voluntary sector because, as the noble Lord said, it provides great support for the work that they do. It is also part of the Government’s policy under the Localism Bill, which we will be discussing quite soon, that the voluntary sector should have a large part to play in managing and directing the services that are in local authority control.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

A number of local authorities now appear to be making disproportionate cuts in the grants to charities and voluntary groups. Why they are doing that is not clear. Is there not a reason for local authorities to consult with charities and voluntary groups to ensure that the right long-term solutions are arrived at to provide services for the communities that they look after at a time when we have perfectly appalling economic circumstances inherited from the last Labour Government?

[Baroness Hanham]

I thank my noble friend. The Government’s whole purpose is to pass responsibility and money from central to local government. Therefore, on the decisions that they have to make, they will consult with those who they will be using or who are co-operating with them. The whole question of a voluntary sector is the purpose of these questions today. The voluntary sector remains an extremely important provider not only of services but also of support. I am sure that any local authority worth its salt would recognise that.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

Does the Minister accept that the provision being made to charities by local authorities falls short of the standards that we might reasonably expect? Can the Government do anything to regulate the process or do they simply stand back and wash their hands of what is not part of their brief or responsibility?

[Baroness Hanham]

The Government are not in the business of regulating local authorities on these matters. It is for local authorities themselves to come up with sensible and sustainable answers. Not every local authority is finding itself in trouble. Many local authorities have recognised the value of the voluntary sector and are determined to continue to support it in all the ways that they can. We should not be too disheartened by all this because, as I say, there is a complete recognition that the voluntary sector is of great value.

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

Is the Minister aware that there are those who believe in the big society concept and who also understand the need for fiscal responsibility, but who nevertheless believe that there is an unevenness in the distribution of finances across the country and in particular the financial settlement with local authorities? Will the Minister be prepared to look again at the financial settlement to ensure that there is a fair and just treatment of local authorities right across the country?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, we are not really on the subject of local government spending at the moment. We have had several discussions on the finance settlement. All I can say is that that finance settlement was demonstrated against a formula, the relative-needs weighting was increased so that money followed socioeconomic indicators. Banded floors were put in place so that the most dependent authorities got the smallest cuts and social service authorities and shire district councils were grouped together in four bands reflecting their relative reliance on central government grant. The right reverend Prelate’s view would suggest that the Government have not taken the greatest possible care with the local government finance settlement in these very difficult circumstances, and that is not the situation.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that her right honourable friend the Minister for Decentralisation, in an article in the Local Government Chronicle last week, rightly called on local authorities considering cuts on the voluntary sector to discuss those matters? Which voluntary organisations did the Government consult when they abolished the working neighbourhoods fund, reduced the area-based grant and made massive cuts in local government funding that are inevitably going to impact on those very organisations?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the working neighbourhoods fund was not going to continue. Under the noble Lord’s Government, it was due to finish at the end of three years. The three years would have been up in this financial year, so I do not think that the accusation of getting rid of the working neighbourhoods fund can be levelled against this Government. Decisions have had to be made against the serious financial situation. There have been consultations with the voluntary sector during the course of these decisions. It has made its representations and has been listened to.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (7th Day)

15:07

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, before I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into a Committee upon the Bill, I should like to beg your Lordships’ indulgence by taking a few minutes to update the House on the work that has taken place since the Committee last met to improve this Bill.

During the Second Reading debate, I made it clear to this House that I intended to engage in an open dialogue with noble Lords throughout the Bill’s passage. I feel confident in saying that I have to date delivered on that promise. Since the last day in Committee, 11 January—which seems a very long time ago, and I am sure that noble Lords have shared my withdrawal symptoms—I hope the time has not been wasted. Indeed, it has been well used. The Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right honourable friend Mr Francis Maude, ministerial colleagues in this House and I have participated in a number of meetings with Peers from all sides of the House seeking constructive and proportionate solutions to concerns regarding this Bill. Such discussions are a crucial part of the work of this House, and I have no doubt that they will continue. I pay tribute to the positive spirit in which noble Lords, including those on the opposition Benches, have looked to work with the Government to achieve our shared objectives. As a result of this work, the Government have today laid a number of significant amendments to the Bill. I hope it will be helpful to the House if I briefly describe their effects as they are relevant to the debates that we shall be having over the coming weeks.

First, I am happy to inform the House that the Government continue to engage in constructive discussions with my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern on the safeguards that should apply to orders made under the Bill, particularly in relation to Amendment 175, which has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill. We intend to reach a solution that will offer further protection for the necessary independent exercise of public functions, including judicial functions, and we will require that orders made using the powers in this Bill are proportionate in their effects. The noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, are working closely with the Government to inform this approach, and I thank them for the rigorous and helpful analysis that they have brought to bear on this process.

I wish to address the overall structure and purpose of the Bill, with particular reference to Schedule 7. Noble Lords will be well aware that the Government’s policy is that all public bodies should be subject to regular review to ensure that their functions are still required and are delivered in the most effective and efficient manner. This is a goal to which the Government remain committed and one which I am sure will continue to receive support from all sides of the House. Schedule 7—and the corresponding power to move bodies between schedules, as described in Clause 11—was designed as a pragmatic mechanism to facilitate this goal by creating a means by which changes to public bodies could be made following future reviews without recourse to further extensive primary legislation.

The Government absolutely recognise that some public functions need to be carried out independently of Ministers. Schedule 7 was never intended to hinder or threaten that independence. However, it has become clear during the passage of this Bill to date that this House is uncomfortable with the nature of Schedule 7. As many noble Lords, including members of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee, have made clear, it is a feeling that is strongly held by much of this House that Schedule 7 represents a significant delegation of power to Ministers and has the potential to hinder the independent delivery of public functions.

Noble Lords will, I hope, forgive me for maintaining a more positive interpretation of the Government’s intentions. None the less, I have listened with great care to the voice of this House and have taken its concerns to my colleagues in government. Indeed, the Minister for the Cabinet Office has met a number of noble Lords, who have taken the opportunity to put these points to him in person. Consequently, I can confirm to the House that the Government have accepted the arguments that bodies and offices should be listed in the schedules of this Bill only where Parliament has given its consent in primary legislation. On this basis, we intend that Schedule 7 and Clause 11 be removed from the Bill. I am therefore adding my name to existing amendments opposing the Question that the relevant clauses of the Bill stand part.

In this context, I should also inform the House that it will be necessary as a result of the removal of Schedule 7 to introduce a small number of amendments that move bodies currently listed in Schedule 7 to one or more of the remaining schedules. These changes shall ensure that all reforms announced as part of last year’s review of public bodies can be implemented. These amendments will be made at a later stage in the Bill’s passage, but I hope that the House will be assured by the fact that these moves, and the reforms to which they relate, will be scrutinised in primary legislation.

I will now reassure those of your Lordships’ House who have concerns about whether the provisions in the Bill on the transfer of functions could be used in a way that could undermine the independence of charities. I make it absolutely clear that the Government have not considered, nor would they ever consider, using the Bill to transfer functions to charities without their consent or make consequential changes to their constitutions without such consent. We continue to work with charities to ensure that that reassurance is made as explicit as possible. The reform of public bodies will ultimately help to empower rather than undermine the role of charities and the independence on which they rely.

Finally, I refer briefly to the clauses in the Bill that relate to forestry. As noble Lords will be aware, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made a Statement in the other place on 17 February, setting out the Government’s intention to end the consultation on the future of the public forest estate and to remove the relevant clauses from the Bill.

My noble friend Lord Henley will set out the Government's revised approach on this issue in greater detail later today. However, I can confirm that I have added my name to amendments to remove the relevant clauses and schedule entries to the Bill, including the regional advisory committees established under Section 37(1)(b) of the Forestry Act 1967, which is listed in Schedule 1.

Progress on this Bill to date has not always been smooth. It has certainly been drawn out longer than I had hoped. However, I take comfort in the knowledge that the expert scrutiny of this House has improved and will continue to improve the Bill. Again, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this process. In tabling the significant amendments that I described today and following our existing amendments to introduce both a statutory period on consultation and the option for Parliament to select an enhanced affirmative procedure, the Government have demonstrated their commitment to engage with and respond to your Lordships' House. I hope, following these amendments, that we will be able to make progress on the Bill with a renewed sense of shared purpose and in the constructive spirit that characterises this House at its best. I beg to move.

15:15

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the statement that he made. Naturally, I warmly welcome the radical changes that he proposes, especially in relation to Clause 11, Schedule 7 and Clauses 17 and 18. I am also grateful for his willingness to engage in open dialogue and to make changes. That is this House working at its best and I am pleased that it is working in this way.

I also recognise that with a new Government, especially a coalition Government, who came to power having been elected on two different manifestos, it is difficult immediately to produce quality Bills. However, the paucity of this particular Bill was extraordinary, as was widely recognised by the Constitution Committee, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, all of which produced devastating critiques of the Bill. It was an unnecessarily rushed Bill and it is clear that the proposals were not properly thought through and that there was no proper consultation. It is thanks to the time that we took to scrutinise the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that this Bill has been recast, just as we suggested it should have been in the first place.

In the mean time, those bodies that were listed under Schedule 7 and their employees have suffered, as have the communities living in and around the forests and woodlands of our country. But I am grateful to the noble Lord and I hope that the Government will have learnt lessons from this Bill and will ensure that, in future, consultations and White Papers come before legislation in the tried and tested manner.

We continue to have concerns about the process and we will be looking to the Government to make further changes in respect of the super-affirmative procedure. We will also be looking for amendments in relation to the sunsetting of certain aspects of the Bill. Today we will discuss forests, RDAs and the UK Film Council. Thanks to the U-turn on forests—our forests seem to be secure at the moment and we are grateful for that—I hope that the Government will reconsider their proposals on RDAs and the UK Film Council. We will all want to celebrate today the brilliant British success at the Oscars last night with “The King’s Speech”. We are all terribly proud of that. I look forward to our debates later on today on these issues.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Taylor for the dedicated way in which he has applied himself to considering the criticisms of the Bill that were made during the earlier stages of debate. I congratulate him on the generous way in which he has involved Members not only of the coalition but of the Opposition in the dialogue, which has unquestionably moved towards much more coherent and democratic procedures for winding up bodies which are past their sell-by date. This has exemplified the maxim of John Stuart Mill that the best government is government by discussion. I strongly welcome the approach and hope that it will continue until the Bill is enacted.

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach for informing us of the removal of Schedule 7 and Clause 11. I was seriously concerned about this matter because I was until the general election the chairman of the Delegated Powers Committee, and I think I am its only surviving former chairman. As it was drafted, the Bill gave power in Schedule 7 and Clause 11 for the Government to do all sorts of things whenever they decided to do so. It was entirely uncertain, and whenever I looked at it I saw in my mind the quotation from King Lear:

“I will do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth”.

What is now proposed is broadly within the standards recognised by your Lordships’ House for delegated powers and I am very pleased that this difficulty is over. It will cut a very substantial amount of time from what we would have expected.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, the Minister was kind enough to refer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and myself. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is sorry that he cannot be here today, but I explained to him what I would like now to say. We are delighted that over the past seven weeks discussions have continued with members of the Civil Service, the Cabinet Office, and so on, on what to do about Amendment 175. My noble friend Lord McNally, who is even more optimistic than I am, said seven weeks ago that he hoped and believed that we would be able to come to a satisfactory arrangement on Amendment 175, and I share his hope still. It is extremely important that this is settled by the next day this Bill is in Committee, because it goes to the architecture of the Bill. Although we are debating details today, the House will need to be quite sure that the safeguards in Amendment 175, or something very close to them, are in place before the Bill leaves Committee. Otherwise, we will be in the position of someone trying to cross a river and not knowing whether a stepping stone is solid or slippery.

Motion agreed.

Schedule 1: Power to abolish: bodies and offices

Amendment 44

Moved by

[Lord Warner]

44: Schedule 1, page 17, line 8, leave out “National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.”

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, in this new mood of enthusiasm for constructive scrutiny, I rise to speak to the amendment standing in my name and in the names of my noble friends which would remove NESTA from Schedule 1. My purpose in tabling this amendment is to find out why the Government thought it necessary to convert NESTA from an NDPB to a charity, and to understand the processes by which they will do this and at the same time safeguard public money and the remit given to NESTA by Parliament.

NESTA was set up in 1998 with a statutory remit to support and promote talent, innovation and creativity in the fields of science, technology and the arts. It does this by leveraging private capital into the next generation of innovative, entrepreneurial businesses, running cutting edge experimental programmes to test new ways in which to solve big challenges of the future, and building an evidence base that provides policy options to promote innovation. Its work has focused on innovation for economic growth, cheaper public services, and in the creative industries. All these seem to be areas where the UK economy needs all the help that it can get.

NESTA has done many good things, and I am a supporter of it. In this connection, I declare my interest as chairman of the Health Innovation Committee for the Young Foundation, which benefits from the generous support of NESTA. However, it is not self-evident to me that most of NESTA’s work is in pursuit of a charitable purpose, as defined in the current Charities Act. What discussions have the Government had with the Charity Commission to confirm that the work of NESTA would be accepted as a charitable purpose, and when did they take place? I am assuming that there will be no significant change of functions, or do the Government have other plans? Will the Minister also tell the House what discussions there were with the board of NESTA about converting it into a charity before Francis Maude made his announcement on 14 October? Was the board enthusiastic about the idea, or did it have problems about being an NDPB, which interfered with the discharge of the role given to it by Parliament in 1998? What other options or alternatives to an NDPB or a charity have been considered by the Government?

Alongside those questions, there are some important issues relating to the substantial sum of public money that would be transferred into a charitable body if the Government turned NESTA into a charity. NESTA is funded by an endowment from the National Lottery, which has grown from the original £200 million and now stands at well over £300 million. Along the way, the National Lottery has given it repayable loans and revenue allocations. NESTA does its work through the allocations, loans and the investment income from its endowment, without grant in aid from the Government. How would NESTA’s funding work in future if it was a charity? Would the current endowment be transferred in total to the charity, bearing in mind that charities can change their charitable purpose? Do the Government have any plans to cut NESTA’s endowment when its status changes? We need answers to these questions before we include in a cavalier fashion a perfectly satisfactory body such as NESTA in Schedule 1 and create unnecessary uncertainty about its future. I beg to move.

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, I, too, am a supporter of what NESTA has done and of its very innovative work and enormously important initiatives. I looked with some puzzlement at the Government’s proposals and join my noble friend in asking some further questions to see whether we can be clear about what the Government propose. My noble friend has already asked about the status of discussions between the Government and the Charity Commission on the future of NESTA. It is not always easy setting up a charity, as—quite properly—certain conditions have to be met. How far have the Government got with those discussions to be satisfied that charitable status is appropriate and proper and would be reasonably easy to achieve?

Furthermore, I understand that in the new scheme of things there is to be an individual called the “protector”, who will, presumably in addition to the Charity Commission, have supervisory responsibilities. What will be the powers and responsibilities of the protector and how will they sit alongside the responsibilities of the Charity Commission?

Will the Minister further confirm that there is at present no burden on the taxpayer because of the endowments held by NESTA? Therefore, there will really be no change in public expenditure or public responsibilities if and when NESTA becomes a charity. In other words, there is clearly no financial benefit in all this except possibly at the margin, where I am told that there might be some savings in not having to deal with civil servants or something of that sort. I am not quite clear how that will work, so maybe the Minister could explain that.

I have two further questions. If not all NESTA’s current endowments are appropriate for charitable purposes, I therefore assume that not all the money will be transferred to the new charity. However, if it is not transferred, where will it go? In other words, there are some functions of NESTA that are not totally charitable; clearly, these are now funded by the endowments. What will happen to the money appropriate to those non-charitable functions? Secondly, given that there are trustees to be appointed to run a charity if the proposal goes ahead, how will the trustees be appointed? By what process will they be appointed and what will be the safeguards?

15:30

[Lord Evans of Temple Guiting]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly as a great admirer of NESTA, an organisation that works in an exciting and important area of our society to create a viable commercial future for science, technology and the arts. NESTA’s core objective is to combine capital investment with non-financial support to help innovative early-stage companies to turn their ideas into commercial success. These target companies, referred to as seed companies, are vital for the cultural success and economic growth of this country. Without this assistance in the early stages of development, these companies will be held back from reaching their full potential. We should all be grateful to NESTA for its part in facilitating the creative industries’ £50 billion annual contribution to the economy.

NESTA is a unique organisation with a world-class reputation. It is the UK’s leading expert on innovation and carries out some cutting-edge work with the creative industries. Let me give your Lordships three examples. Its creative mentoring programme brings together new creative businesses with successful figures in the industry to help them to grow. It has worked with the National Theatre to bring live theatre to more people through the power of digital distribution. It is also working with our fashion industry to encourage the best UK designers to work more closely with British high-tech manufacturers.

NESTA is also recognised as one of the UK’s leading organisations producing world-class research, concentrating on exploring future areas of economic growth. It has always enjoyed a greater level of independence than any other non-departmental public body because of its unique set-up. NESTA has an endowment from the National Lottery, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and therefore operates at no cost to the Exchequer. In this case, moving NESTA from the public to the third sector will, in principle, allow it to continue its vital work as an early-stage seed funder and to act as a test bed for innovative solutions to some of our greatest challenges in the commercial creative sector.

In terms of detail, it would be helpful if the Minister could comment on the following points, which have also been raised by my noble friends Lord Warner and Lord Dubs. What consultation have the Government undertaken with the board and different interested groups about the change? What process will the Government use, as my noble friend Lord Dubs asked, to select and appoint trustees? The Minister may also like to inform the House, in light of the Public Administration Committee’s recent report on quangos, why this body is one of the few bodies to have been singled out for charitable status.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for introducing this amendment, and the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, for their contributions, which give me an opportunity to explain how the Government see the role of NESTA. It is government policy to reduce the number of NDPBs and NESTA did not meet the Cabinet Office criteria for remaining an NDPB. However, NESTA and its activities are still considered highly valuable to UK growth and innovation. The Government are clear that they want that work to continue. That view will be widely held throughout the House.

We have no intention of winding down NESTA and its activities. Instead, the proposed reconstitution of NESTA as a charity, with its £329 million endowment held in a separate charitable trust, will allow it to continue its valuable work. Far from halting its activities, establishing NESTA as a charity preserves its ability to deliver its public benefit mission at no cost to the taxpayer. I confirm the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that there is no question of saving the taxpayer money in this matter, since the body is independent of taxpayer funding. We can further distance it from government and enhance its independence by making these changes. It will therefore cease to be classified as an NDPB and as part of the public sector. We have already worked closely with NESTA to develop the detail of this reform. We will seek Charity Commission approval for the proposed new model. This model builds on that successfully used by the Millennium Awards Trust, which similarly derived much of its funding from the National Lottery. We want to build on that model.

Once NESTA becomes a private sector charity, the Government will no longer select or appoint the trustees. The separate charitable trust, which will be created to hold the endowment in the public sector, will have a protector. The intention is for the protector to be appointed by Ministers and for NESTA the charity to be the trustee of the trust. The role and powers of the protector are yet to be defined but they will be based on the Millennium Awards Trust model. This is a very positive step that is being taken by the Government. We firmly believe that this model represents an opportunity for NESTA to continue its success. However, we also believe that NESTA’s current status as an NDPB is by no means a prerequisite for it to continue to flourish. Establishing NESTA as a charity is part of the Government’s wider commitment to hand power to the big society and not simply to rely on central bureaucracy to control public life. The Government’s proposed model reflects this objective while safeguarding the public interest in the large endowment managed by NESTA.

I have been asked by many noble Lords about the nature of the discussions that we have had with the Charity Commission. There was an initial discussion with the Charity Commission last December and there has been an exchange of correspondence since then. This is designed to ensure that the objects of NESTA are charitable. BIS and NESTA itself have carried on these discussions. They are positive and we are confident about their outcome. While there have been no public consultations, officials worked closely with NESTA’s senior management team to develop the charitable option and NESTA consulted informally with its board of trustees, which is supportive of the change in status. NESTA also consulted several key stakeholders. Its staff were informed on 14 October 2010, following the Government’s announcement on public bodies reform. Since then NESTA has held regular meetings with staff to inform them of the transitional process and provide the opportunity to address any questions or concerns that they had.

In a statement released at the time of October’s announcement, NESTA’s chair, Sir John Chisholm, said that the board welcomed the decision and described it as an extremely positive move for NESTA. The statement also contained endorsements from Sir James Dyson and from Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Since then, NESTA has written to key stakeholders and engaged with the public via its website and social media sites, giving details of the proposed transition and welcoming any questions regarding the change in status. In the light of these considerations, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his full explanation. I am still just a shade puzzled as to what will happen if the Charity Commission does not accept that the purposes defined by Parliament meet its requirements as to a charitable purpose. Many of those purposes defined by Parliament have at their heart economic development. Before the next stage, so that we can be absolutely clear, I would like more assurance from the Minister, perhaps in writing, that there is not going to be a slip between cup and lip over this that would damage NESTA and the work that it does. On the basis of an assurance in that area, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 44 withdrawn.

Amendment 45 not moved.

Amendment 46

Moved by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

46: Schedule 1, page 17, line 10, leave out “Railway Heritage Committee.”

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I am very pleased to continue the mood of co-operation and friendliness between the various parts of the House in relation to my Amendment 46, which is supported by two of my noble friends and by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, on the Benches opposite.

I start by expressing my appreciation to the Minister for his willingness to engage with me from Second Reading when, having heard my speech, he realised that what was initially proposed by the Government did not make a lot of sense, was causing a great deal of anxiety and needed to be put right. The way in which he and indeed his noble friend, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, have engaged on this subject has been excellent, and I thank both of them very much.

I am not going to argue for the continuation of the Railway Heritage Committee as a non-departmental public body. It has had that role for only about five years. Previously it had been a committee first under the wing of the British Railways Board at the time of privatisation and subsequently under the Strategic Rail Authority.

When the SRA was abolished, it became an orphan. I declare a past interest as its unpaid chairman at the time. We thought that the Department for Transport would provide a secure, long-term home for it. That optimism was misplaced, as the department originally intended to use this Bill to get rid of it altogether on the grounds that railway heritage was not sufficiently special to justify statutory protection. The signs are now that Ministers do not take that view, and I shall outline in a few words today how I hope we will be able to establish a new arrangement which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, will be able to accept on behalf of the Government.

What I shall propose achieves the Government’s two objectives behind the Bill, which were a long time ago, as he said in his initial statement. The first objective is to reduce the number of non-departmental public bodies and the second is to save taxpayers money, while at the same time, with the Railway Heritage Committee, preserving something that is really important. The RHC came into being as a direct consequence of the privatisation of the railways. When the railways were state-owned, obligations were imposed on the British Railways Board and its predecessor, the British Transport Commission, to ensure that what was significant to the history of the railways was preserved. That was a statutory obligation that was imposed on them. However, given privatisation and the fragmentation of the industry, it was necessary to create a new statutory mechanism to ensure that the process was continued. Initially, provisions in the Railways Act 1993 covered heritage items and records owned by the British Railways Board, but it was quickly realised that these measures were not adequate for dealing with the new companies that had entered the industry.

The response to that was contained in a Private Member’s Bill, introduced in the other place by a Conservative MP, Mr Mark Robinson, which achieved total cross-party support in both Houses. I read the Hansard reports of those debates, and the arguments for statutory powers of designation and for the principle that our nation’s railway history is sufficiently special to justify its legal protection were, and still are, compelling. Thereby, the Railway Heritage Act 1996 was passed, with the RHC operating initially under the auspices of the BRB.

15:45

The way in which the system works is that the RHC identifies artefacts and archives that are sufficiently important to justify preservation and then, after careful consideration, issues a designation order. Often the artefacts will still be in use on the working railway, and the designation is simply to ensure that the artefacts are looked after and not destroyed. When they no longer have any operational use, the owner seeks permission from the RHC to dispose of them. This is granted on the basis that they go to a good home—perhaps the National Railway Museum, another accredited museum, a heritage railway or, in a few cases, a private collection, with due accord given to the requirements of the Scottish museums movement and the railways in Scotland.

As the railway industry has been fragmented, designation has provided a structured way of identifying important artefacts and records, and it avoids the political pressure that would otherwise come from enthusiasts who are passionate to preserve a much wider range of items, regardless of costs. With designation there is a good process and good governance. Without it the result would be confusion and frequent requests for government intervention.

It was originally thought that these arrangements could be made on the basis of voluntary agreements, but during the passage of the 1996 Act they were rightly rejected by Ministers as unworkable. I agree with them. It is interesting that as recently as 12 January, the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee of the Scottish Parliament, while considering the Public Records (Scotland) Bill, heard evidence on behalf of the Scottish Council on Archives. The keeper of the records said that,

“a voluntary scheme would be rather like new year’s resolutions: we all start off with genuine enthusiasm and then gradually, as other things emerge, the enthusiasm wanes … We need a statutory framework as a fall-back position. It is particularly important because we are not just talking about traditional paper records; myriad electronic records systems—if I can call them systems—are emerging”.

The same applies to railway artefacts. The RHC has worked happily with the industry, whose members see it as a helpful partner that not only relieves them of much of the burden of worrying about preservation matters but complements their serious commitment to railway heritage. It is possible without statutory powers to foresee circumstances whereby one difficult company could effectively spoil the arrangements for everyone else.

Such is the degree of support within the railway industry for the continuation of the RHC—or for its statutory powers—that when an extensive consultation exercise was carried by the Department for Transport in 2008-09 to gauge the degree of support for extending the scope of the RHC to take account of the changes since 1996, there was virtually unanimous support for that proposition. Indeed, Transport for London specifically asked that London’s underground railways should come within the committee’s scope. Backing for the continuation of the RHC has come in the form of numerous letters to the Minister for Railways and, I suspect, to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.

If the committee were to be abolished, there would be no statutory protection of records and artefacts from now on, and future historians would find a void where at present there is a complete and accessible record. There would have to be a process of de-designation covering more than 1,000 artefacts and countless records and drawings that have already been designated. This would have a totally disruptive effect on the modern railway industry and add significantly to the costs of the National Railway Museum, which would find itself bidding at auction for items that at present it receives free of charge from a co-operative and supportive railway company.

There is a way through these difficulties, which I have discussed with the Minister and his officials in the Bill team. My proposition is that the RHC ceases to be a non-departmental public body in the Department for Transport and that its functions and statutory powers are administered by the National Railway Museum on behalf of the National Museum of Science and Industry. I should advise the Committee that I was appointed a trustee of the NMSI by the Prime Minister in January. The chairman of the NMSI board of trustees issued a totally supportive statement on 13 January saying that they were willing to take on this responsibility, and the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, the previous chairman of the museum, sent me a message this morning to the effect that, although he cannot be here this afternoon, he fully supports the proposals, which I have discussed with him and the NMSI.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government accept the solution that we have been working on together and that they will start drawing up the necessary statutory instrument to implement a railway heritage scheme. When we first discussed this, the Minister told me that he thought this was in line with the Government’s big society approach. That was his phrase, not mine. It would indeed reduce the number of NDPBs by one. It would save public money because the National Railway Museum would provide administration support, saving the employment costs of the one member of staff who is currently involved in running the RHC. It would also provide an opportunity for volunteers to continue to do what they already do very effectively. It is a sensible way forward and I commend it to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment and I fully support what my noble friend has said about the concerns and needs of the railway heritage sector. I congratulate him on the work that he has put in over many years to look after and preserve the heritage of the railway, which I think is unique. I suppose I would say that because I am very interested in it, but it is part of our national heritage.

Many noble Lords will know that the whole of the Great Western Railway was built to broad gauge by a fellow called Brunel, whom we all revere as having built wonderful smooth tracks, great bridges and excellent locomotives. However, many noble Lords might not know that not a single broad-gauge locomotive has been preserved because at the time the industry was much more interested in conversion, making money and moving forward. However, if this organisation had been around then, I am convinced that one or two locomotives and other pieces of equipment would have been preserved.

I worked on building the Channel Tunnel for 15 years. We managed to preserve one of the boring machines on the UK side and stuck it beside the motorway at Folkestone. The French half of the organisation put another one on a roundabout on the motorway at Calais. The UK one has been chopped up for scrap but the French one is still there, so we do not have a very good record in preserving these things. When something has lost its usefulness, people say, “Let’s make some money and scrap it”, or they are too busy doing something else. Therefore, this heritage committee forms a very important link in ensuring that a selection of the most important pieces of the railways is preserved.

My noble friend also mentioned the history of the heritage committee, starting off in its British Rail days. It went through the Strategic Rail Authority stage and then, as he said, became a bit of an orphan. The Government are going through another reorganisation of the railways at the moment. I do not know what it is going to produce but a similar thing has happened every five or 10 years for the past 20 years. My noble friend’s proposal that the Railway Heritage Committee responsibility should be transferred to the National Railway Museum, which I hope will have a much longer life, until the next railway restructuring is an excellent idea, so I wish him well in his onward negotiations with the Minister. I hope that the Minister in his response will give us some comfort that this might actually happen.

[The Earl of Mar and Kellie]

My Lords, in a single sentence I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to point actively to a secure and active home for railway heritage preservation.

[Lord Bichard]

My Lords, I have a slightly broader question for the Minister. What discussions have taken place between the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Office for National Statistics on what actions current NDPBs need to take in order to shed that status? I declare an interest as chairman of the Design Council, an organisation that is enthusiastically seeking to shed NDPB status and become a charity. A degree of frustration is already arising that this is not as easy as it appears on the face of it. If this frustration is being experienced by a number of similar organisations, it would be helpful if this could be clarified as soon as possible.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I will be relatively brief, having seen a copy of the statement on the Government’s intentions for the Railway Heritage Committee. As my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester has explained, the committee exercises statutory powers in designating railway artefacts and records so that they do not get damaged, destroyed or lost to ensure that what is important to our nation’s railway history is preserved. The committee also has the function of agreeing which institution shall hold the records and artefacts so designated when they are no longer required by the railway business that owns them. It also deals with the terms under which they are to be offered to such institutions. To quote its mission statement:

“The Railway Heritage Committee is established by statute to secure the preservation of evidence which is significant to the railway’s history”.

As the Government’s own briefing note recognises, most of the people involved with the committee act on a voluntary, unpaid basis and the cost of the Railway Heritage Committee is currently around £100,000 per year. Good value for money, one would have thought, and perhaps that is how the Government might have seen it from day one if their decisions last year on the future of public bodies had been taken with a little more thought and a little less speed. My noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester has worked tirelessly to try to ensure that the important statutory work of the committee continues, albeit not through a continuation of the Railway Heritage Committee as the Government have already announced their hasty decision in principle to abolish it. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister knew as much about the invaluable and cost-effective work of the committee at the time the decision was taken to abolish it as he does now. I suspect not. Decisions are usually better when they are based on facts following discussion rather than assumptions without discussion.

However, we recognise that the Government, subject to confirmation from the Minister, have apparently shifted their position in the light of the powerful case made by my noble friend. My noble friend’s proposal is that the Railway Heritage Committee’s power of designation should transfer to the board of trustees of the Science Museum, which also encompasses the National Railway Museum and thus has a very direct interest in railway history and the statutory work that is currently undertaken by the Railway Heritage Committee. I understand that the Minister is likely to be giving a positive response to my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester’s proposal, which, from the Government’s point of view, provides a face-saving formula. The Railway Heritage Committee would still cease to exist, as the Government have already announced, but the important and invaluable statutory functions of the committee would be retained. This would enable the Government to avoid what would have been fully justified criticism that, for the sake of £100,000 a year, they were prepared to see a vital part of our nation’s history lost, damaged or destroyed and the enthusiasm and dedication of so many volunteers discarded and rejected.

The Government’s briefing document says that their decision in principle in October to abolish the Railway Heritage Committee did not include plans for a successor organisation. That statement is less than frank. At that stage, the Government had no intention of there being a successor organisation. It will be thanks only to the efforts of my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and others who recognise the importance of preserving our railway heritage, if, as we hope he will, the Minister indicates when he responds that the Government are now involved in serious discussions to ensure that the statutory functions of the Railway Heritage Committee will continue, albeit through a different channel, and will not be abolished by this rushed, ill-thought out and high-handed Bill on which the Government are back-tracking with ever increasing rapidity.

16:00

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, perhaps I should start with the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. I hope that he will allow me to write to him, because the question extends somewhat beyond the brief I have on this particular body; but it points to the complexity of the reform of public bodies and why this has not been a particularly easy process.

The proposal today affects two government departments as well as the Cabinet Office, so it is frequently quite complex. However, there is a desire across government to achieve reform of the public body sector which I think is widely shared in this House. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that I am always ready to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and I have been greatly informed about the work of the Railway Heritage Committee as a result of the dialogue that I have had with him. I join in the tributes paid across the House to the work that the noble Lord did during his period as chairman of the Railway Heritage Committee. I thank him for the energetic and positive way in which he has reacted to the Government’s changes and for what he has done to bring about what I hope will be a satisfactory outcome.

I hope that the noble Lord will understand when I say that the committee’s appearance in Schedule 1 does not reflect on the distinguished service that he and his members have given to the committee over the years. The committee’s current powers are to apply a statutory designation to rail-related items of heritage interest.

The noble Lord’s amendments would move the committee from Schedule 1 to Schedule 5. They would therefore allow the committee’s powers to pass to another body while it retains its status as a public body. I understand the noble Lord’s desire for the committee’s powers to be retained, for example under the National Museum of Science and Industry, which operates the National Railway Museum—and I am delighted to hear of his involvement in that—but he should be aware that that would best be achieved by the RHC remaining in Schedule 1 and the powers being transferred at the time that the RHC is wound up.

The need to reduce the cost of government is an important consideration, but it is not the only one. The review of public bodies that took place last year began by asking whether a function needed to be carried out at all and, if so, whether it was appropriate for it to be carried out by a public body. Our analysis recognised that the railway industry already had a long and proud record of preserving its heritage, and I pay tribute to the industry itself and to the flourishing voluntary railway heritage sector for that undoubted success. Our proposal to abolish the RHC did not imply that we have no interest in railway heritage or that the good work that has already taken place would not be supported by other means. On the contrary, the Government are very sympathetic to rail heritage, and the spending review settlement for the DCMS will ensure our continuous support for the National Railway Museum. I know that the NRM and its parent body the National Museum of Science and Industry will want to engage actively to support the work of the railway industry and the voluntary railway heritage sector.

In the context of the review of public bodies, the question for the Government is therefore not only whether we can justify the cost of the committee but whether we can justify retaining a statutory power of designation in a field where there is already an impressive voluntary record of preserving the industry’s heritage. The noble Lord has presented his arguments in a positive way and they have led to further discussions within government. We see merit in the proposed transfer of the RHC power of designation to the board of the trustees of the Science Museum, the legal entity which stands behind the National Museum of Science and Industry. Positive discussions on the detail are continuing. Noble Lords will know that I am personally committed to supporting further discussions and continuing to engage with the noble Lord on his proposals. In those circumstances, and in view of the fact that his amendment would not in any case be the best means to achieve his desired goal, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment to allow the use of time between now and Report to take these positive, detailed discussions forward, and we will update the House at Report.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I am a little overwhelmed by the compliments paid in one or two quarters to me on this, but this has been a collective effort by a lot of people who care about railway heritage and railway heritage preservation. Above all, I want to pay my own tribute to the Minister for the generous and gracious way in which he has listened and been willing to accept the arguments that have been put to him. The most important thing that he has said—and this is the change in government policy—is that the Government now accept that there needs to be statutory protection for railway heritage. They did not accept that, and the Department of Transport did not accept that, in the initial press release last autumn when the committee was included in Schedule 1 to the Public Bodies Bill. I accept completely his point that my amendment will not be necessary if the Government are able to come forward at Report with alternative arrangements. On that basis, and on the understanding that he has expressed today and the agreement that we have already reached and will continue to discuss, I am very happy indeed, if the Committee agrees, to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 46 withdrawn.

Amendment 47

Moved by

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

47: Schedule 1, page 17, line 11, leave out “Regional advisory committees established under section 37(1)(b) of the Forestry Act 1967.”

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

I believe that with Amendment 47 we are also discussing a series of other amendments which relate to forestry issues. I shall carry on in the spirit of bonhomie which has engulfed the Benches in the House today but I must also say that I could not have foreseen such a situation arising a couple of weeks ago. The Government have made it very easy for us to be very positive because they have listened to what we have been trying to say—or at least I would like to think that they have been listening. The Minister has certainly been listening. I am not sure whether it was my arguments that persuaded him to move his position or whether it might have been the half-million people who signed the 38 Degrees referendum, or the 82 per cent of their own supporters who opposed their initiative, or the 86 per cent of the general public who opposed the Government’s proposals. If was not my arguments or any of those other possibilities perhaps it was the mass meetings.

What has been really encouraging over the past few months is the fact that the British people have spoken in a way that I cannot remember them speaking before. Across the country we have found protest groups—people—getting organised to fight the Government on this issue. Sometimes it has been just small groups of people with one local forest. In other cases—such as the Forest of Dean, the Lake District or Chopwell in the north-east—there have been very big demonstrations involving thousands of people, often in quite remote forests.

I think that the Government got the message, but I must say that they have caused a lot of trouble, offence and concern. Many workers in the Forestry Commission, whom I regard as some of the finest workers in this country, have been offended by some of the comments made by Mr Cameron. I am sure that he did not mean what he said, but he has caused great offence to them. The struggle in which we have been involved of late was justified in one of our local newspapers. The Cumberland News had a piece this weekend in which it held vox pops asking people what they thought about the Government's proposal for forestry. A woman said, “I am so relieved. My husband works in the forest. We have been worried sick. We have hardly slept. What a relief it is now”. It is that sort of hardship, that sort of worry, which could have been avoided if the Government had consulted instead of just rushing ahead with the proposals.

However, they have sat back and reassessed the position; and on 17 February, the Secretary of State honestly and openly announced three major retractions. I see that one name added to my amendment today is that of the Minister, and I am very grateful that he has added his weight to mine. I hope that, between us, we will carry the day. In the other place, the Secretary of State said that her announcement,

“will allow for more measured and rational debate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/11; col. 1155.]

That implies that the government proposals had not been measured and had not been rational. They had not. As I said, the Government have now said that they were wrong, and I accept their words.

My specific amendment is about the regional advisory committees—not in themselves a great part of the scheme of things, but a useful part. I could never understand why the Government were so opposed to regional advisory committees. We looked at that when I was chair of the Forestry Commission. We examined everything, because I was determined to sweat the assets of the Forestry Commission. They belong to the public, so we must get value for money from those lands and those trees. We looked at everything, including the regional advisory committees, but at the end of the day, when we added it all up, we found that their net worth to the commission was far greater than the cost.

There are nine committees. The idea is that they allow the commissioners to have an entrée into thinking on a regional basis. We had devolved a lot of our policies from the national, England level down to the regions. In some cases, we had given money to the regions and said, “You may want to spend it differently in the north-east as opposed to the south-west”. In performing those functions, we really needed the regional advisory committees. I suggest that strategy of trying to engage with local people was the right thing to do and one reason why there was so much opposition to the government proposals of a few weeks ago. We got that right.

16:15

The regional advisory committees are voluntary; the chairs get a small honorarium but the rest are volunteers—a very broad cross-section of the population. We have some chairs who are academics, some who are environmentalists, and one who is the rector of Hexham Abbey in the north-east of England. We also have business people. In itself it has been a real fund of knowledge and information for the Forestry Commission. In the north-west, for example, there are five people involved in rural and forestry businesses. There is one each in academia, the third sector, health, the environment and the RDAs. We have a broad section, which has been invaluable in carrying out our particular jobs. They have met three or four times a year while the chairs meet twice a year. Therefore, we have some commonality right across the country.

I am very pleased indeed that the Minister has added his name to mine and that he will support this move to knock out the regional advisory committee from the Bill today. While I am on that subject perhaps I may add that we had a discussion earlier about the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee on which the House did not push for a decision. Will the Minister now be prepared to take that back and look at it again on Report? Although I agree with him that it has not operated for a number of years, I feel that, when we get the report from the Secretary of State’s committee of experts, we might find that that committee could be used for another reason. For example, the Government have appointed a regulatory authority dealing with forestry. It may well be that this committee could be useful to the recommendations of that committee. I hope that the Ministry will perhaps look at it and see whether it is possible to bring it forward at a later stage.

I end by asking the Minister a couple of questions. The first arises from his announcement on Schedule 7 today. It was a very welcome announcement in which he said that Schedule 7 would disappear, but also that a number of bodies might be transferred to other schedules to the Bill. Can he give us an assurance that when the Secretary of State announces that all references to the Forestry Commission will be removed from the Public Bodies Bill, the Forestry Commission will not be one of the bodies transferred from Schedule 7 to an earlier schedule of the Bill? Perhaps he can give me that reassurance. I am sure that it is fairly straightforward.

Can I tease a little more information from the Minister about the Secretary of State’s announcement and how it relates to the series of amendments that we are discussing? Most of the discussion is about the 85 per cent of the Forestry Commission land which the Secretary of State cannot order the commissioners to sell, as it would be illegal for them to sell such a large section of the state forest. However, the Government announced that they were going to sell 15 per cent over the next four years. That was withdrawn from the market pending the consultation. What is the Government’s thinking on this 15 per cent? Will it go ahead? We believe that it should not go ahead. However, if it does, we believe that any money raised by selling off forests should be ploughed back into the forestry estate, as happened under the previous Labour Government.

I also ask a question that is puzzling a lot of people. What legal advice has the Minister had on the issue of the 15 per cent? When the 15 per cent has been sold and the 85 per cent becomes the 100 per cent, is the Secretary of State entitled to order the Forestry Commission to sell off an extra 15 per cent, and so on? That question raises a lot of uncertainties and it would be very helpful if it could be answered. The answer could give people a lot of comfort and might help the Government to buy back the support and good will of the British people which they will need in their approach to the disposal of Forestry Commission land. I beg to move.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)]

My Lords, I should point out that if this amendment is agreed to I will not be able to call Amendment 47A.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Judd, speaks, I think that it will be useful if I intervene to prevent a debate that otherwise might go on for some considerable time. I think that we can forestall that debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere—my noble friend, if I can put it that way, in that we come from the same part of the world, support the same football team and are looking forward to seeing each other at Wembley on 3 April this year—that I always listen to him, as do my colleagues in government. Indeed, we always listen to other people, so it is not just the honeyed words of the noble Lord. We have listened to the words of everyone throughout the country, even—dare I say it?—to our local newspaper, the Cumberland News, and the vox pop in it, to which he referred.

I am grateful for what the noble Lord said and for the kind words about what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said when she made her Statement on 17 February setting out a series of announcements concerning our forestry policy in England. I stress that these amendments relate purely to England; I think that there are others relating to Wales, which we will leave to one side for the moment. As she put it—I repeat her words—they,

“will allow for more measured and rational debate about the future direction of forestry policy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/11; col. 1155.]

She said that because—dare I say it?—despite what the noble Lord said, we were not getting a measured and rational debate on forestry as a result of misunderstandings behind what had happened. My right honourable friend announced that the consultation on the future of the public forest estate would be ended, and she has done that. This was done because it was quite clear from those early responses to the consultation that the public and many MPs and Members of this House were not happy with what we had set out.

As stated in the announcement, an independent panel to consider forestry policy will be established and, in due course, we will let the House and another place know further details about it. It will report to the Secretary of State this autumn with advice on the future direction of forestry and woodland policy in England, the role of the Forestry Commission and the role of the public forest estate. The panel will include representatives of key environmental and access organisations alongside representatives of the forestry industry. Its membership and terms of reference will be published shortly. I ought to make it clear that, although it will include a wide range of representatives, we hope that all those appointed will be appointed for their knowledge and expertise. We also hope to keep this body small so that it can be properly focused. I think that all noble Lords know the danger of allowing bodies of this sort to grow like Topsy. I confirm that the panel will have an independent chairman.

My right honourable friend also announced that the Government will support the removal of all those clauses from the Public Bodies Bill. I was very grateful to the noble Lord for not reading out all the amendments that are being taken as part of this group, but we can take it as read that they will go through in due course. As a result, there will be a number of other amendments that I think noble Lords will not wish to move because they relate to clauses that will no longer be there. We can take it that forestry is, as I put it on another occasion, purely in relation to this Bill, a dead parrot, other than forestry in Wales, and will not be debated. That means that we will remove the Forestry Commission’s regional advisory committees, which are the subject of the lead amendment.

The noble Lord also asked what we are intending to do about the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee. He will remember that we had a debate about it earlier in Committee and that I referred to it as a dead parrot because it had not sat since 2005. It was while the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, was chairman of the Forestry Commission that it ceased to have any members. I ought to be careful about this, but I should remind the noble Lord that it was his statutory duty to have such a committee and to have members of such a committee, but he decided that there would no longer be members of the committee and that the committee would no longer meet. When he comes to answer, he may assist the House by advising us why he decided that it was no longer necessary to abide by his statutory duty to have members of that committee or even to have the committee. The simple fact is that that committee has not met since 2005. As I said on that earlier occasion, it is a dead parrot, along with all the others. It is up to the noble Lord to make the case for it. If the noble Lord wants to put a case for preserving that committee at Report, I will always look at the advice that he puts before us and I will listen to his arguments as to why we should resurrect or resuscitate that dead parrot. The noble Lord, however, made it quite clear by his actions in 2005 that he did not want it, so I do not quite see why now, in 2011, he would want to revive it—unless, just possibly, he has some mischievous reason of his own, which I would never suspect that he possibly could. Anyway, we will look at that in due course, if the noble Lord wants to bring it back at Report.

We will, as I said, remove all those clauses relating to Schedule 1 and to Clauses 17 and 18 and there will be a series of small consequential amendments. My noble friend Lord Taylor has put his name down to do that—regional forestry committees and all the others will come out. I make it clear that everything that the noble Lord wishes for the moment has been dealt with. I should also make it clear that the withdrawal of the forestry-related provisions for England from the Bill does not affect the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy proposals in relation to restructuring their arrangements for the delivery of their environmental policy, including policy on forestry in Wales. That is for another day and will be for those who will respond on these matters.

The noble Lord asked why we can sell 15 per cent. The previous Administration used these powers to sell land and I have referred beforehand to the fact that under the noble Lord’s watch, when he was chairman of the Forestry Commission under the previous Government, some 25,000 acres were sold without any protection whatsoever. We make it clear that, should we be selling any, we will make sure that there is appropriate protection offered in terms of access, the environment and biodiversity. Of course—as I think we have made clear—we will not be selling anything in advance of the panel reporting back to us. That is why we suspended those sales, having completed the sales that we had inherited from the previous Labour Government.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I have a brief question for the Minister. When I was a Minister working with my noble friend, we were selling some forestry land, but we were also acquiring land. Does he intend to continue to acquire land on behalf of the Government and the state?

[Lord Henley]

Decisions will be made as appropriate. The point is that the previous Government—I will mention the figures again—sold something of the order of 25,000 acres without any protection. I accept that they bought some back, but they did not buy back as much as 25,000 acres. One has to recognise the fact that not all the land that the Forestry Commission owns is appropriate to belong in the public estate. That is why the previous Government, among whom the noble Lord was such a wonderful ornament, sold off land, or instructed the noble Lord, Lord Clark, who is about to intervene, to sell it off, as he did.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

I agree with the Minister that there come occasions when it is appropriate to sell a small part of the estate. However, the difference between us and the present Government is that, under us, all the moneys received from the sale of any forest land either was used to buy new forest land—sometimes at a greater cost, because it was in the urban areas—or went back into forestry. As I understand it, with this 15 per cent sell-off, the Government are using money from forestry for the Treasury or for Defra’s general budget.

[Lord Henley]

No decisions have been made about any of that whatever, but I remind the noble Lord that, although it might have been said that land was sold off purely to buy back other land, some of the proceeds were used to top up the running costs of the Forestry Commission. I am not sure that that is the right way to go about these things.

I want to get back to the 15 per cent, which was the last point made by the noble Lord. The Forestry Act requires that there should be a substantial forestry estate. The noble Lord will be familiar with the 1967 Act and all the previous Acts. That estate should be placed at the disposal of the Forestry Commission to manage. I will not go into all the legal advice that we have received from lawyers, as is the convention that the noble Lord will be fully aware of, but we do not consider that the sale of 15 per cent would undermine that statutory regime. That is where we are on that matter. I hope that I have explained where we are. I am grateful—

16:30

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I apologise for intervening, but I wanted to make certain that I understood exactly what the Minister was saying. I take it that, along with the major dead parrot, all the smaller parrots die as well, including all the amendments that come under the broad heading of Clauses 17 and 18. However, on the proposed expert panel on forestry, which I understand will report back in the autumn, will there be an opportunity to raise the issue of the make-up of that panel? For example, will it include a person with knowledge of the heritage forests? If there is no opportunity to raise this, I will have to pursue the issue through Parliamentary Questions. I speak as someone who was about to make an eloquent short speech on the subject of the New Forest—the largest and most historic heritage forest. I will pass that opportunity up given whatever answer the Minister gives me on the earlier point.

[Lord Henley]

I will not speculate on the make-up of that panel other than what I have said already. I said that the panel should be relatively small. Most of us would agree that to create an overlarge panel would be unwieldy. Having said that, while I was abroad I received an e-mail from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, suggesting one particular group, while many other noble Lords have sent other suggestions. We want to create a small group but it should be understood by everyone that that group would have the power to consult and to set up sub-groups to ensure that as many as possible are included. I will not give a precise figure about how small that group should be, but it should, as I said, be relatively small and focused. We want to make sure that it reaches out to all the other people and we will make it quite clear to members of that group once we have appointed it, and appointed an independent chairman, that they should be consulting with many of those who have already written to the department or made their views known.

I am not sure whether the noble Baroness will have another opportunity in our proceedings on the Bill to discuss these matters because all the forestry amendments that can be are in this group. One or two amendments cannot be in this group because they would insert clauses after Clauses 17 and 18 and, if those clauses are not there, the amendments obviously cannot be moved. I am sure that the noble Baroness will find ways of tabling amendments should she wish to do so. She will also find ways of speaking to me or to other colleagues to put forward her views about who might or might not be on the panel.

I notice that the noble Baroness has tabled Amendment 174ZB much later on, which cannot be moved because it would come after these amendments and those clauses will not exist. The amendment is also in the names of her noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Strathclyde, but my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s name is there in error. That amendment mentions the New Forest, Sherwood Forest, the Forest of Dean and Kielder Forest. I was intrigued to see Sherwood Forest mentioned. I had visions of sylvan glades and Errol Flynn skipping around in green tights, with the noble Baroness possibly as Maid Marion. But we will see about that in due course.

The noble Baroness will find her own way of making suggestions about who should or should not be on the committee. All I am saying is that we would like to keep it small and focused. Although they might represent certain groups, we want those on the committee to be there for their individual expertise and experience rather than for representing the particular groups involved.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, I appreciate that the Minister has been very generous with his time with me. However, in order to expedite matters later, I raise one point that he did not answer, which is quite critical. Is the 15 per cent cumulative, so to speak? When the 15 per cent has been got rid of, can this stand for 15 per cent on the next 100 per cent?

[Lord Henley]

That would depend on legal advice on one’s interpretation of the Forestry Act 1967. The noble Lord will be more familiar with that Act, and all previous legislation, than even I am. He will know that it imposes a duty that there should be a substantial forestry estate at the disposal of the Forestry Commission. It is a matter for interpretation as to what size that should be.

[Lord Judd]

I am sure that the whole House would agree that it is a great privilege to participate in a debate on an amendment initiated by my noble friend Lord Clark of Windermere. There are few people who have contributed more to the cause of the forests than has my noble friend. One thing that was particularly important about his time in the chair was that he saw to it that the commission addressed the issue of involving local communities in a sense of ownership and participation in the enjoyment of the forests. Under his stewardship, a great deal was done to open up the forests and to encourage people to use them and to have fun in them, but in a way that did not rape their very special character and heritage, in the sense that they are places of great spiritual significance and beauty. The whole House, irrespective of party difference, will want to pay tribute to my noble friend.

I endorse what my noble friend said about the spirit in which the noble Lord who is leading on this Bill has approached those issues that are put before him by people with special interests. I suppose that I shall have to say several times during our deliberations on this Bill that I should declare an interest. I am vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks and, particularly in the context of the forests, I have the great privilege of being the president of the Friends of the Lake District. One thing that my noble friend mentioned which I would like to underline is the strength, depth and spontaneity of feeling expressed when people felt that the forests were under threat. It was an extraordinary social cross-section of people, which was also impressive. The phrase one heard over and again was, “What are they doing to our forests?”. There was a deep feeling that these forests were the heritage of the British people and that they belonged to the British people. We all ought to try to make connections in government between things that are happening in different spheres and I put it to the Government that, at a time when the Prime Minister chooses to talk about British character, it is very important not to attack those things that people feel are central, in a tangible way, to being part of Britain. Their forests are certainly part of that.

I was glad to put my name to the amendment dealing with the regional advisory committees. I referred to my role in the Friends of the Lake District and in the Campaign for National Parks, which brings together groups concerned about national parks all over the country. I think that it is important that, in the commission’s administration of the forests, real efforts are made to get a local perspective, so that there is a real forum in which local issues and priorities can come forward and be taken into account in the way that things are handled. If nominated and appointed in the right way, advisory committees on a regional basis are a significant way in which to give meaning to this sense of ownership by the people as a whole, because it is possible for the local arguments to be heard and taken into account. That is why it is so important that the advisory committees should continue.

In his remarks, my noble friend made considerable reference to the issue of the 15 per cent. I hope that the Minister, whom I regard as a good Cumbrian friend, will forgive my saying that he did not convincingly answer the point. He kicked it into touch, because he said that it “all depended”. With all the blunt directness that I have come to love in the people of Cumbria, all I can say is, “Come off it”. If these forests belong to us and if we have expressed such a degree of concern, we do not want to find ourselves going down a road along which, through the back door, exactly what we have expressed ourselves as against is accomplished over a period of years. From that standpoint, we need a categorical assurance from the Government that this is not a back door to achieving the short cut that they were introducing in this Bill. On the 15 per cent issue, I hope that my noble friend Lord Clark will forgive my saying that there was a good deal of anxiety among those who were protesting about what had happened already. In a sense this is not a partisan point but one that stretches across the whole issue of the administration of the forests.

I thank my noble friend for moving the amendment. I say to the noble Lord opposite that it is time to take the message of the British people and build strongly on that—and not immediately, on day one, to start back-pedalling. The Minister referred to the importance of his advisory panel. Yes, I understand the business executive, streamlined modern management talk, which says that we must have a small, concentrated group of specialist people who will conduct this. Of course, you cannot dismiss that, because it is a very responsible job to administer the amount of forest that is there to be administered. But in the spirit of what the British people have just done and said, it will be crucial that the advisory panel is representative and is one with which the people can identify, so that it is seen transparently to bring together the different interests and communities among those who support the forests and were so aghast at what was proposed. There is a balance to be struck between business efficiency, on which the arguments of course must be taken seriously, and the job of carrying the public with whatever is proposed by seeing that it comes from a representative body with which they can identify. I am glad to be able to support the amendment.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Henley, for what they have said this afternoon, because it means that there will be no need for me to move Amendment 47A relating to the Forest of Dean. As noble Lords are aware, there was particular anxiety and anger in the Forest of Dean, which falls within my diocese of Gloucester, at the proposals to legislate in regard to forestry without regard for the special status of the Forest of Dean recognised in earlier legislation. The Government have wisely withdrawn all the clauses relating to forestry. When they return with some new and different proposals relating to the future of the forests, of which we have had some hints already, I hope they will at that point recognise that when people speak of the Forest of Dean, they are not talking about a collection of trees, but about a series of communities with a common sense of identity. People call themselves foresters simply because the Forest of Dean is where they live, and their sense of identity comes more from the forest than from the particular towns, villages or hamlets that are part of it. To talk about changes in ownership with even the smallest possibility of withdrawal of access or unwelcome development is to provoke a deep emotional response in people who have, in many cases, inhabited the forest for many generations—that quite apart from the more general issues of the ownership and stewardship of the forests on which the Government have wisely changed their mind. So I am grateful to the Government for withdrawing the clauses that they have, rendering my amendment obsolete. I can assure your Lordships that the people of the Forest of Dean are both relieved and elated by the sense that they have seen off a particularly ill-thought-through policy.

16:45

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly in the debate because I realise that the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, have been incredibly helpful. It is the first time I have spoken on the Bill. I just want to raise an issue that was not really covered by the Minister’s statement—otherwise I would not be standing up. That relates to the forests being used for motor sport.

Last year, the motor sport industry contributed almost £1 million to the Forestry Commission for 41 events, 31 of which were stage rallies. There is nowhere else they can take place. Each one of those is estimated independently to bring to the local community about £2 million when it takes place. Ministry of Defence land used to be used. That is not really possible in any event because of use in the past so the forests are the only areas where these rallies can take place. There was a centrally managed agreement between the Forestry Commission and the Motorsports Association, which is the governing body for UK motor sport. I have a couple of questions, because the Minister said that a measured and rational debate was not taking place, so it is going to take place with the review.

First, will the independent chair be appointed as a result of an advertisement or a few phone calls? It is quite important that we know that. Secondly, will the Land Access and Recreation Association have a place on the body? I am making a special plea because that is the one way that the motor sport industry will be represented. It employs 38,000 people, 25,000 of whom are professional engineers, and is worth something like £4 billion to the economy. Most of the teams that we see with foreign flags are actually in this country, where the cars are designed and produced. We are talking about big business here, where the forests play an absolutely crucial part, particularly for the rally side of the industry. It is very important that they can put their piece at the table and are not reduced to external flag-waving or lobbying. If LARA is represented on the body, then I am assured that the issues relating to motor sport can be raised, because the issues have not gone away. If I can be satisfied with that, there will not be any need to raise this in future. I realise that forestry is coming out of the Bill. Nevertheless, as this body and review panel are going to be meeting, if we can get these things settled now, it will make life a lot easier for the ministry and for Defra, which, I presume, is going to have to fill a hole in its funding in due course.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, along with other noble Lords, I thank the Government, particularly my noble colleague Lord Henley, for intervening early in this debate, which was extremely helpful in setting us on the road for debate in certain areas. I want to thank the Government generally for their common sense in dropping the forestry clauses from the Bill, or at least proposing to support the dropping of them when we get to them. The Government have listened to what has been going on; I suspect as well that they have been retreating in a certain amount of disarray in the face of the public opposition which they did not expect. I am not, however, going to stand up and talk about U-turns and that kind of thing. It is always strange that when Governments put forward things that some of us might not like, they are accused of being obstinate and stubborn if they refuse to listen to what people say. However, if they agree to change and withdraw things, they are accused of making U-turns. They can be accused of anything by people who want to accuse them but I am delighted by the Government’s decision to take out these clauses.

I speak in favour of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere. I would have signed it if there had been any space when I first discovered it. I have tabled several amendments in this group, which are now all dead parrots or perhaps dead budgies—or, since we are talking about trees, dead woodpeckers. I do not know; I get lost among these metaphors. The Minister talked about Sherwood and suggested that my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby might be Maid Marian. I was not sure whether he was putting himself forward as the Sheriff of Nottingham. If he is, the right reverend Prelate could be Friar Tuck. All I can say is: please can I be Robin Hood?

When I proposed that Clauses 17, 18 and 19 should not stand part of the Bill, I originally did so for traditional House of Lords Committee reasons. These clauses needed a great deal of probing and discussion, which the stand part debates would have allowed to take place. I was also concerned about what appeared, on the face of it, to be fairly draconian Henry VIII powers being granted. In retrospect I was right to be concerned, but as time went on I became more convinced that this was not the appropriate legislation to deal with the future of the Forestry Commission and its land, woodlands and forests. Therefore, I became more serious in believing that this House ought to take these clauses out. I now believe firmly that if the Government had not seen sense on this, this House would at least have taken them out before it sent the Bill to the Commons. Nevertheless, we are now in the position that we are in.

I praise not just the Government for their action but those who have campaigned on this matter. It is easy to attack or criticise the campaigners by saying that some of their messages were a bit simplistic and not all of the 535,000 people who signed the 38 Degrees petition had a detailed knowledge of all the issues. That is absolutely true but how many people have a detailed knowledge of all the issues when they cast a vote in a general election? Once these campaigns started to mushroom, I was determined to make sure that the people running them had as much knowledge and understanding as possible of what the Government were putting forward, what the Forestry Commission does and the facts and figures about the estates, as well as parliamentary procedures. They could then at least have some slight understanding of how the Bill would go through this House. Not many people have such an understanding—including some Members of this House, probably—but I thought that was at least a useful thing to do. If I have been able to play a small part in that, I am very pleased to have done so.

The huge petition that the noble Lord, Lord Clark, mentioned was quite astonishing. Similar petitions—about, perhaps, more important things than the forests in many people’s eyes—rarely get into six figures but this one, if the Bill had got to the Commons with the forestry clauses still included, would clearly have been signed by a million people. This is an astonishing phenomenon. In addition to that, several national campaign groups were set up and campaigned mainly via the internet. They included Save England’s Forests, which got its first real boost of publicity from the celebrity letter to the Sunday Times. I see the noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, in his place. He was thought to be a celebrity who might like to sign the letter. Nobody bothered to ask me but that does not worry me at all because I am not a celebrity.

There was also Save Our Woods. The young people who run that have done a very good job in setting out a vast amount of factual information and creating a forum where people could exchange information. I believe that all this has contributed to the amount of knowledge and understanding in the campaign groups being much greater than it was at the beginning. In addition, providing huge local support to the campaigns were local organisations, some of which were enumerated by the noble Lord, Lord Clark. Some of them covered big forests such as the Forest of Dean and the New Forest, others covered larger areas such as the Lake District, and many more, springing up almost by the day, were concerned with their own local forests. Add to that all the access groups, which were absolutely united against the proposals. Towards the end of the campaign, a lot of the established groups, such as the Woodland Trust and the RSPB, were coming on board. It was an astonishing campaign. The involvement of the internet, Twitter, Facebook and all these realms that I do not know much about has been a complete eye-opener to me.

Basically, the problem was this. First, the Government, although they would put it in slightly less brutal terms, botched the entire publicity throughout the last six months of last year of what they were doing. Different Ministers, although not the noble Lord, Lord Henley, were saying different things. It was not at all clear what they were saying. That gave the campaigns a lot of fertile ground. This was also about trees. As a local councillor for many years, I learnt long ago that you mess about with trees at your peril, unless you explain to people exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it and you get them on side. It really came home to me on one occasion, when Pendle council—I declare that I am a member of Pendle council—was proposing to remove some trees outside the municipal hall, which is a council-run theatre in Colne. These trees were diseased and needed removing, yet there was huge public opposition to it. We now have some nice birches there, which are much better. Nevertheless, at the council committee meeting at which this was being decided, a lady addressed the committee in tears. She said, “Do you know, me and my husband, we had our first kiss under that tree, and you’re going to chop it down”. That is how people think about trees. If you are going to do things to trees, you have to be very careful; you have to prepare your ground and you have to take people into your confidence from the very beginning.

I support many of the comments made about the independent panel and some of the questions. How will it be chosen? It is all going to happen fairly quickly if it is to report in the autumn, as is intended, so how will it be chosen? What are the criteria and the mechanisms for deciding who should be on it, and what are its terms of reference? The Government have to come clean about these questions from the very beginning. Furthermore, will there be any ongoing information and publicity about the panel’s work until it produces its report? If not, there will be a vacuum for several months during which all sorts of rumours will develop and gain credence. The organisations that have now been set up are not going to go away. They will continue to ask questions; and if there are no answers, all sorts of information will get out there that may or may not be true. It is in the Government’s interest to be as open as possible about the work of this panel and how it will work.

There is a further question about the 15 per cent. The Government have said that they have suspended selling any more of the 15 per cent until they have better protections on access and biodiversity. That is very welcome. How will these protections be announced, when will they be announced, and will the panel be involved in that work as well as deciding the long-term future of the majority of the estate?

A major consultation was run by the Forestry Commission in 2009—not very long ago—which seems to have been dropped and forgotten. A lot of organisations fed into that consultation. Will the proposals and submissions that resulted from that consultation be fed into the panel as information on which it can consider their views, along with everything else? Will there be a means by which the public can input into the work of the panel, or is all consultation now dead? I was disappointed when the Government dropped the consultation—although I was delighted when they said that they would remove these clauses—because a lot of organisations were doing a lot of work preparatory to putting in their views. It sounds—to a cynic outside, anyhow—as though the Government have said, “We have looked at the first results of the consultation. We do not like them and therefore we are stopping the consultation”. However, a lot of work contributed to that consultation, and it would be helpful if organisations in the field, campaigning groups and everyone else were at least able to contribute to the work of panel by putting in their views.

17:00

We all have views about future policy. The noble Lord, Lord Clark, has secured a debate, which is still going ahead on Thursday, in which we will all be able to put forward those views more positively. However, all those people out there have suddenly not just become interested in forests—many have always been interested—but are committed to the cause of the forests, as they see it. The genie is out of the bottle and will not go back in. The campaigns and the campaign groups are alive and will not go away. They want to be involved. If there is a vacuum for the next six months, they will continue to be involved, and it will not be to the Government’s advantage unless they can find constructive ways to involve these groups, as well as everyone else who is interested in the forests, and allow them to feed their information into this independent panel and understand how the panel’s thinking is progressing.

This has been an extraordinary event. It is the first of this nature that I have witnessed or been involved in. It is actually exactly the same process that brought people on to Tahrir Square in Egypt. That related to an altogether different issue, and this one is perhaps less momentous. However, it involved the same kind of communication, process and campaigning by use of the internet and the involvement of many local groups. This may be the pattern for the future or it may be a one-off, but whatever it is it is quite extraordinary. I congratulate the Government on withdrawing their proposals, but we now want constructive involvement and inclusion of people in the process that is going ahead.

[Lord Williams of Elvel]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships with other matters, but I should like to ask the Minister about my noble friend Lord Clark’s question on the cumulative 15 per cent, which was followed up by my noble friend Lord Judd. My understanding of the Minister’s reply was that it was a question of the interpretation of the Forestry Act. I have always assumed that the Government, who are responsible for the administration of the Act, have some idea of what it actually means. Will the Minister be kind enough to write to my noble friend Lord Clark explaining what the Government think the Forestry Act actually means in that respect?

[The Lord Bishop of Guildford]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Henley, for their interventions this afternoon, and for the Secretary of State’s intervention in another place some time ago. I speak as one who would have supported the amendment in the name of my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, had the question been put.

Your Lordships’ House will be anxious to move on fairly quickly now, so I make one simple point as someone who has taken a close interest in the Forest of Dean in particular and in the general debate about forestry. I refer to the process of preparing Bills. We have heard about the huge public response to the proposals as they have been understood, or even misunderstood. Had the section on forestry been researched with close attention to the debates in your Lordships’ House in 1981 and in another place, almost all the issues that have been in the public domain and which have been debated so fiercely and strongly—although, I agree, not always accurately—would have put an amber light in the preparation of the Bill. Therefore, to save further embarrassment in government and policy, I gently propose that looking at what Parliament did on the previous occasion on an issue such as this would help in the construction of Bills.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief, but first perhaps I might follow the right reverend Prelate’s comments by saying that I have been puzzled from the very beginning of this Bill. I find it extraordinary that the New Forest has been protected by primary legislation dating from 1877 through to 1970, yet essentially a process of statutory orders can overtake and indeed overrun those original primary Acts. Therefore, my first question is how such Acts can be so easily set aside and whether one should reconsider the way in which consultation on legislation takes place.

My second and only other question concerns the impact of the Localism Bill. Those of us who care about the forests have now established that this legislation was very unwise. However, I am not clear whether that Bill will insist that decisions on forests are taken at the most local level. The regions where the feeling is greatest are the ones that are most closely related to the forests on which they depend. That is probably where the decisions should be taken, rather than statutory proposals being made centrally.

Let us bear in mind the lessons of this Bill—the deep lessons of how the British public hold forests as very dear and very important—and let us make sure that, when the Localism Bill emerges, there will be no attempt to go back to central control over the future of the forests.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, to save time, I shall spare your Lordships my musings on my ramblings around the Forest of Dean which I enjoyed over two days last week. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I want to ask a question about the Localism Bill. When I was the Forestry Minister, I was pleased to agree with my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper—when she was at the Department for Communities and Local Government—planning policy statement 9, which protected biodiversity in forests. In the context of the changes to the planning system that are also in the Localism Bill, how will those protections to biodiversity, which I know the Minister holds dear, be retained?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask one question on Scotland. Before anyone jumps up and says that this legislation does not affect the forests in Scotland, I acknowledge that it does not. However, as the headquarters of the UK Forestry Commission are in Scotland, the legislation could, as I understand it, have a significant effect on Scotland. The original proposals involved a substantial loss of jobs at Silvan House in Corstorphine. Now that there has been a U-turn and the Forestry Commission is to continue with its responsibilities for forests in England, will all the jobs held by people who are administering and dealing with the English forests be retained at Corstorphine in Edinburgh? As I understand it, no announcement has been made about a U-turn on the jobs. It was announced that 150 jobs would be lost at Corstorphine in Edinburgh, but that would seem a strange thing to do in the light of the announcement of a policy U-turn. It seems that the jobs in Edinburgh will still be necessary to carry out the tasks that have been done very well for many years.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

I, too, am very grateful to the Minister for the information that he provided at the beginning of this debate and for the gracious apology from the Secretary of State in the other place a couple of weeks ago. I, of course, welcome the statement and the fact that all references to “forestry” and the Forestry Commission are being deleted from the Bill. Can the Minister confirm that the Forestry Commission will not appear in any other schedule if Schedule 7 is disappearing? Can he also provide clarification on Wales? I am not entirely certain what the position is now on Wales because the Forestry Commission is mentioned in Clauses 13 to 16.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and others, I pay tribute to the wonderful campaigns up and down the country. I, of course, pay special tribute to the people of the Forest of Dean in the Hands off our Forest campaign. It was the first campaign off the blocks and led the way for campaigns that drew widespread support, and eventually the Government listened, as they should do, and changed their mind. The sort of consultation the Government embarked on after they had produced the Bill, which said that they were going to enable forests to be sold, is not the right way of going about things. We should always have a consultation and a White Paper first.

I realise that the independent panel will listen to people’s views but, as many noble Lords have said, we need to be assured that the independent panel is going to work in a transparent and public way, and we need to know who is going to be on that panel and what their remit is. If the Minister does not have answers to those questions today, I trust that he will have answers when we debate this issue again on Thursday. While I realise that the independent panel has been tasked by the Secretary of State and Defra, we on these Benches and in the Forest of Dean strongly believe that the small percentage of forests that remain in public hands—I think it is only about 15 per cent of the country’s forests and woodlands—should remain in public ownership and continue to be managed by the Forestry Commission, which does an excellent job.

I am therefore delighted that Clauses 17, 18 and 19 are being deleted and that all the other amendments will fall. The reason why I and so many others from the Forest of Dean felt passionately about these things is because, as the right reverend Prelate said, the forest is not just the woods but a community, and we felt that our community as a whole was under threat. We enjoy customary privileges rather than established rights and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, we felt that those customary privileges were under threat.

I also added my name to amendments relating to public access, consultation, management and so much more. These issues are all of the utmost importance and I hope that they will be dealt with by the independent panel. Rights of access under the CROW Act are simply not enough when it comes to forests. We are all deeply grateful to the Forestry Commission for enabling cyclists, those who ride horses and those who practise motor sports to enjoy our forests. They simply could not do that under the CROW Act.

Likewise, I hope that the panel will consider Forestry Stewardship Council certification. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool tabled an amendment on this together with my noble friend Lady Quin. In 1999, the whole of the public forest estate received FSC certification, which recognises that these forests are responsibly managed according to environmental, social and economic criteria. We believe that that must continue. We want to ensure that this rigorous management standard is maintained for the future.

We should pay tribute to the way in which the Forestry Commission manages and protects our forests, ensuring maximum biodiversity and a strong ecosystem, as well as producing timber and making a huge contribution to meeting our targets under Section 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008. That is another issue that is mentioned in an amendment by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon.

17:15

I had a specific amendment relating to land in the Forest of Dymock. It did not enjoy special protection under the 1981 Act but, like so many forests and woodlands in our country, it is a very special forest. It is a major block of ancient woodland from which the seeds of sessile oaks are taken and exported throughout the world. There are glorious wild daffodils, dormice and so much more. Forests and woodlands such as these simply must remain as public national assets.

I have to ask, as is right on these occasions, why Clauses 17, 18 and 19 were put into the Bill in the first place. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, generously said that he thinks that perhaps it was a PR problem. That is one of the reasons why the campaign got off the ground up and down the country. I think that there was a real fear because when people read the clauses in black and white, they were alarmed about the future of these forests. Why were the clauses in the Bill? Sometimes we are told that it is because of the potential for increasing revenue, although the statistics show that the cost of the sale and the necessary grants would be more than the amount that we get in revenue. At other times, it is about the big society. In campaigns throughout the country the big society has spoken and people want their publicly owned forests to remain as national assets managed by the Forestry Commission. We all recognise that forests are part of our heritage. People recognise forests in terms of access, leisure, education, recreation and public well-being. They benefit our economy through timber sales and forest products. They support government commitments to biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and they provide a healthy natural environment. We want to ensure that our forests are safe now and for the future. For that reason, I warmly welcome the changes and amendments that the Government are bringing forward to the Public Bodies Bill.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, it might be helpful if I answer some of the points raised before the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, speaks to his amendment, for which the Government have said that they have sympathy and which I understand the House is likely to accept.

There are a number of points, but the first and probably the most important is to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that the Forestry Commission will not appear in any other schedule. It is not in Schedule 7—that schedule is coming out; it is not in Schedule 1, which we are coming to the end of; and it is not in Schedules 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. It is dead. It is out of the Bill. We have not dealt with the amendments relating to Wales but no doubt these can be discussed, preferably by someone other than me, when we reach that stage of the Bill. I make it clear to the noble Baroness that forestry policy in Wales is a devolved matter. She will know that Wales has just gone through a referendum on extending its powers, so these matters are even more important. The House will consider in due course the clauses relating specifically to Welsh bodies. There are references to forestry in those clauses but the policy aim is linked to the Welsh Assembly Government’s proposals on restructuring the activities of the Environment Agency Wales, the Countryside Council for Wales and the Forestry Commission Wales to enable them to take a more integrated and sustainable view of environmental management based on an ecosystems approach. We can discuss that in greater detail when we get to it in the Bill.

The next point that I want to deal with is the advisory panel. I am not sure that I can say much more to noble Lords who have spoken about this. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, as always, wanted a much larger panel that included everyone possible. I happen to feel—and most people would agree—that a small manageable panel would be better, particularly as it will be given the remit to consult whomever it wishes and to set up sub-groups to ensure that all others are included. As I said, we have already received a large number of applications to join that panel and I think that everyone would agree that to take on everyone would be a mistake. We need a proper panel that is appropriately balanced and one that consults people properly. I also stress that the panel will be independent and will have an independent chairman, so I think that it is wrong when my noble friend Lord Greaves stresses that it must be for the Government to make sure that it consults people properly and that we get out information about what the panel is doing. It should be for the panel, which is independent, to get out what it is doing and to let people know how it is moving and in what direction it is moving. I am sure that the panel will do that with great expertise.

[Lord Judd]

After quite a number of years in both Houses, I am weary of Ministers putting words into your mouth that were not in your mouth at the time at which you spoke. I did not argue for a vast representative body. I said that the Minister had a real task to balance business efficiency against transparency and credibility. I am sure that he will understand that there has been deep misunderstanding and deep anxiety among the public about what has been afoot. If this panel is to carry conviction, it must somehow have people on it whom the wider public can identify with and feel are representative of their anxieties.

[Lord Henley]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord, other than that I believe that a smaller—I am not going to suggest a figure, as I think that it would be wrong to get into figures at this stage—manageable panel under an independent chairman is the best way forward. I apologise if the noble Lord felt that I had put words into his mouth. I appreciate that I have probably done that in the past and I will probably do it again in the future. However, I got the impression that he was pushing for bringing everyone in. The danger when a great many people want to be on something is that, if you do not make it clear right from the start that you want a small and appropriately focused committee, you end up giving in to every possible demand and you end up with something that is unwieldy and unfocused and cannot do the job. This panel will have the right to set up sub-groups or sub-committees—whatever you call them—so that it can consult. We want to make sure that it talks to all those who have put in their views.

That is why it is also very important that we have an appropriately independent chair. I am grateful for questions that I have received on this from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and others about how that will be done. All I can say at this stage is that the independent chairman will be appointed by the Secretary of State after consultation. As we want this to report by the autumn, we want to move on relatively speedily. I am sure that whomever we appoint, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is smiling at this stage, will accept that we have appointed the right person, because he always does in the end when we find the right person. I am sure that he is not putting himself forward for this job. He will accept that we will find the right person in due course. It will be an independent panel under an independent chair.

That brings me on to the other comments that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made. As a former Member for a Birmingham seat, he raised the question of motorsport and its use of the forests. He was right to do that because it is important that we remember that there are diverse users of all the forests. Forests are not just there for growing timber, even though that is very important. Forests are also there for people who want to walk, to ride or to drive and for those involved in motorsports. They are also very important for biodiversity. In my own part of the world, up in Kielder, the forest is important for the few surviving red squirrels that we have in this country. There are a whole host of different uses that conflict with one another, which means that any decision about access has to take into account biodiversity interests. I imagine that not all of those who are keen on walking in the forests are that keen on some of the motorsports going on. We have to balance those issues. I am sure that the noble Lord will accept that. It is one of the things that we will make sure is done in due course.

Both right reverend Prelates referred to the Forest of Dean and the fact that it is a special case. I accept that the Forest of Dean is a special case. It was made a special case in law as a result of the 1981 Act, if not before. Actually the Forest of Dean and the New Forest have been special cases—I cannot say for how long, so I had probably better use this legal term—“since time immemorial”. It goes back that far. The odd thing about the Forest of Dean and the New Forest is that, as I understand it, they were originally part of the Crown Estate and then for some reason—why they but not others I do not know—became part of the Forestry Commission. The simple fact is that they are now part of the Forestry Commission and not part of the Crown Estate. That is where we are. Another public forest, Epping Forest, has gone into the ownership and management of the City of London. The Forestry Commission is not necessarily the only public body that can look after public forests in the best way. Epping Forest is not the only exception to that, but I accept that it is a special case.

That brings me to the planning issues raised by my noble friend Lady Williams and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth. Yes, we are aware that there will be changes as a result of the Localism Bill. We can give assurances, as my right honourable friend Greg Clark has done, that protection for ancient woodland in the existing planning guidance will be carried over into the national policy framework. All that will be done, but we also feel that, as a result of the Localism Bill, it is important, as my noble friend Lady Williams put it, that local communities should have a right to have some input into what is going on in the forests or small woodlands in their area.

I want to touch on one or two other points. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, talked about jobs. I must make it quite clear to the noble Lord and his party that the Forestry Commission, like a lot of other public bodies, including public bodies within Defra, will have to take its cuts and reductions as a result of the mess that we inherited. It is no different from any other body. The change of tack that we have indicated on forests does not necessarily mean any change of policy in what the Forestry Commission does in terms of its staff. That is a matter for the Forestry Commission to manage.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I put it to the Minister that two factors are affecting the staff at Corstorphine. One is the general economic climate in which, as he says, they must take the hits along with other public bodies. The second is the Government’s policy on forestry. As I understand it, the U-turn involved the Forestry Commission continuing to manage forests in England, for which staff at Corstorphine have responsibility, so surely it is wrong to continue with the same level of redundancies as was envisaged when the policy was different. Will the Minister not have another look to see whether some of the jobs in Edinburgh need to be continued to deal with the new policy that has been announced, into which he has gone into detail?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I never like to accuse the noble Lord of not having done something, because he is assiduous in his parliamentary work, but it is obvious from what he says that he has made no effort to read the entire forestry consultation that we put forward and have now withdrawn. If he had read that, he would have known that there is no immediate plan to sell off everything willy-nilly, as he seems to be suggesting, and as a result lay off half the Forestry Commission. We were looking at very long-term plans possibly to change the ownership of this forest or that but, in many cases, it would have involved transferring money to whoever took over some of those bodies. We were not at that stage considering reducing the number of staff, but we are asking the Forestry Commission, like all other bodies attached to Defra and other government bodies, to take its fair share of the reductions that the Government are having to make as a result of what we inherited.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have had discussions with the representatives of the trade unions from Silvan House, who have briefed me in detail on that. My understanding is that at least some of the proposed redundancies relate to the previous policy, which has now been abandoned. Unless my logic is completely crazy, it would seem that if you change your policy and continue with the present arrangements to look after some of the English forests from the Forestry Commission headquarters, a review must be needed of whether the large number of redundancies originally envisaged is still now necessary. Is that not the case?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, that is not the case. I am not sure that the advice which the noble Lord has received was necessarily—dare I put it this way—as accurate as it might have been. Anyway, the simple fact is that the Forestry Commission, along with others, will have to take its cut because of what we inherited.

I hope that I have dealt with all the points that have been put to me in the course of the debate. I appreciate the strength of feeling that had been held, and I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Clark, will now press his amendment. As I said, we will support it. I hope that the rest of the House will support it and that we can move on to other matters in the Bill.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

I rise very briefly just to say that it is a very unusual experience to find that one of my co-signatories to an amendment is a government Minister and that I look forward to it happening more and more in the future. I say that in the spirit in which the amendment has been moved.

Both right reverend Prelates and all the other contributors to this debate have made the point that the general public’s feeling towards the forest has been quite uncanny. The general public really do not discriminate between 85 and 15 per cent and the Government will have to think very carefully about how the 15 per cent is handled. However, that is a matter for another day. We are talking now specifically about Amendment 47—so we are talking about the big society, localism and the regional and advisory committees.

Amendment 47 agreed.

House resumed.

Libya and the Middle East

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Statement

17:32

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, this might be a convenient moment for me to repeat a Statement that was made in another place by the Prime Minister earlier this afternoon. The Statement is as follows.

“Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the evacuation of British nationals from Libya, the actions that we are now pursuing against Colonel Gaddafi and his administration and developments in the wider region.

We have been working intensively to get our people out. As of now, we have successfully removed around 600 British nationals from Libya. The evacuation has centred on three locations: Tripoli airport, the port at Benghazi and the desert oil fields. At Tripoli airport, a series of six aircraft organised by the Foreign Office and an RAF C130 Hercules flight have brought out more than 380 British nationals and a similar number of foreign citizens. At Benghazi, HMS ‘Cumberland’ has carried out two evacuations from the port, taking out 119 British nationals and 303 foreign citizens. The first of these evacuations took place in very difficult sea conditions. The second arrived in Malta earlier today. These evacuations were assisted on the ground by five rapid deployment teams. In total nearly 30 extra staff from the Foreign Office helped marshal British citizens in the midst of chaotic scenes in and around the airports and ports.

The most challenging part of the evacuation has, of course, involved those British nationals scattered across over 20 different locations in the oil fields deep in the desert. On Friday evening, I authorized a military operation to bring as many as possible out of the desert. On Saturday, two RAF C130 aircraft flew into the eastern desert and picked up 74 British nationals and 102 foreign nationals at three different locations. A second mission took place yesterday, bringing out a further 21 British nationals and 168 foreign nationals. On the second mission, one of the aircraft involved suffered minor damage from small arms fire. This underlines the challenging environment in which the aircraft were operating.

Indeed, Britain has taken on a leading role in co-ordinating the international evacuation effort. Our AWACS aircraft are directing international aircraft involved. Brigadier Bashall, who is commanding the operation, has established a temporary joint headquarters in Malta. I have thanked the Maltese Prime Minister personally on behalf of the country. Not for the first time in our history we must pay tribute to Malta and her people. In terms of numbers of British citizens remaining in Libya, this is, of course, difficult to ascertain precisely given the situation on the ground. Many of them will be dual nationals and not all of them will want to leave. I asked for urgent work to be done on accurate numbers in both categories: those who wish to leave and those who currently do not. Our current indications are that, as of today, there are fewer than 150 British citizens remaining in Libya, of which only a very small proportion wish to leave. Clearly this can change at any time. We will keep the House regularly updated.

We will continue to do all we can to ensure that those who wish to leave can do so. HMS ‘Cumberland’ will remain in the area, together with HMS ‘York’, which also stands ready off Tripoli to assist. We have military aircraft, including C130s and a 146, in Malta ready to fly in at very short notice. The Government will continue to focus on making sure our citizens are safe. COBRA has met regularly to co-ordinate the effort and I personally chaired three meetings over the weekend. The National Security Council is looking at the overall strategic picture, meeting last Friday and again today, not least to look at other risks to British citizens in the wider region. As I said last week, there will be lessons we will wish to learn from this evacuation, including in respect of the hiring of charter aircraft, use of defence assets and the need for greater redundancy.

Clearly an important decision was when to extract the embassy. This was taken at the COBRA meeting on Friday and carried out on Saturday after the remaining civilians had been extracted from Tripoli airport in parallel with the start of desert operations, which were of course planned from Malta. Our judgment throughout has been that the risk to British citizens has been growing. The Americans, French and Germans have similarly suspended the operations of their embassies. Britain also retains a consul in Tripoli and a consular warden in Benghazi. We have arranged that Turkey, which still has several thousand of its own citizens in Libya, will look after British interests while our embassy’s operations remain suspended.

I am sure that the whole House will want to put on record its thanks to all those who have made the rescue effort possible, to the skill of the RAF pilots, to all those involved from all three armed services, to our diplomatic service and to all those who put themselves in harm’s way to help our people leave safely.

Let me turn to the pressure we are now putting on the Gaddafi regime. We should be clear. For the future of Libya and its people, Colonel Gaddafi’s regime must end and he must leave. To that end we are taking every step possible to isolate the Gaddafi regime, deprive it of money, shrink its power and ensure that anyone responsible for abuses in Libya will be held to account.

With respect to all these actions, Britain is taking a lead. Over the weekend, we secured agreement for a UN Security Council resolution, which we had drafted and which is unusually strong, unanimous and includes all of our proposals. It condemns Gaddafi’s actions, and imposes a travel ban and assets freeze on those at the top of his murderous regime. It demands an immediate end to the violence and the killing of protesters, access for international human rights monitors, the lifting of restrictions on the internet and media, an end to the intimidation and detention of journalists and refers Libya’s current leaders to the International Criminal Court to face the justice they deserve.

We were also the driving force behind a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, which started work to eject Libya from the council; and the Foreign Secretary is in Geneva today along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see this work through. With our European partners, we have today secured agreement on freezing the assets of a wider group of individuals, banning them from entering the European Union and also imposing a wider arms embargo on the Libyan regime. Britain is also leading in implementing these direct measures against the regime.

I can tell the House today that here in the UK a special Privy Council session was held yesterday as a result of which we have now frozen the assets of Gaddafi, five of his family members, people acting for them or on their behalf and entities that are owned or controlled by them. The Treasury has stepped in to block a shipment of some £900 million in banknotes destined for Libya. The Government have revoked Colonel Gaddafi's immunity as a head of state and neither he nor his family may freely enter the UK any more. We have also revoked the visas of a number of Libyans linked to the regime who are now on immigration watch lists.

We will look at each and every way of stepping up pressure on this regime, including further isolation of the regime by expelling it from international organisations and further use of asset freezes and travel bans to give the clearest possible message to those on the fringes of the regime that now is the time to desert it. We do not in any way rule out the use of military assets. We must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people. In that context, I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone. It is clear that this is an illegitimate regime that has lost the consent of its people. My message to Colonel Gaddafi is simple: go now.

Everyone hopes this situation will be resolved quickly but there is a real danger now of a humanitarian crisis inside Libya. We are acutely conscious of the risks of shortages and are monitoring the situation closely. We have dispatched technical teams to be in place at both the Tunisian and Egyptian borders. Currently the most pressing need is assisting the large numbers of migrant workers into Egypt and Tunisia to get home. Tomorrow, in response to a request from the UN, Britain will fly in tents and blankets from our stocks in Dubai for use at the Tunisian border. The International Development Secretary will be visiting the region later this week to assess the situation on the ground for himself.

North Africa and the wider Middle East are now at the epicentre of momentous events. History is sweeping through this region. Yes, we must deal with the immediate consequences, especially for British citizens caught up in these developments, but we must also be clear about what these developments mean and how Britain and the West in general should respond. In many parts of the Arab world, hopes and aspirations which have been smothered for decades are stirring. People, especially young people, are seeking their rights, and in the vast majority of cases they are doing so peacefully and bravely. The parallels with what happened in Europe in 1989 are not, of course, precise, but there is no doubt that many of those who are demanding change in the wider Middle East can take inspiration from other peaceful movements for change, including the velvet revolutions in central and eastern Europe or the peaceful transition to democracy in Muslim countries like Indonesia. Of course there have been many disappointments in the past, but those of us who believe in democracy and open societies should be clear: this is a precious moment of opportunity.

While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate peacefully—these are basic rights, and they are as much the rights of people in Tahrir Square as Trafalgar Square. They are not British or western values but the values of human beings everywhere; so we need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region, at the billions of euros of EU funds, at our trade relationship and at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies, and we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world.

Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse. We should be clear too that now is not the time to park the Middle East peace process, quite the opposite. This is a problem that is long overdue for resolution, and we should use developments in the region to drive forward progress, not hold it up. In short, reform, not repression, is the way to lasting stability. No one pretends that democracy and open societies can be built overnight. Democracy is the work of patient craftsmanship, and it takes time, as we know from our own history, to put its building blocks in place. What is happening in the wider Middle East is one of those once in a generation opportunities, a moment when history turns a page. That next page is not yet written. It falls to all of us to seize this chance to fashion a better future for this region, to build a better relationship between our peoples and to make a new start. As the inspiring opposition leaders I met in Tahrir Square said to me last week, ‘we now have the opportunity of achieving freedoms that you in Britain take for granted’. I am determined that Britain will not let them down, and I commend this Statement to the House”.

17:47

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement on Libya and the Middle East made by the Prime Minister. I should like to ask him about four areas—the immediate safety of British nationals, the future of the Libyan regime, the wider Middle East, and the lessons learnt from this crisis. First, however, I should like to join the Leader in expressing the deep and abiding gratitude of this side of the House to the members of the British Armed Forces, who have succeeded, with such extraordinary courage and professionalism, in evacuating so many of our own citizens, and those of many other countries, from Libya over the past week. These brave men and women are a credit to our nation. I also add my thanks to the Foreign Office staff on the ground in Libya for their efforts.

Our first concern must always be the safety of our own people. For obvious operational and security reasons, I would not expect the Leader to discuss any future operations; but can he assure the House that all contingencies continue to be looked at in relation to any remaining UK citizens stranded against their will? Given the closure of the British embassy on Saturday, can he reassure us that everything is still being done to keep in close contact with those citizens who remain and tell us what means of communication are available to them?

On the question of Libya's political future, I think that the whole House will endorse the view, publicly expressed by the Prime Minister today, that the only acceptable future is one without Colonel Gaddafi and his regime. We welcome what the Leader of the House says about a possible no-fly zone. We also welcome the international isolation of Colonel Gaddafi expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 1970, including sanctions, an arms embargo and a decision to refer the killing of protestors to the International Criminal Court. The resolution imposes travel bans for 17 Gaddafi loyalists and asset freezes on six of those individuals. Do the Government think that the asset freezes go wide enough in covering all those beyond Colonel Gaddafi's immediate family who have made the decision to stand with him? Will the Government make full use of the provision in paragraph 23 of the resolution to nominate additional regime members who should be targeted by travel bans and asset freezes?

On the human rights situation, there is clearly a growing humanitarian crisis on the Tunisian and Egyptian borders. On these Benches, we welcome the Statement’s points on British action to help the humanitarian assistance to displaced migrant workers, and we look forward to the report later this week on the visit of the International Development Secretary. I understand that one of the most pressing needs identified by the Tunisian Government is transport for displaced workers from Libya who wish to return to their own country. May I ask the Leader of the House to draw this to the attention of the Secretary of State for International Development for his consideration during his visit to the region this week?

I turn to events beyond Libya, in the wider region. The events now unfolding across the Middle East are as significant as the revolutions that liberated eastern Europe in 1989, as the Statement says. Our response to them needs to be equally ambitious. There is a popular will in many of these countries for democratic reform. This movement is in line with the values that we share, and the stability promised by the undemocratic regimes in many cases has turned out to be hollow. Does the Leader of the House therefore agree that there must be no question but that our hopes—indeed, our interests—lie unequivocally with those demanding economic and political reform?

Does the Leader agree that we need to build a strategic response, including closer economic ties, support for civil society and institution building? However, does he agree that, in order to do so, we have to embrace closer contact with civil society, including academic institutions and non-governmental organisations committed to building a democratic future for their citizens? In respect of that aim, does he agree that full support should be given to the work of bodies such as the British Council and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, both of which have carried out important work in this area over the past few years?

Does the Leader concede that while there is much that we can and should do bilaterally, real progress will require sustained will and effort at a multilateral level, including via the European Union? Can he tell the House whether the negotiations for an EU-Libya association agreement on both free trade and human rights have been suspended? Libya is a member of both the Arab League and the African Union. Can the Leader say what efforts the Government have made with the countries of both organisations to bring pressure to bear on the current Libyan Government against the violence that we have seen? Does he also agree with these Benches that it would be a tragedy if in this moment of change the opportunity was not grasped to make progress on the issue of Israel/Palestine? I therefore give the support of these Benches to the Government’s calls for the rapid resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the Government’s decision to support the recent UN Security Council resolution on these settlements. Can he say what steps the UK will now be taking to get negotiations moving again? On the question of arms sales, can the Leader confirm that the Government will work with EU partners to strengthen the guidelines and their operation?

Finally, I should like to ask about the lessons to be learnt from the immediate crisis response during the past week. Many Members of your Lordships’ House, on all Benches, have in recent days either been aware of or had close experience of people who have been deeply anxious about family members, friends, colleagues or others stranded in Libya. I add our thanks to those expressed by the Prime Minister to the Maltese Prime Minister for the evacuation of British nationals and everything else that he is doing to assist. However, does the Leader accept that the Foreign Office should have done more, as other countries did, to ensure that planes were on the ground in Libya on Tuesday, rather than late on Wednesday night, to evacuate our citizens? Can he explain why this happened? Given the scale of the emergency and the transparent need for co-ordination across government, do the Government now agree that the emergency committee, COBRA, should have been convened earlier than Thursday? Can he explain why this did not happen? Can he also share with the House the wider lessons that have been learnt on the Benches opposite about the running of the Government?

I think that the whole country has now, thankfully, seen the scale of response that can be mobilised to help our citizens, and we are grateful. However, can the Government promise that British nationals abroad in future will not be let down as they were by the chaos and incompetence of early last week?

The Statement mentions the crucial role played by HMS “Cumberland” in the evacuation of British and foreign nationals. I was in Plymouth myself on Saturday and the citizens in Plymouth were immensely proud of what that ship was doing. Can the Leader give the House a clear assurance that the defence cuts currently planned will not in future preclude such vital rescue tasks for our citizens caught up in violence overseas?

Is the Leader satisfied with the way in which the warden system has worked? There have been reports that some of those working in the oilfields have found it very difficult—for some, impossible—to make contact with our consuls or with the embassy. I would welcome the opportunity to raise one or two of these issues later with the Leader of the House on Privy Council terms, if he thought it were appropriate.

These are questions which need to be the subject of thorough investigation and consideration. Given the volatile nature of the position, not just in Libya, but throughout the region, this needs to be carried out rapidly. We all hope that the levels of violence that we have seen in Libya will not be repeated there or elsewhere in the region, but there are signs of unrest in other countries in the area. British nationals working and living in the region need to be confident that their Government and their country have both the capacity and the will to assist them, including bringing them home safely should the need to do so arise.

Finally, will the Leader give a commitment to this House that when these inquiries and considerations are completed, he will come back to your Lordships’ House to report on both the findings and the lessons learnt for the future?

17:55

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response, and I am largely in agreement with much of what she said. I will try to answer the questions that she raised, and I will write to her about those that I do not manage to deal with this afternoon. I thank her for the tribute that she gave to the Armed Forces and others who have worked immensely hard during these difficult few days, including those in the FCO.

The safety of UK citizens is paramount to the Government, as the noble Baroness would expect. She asked specifically, since the embassy has closed, about the steps that we are taking to keep in touch with those who are in the country. We are working hard to keep in touch with them, and we are reviewing various options to assist those who wish to leave. However, as the noble Baroness herself pointed out quite rightly, it would be inappropriate for me to speculate on what those options might be or to go into the detail of potential operations. Technology certainly exists in a number of ways for British nationals in Libya to contact the Government. There are phone lines that are manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is, of course, Skype, and there is an efficient tweeting system to send information out to people who would like to be kept informed.

The noble Baroness raised the issue of the Security Council resolution. I agree with her that this was an extremely important resolution, one which I believe will make a substantial difference. She asked whether the asset freeze goes far enough and whether we would seek to extend it. The answer to that is yes; if we felt that it was necessary to do so, then we would. It is very important that this asset freeze is seen to be as effective as possible so as to maximise the pressure on the leadership in Libya, who need to understand that the rest of the civilised world will not put up with the kind of internal violence that we have seen over the past few days.

I very much welcome the visit of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who hopes to visit the area later on this week. Of course we will report back to Parliament on his visit.

The displaced migrant workers leaving Libya and seeking to find their own way home are another important issue. I know that the department is well aware of it and that substantial groups of officials are at the border posts offering advice to try to get them home.

The noble Baroness asked about the significance of the wider issues. Nobody seeing this extraordinary, rapid development throughout north Africa over the past few weeks can fail to be amazed at the speed and the comprehensive nature of the changes taking place. Of course we need to have a strategic response, and we need a response at almost every level, as the noble Baroness pointed out, including with elements of civil society in these countries. I am glad to say that we have made wide-ranging contacts with civil society. We have always had them to some extent, and rightly so. The Foreign Secretary met some of these contacts on his recent visit to the region earlier this month, as well as meeting British Council colleagues who play such an important part in all of this.

We also look to other countries and other multinational bodies to exert influence and pressure on what remains of the Libyan Government. We should leave no stone unturned in making the Libyan Government understand that the best way forward for them is to leave office and to hand it over as peacefully as possible.

The noble Baroness finished with one or two comments about the role of the Foreign Office. Having looked at what has been done, I do not share the view that the Foreign Office should have done very much more very much more quickly. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has long been a member of the Non-combatant Evacuations Operations—a planning group which is run by the MoD and the structure that led the joint planning for the mixed evacuation in Libya. Every crisis is different. Libya is different from Egypt and both are different from the 2006 evacuation from Lebanon. The NEO model is a flexible response to that reality.

We put a consular rapid deployment team into Tripoli on Tuesday, 22 February to assist with the evacuation. We also deployed five rapid deployment teams totalling nearly 30 extra staff from the FCO. Those are the people who have done such a magnificent job in getting British nationals on planes in the horrific and dangerous circumstances at the airport. The Australian team arrived on Friday and the Canadians on Tuesday from Egypt. In any action of this kind—in any mission that comes out of nowhere—there are always lessons to be learnt. There will be a review and we will have to learn whatever lessons there are. But I am confident that the FCO reacted quickly and was prepared for this. One of the signs of that was the relative success of the operation that took place.

18:02

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, from these Benches, I share in the tributes that have been paid to our Diplomatic Service and armed services in helping to evacuate our citizens. Several noble Lords want to speak and I will be brief.

I congratulate the Prime Minister on securing Resolution 1970 through the Security Council. Do the Government see it in the context of the broader responsibility to protect? I speak specifically about the sentiments in the Statement about the no-fly zone. Will my noble friend reassure us that preparations are advancing? We know from the barbarous nature of this regime that we may well have to intervene on the responsibility to protect to take those minimal measures implied in a no-fly zone. I wonder whether we will be prepared to do that as part of a framework outside of the UN Security Council if we are not able to achieve agreement there.

On the broader sentiments on democracy, this is such a significant Statement from a UK Government: I do not believe that I have seen one in my 25 years of trying to think about democracy in the Middle East. Will my noble friend reassure us that with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and through all the other work that the Government will do with civil society institutions they will bear in mind that women in the Middle East, as elsewhere, comprise the majority of the citizens of that region? They have for far too long not had a voice in the governance of the region. Will this Government be steadfast in ensuring that women's voices are heard in the reform process going forward?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her comments. On the no-fly zone, there are no details at present and there will not be until we have had discussions with various allies about the feasibility and speed with which it can be put up and about compliance with other international organisations to make sure that everything we do is entirely legal. But the preparations continue, and it is important that they should.

On the organisations that support democracy such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, I can confirm that in the current year the budget has been increased. There is nothing I can possibly add to what my noble friend said about the importance of women in politics, particularly in some of these countries. It is self-evidently true.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, the Leader of the House referred to the Government having revoked Colonel Gaddafi's immunity as head of state. Can he tell us a little more about how that has been done? Will the revocation operate retrospectively and have any other Governments taken the same step? It sounds like a sound step if it can be done and perhaps other Governments should be encouraged to do the same.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it has been done. I gather that it is a matter of state action that any Government can choose to take and the Government have so chosen. I understand that other countries have done something similar, but I cannot name which ones. As for the action being retrospective, I am not sure that it is important that it should be retrospective, but the noble and learned Lord may have been making a clever legal point that at the moment I have missed.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

No.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am glad to hear that the noble and learned Lord say no.

Again, it is part of putting pressure on the regime and senior supporters of the regime including looking at the role of the International Criminal Court. It should complete its investigations so that we can bring this truly appalling situation to an end as quickly as possible.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement from the Prime Minister and I am glad that the opportunity will be taken to learn lessons from the procedures, particularly around the evacuation. If one contrasts the evacuation from Libya with the evacuation just a couple of years ago from Lebanon, it was at a much slower pace. However, I have a much more mundane, long-term question. For the courageous young people that we have seen throughout the region to reach their aspirations, there will have to be a sound economy throughout that region. With the turbulence surrounding events of the past couple of weeks, we have seen oil prices rising to $120 a barrel. That has a direct impact on this economy and on the fragile economies of the developing world.

I am aware that the structures exist to bring together oil producers and consumers both within and outwith OPEC to discuss the operation of oil markets. Will the Leader of the House indicate whether there has been an opportunity to begin those discussions? If we do not secure stability in oil markets in the Middle East, many of these courageous young people will experience continuing poverty, and such poverty of aspiration is what brought them onto the streets in the first place.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Baroness did not ask a mundane question. It is a crucial one and goes to the heart of how the situation will develop possibly over the next few months but certainly over the course of the next few years. The key is about the economy in these countries. As the noble Baroness pointed out, a lot of that is dependent on the price of oil and how it is managed. The second part of her question was about the role of young people, the proportion of whom as a population appears to be far greater in some of these countries than in Europe.

To the specific question on whether discussions are ongoing with oil producers, particularly OPEC, the answer is yes, and they will continue. There are no easy answers to what the noble Baroness called her mundane question, but we are very much aware of them. The decisions, depending on how events pan out over the next few weeks, will have a great bearing on the success of the north African economy over the next few years.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I am delighted that the Prime Minister visited Tahrir Square and leaders of the opposition in Egypt last week. While it is absolutely right that the peoples of the Middle East should determine their own futures, we have a lot to offer in institution-building and in developing the concept of stable and effective opposition. I am delighted that my noble friend said that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy will receive funding and that the British Council and others will be encouraged to work with civil society. However, there are a number of opposition leaders in Arab countries who have not had the luxury of being able to travel here and who would like to come to visit different political parties and institutions. Will my noble friend do all that he can to facilitate that as quickly as possible? That has to be in all of our interests.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lady Morris. She is right when she talks about institution-building and the role that we can play. That includes looking at the experience post-1989 and the building of democracy in central and eastern Europe. Bodies such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy play a very important part. As I said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, it is partly about building these institutions and partly about rebuilding their economies. The two very often go hand in hand, and we should be looking at the two in making sure that we can bring all of this to a successful conclusion.

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for bringing the Statement to the House. I congratulate the Government and our security services on how they have worked effectively together so that this operation has been completed without casualties. I suggest that perhaps the Government would do well to look at their relationship with the press, who appear to have been pre-emptive and working on a minimal amount of information when they evoked the initial criticism of the operation.

It is important that civilian firms employing British civilians overseas keep a proper record of who they employ and where they are employed. If they already do so, was that information available as quickly as it should have been to the Government? I should be grateful if the Minister could answer those two questions. Lastly, this House should and does acknowledge the gratitude due to our Turkish friends and allies, who have once again stepped into the breach to support us at this difficult time.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, perhaps I may say how grateful we are for Turkish help in this developing crisis. They have now taken over the role of representing the United Kingdom in Libya. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, for what he said about the role of the Armed Forces, the Government, and the security services, in this instance. I will not entirely follow him down the route of overly criticising the press, but it is certainly true, in planning these operations, that they are delicate, they need to be kept secret, there are enormously important elements of security, and our very free and open society is open to everyone, including Libyan armed forces. I hope that, over time, people will look back and see this process as having been rather more successful than was perhaps perceived at the end of last week.

The noble Lord asked a totally reasonable question about the amount of information that was made available on the whereabouts of individual employees. We are dealing with an area in the desert which is something like four times the size of the United Kingdom and I understand that some of the information we received was not as good as we would have wanted. No doubt that is one of the lessons we shall all learn.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, will the Government make sure that any no-fly zone encompasses both rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft? This is a very obvious thing which has been overlooked occasionally in the past. I have confidence that Her Majesty’s Government have been canvassing friendly countries as to who would wish to join in the enforcement of any no-fly zone. Can the noble Lord tell us how many positive answers he has had—I am not asking him to identify the individual countries—and have those answers come from states that are actually in a position to contribute to the enforcement of a no-fly zone, particularly with respect to possession of the right sort of air assets, attitudes, and all the other ingredients that are necessary to take part in that sort of activity?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord is entirely right, and he should not shrink from stating the obvious, that we should look carefully at whether a no-fly zone should ban both rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. The rest of his questions are entirely fair, but I am not able to help him with them at the moment. Work is ongoing with allies and other multinational organisations to see how a no-fly zone could be best put into effect and policed. Only when the Government have that information available will we be able to make it public.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House very much. This Statement will go a long way and will be welcomed by the many brave people we have seen on our television screens and read about, who are demonstrating and fighting for democracy and for their freedom. I think it is going to improve the reputation of this country tremendously in those places. I should like to ask two questions. First, specifically about the British nationals who are still scattered and missing, or who have not been located, in the oilfields in the desert, what contribution has been made by the oil companies that they work for to help to locate these people and to evacuate their own workers to safety? Presumably they have resources at their disposal to help that effort. Secondly, although I welcome my noble friend’s comments and those of the Prime Minister about the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world, which has clearly been demonstrated now to have been a myth, what lessons have been learnt specifically regarding previous policies and the previous Government’s policies in arming and cosying up to dictators who oppress their own people?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend on the cause, which we have seen on our television screens, of people fighting for freedom and for democracy, but most of all for choice and for change and to remove these old regimes that have oppressed their people for so long. On the first question on UK nationals, I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, some of the role undertaken by UK companies. Generally speaking, there has been a lot of support from UK companies in helping the Government to trace the employees, so that has on the whole been a reasonably good story.

As to the second question about cosying up to dictators, of course I agree with my noble friend. However, successive British Governments cannot always pick and choose the kind of Governments that countries have chosen for themselves or have had imposed on them. At different times, different Governments will work in different ways with all sorts of people, some of whom are deeply unsavoury.

[Lord Craig of Radley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. He has rightly acknowledged the considerable contribution of the Armed Forces in this, and it is a great regret to me that they were not brought in earlier, as happened with the French and German air forces, which arrived in Tripoli at the beginning of last week.

Bearing in mind that some of the assets used on this occasion are about to be scrapped and that others have already gone that could be used on similar occasions, has not the time come for the Government to consider some quantitative easing of the defence budget?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I understand exactly why the noble and gallant Lord has asked the question, and the way in which he did so. We believe that, even with the strains on the MoD budget, we still have the capability to carry out the evacuation process that has been carried out over the past few days.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, I, too, express appreciation for the Statement made by the Leader of the House, repeating what the Prime Minister said. I am also pleased with the evacuation measures that have been taken. However, early on in this crisis, millions of British people saw the Foreign Secretary on the television saying that Colonel Gaddafi, the tyrant of this issue, was in Venezuela. Have the Government made any assessment of the impact that that incorrect statement has had on the British public?

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, and I think that it would be impossible to do so.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the defection of senior Libyan diplomats from around the world may prove to have been a significant component in the removal of Gaddafi? Furthermore, in the context of the withdrawal of the British diplomatic mission from Tripoli, is there any news on what is happening to the Libyan embassy in London?

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, there is no news on the embassy in London. But my noble friend is right that the defection of senior Libyan diplomats, particularly at the United Nations, was a signal to many others that this regime had come to an end. That is part of the combined exerted pressure that we wish to see to encourage more defections and bring this regime to an end as quickly as possible.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (7th Day) (Continued)

18:23

Amendment 48 not moved.

Amendment 49

Moved by

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

49: Schedule 1, page 17, leave out lines 15 to 22

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, it is clear from the amendment that these Benches seek to remove RDAs from Schedule 1, which legally enables their abolition. This debate on the chaotic and misguided abolition of RDAs announced by ministerial fiat comes at a time when there is clear evidence that economic growth has flat-lined and that the economic recovery has ground to a halt. Now, more than ever, we need the regions to be motors of economic growth in our country, instead of which the RDAs, which provide the architecture for regional economic development, are being dismantled.

As we have heard at Second Reading and throughout this Committee stage, the Conservative-led Government have failed to follow a satisfactory process or procedure for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of the bodies scheduled for abolition. The rushed decision-making and lack of consultation is nowhere more blatantly obvious than with the abolition of the RDAs. The White Paper outlining the Government’s plans came after the decision to abolish RDAs had been announced, and it was a real surprise to these Benches to see their inclusion in Schedule 1. The House of Commons Public Administration Committee concluded that the Government did not consult properly on their proposals. It welcomed the Government’s agreement to allow for further consultations and said that it expected,

“these consultations to have real effect on the outcome of the review; even if this means reversing decisions that have already been made”.

What consultations have taken place since the abolition of RDAs was announced, and how have the conclusions of those consultations been taken into account?

Even if the Government did not make a proper assessment of the value of RDAs, an independent evaluation by PwC found that since their inception RDAs helped to create thousands and thousands of jobs, well in excess of their target; assisted nearly 57,000 businesses—again, well in excess of their target; enabled £5.7 billion of funding to be levered in from the public and private sectors; and created over 8,500 new businesses. The evaluation also demonstrated that every pound spent by RDAs added approximately £4.50 to the regional economy. Other strengths of the RDA model include the ability to pursue a coherent vision for the region that could be turned into a strategy for economic development and investment.

So why are RDAs being dismantled with no credible alternatives? I am sure that the Minister will tell me that they are being replaced by local economic partnerships, which will see business and civic leaders work together to bring economic development, shifting power away from central government towards local communities, which really understand the barriers to growth. But it is not the case that all the RDAs are being localised. Some functions, such as inward investment, innovation, key sector development and response to economic shocks are going to be transferred to the national level. Inward investment is one of the real big successes of RDAs, offering one-stop shops in a region, with fantastic results—for example, Toyota in Derby or Nissan in the north-east. So how does centralising such a function square with the much-vaunted localism agenda? Are the Government really committed to devolving powers and functions when there is clear evidence that they are currently being well managed at regional level? I am more than a little confused about the role of regional government offices, and would be grateful if the Minister could help me. Is it true that Mr Cable is reversing elements of Mr Pickles’s Maoist revolution by rebuilding parts of the regional infrastructure that were scrapped last summer? I very much hope that six regional government offices are being reinstated and that that will foreshadow other changes in regional policy.

I think that it will be clear from debates later this afternoon that some RDAs are more effective than others and that there are weaknesses as well as great strengths, but just because reform or change is necessary in some areas, why take the radical step of abolition, especially when it is apparent that the LEPs will not be able to provide the same impetus for regional development as the RDAs? In many areas of the country, there are simply no local economic partnerships; I think especially of my own region of the south-west. Could the Minister update us on how many LEPs have been approved and where the gaps are? How are the gaps going to be filled? It would be, or should be, unthinkable at any time, but especially when economic growth must be the means to kick-start and sustain recovery, that any part of the country should be without proper regional development.

There are many grey areas relating to funding. Can the Minister confirm that it could cost as much as £1.4 billion to wind down RDAs and complete existing programmes? Could he also confirm that funding from the regional growth fund will amount to £1.4 billion over three years, and that that is nowhere near the sum given to RDAs? If that is true, the money available is not adequate, and it suggests that the Government do not take regional growth seriously enough. I also wonder why the Government are approving only projects based on short-term job creation for the first £250 million of funding from the regional growth fund. Job creation is critical, of course, but what about strategic, long-term projects, which are essential for the economic well-being of any region? I would suggest that, by focusing on short-term job creation, the Government are being short-sighted, neglecting the potential for long-term economic growth as well as jobs.

18:30

Then there is the question of land and property assets that are currently owned by the RDAs. Given the significant value of many of these assets and their role in future growth and development, I wonder what the Government are proposing to do with them. I would be grateful for reassurance from the Minister that they will not be disposed of in a fire sale, with little regard for the regional and strategic importance of many of the sites held. These assets should be retained and used locally to drive economic growth and recovery.

Many of the successes associated with RDAs are a consequence of the expertise and experience of the staff who have played a pivotal role in the agencies. I am concerned about the staff themselves, but also about the body of knowledge they have built up. What are the Government doing to minimise the number of redundancies which will occur with the abolition of RDAs? How will they ensure that the knowledge, skills, experience and expertise are not going to be lost?

My final question relates to funding from the European Regional Development Fund. Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to centralise the delivery of ERDF funding into the DCLG? If so, it would appear that LEPs will be excluded and that the management of the funds will no longer have local and regional input, leadership and direction, with the risk that it will fail to reflect the priorities of the regions. Will he also confirm that the European Commission has expressed concern about the changes caused by the abolition of RDAs, and say whether the £1.5 billion of funding is at risk?

It appears that by dismantling RDAs, the Government are creating uncertainty and failing to support strong and credible organisations to replace them. At present, LEPs simply do not have the powers or resources to drive jobs or growth in our regions. It is widely recognised that LEP funding will not be guaranteed, and that they will certainly not have any start-up or core funding. The regional growth fund has already been oversubscribed in its first round, meaning that many strong bids that have already attracted private sector support look set to miss out because the Government are not prepared to invest in private sector growth. This does not bode well for regional growth and development, and I would urge the Government to think again—to reconsider the fine record of RDAs and the huge contribution they have made to the regions and the country as a whole. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, in the coalition lexicon, there is a six-letter word missing: it is the word “region”. It has been banished by Mr Pickles, and the use of it has been banished from PCTs by the Department of Health. Of course it is true, as my noble friend Lady Royall has implied, that there is a variable geometry about regions. They are not all the same: some are regarded as too big—one thinks perhaps of the south-east, where a predecessor television programme to “Strictly Come Dancing” was called “Come Dancing”. Some of your Lordships may recall that then “Home Counties North” and “Home Counties South” were regarded as appropriate areas. Perhaps that might have been better than a single RDA for the south-east. Nevertheless, many of the RDAs have performed extremely well. If there were uncertainty about some of them, the question arises: why abolish all when there may be a very strong case for keeping some, if not all?

Nearly a year ago, Vincent Cable came to the north-east in his first few weeks as Secretary of State, and he declared his belief that the north-east was,

“one region where business support through a regional agency is both necessary and appreciated”.

He was right about that, but he subsequently went on to propose the abolition of that agency. In any case, he understates the case.

Consider the report on the RDAs from the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills. It found evidence of effective intervention in the face of economic shocks and strongly endorsed the RDAs’ role because they,

“improved the understanding of local economies and their connections with businesses … They were also able to catalyse delivery of infrastructure … and took a strategic approach to planning decisions”.

It thought that some RDAs were, perhaps, too big to profit from local engagement, but it made it clear that,

“policies were far from being applied on a blanket basis within regions”.

Interestingly, the CBI recorded 66 per cent support for continuing regional co-ordination via the LEPs, if they were to be the new mechanism—and especially strong support in the Midlands and the north. Even in areas where the number of local enterprise partnerships was great, it saw the need for an overarching structure. The Select Committee recommended that regional groupings should be recognised where a clear wish was expressed. It also expressed a concern that inward investment and tackling economic shocks would be inadequate without local knowledge and support, as my noble friend has said, when functions were translated to Whitehall. This has been compounded by the proposed abolition of Government Offices for the Regions providing critical intelligence and contact from within the regions to government. Accordingly, the Select Committee recommended that government should devolve powers to regional structures where there was clear evidence of good management of resources.

A back-handed compliment was paid to the Government’s policy from one witness to the Select Committee, who said:

“One good thing that the Westminster Government has done is to abolish regional development agencies in England”,

removing significant competition from the market. That witness was Dr Brian Gibbons, who is Minister for Economic Development in the Welsh Assembly. He clearly took the view—indeed he expressed it—that the Government’s decision presented Wales with a significant opportunity at the expense of the English regions.

The Federation of Small Businesses said that the local enterprise partnerships should have the capacity to address all the issues impacting on development, including transport, planning and housing at a strategic level, tourism, the low carbon agenda and skills and training. But that long list begs the question of the scale of the organisation to carry out those functions and the resources it will need. The organisations that will take the place of the RDAs are the local enterprise partnerships and, as my noble friend has said, they will not have responsibility for significant areas of policy including the ERDF. They will be expected to work with government, whatever that is supposed to mean, on investment priorities, transport infrastructure, the regional growth funds and getting the jobless back to work. Again, there is the question of scale: you will have, as we have in the north-east, at least two organisations, perhaps with an overarching body as well. In other parts of the country there are none, in some there are numerous: how will these work together at the strategic level as opposed to the very local level?

Of course, as my noble friend has pointed out, the funding is very limited: £1.4 billion over three years is very little more than what the Secretary of State himself described as the “trifling” figure—I think that was the word—of £1 billion that was originally proposed. The committee was also concerned about the not-so-local knowledge, about the assets and about the potential for a massive success or failure if the debts were not adequately resourced. Of course, they are not being resourced: they will have no funding and no powers. As I have said previously in this Chamber, they are in danger of being penniless, powerless and pointless. That is a real risk.

There are serious questions to be asked about assets. The Government’s plan is for the assets to be used to pursue economic development benefits through transferring assets to appropriate hosts. They qualify that promise, which on the face of it looks reasonable, by reference to the need to deliver maximum value on public sector investment in the context of deficit reduction. There is therefore a clear implication that the assets will be realised to meet that agenda. There is also a clear implication that that might lead to early disposal.

I have not had the advantage of reading the entire text because Wikipedia has not yet published it. I have seen only a redacted copy of the submission made by One North East, the agency with which I am most familiar, on the proposal for assets disposal. Interestingly, it is proposed to sell some at market value to local authorities. How local authorities are supposed to fund the acquisition of those assets in the present circumstances is beyond me. Some will eventually be put on the market for open market disposal, with an interim period of management by local authorities. Again, at a time of local authority cuts, where will the capacity exist to manage this estate? Similar difficulties arise in relation to intellectual property. There are no fewer than seven pages on that in the submission, including an interestingly little-known scheme called JEREMIE, which is spelt somewhat differently from the convention. It is to do with finance for business and has been extremely successful in the north-east.

What we have here is really an irony. This Government, above all, look to the private sector to lead and to make good the deficiencies in the economy. The RDAs, which they are about to abolish, are heavily engaged with the private sector. They are private-sector-led bodies, and yet they apparently cannot be trusted with economic development in the regions.

The proposals in the Bill bear all the hallmarks of a rush to misjudgment, like so many of the measures that the Government have brought forward. We have seen examples this very day of second thoughts having occurred. I hope that the Government will listen to their natural supporters, if you will, in the private sector, in business and across parties in parts of the country; and will pause, reflect and reconsider proposals that threaten to damage the economic recovery that is essential but seriously at risk in many regions.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, for much of the period since the Second World War—and indeed before—Governments have pursued some form of English regional policy. There have been several initiatives: regional Ministers in some or all regions; development corporations; development companies; and a variety of government office structures, so that Whitehall could be represented properly across all parts of England. Policies have been chopped and changed, but they have been clarified in recent years—first by the creation of the development agencies in the English regions, and secondly by the strengthening of government offices so that all Whitehall departments were housed in a single government office. The system was far from perfect and led to some unnecessary bureaucracy. There was a lack of democratic accountability within the regions. However, the system had one overriding virtue; it was regionally based and gave a clear and firm focus for each region in England that had previously been lacking.

Some regions did not like the structure because they did not feel that their region really existed as an entity. The south-east is the most obvious example. Others, such as parts of the south-west, felt distant from their RDA and government office. Perhaps it was a mistake by the previous Government to create an RDA in each region. Indeed, it is hard to see, in terms of strategic regeneration, why the south-east needed a development agency at all. However, that is history. What is not history is the decision to abolish all English RDAs.

In the north, people have identified with their RDA to a much greater extent than in the south. Maybe this is a function of the northern regions being further from London and the levers of power. It also reflects the greater needs of those regions, which require government intervention for the ultimate benefit of the UK as a whole. The decision to abolish the RDAs and government offices in the south-east may have been broadly popular but it is most certainly not a popular decision in my own region—the north-east. I declare my interest as a board member of One North East since 2005. There is a constitutional issue here, too. Why do Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London have substantial devolved powers, some of which are set to increase, at the very same time that the English regions are being further centralised within London-based structures?

18:45

The accusations against the RDAs were that they wasted money, competed with each other in, for example, tourism and inward investment, and had bloated staffing establishments with expenses systems that were open to abuse. Like all generalisations, such conclusions are exceedingly dangerous. The vast majority did not run bloated staffing structures or see abuse of expenses systems. Most did not compete directly with other RDAs, and all were subject to audit by the National Audit Office. All worked with the single purpose of generating economic growth in their regions. All can point to success stories that would not have been achieved without an RDA. We are now in a position where Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London can spend money on tourism, for example, but the English regions with which they compete cannot. This cannot be right.

My noble friend Lord Beecham reminded us that the Business Secretary admitted publicly a few months ago that the process of abolishing the RDAs had been a bit “Maoist”. I agree with him. It was done without any attempt to evaluate the sustainable achievements of each RDA and whether they had delivered value for money in long-term jobs growth. The decision-making on RDAs fell foul of the unhelpful fact that the DCLG had been funding the lion’s share of RDAs, with BIS being very much the minority financial partner, even though BIS was the responsible Whitehall department. This has added to the confusion over who was responsible for what.

Can further sustainable jobs be delivered without an RDA structure in England? Can redistribution to the poorer regions and those more dependent on the public sector be achieved, too? While the creation of a regional growth fund, which has £1.4 billion to commit over three years, is designed to do just that, it has less to spend than the RDAs had. I declare an interest again as a member of the growth fund’s advisory board. When account is taken of the new likely geographical spend and the fund’s clear remit to generate sustainable private sector jobs, it will certainly be able to make a difference. I welcome that. However, it cannot be the whole story. At the heart of the matter lies this constitutional issue. I do not feel that sufficient thought is currently being given to English regional policy. Simply abolishing our RDAs where they proved valuable, making little attempt to save the good things they have achieved, is a mistake.

Not surprisingly, we now find that some Whitehall departments are deciding that they must continue to employ staff outside London. I understand that some 20 per cent of One North East’s staff will now continue working in the north-east for Whitehall departments. However, they will be split up to work in departmental silos—so much for joined-up working. We cannot run everything in England from Whitehall. I thought we had learnt that lesson many years ago. No doubt local enterprise partnerships will give a focus to regeneration, but since they cover all of England they do not have a responsibility for assisting the weaker local economies, and neither do they have any central government money.

In practice, this is the last operational year for our RDAs. The Government should have paused for thought for longer than they did before deciding to cull them. The process that has been followed, and the absence of any clear regional structural policy behind it, is a matter of serious regret, from which I hope we can yet learn.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I follow my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lord Shipley. Newcastle has spoken from both sides of the House today. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, is waiting to represent the southern part of our region. I very much represent the middle of the region but also, I hope, the region as a whole. The north-east is a region and feels itself to be a region. It has a sense of identity and believes, partly because it is so near Scotland, that it has to fight both to maintain that identity—of which we are very proud—and to make the best of the enormous talent that is in the region.

Much government policy over the past 40 years has recognised that there is talent there and that the north-east laid the bedrock for much of the development of this country. If you think about the Industrial Revolution and the contribution that the north-east made then and in subsequent years to the growth of the economy across the nation, it was very important. As those prime industries began to decline, a regional voice, and action supported by central government, were seen as important to begin to rebuild. This case was being made very loudly before I became a Member of the other House. Indeed, when I did become a Member of the other House, my then neighbour and now my noble friend Lord Radice proposed a Private Member’s Bill, which several of us supported, to enable the north-east to have a regional body that would take strategic decisions with government support. Of course, that was in the era of the Government run by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, so the Government of the day saw the point and the need, and they responded, eventually, to the efforts made by my noble friend and others across the board.

The north-east is parochial, but it is not sectarian. We do not want to get into a situation in which one group fights another within the region for whatever scraps are around. We have always accepted the importance of trying to build the private sector because it is true that at the moment we have too many public sector jobs. Even though we increased the number of private sector jobs in recent years, it was by no means sufficient. That is still a huge job to be done in the north-east, but now we are losing the strategic means of doing it. I just ask the Government to think again.

I accept that there have to be cutbacks in public spending, but it frightens me to see how much money the RDA is having to spend on redundancy and run-down costs when that money ought to be put into economic development. The rise in unemployment, particularly among young people, is frightening. My generation will regret that for many years to come, because we thought we had got through it. We thought that we had got to the stage where we could promise young people in the north-east prospects and opportunities, and that is beginning to fall off the edge again. They see redundancy payments and the struggle to get rid of assets when they know that doing so at this time will not bring in the return that we should be getting from those assets. This is the moment for the Government to think again about the north-east.

The reaction to the Government’s announcement on 23 June was bewilderment, particularly, as my noble friend Lord Beecham said, after the Secretary of State for Business, Vince Cable, said on 3 June that, having looked at things, he was convinced of the need for one body across the north-east. It was therefore with bewilderment that the private sector, the regional chamber of commerce and the regional CBI faced the prospect of months of, quite honestly, squabbling again about what the LEPs should look like, how they should be formed and all that, when the key issues of the day were actually slipping out of anyone’s responsibility.

It was irresponsible of the Government to appoint a new chair of the RDA on 3 June, and then, on 23 June, to say that the organisation was being abolished. One of the key businessmen of the region was being put in place to manage redundancies. It is nonsense. He should be managing inward investment; he should be managing what possibly can be done with the manner in which the assets have been developed in the north-east, with partners, to draw the best strategic opportunities for the region. Instead, he is managing decline, which is a tragedy. There is no one who does not accept that the Government will have to put in less money this year, although they did with regard to One North East, and I hope that they recognise that from what my noble friend Lord Shipley has said. I acknowledge, welcome and am thankful for his contribution both to the RDA and to the new body. However, the new body—the national body—will not have particular reserves for the north-east. It will accept whatever bid comes from wherever. Therefore we might do more to unbalance the economy in this country rather than address the need to rebalance the economy in this country.

One North East was, according to all the independent audits, very successful in the number of jobs that it created, the number of new businesses that it supported and the number of people it helped to get into employment. I will talk about that in more detail at a later stage. The north-east has had a successful RDA. No one says that it achieved everything that we had ambition for it to achieve, but it is one region in England in which we know that progress was being made, and we know that it makes sense to have a strategic body across the region. We are, after all, a very small region, the smallest in the country. Its success was therefore dependent on being able to be strategic across the region. It had a plan for green jobs; it had been developing green policies in recent years. I know very well, from companies that I have talked to, the work that One North East was able to do in pulling together that strategy and in making sure that one company worked with another in a way that developed each of their interests while working in a more coherent and strategic way across businesses.

As a result, Romag, the glass company, was able to support the development of more charge points for electric cars and to support the electric car makers in where they would be and how they would develop their business in a network of hubs around the country. All these ideas came out of the initiative of One North East. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to talk to Nissan about its support for One North East and how important it thinks it has been in its continued presence in the region and its ability to get the parent company to continue to invest in that factory in the north-east, which is, as we know, the most productive car factory across Europe, if not the world.

It is very difficult to talk without emotion about the north-east, a region that means so much to so many of us and to try to get the Government to think again. This does not mean, “You’ve got to put more money in”, but that the money that is going in has to be used in the most strategic way and must not be fragmented. It should not be used in a way that does not maintain the consensus with business, trade unions and local authorities that we have had across the region for many a long month and year. The Government are breaking that consensus, which is incredibly dangerous. I ask them to think again.

19:00

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I declare an interest: my son is the chairman of the North East Chamber of Commerce, which the noble Baroness mentioned. I endorse everything that has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Shipley, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. Politically, people think of the north-east as being divided by rivers. Economically, the north-east is divided between the rivers. Now, instead of having one regional development agency, which has been looking over the whole of that area and easing that division, the Government are setting up local enterprise partnerships that are separating the region. It seems to be madness. All that I can say, from the points of view that I have heard from everyone, is that there was not just confusion but anger up there after Mr Cable made his announcement. Having observed the situation, the Government seemed to be prepared to listen to what people up there were saying and proving, but suddenly that was all dashed, apparently in alliance with a mantra that everything should be localised.

If there is one issue that should be borne in mind, it is communications. The communications system in the north-east is not all that good. There are not the motorways or the means of connecting the various areas. Why not? It is because, over the years, there has been all this local scrapping. Yes, bypasses have been built around areas and there have been local communications, but the region was never looked at as a whole until there was an RDA. Until and unless you get the region to be looked at properly, you will not get the communications that should be the hub of any future development. I join everyone who is begging that the north-east be, if necessary, taken as a separate area and looked at separately again, in order not to throw away what has happened.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, in many ways, this debate reflects the sense of where we are with the whole Bill, because we have heard speech after speech about the north-east of England, which we all love dearly, pointing out what an exceptional region it is and how it needs special attention and help. People have been saying that it had a regional development agency that performed better than any other and was adhered to and held in affection by the business community of the region. It is a small region, with 2.6 million people. The Northwest Regional Development Agency, on the other hand, covers an area from the Scottish border to Cheshire. That is not a homogeneous region to which people can feel an affinity.

There are different views on this. We are having this debate, but let us remember that there is an option available to the local authorities and the business community of the north-east to have a single local enterprise partnership for the whole of the region. That offer was put forward and I supported it, so that there should be one voice for the north-east. However, the local authorities, in their wisdom, could not agree on that. We therefore have this breakaway on Teesside. In fairness to Teesside, and given my credentials in the north-east that I offer to this debate—I was born on Tyneside, represented a seat on Teesside and now live on Wearside—I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said about the region between the rivers. There are different perspectives. The people on Teesside felt strongly at the last general election that they had been let down by the regional development agency. The closure of Corus TCP was a real issue. The people felt that they wanted to reflect the fact that the economy and the process industry of the Tees valley made up a unique and discrete entity and that they might perform better on their own. I disagreed with them, but they took that decision, which was for them to take. It was on offer.

Perhaps I may offer this point of view. As well as the sort of romance that we have heard about One North East, let us remember—I am sure that my noble friend Lord Shipley from the board can confirm this—that its budget two years ago was £290 million. Under the previous Government, that was to be cut this year to £180 million. The idea that there was some sort of love-in and that somehow money was being poured into the good north-east was not true. A cutting back of the reach of that agency, and some may say its effectiveness, was already in train.

It is also worth putting this on record. Other noble Lords will also remember the time when I was Minister for the north-east under the previous Conservative Government. There were the Northern Development Company and the Teesside and Tyne and Wear development corporations, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, referred. The development corporation for the north-east was fantastic and very well run under John Bridge, with George Russell as chairman—Ron Dearing was a previous chairman. These were terrific ambassadors for the region. They brought in significant amounts of foreign direct investment; 75,000 jobs were brought into the region during their time, although their organisation was very thin. They did phenomenal work. Our reward for having one regional development agency, going head-to-head with the Welsh Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise in trying to bid for projects, was that the incoming Labour Government created seven competitors for us in the other regional development agencies around the country. That was a mistake. There is a case for north-east exceptionalism in these matters. I should have preferred the continuation of a single entity, but that has not been possible.

In conclusion, we are entering a time when there is a change of approach. An interesting study into regionalism by the Smith Institute looked at a set of data covering a period between the peak before the recession hit and its trough. It showed that a recession born of the financial services industry, which should therefore have primarily impacted on the City of London, in fact hit the regions of the country, such as the north-east, Yorkshire and the north-west, hardest. That seemed to fly in the face of the argument that regionalism would balance the national economy. Regionalism was meant to give a little bit of emphasis and push to those regions that, because they were peripheral to the centre, struggled in economic terms. However, we were actually hit hardest.

The north-east will have a good and positive future, not because of organisations and institutions, but because of the quality of its entrepreneurs and businesses. The entire budget of One North East is only half as much as the amount by which Greggs increased its turnover last year, in terms of investment in the region. The company employs 18,000 people. The private sector is doing it. Companies such as Sage are doing fantastically well. I was at the opening of a new facility for OneX in Teesside, which is now exporting server capacity into Denmark through a new cable across the North Sea. There are some fantastic things happening.

It is worth remembering that the north-east is the only region in the country that exports more than it imports. That is a great place to start, and we have to have far greater confidence in our own ability. A good policy is the introduction for the first time of a difference in national insurance contributions, with a preference for allowing people outside the south-east and London to benefit from lower tax rates. Personally, I would go much further. There is a real case for reintroducing enterprise zones across places such as the north-east. In places such as Blyth, Easington and Middlesbrough, where there is no enterprise at all at present, you could create enterprise zones under which businesses could be set up.

The opportunity was there for us to have a single voice in the north-east, although it was not taken. However, the prospects are good, but only because our entrepreneurs and businessmen are good.

[Baroness Whitaker]

I rise to speak to Amendment 55, leaving the north-east. The grounds for my amendment, in contrast to the eloquent plea by my noble friend Lady Armstrong, are not that every part of the South East England Development Agency should remain exactly as it is now, but that, at present, without it, there is no adequate support for some of the poorest parts of the south-east. I am thinking in particular of Newhaven, next to where I live, where over a quarter of households earn 60 per cent less than the national median income. Newhaven would hugely repay investment. It is poised to become the key commercial port in Sussex and 30 per cent of local companies are in the manufacturing, construction and building sectors. But its high street is withering away and its residents have little spending power.

The Government have proposed local enterprise partnerships in place of the regional development agencies, as we discussed earlier. But at the moment Lewes district, where Newhaven sits, is covered by an LEP for East Sussex, Kent and Essex. This is hopeless. Newhaven has few links to the east. The travel-to-work area is west towards Brighton, north to Gatwick and Crawley, and, for commuters, north-west to London. Unless Newhaven can go into the Coast to Capital LEP, there is little hope for the prosperity of the hardworking and friendly people who live there.

There are acres of brownfield land designated for industrial and commercial use which will be of little interest to an LEP focused on Hastings, Kent, Essex and the Thames Gateway. But it is all ripe for investment. The town is well placed to provide work for the Brighton area and there are promising signs that land with planning permission for housing will soon be developed. The port owners are actively pursuing regeneration of the port, which again has few synergies with the east and north-east.

You could argue—indeed, it has been argued—that SEEDA is too big and there could be other solutions to the regional investment problem. But the worry is that places such as Newhaven will simply drop out of the loop unless the Government pay more attention to practical realities. I ask the Minister: what in the Government’s arrangements for LEPs demonstrates any improvement for Newhaven?

19:15

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, we have heard a lot from the north-east during the discussion on these amendments and I want to broaden it a little to the rest of the north of England. I have Amendments 52 and 58 in this group, which refer to the three regions of northern England: the north-east, Yorkshire and the north-west. I speak as a Yorkshireman who lives in the north-west—just—and, in view of what I am going to say, I should remind the Committee that I am a member of Pendle Borough Council.

Here, we are dealing with a government policy based on the view that regions do not really exist in England. I think that that is a metropolitan/south-eastern view of life and does not apply in the north. I believe that regions exist. I certainly believe that the north-east exists but I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, that most people in the north-west are very clear that they live in the north-west. North-west England may be a boring name; nevertheless, most people in the north-west know perfectly well that they live in the north-west and they have an allegiance to it.

There are boundary problems, but there always are. I live in Pendle, which is on the border with Yorkshire. We have an area called West Craven, which includes the small towns of Barnoldswick and Earby, where everyone believes that they are still in Yorkshire for everything other than administrative purposes. There is always a problem with Cumbria, which in a sense is a mini-region on its own. If Cumbria had been twice the size it is, it would always have been a separate region. It has always had to choose whether to be tagged on to the north-east or the north-west. However, that is not to say that in Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester in particular, and in south Cumbria, people are not very clear that they are in the north-west, and they have an allegiance to it. I do not object to an attempt by the Government—if this is what they have done—to rationalise our regional structures and make them more efficient, more logical and more sensible.

Perhaps I may talk for a minute about regional structures in general in the north-west and about the government office for the north-west. A close member of my family had a job as a permanent temp in the regional office in Manchester for the best part of a year. This was a while back but not that far back. I do not want to breach lots of confidentialities concerning what she did there—she had to sign the Official Secrets Act to work there and she asked me whether it was all right to sign it. However, I think I can mention one thing without having her hauled off to the Tower of London. She said to me, “You know when MPs and people put questions down and ask questions of the Government?”. I replied, “Yes”, and she said, “Well, if they’re about transport, I have to deal with them, find out the answers and send them back to London”. I remind noble Lords that she was a temp. I thought about it and asked her what she meant by “and people”, but she said, “Please don’t, daddy”.

The regional offices and the North-West Development Agency were probably overstaffed. They were not wholly efficient, but that is a reason for slimming them down, making them efficient and getting them to do their job more effectively rather than abolishing them. The North-West Development Agency had the same task as the others. It had to deal with business support, which I think is very valuable. It also had the task of directly stimulating development and regeneration by directing funds—many of them government funds—into schemes in the region. One problem is that a large number of those funds have dried up for the moment and there is no money to hand out. However, the present Government seem to be of the view that regeneration in terms of investment in the public realm and the public infrastructure is not efficient development and, unless the money goes directly to commercial activity to create jobs, it should not be done. However, who else is going to renovate the public realm and regenerate rundown areas if not the public sector? The commercial sector will come in and help but the underlying funding has to come from the public sector. However, it seems to me that that is drying up and it will need to be reinstated as soon as possible.

Furthermore, following the latest planning legislation, the regional development agencies were in charge of producing the regional strategies along with the leaders’ boards, which had a temporary existence. I always thought, as I think my party did by and large, that it was not appropriate for an unelected regional development agency to act effectively as a regional planning authority. Whatever was going to happen to regional planning—it is currently being abolished, although it will probably have to come back—we would have had no problem at all if it had been taken away from regional development agencies, because it was not a suitable thing for them to do. I went back to the coalition agreement and it says:

“We will support the creation of local enterprise partnerships … to replace regional development agencies (RDAs). These may take the form of the existing RDAs in areas where they are popular”.

That was a fudge when the coalition agreement was hammered out, a compromise between the Liberal Democrat view that regional development agencies should continue to exist in areas such as the north of England and the Conservative view that they should be swept away. Within Government that turned into a turf war between BIS and the CLG and the CLG came out on top. Like the north-east, we in the north-west and people in Yorkshire thought that RDAs were going to continue in a slimmed-down form.

So what is happening? We are told that there’s a regional growth fund, but there is much less to spend and it is being doled out centrally. The idea that politicians and civil servants in London are the right people to decide which projects in the north-west or in the other parts of the north of England—places 200 or 300 miles away—should be funded is not really credible. Decisions made in that way are not going to be good decisions. There is European funding—the ERDF—and the Rural Development Programme for England, but again the decisions are being taken centrally. A Written Statement from my noble friend Lady Hanham says:

“I have concluded that, in order to maintain compliance with the regulations and spending momentum, we should transfer the existing ERDF staff and functions into my department by the beginning of July”.—[Official Report, 3/2/2011; col. WS 86.]

Except in London where it will be devolved to the Greater London Authority, presumably because the Greater London Authority exists. But in the rest of the country decisions about regional development funding are going to be made here in London. That just seems illogical.

Then we have the question of the transfer of assets. The regional development agencies have been asked to produce plans but they are not being allowed to make their own decisions. The decisions are going to be made by the CLG and BIS, depending on what those decisions are. Then, as one noble Lord pointed out, assets are going to be offered to local authorities at a commercial rate. In my experience in Pendle, some of the property which belongs to the regional development agency was bought by the RDA off local authorities in order to provide a source of regeneration funding by those local authorities. But the local authorities are not going to have that money—so what is now happening? People are realising that this is topsy-turvy and that it is not going to work. We are told that for future regional development agency funding, ERDF funding and rural funding, there are going to be teams based in the regions, perhaps collocated with the Homes and Communities Agency. We read in the papers that BIS is talking of setting up small regional offices in order to make sure that the decisions made are right for that region because people in London cannot do it. And we are told that for decisions on the regional growth fund the CLG is going to have teams of people in the regions because, again, people in London cannot do it. It is a scorched-earth policy. Everything is being abolished. I always thought that it would have to be rebuilt sometime. They are beginning to rebuild it at the very time they are abolishing what is there at the moment. There does not seem to be a great deal of logic about this.

The last thing I want to say is about LEPs—local enterprise partnerships—which are supposed to deliver the local growth policies, though they will have precious little government funding. The specific question I want to ask the Government—I do not expect my noble friend Lord Taylor to know but perhaps somebody can write to me and tell me afterwards—refers specifically to Pennine Lancashire, the part of Lancashire that wants to be a separate LEP from the rest of Lancashire based on Blackburn, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Rossendale and Ribble Valley, a very clear economic area which already has institutions in PLACE, which is a regeneration and development agency set up by the authorities in our part of Lancashire under a multi-area agreement. So we have a Government who tell us multi-area agreements are the way forward. We get on with it and produce an effective, genuine partnership between the local authorities, working very closely with the private sector, ready to go as a LEP. We know exactly what we want to do to convert it into a LEP and how to do it and still we are not being given the go-ahead. And yet the regional growth fund already exists. So who bids for our part of Lancashire? It is the body called PLACE which is the multi-area agreement body. That body exists and is bidding. Can the Government give an assurance that bids from areas like ours which are properly organised and properly submitted, even though we do not yet have an agreed LEP, will be treated on exactly the same basis as areas which already have a LEP? Otherwise we are being dreadfully discriminated against. I hope the answer will be yes but I would be grateful if somebody could write to me and tell me.

The regions in the north of England need to be recognised. Just because the existing RDAs have not managed to narrow the gap between areas like the north and London does not mean they have not done a good job. There is no evidence whatever that by maintaining the gap as it is, even if it has not been narrowed, they have not been doing a job. Without them the gap might now be a lot larger. Unless we see some research and proper evidence to the contrary, we will continue to believe that regional institutions are necessary.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendment 56, drawing on my experience as the Minister with responsibility for the south-west in the year running up to the last general election. I agree with much of what has been said in this debate so far, but I want to start by paying tribute to Sir Harry Studholme, the chair of SWRDA, and Jane Henderson, the chief executive, and all of their staff for the excellent work that I observed them doing during that year and the time preceding that when I was a Member of Parliament in the region. They were doing excellent work, largely on the supply side of the economy, developing sites such as Osprey Quay in my constituency, without which the Olympics would not be coming to the south-west, Gloucester Docks and the Science Park Network in the Bath and Bristol area. I endorse the questions that were asked by my noble friend Lord Beecham about assets and what happens to those assets owned by the regional development agency in reality.

SWRDA did excellent work in developing skills and 130,000 people have been provided with new work-related skills since 2002 in the south-west. Without SWRDA we would not have the combined university, the only university in Cornwall, which has been doing stunning work in developing the economy in that part of the region. Without it we would not have the marine skills centres across the south-west or the nuclear skills centre that is being developed in Somerset. SWRDA has been developing connectivity—the new generation broadband initiative in Cornwall, for example. It has been developing finance for business. The South West Angel and Investor Network comes to mind, as does the work that I was a part of in trying to get banks to focus on the needs of small businesses. Hooking banks up with a federation of small businesses in the region was very important as we were trying to respond to the recession.

So plenty of good work went on across the region, and although it is possible to argue that a region the size of Denmark will have some issues around its edges as to whether, for example, Bournemouth and Poole as a conurbation is best placed in the south-west or the south-east—and similarly with Swindon and Gloucestershire, given that Tewkesbury is closer to Scotland than it is to Land’s End; these arguments will run—I would argue that we were just starting to get a sense of identity in the region as the RDAs were becoming successful.

I would argue that the sort of centralisation that we are getting, and which others have argued against, is a backward step. LEPs have already been announced across the south-west but there is none so far in Dorset, Bournemouth, Poole, Devon, Somerset Wiltshire or Gloucestershire. Huge swathes of my region will not have an LEP. Indeed, as the BBC reported, there is one down in Cornwall where we have the interesting spectacle of Sir John Banham being generously engaged for just over 20 days at half his daily rate—it is usually £4,000 but is now £2,000—to produce a strategy which has now been rejected. He has now left at a cost of more than £40,000 to the taxpayer. I cannot see that as good value for money from this new system.

19:30

We are seeing a centralisation caused by Whitehall dictating what the LEP boundaries should be. As far as I can tell, the LEP proposals from the south-west have been knocked back because they do not appeal to Whitehall’s notion of what the boundaries should be. The regional growth fund has been referred to, as has the centralisation of the Rural Development Programme for England and the ERDF. I had a conversation with a leading multinational technology company based in Swindon which said, “Once the RDAs are gone we cannot really have a good relationship with the two regions that are most important to us, as we do with other regional governments around Europe. Frankly, we haven’t the energy to engage with lots of individual little LEPs, so we will engage with Swindon council and central government. We can’t afford to do any more than that”. We will have less engagement with the economy and less investment coming from a very important investor around the world.

I would also argue that there is an ideology attached to this. Clearly the Government are against regional policy even though it works in many other successful economies around the world. But they are also against an industrial policy and industrial activism. We would not have the Eden project were it not for the risks that were taken in part by the South West Regional Development Agency. Everyone knows the impact on south-west tourism to have Eden developed in Cornwall. As I said, we would also not have the Olympics. We should consider what has been done around creative hubs across the south-west, which is one of the strengths of our region, or for green industries. The Minister needs to give us an answer on whether the Wave Hub, which is so important in the south-west, would have been developed without a regional development agency. Could LEPs develop that? Would it just be one of the things that would bid into the regional growth fund? I do not know.

The composite centre, which I was pleased to open, built on the aerospace expertise of the region held by Rolls-Royce, GKN, Westland and Airbus. Aerospace manufacturers and the University of Bristol bring their expertise and they are supported not only by BIS in Whitehall but, crucially, the RDA. World-beating composite technology is being built in Bristol. Would that have happened with a LEP? Would it get through a much more competitive regional growth fund strategy? More than 100,000 public sector jobs are projected to be lost in the south-west, many of them in areas where LEPs are not set up. Under this new set-up, how will those jobs be filled in an area that is peripheral compared with the south-east?

My final substantive point concerns value for money. I have already mentioned the scandal of the amount of money that went to Sir John Banham. I looked at the independent evaluations of RDAs, and it appears that only 10 per cent of the overall budget was spent on administration and that it had a clean bill of health from the National Audit Office. That 10 per cent figure is something that many parts of the public sector and indeed some parts of the private sector would be pleased to score. I think that £238 million was spent on administration. That is all the saving that is potentially there. As has already been said, even if my party had been re-elected, we would have had to cut the overall budget and the administration costs with it. It is not a massive saving given that for every pound spent, £4.50—the more conservative estimate—is generated in the economy. These are the questions that the Government need to answer.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but he has twice mentioned Sir John Banham, and his last reference was in terms of a scandal. Will he make it clear to the Committee that if scandal there be, it is not to be laid at the door of Sir John Banham, who is a friend of mine and a considerable public servant, but should be laid at the door of those who put him on the task?

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I do not know Sir John Banham but it seems extraordinary that more than £40,000 has been paid out from the Cornish LEP to commission him to do a job that was then rejected. Something in that process has gone wrong. I know that he has done other work and given service in public life. I have nothing against him personally, but something has gone badly wrong. We need to learn lessons from that. If we are to make savings out of this process, which one assumes is part of the motivation, we cannot afford for any of those individual LEPs to be making £40,000 errors. That money needs to be spent on creating jobs, particularly for young people—to reprise what my noble friend Lady Armstrong said.

In summary the Minister needs to say why we are going for an ideological centralisation and anti-industrial policy position. Where is the value for money out of this abolition of the regional development agency?

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.38 pm.

Israel

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

19:38

Asked By

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will work with the Government of the United States to ensure that Israel complies with United Nations resolutions and international law.

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, this is again a very important moment to have a debate on this matter. I am grateful to the House for giving me the opportunity this evening.

Over the weekend it was good to see for once—unusually, and I suppose sadly—the unanimous decisions of the UN Security Council calling on Colonel Gaddafi to account for the abominable behaviour that he is wreaking on his own people. In contrast, how depressing it was to see—once again, and probably for the 42nd time—the previous weekend’s United Nations Security Council session being ruined, even recklessly sabotaged, by another US veto concerning the Israel/Palestine issue. A seemingly unanimous decision in a moderately worded resolution asking Israel to obey its international law duties in occupied Palestine was deliberately—I am sad to use the verb—wrecked by the US. This time it caused universal resentment, even hatred, towards America among some of the other Security Council members. Some of them kept silent counsel, but they did so with great sadness.

Once again the US refused to condemn behaviour which even President Reagan repeatedly described as totally illegal: the continued colonisation of the West Bank and, of course, East Jerusalem. Once again the Arab street sees the double standards of the US. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quite rightly expelled after a year. The UN, quite rightly, did not hesitate then. Israel invaded the West Bank 44 years ago, but it is still there.

I warmly congratulate the UK Government as well as the EU on their much more decisive stand in contrast to the still lingering, miserable and self-inflicted humiliation which is further eroding America’s already tattered so-called leadership of the western world. Indeed, Barack Obama made it even worse by allowing the long-suffering Department of State—and I have enormous sympathy for many of its senior officials dealing with this matter—to leak the sad news that he imposed the veto with a heavy heart. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, was even allowed to make some harsh comments on the illegal colonisation policy. Even the former Israeli consul-general in New York, Alon Pinkas, said that this should be the last-ever veto since Americans in general were sick and tired of the continuing charade carried out in their name. Even Israel military radio carried a reaction of disbelief.

The cynical use of the veto by America so blatantly and so often is a madness that must not continue. Furthermore, against the background of the momentous events now in surrounding Arab countries, where the essence of the people’s democracy is rising up against tyranny and the abuse of power, we see just how monumental have been the mistakes made by the US and by us, too, the West as a whole, in the frenzied, relentless search for oil at any price—any political price and any price of freedom. The whole history of the West’s presence in Arabia is indeed a saga of wretchedness and despair for ordinary citizens in most of these countries, much of that manifested now in the words used by the rioting crowds in the various squares in the various countries when they are interviewed by the media.

As in Latin America for so many years, we remember with pain that the US in particular has always preferred the brutal dictator regimes, as it does now in Arabia. Surely now is the time for the former imperial powers and the US to restore the balance of hope in this crucial area by following an ethical foreign policy, as well as by curbing arms sales and stopping support for unacceptable regimes, even Saudi Arabia with its corrupt royal dictatorship. Above all, now is the time for Israel, too, to show decency and wisdom at long last in its policy towards the cruelly treated Palestinians.

Make no mistake, Israel is a country that I greatly admire, and I have done so for many years. I admire many of the people there. It is a great country. It has a great contribution to make in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, however, across the fence, we see Fatah struggling for the legitimacy that it lacks in the Arab street. That is one reason why it will not join in negotiations until Israel acknowledges its offences under international law and the Geneva conventions on the treatment of civilians and shows a complete change of heart. That is a responsibility that is as solemn for an occupying power as it is for a country that actually owns the territory legally. Can the present Israeli Government—who so sadly include a number of rather extremist members, though I will not mention any names tonight, and who have been such a disappointment —accept this reality at long last? I hope so. In doing so, they would be meeting the fervent wishes of millions of decent, fair-minded Israeli citizens who want peace and security and good relations with their Arab and Palestinian neighbours.

With the Palestinians seemingly prepared to accept that a two-state outcome will accord them a mere 23 per cent of the original combined mandate territory, there is no longer any rational reason for Israel to prevaricate even if aided by a totally incompetent American support stance. That will mean that the settlers have to leave the illegally occupied lands. Let us repeat that loud and clear. The Israeli Government can easily provide financial assistance for resettlement back in Israel proper. There is, for example, plenty of spare space if the Negev, too, is properly developed with infrastructure and modernised in the future. This process has not yet even begun to take place on a massive scale. While they are about it, surely the Israelis can modernise their hopelessly outdated election system and reduce the blackmail of the tiny extremist parties in the Knesset.

Yes, it will mean that the international community has to accept the inclusion of Hamas in any fundamental, realistic negotiations for peace. It is outrageous that it has been excluded when it is the main Palestinian political grouping capable of securing a genuine democratic majority. What a contrast to the Fatah president’s desperate and lamentable efforts to secure street support, having already blatantly exceeded the mandate period. At long last elections are now in the offing, thanks to the pressure that he was facing, but it will be outrageous if the Palestinian Authority seeks to exclude Hamas from the West Bank election activity—or, indeed, per contra, if Hamas seeks to consolidate one-party rule in Gaza, which is surely just as unacceptable, preventing other parties there from having a say. Leading Palestinian political commentators of all groups were certainly too eager to express support for the dodgy dictators, some of whom have now been removed, in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. We are also now observing the events in Yemen.

Any elections in the near term must restore the confidence of the street in the West Bank. They must help local voters feel that they are playing a full part in the wider Arab uprising which we are now excitedly witnessing. Huge problems are still being caused by the long-running American stupidity and carelessness in the Middle East, and they will take time to sort out. Israel must show it can rise to the occasion at last. As William Hague stated on 14 February:

“We are calling for both sides to show the visionary boldness to return to talks and make genuine compromises … the entire international community, including the United States, should now support 1967 borders as the basis for resumed negotiations. The result should be two states, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/2/11; col. 716.]

After all the tears and madness of history, cannot the world work for the two friendly states, side by side, erasing the tragedy of Israel’s failure to be magnanimous and generous after its spectacular 1967 victories? Then we could perhaps see a rewritten version of the Balfour declaration. Let me try this one to see if it is congenial: “As long as it is not to the detriment of the 62 year-old state of Israel, a renewed homeland will be created for the state of Palestine, a modern democratic and progressive republic, with financial assistance from the international community, the two neighbours respecting human rights and their reciprocal friendship, producing in due time the near east common market for the prosperity of all”.

19:46

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dykes for securing this timely debate and also for the way in which he has presented it. I believe that the only hope for the development of civilisation is to advance towards a society of states under a rules-based international order. The argument is that there is a community or society beyond the nation state of which we are all part and being part of that club comes with international rights and responsibilities.

The alternative to a rules-based international order is anarchy in which the powerful do as they will while the weak suffer as they must. That is the completely opposite end of the spectrum from which I am sure we all entered politics. We wanted justice to trump power and protect freedom and if anything have a bias to the weak and the oppressed. This too was the desire which led to the creation of the United Nations out of the carnage of World War II. Article 1 of the UN Charter says:

“To bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes”.

Why is that relevant to this debate? Well it is relevant because we have voluntarily agreed along with 191 other nations to work for peace within a framework of law and non-violence. Why is that especially relevant to Israel? The state of Israel exists in international law only because the United Nations Special Committee of Palestine in 1947 proposed that it should be along with an Arab state of Palestine and because United Nations Resolution 181 said it existed in international law.

I would argue therefore that there is a special reason for the state of Israel to look benevolently upon the United Nations institution for it, more than any other nation or institution, has realised the aspirations of a Jewish national homeland and enshrined that in law. It therefore requires it to comply with its requests expressed through resolutions and work with the United Nations despite its manifold imperfections to bring about the creation of a viable Palestinian state as equal partners in an international society of nation states.

19:49

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, on having so firmly introduced this debate today. I would just like to make two or three points. First, I think historically it is a major tragedy that we have seen the United States behave as it has at the United Nations in recent weeks. It is while the United States still has ascendency in the international community that it is so important for it to throw its weight behind the strengthening of international institutions and international law. That is in the interests of the future of the people of the United States because it will not always have that ascendency. It will then—too late, perhaps—realise the importance of having strong international institutions and the rule of international law.

Secondly, what is so sad about what the United States has done is that it is absolutely counterproductive to the security of Israel. It will not help the people of Israel. No one cares more than I do about the future of Israel; I have many friends in Israel. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, in introducing the debate, referred to the people of Israel letting down themselves. Many people in Israel want the debate in Israel to open up. They have a completely different perspective on the future. They see that the future of Israel, the strength of Israel and the safety of Israel lie in negotiated settlements and making peace with the people in the surrounding area.

If there is to be peace in the region, it is essential that negotiations are as inclusive as possible. That is where the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is so right again—he has done it before—to emphasise the importance of Hamas. At the moment, there is a self-fulfilling prophecy: we strengthen the extremist elements in Hamas. They are not all extremists in Hamas; we should be strengthening the more moderate elements and bringing them in to help move the negotiations forward.

Finally, let us just remember that when we talk about aggression and the threat of aggression, of course it is wrong to kill innocent Israelis. That cannot be condoned, but what about the bombardments of the so-called buffer zone within Gaza? What about the 52 innocent people killed within the buffer zone last year? What about the embargo and the damage that it has done to the health, well-being, industry and economic life of Gaza? Is that not aggression? From every standpoint, the American position has been disastrous.

I congratulate the British Government with one reservation. Having made such a courageous, firm and sensible stand at the UN, why on earth did the Prime Minister at this very juncture go with a group of arms salesmen to the Gulf, sending a completely contrary message to that which is inherent in everything that we are arguing about how peace and security need to be achieved? That was counterproductivity of the first order.

19:52

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for my delay in attending the debate of my noble friend Lord Dykes. I was detained in my room momentarily.

It is nearly 18 years since the Oslo peace accords showed a ray of hope for a peace settlement; but 18 years later, we find ourselves at an impasse. The history of US involvement in recent times—we can go back to the Camp David accords, the Madrid conference, the Clinton parameters and Annapolis—should have yielded greater results than they have. Of course, it does not fall to the US alone to secure peace in our time in the Middle East, but recent US efforts have been particularly disappointing. We have had fine rhetoric since the inauguration of President Obama and the expression of lofty ideals, but we are no closer to a solution than at any time before Oslo.

If the US continues to be rebuffed in the manner that it is being rebuffed at the moment by the Israelis, the question is to be asked whether the will for peace exists between the Israelis and the Palestinians, because there will be a comprehensive peace only if both sides are prepared to sit down to sue for peace, irrespective of the position of other powers.

There is little to bring Israel to the table when it can create facts on the ground with impunity in its settlements, its separation wall and, above all, its electoral system, which allows for its most extreme elements to sit at the table. The Palestinians, too, have settled for a dual-track strategy: that of securing economic growth by Fatah in the West Bank, while Hamas seems to be torn between being, on the one hand, the Government in Gaza and, on the other, still playing the role of insurgent when it suits it. Fatah, we hear, will try to seek a unilateral declaration of independence, but that, while giving it legitimacy, will not give it back East Jerusalem or freedom for the Occupied Territories and will certainly not give the people who languish in the camps the right of return.

My noble friend Lord Dykes talked of the democratic trends in the Middle East. If there is one silver lining, it is that the Arab nations together, once they move to more democratic and legitimate frameworks, could secure Israel by normalising relations with Israel. That would be a significant step forward. The West should stand by to facilitate that through encouraging democracy and pluralism in those countries but, ultimately, the peace, such as will come, will have to be made between the two countries alone.

19:55

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for introducing the debate on this important subject. I start by declaring an interest as the incoming chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association and say that as someone who was a strong advocate in the early and mid-1990s of what became the Good Friday agreement solution in Northern Ireland, I am strongly committed to historic compromise as the means to overcome the tenacious problems of ethnic, religious and national political divides.

I want to concentrate on the issues surrounding the United States, the United Nations and our foreign policy in recent days. One point has to be made about the decision made by the American Administration in the lead-up to the recent United Nations vote: 110 congressmen wrote to the Administration to say, “Do not support this anti-Israel resolution”. In the end, the Administration compromised. Critical points were made about Israeli policy. I say wryly and not with overwhelming pleasure after 30 years experience of the Irish question that 110 congressmen is 109 more than you need to countermand any dialogue between our Foreign Office and the State Department. We must respect profound political realities for any United States Administration.

On the United Nations decision, one point made by the American ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, seems to me of some substance. She argued that, had the United States not vetoed the resolution, it would merely have hardened opinion on both sides. More profoundly, it is clearly the view of the United States that the United Nations—its resolutions and its theatre—is not the context for the resolution of the Middle Eastern problem. That is the message that the United States is sending to us. We may not like it, but we have been sent that message very firmly.

The problem is seen more profoundly as one of land for peace and of convincing enough Israelis, in the aftermath of the disappointment that many Israelis feel about the consequences of withdrawal from Gaza, in both the political class and the population at large, that land for peace is a gamble that they can take on. That is the fundamental problem. It is not helped by one-sided denunciations of Israel and the failure thus far in the debate to acknowledge the consequences for many Israelis and the disappointment felt because of one risk that was taken: the withdrawal from Gaza. That is the reality with which we are now faced in this context. The United Nations and its resolutions are, in a sense, background music.

19:59

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for launching this debate. The best reason for working closely with the United States in the past was that it always seemed to have the best chance of bringing about a just and peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine dispute. Sadly, we now seem to have reached the point where that is no longer the case. Israel remains obdurate. The United States is unwilling to act as a candid friend. The result is the recent vote in the United Nations Security Council, in which the United States found itself isolated, as did the Israeli position of settlements and occupation. I hope that the United States will learn from this embarrassing debacle, which has separated it from almost all its closest friends and allies. It is still the best hope for securing a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine dispute.

However, we, and other countries who believe that Israel’s current contra mundi defiance is against its own long-term interest as well as a danger to peace, should no longer wait on the United States. At this critical stage in the Middle East, when hope and fear are so finely balanced, we must be open and frank about our abhorrence of Israel’s current settlements policy and the concomitant occupation that it involves. We should bear in mind the wise words of David Shulman, the Renee Lang professor of humanistic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, when he talks about,

“its relentless, daily, dehumanizing grind”.

We must make clear the extent to which that policy diminishes our friendship for the Government—as distinct from the people—of Israel, with the practical consequences that must inevitably flow from this. It is very sad that we should be in this position. As the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and others have said, there are many in Israel who do not share the views of its Government. I pay particular tribute to those Israeli soldiers who recently produced the book, Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldier Testimonies 2000-2010. It is to those voices in Israel that we should listen and not always to some of the advocates of the hard-line policies of the Government that we hear in this House.

20:02

[Lord Janner of Braunstone]

My Lords, does this House recognise that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East? Democracies, like Israel or this country, do not always elect the Governments whom we would vote for. However, in my view, Israel continues to play an important role in the international community. It represents a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. It represents democracy, liberty and freedom in a region that has long been filled with tyrannies and dictatorships. We have all seen the people’s aspirations, which have long been suppressed, now released in recent revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Libya, which we should welcome. We should recognise the fact that the only democracy in that area is the country that Members of this House have been attacking so readily this evening. The instability of the region has always been a major problem for Israel. However, the current revolutions in the Middle East present an opportunity for Israel and the world.

The primary role of a nation state is to defend its borders and citizens from attack. Israel faces a tough task. Its duty is to defend its citizens. Hamas is not a Government and Gaza is not a nation state. Hamas has been praised. However, Hamas is a terrorist group, which rains terrors on civilians in Israel. These terrorists ignore international law and they, not Israel, should be the key focus of this debate. Let me make it clear to this House: Israel does not target citizens, unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, which target citizens in many parts of Israel. Mistakes occur in warfare, just as mistakes have occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. When these mistakes happen, investigations are launched and, where possible, justice is delivered. I would have been interested to hear how the noble Lord who triggered this debate would himself have responded if we in this nation suffered from attacks from terrorist entities, which is the position that Israel has to face. Many of these terrorists were funded and armed by an Iranian regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to attacks on Jewish people around the world. The true question for this House is who the real abusers of international law are: Israel, which defends its citizens, or the terrorists who target them.

20:05

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this debate tonight. I have somewhat had my breath blown away by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Janner.

The international community is outraged by the behavior of Colonel Gaddafi towards his people in Libya and has rightly condemned his actions, which have violated human rights and international law. The reaction from our leaders has been swift and decisive. Sanctions are being imposed and bank accounts frozen—quite right too. Any Government who behave in this way should receive the same response. Why, then, has the Government of Israel, who defy all international law, never been called to account by the international community and, why, just last week—as we have heard from other noble Peers—did the USA veto the UN resolution on settlements after calling for a freeze on those settlements just a few months ago? Why has this happened when the behaviour of Israel towards the Palestinians lies at the very root of the problems in the Arab-Muslim world?

Tonight, I want to raise briefly the subject of prisoners and their treatment by Israel. At the end of January, there were 5,642 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, 621 of whom are still awaiting trial and 219 of whom are being held in administrative detention for no good reason, without any charge or prospect of trial. Since 2000, over 7,000 children have been held in Israeli prisons. There are currently 221 children in prison. A horrifying report has been submitted to the UN by the Defence for Children International. I beg your Lordships to read the report. Most children had been accused of throwing stones and were subjected to various forms of torture and forced to sign statements written in Hebrew. There is no time to give the detail. However, this is a sure way of providing embittered terrorists who will hate Israel for the rest of their lives.

After four years in prison, three members of the PLC are now threatened with deportation from their homes and constituencies in East Jerusalem and have taken refuge in the Red Cross. Is imprisonment for winning an election permitted under international law? I think not. Israel is immune to international law. We have to face this. The USA and Europe collude in it and I hope that the Minister will tell me why.

20:08

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, we have had a stream of similar questions over the past few months evincing a disproportionate focus by this House on Israel, now evident in the turmoil in the Middle East. These questions are based on some implicit but unsustainable assumptions—for example, that Britain has any influence over Israel and Palestine or that it should be following and supporting American policy, which has been criticised here tonight. The UK risks becoming a spent force in this area because it is no longer seen as even-handed by Israel. The Foreign Secretary’s recent comments have made this situation even more partial. The judgment of the UK Government and their advisers over the Middle East is suspect. We have got it wrong for years.

As we speak, international humanitarian law is being ignored to the damage of millions in the region. Israel has not been the focus of the rising-up by the peoples of Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya. Indeed, I once heard an ambassador from the region say to an audience that the Arab states did not really care about Israel at all, but it was a useful deflection from the problems internal to their states.

As far as the UN goes, one would have thought that to point out that Libya and Bahrain have seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council would suffice to make one sceptical, but the law and the resolutions are not clear. The fundamental issue is that Israel itself owes its existence to the League of Nations and the UN and has a right of self-determination and self-defence, which has been rejected wholesale ever since 1947 by its neighbours. For example, today is the last day of Gilad Shalit fortnight. This young Israeli solider has been held for four years by Hamas and denied all visits, even from the Red Cross, in breach of international humanitarian law. This is one matter that the UK Government can take up if they wish to promote the rule of law in the region.

The UK can also be constructive in building normal relations. The noble Lord, Lord Stone of Blackheath, made a moving and impressive speech on 11 February describing the work in which he is involved in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in education, health and the environment and in fostering economic prosperity in the West Bank.

The UN is not the place to bring pressure on Israel to end the occupation and to freeze settlements. That has to be done by negotiation. This Government must support a two-state solution and reject the delegitimisation of Israel. They could encourage and help Arab leaders to invest in infrastructure, housing and general state-building for a future Palestine. They could promote the education of Palestinian youth towards a future of peace and co-operation, not rockets and hatred. They could rehabilitate housing so that refugee camps become decent habitats. There are obvious opportunities and responsibilities for the UK Government if they heed the voices of reason.

20:11

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I compliment my noble friend Lord Dykes on securing this short debate. I know that he, like me, seeks a lasting peace in the region based on a two-state solution with a secure state of Israel alongside a very viable Palestinian state. Of course, it is helpful if United Nations resolutions are complied with but, as my noble friend Lord Dykes pointed out, they are resolutions of the General Assembly, not of the Security Council. Israel has complied with every resolution of the Security Council, with all its faults. In fact, it complied with only one, on Lebanon. There have been no others.

However, my view is that, contrary to the name of this debate, trying to solve the long-standing conflict by United Nations resolutions is not the way forward. As my noble friend Lord Dykes suggests, Her Majesty's Government and the United States could have a role, but I am certain that the first step must be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiating table. I would add to that “without preconditions”. That is the problem. The Palestinians say they will not go to the negotiating table unless something happens—for example, no settlements. The Israelis say they will not go unless they are recognised by everyone. My view is that the United States, the United Kingdom and others should ensure that they sit down at that negotiating table without any preconditions whatever. Once they are there at that table, I believe that things can be solved. For those who study the region—I am a former chairman of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel and I have studied it deeply—there is a desire for a solution. Most people know what that solution will be—where roughly the border will be. Once there is a border, the settlements that are on the non-Israeli side of the border will no longer be there as settlements. You solve it at a stroke. At the same time, we have to ensure that there is no psychological and practical warfare on Israel, where the towns of Sderot and Ashkelon in Israel are bombarded by rockets, producing a psychological and practical fear in Israel; it is this that produces some of the attitudes of the Israeli Government, of which many in this House might disapprove.

I ask noble Lords to think about the fact that our duty as a country is to get these people to the negotiating table and to bear in mind that this is not only about Palestinian refugees; 800,000 Jews fled Arab lands, of which 600,000 found a home in Israel. Refugees, sadly, are part of life. Many of us have been refugees or have parents who were so.

20:15

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I come to this debate as a committed supporter of Israel and a committed critic of its Government: as a committed supporter of a two-state solution and an opponent of the settlements. The question of the legality of the settlements in international law is perhaps more arguable than is normally thought to be the case, but that is an irrelevance here; I certainly oppose the settlements. Whether, in the reported words of a distinguished Member of this House, this makes me an intelligent but prejudiced Jew, I do not know—I leave it to others to determine.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, in his criticism of the political system in Israel. Interestingly, of course, it is a very pure form of proportional representation, which presumably he would like to see in this country. He also referred to the 1947 resolution that created the state of Israel: a resolution that, if it had been complied with, would have led to the creation of an independent Palestine. It was not complied with because Egypt and Jordan decided not to implement it. Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. The reality is that, 60-odd years later, many of the states in the region still do not recognise the existence of the state of Israel—and more particularly, and crucially, neither does Hamas. If Hamas had followed Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in recognising the state of Israel, it would certainly be a legitimate partner in a dialogue. That is clearly a consolation that all of us here in your Lordships’ House would like to see.

I will refer not so much to the general issues but to small yet positive steps that might be taken—and indeed have already been initiated—in developing the democratic structures within Israel and potentially within Palestine. So far as Israel is concerned, they relate to the Israeli Arab community. In my former days in the Local Government Association, I managed to initiate a scheme for capacity building within the Arab municipal sector in Israel, supported by the previous Government, with a modest amount of funding that is still available during the current year. I hope that the present Government will continue with that programme, and seek to extend it to the Palestinian Authority itself. It is clearly in everyone’s interest—other speakers have referred to this—to promote democracy and state building within the Arab world. Here is an example of where it can happen.

The event two years ago in Israel, which saw people from local government in this country going over to work with newly elected Arab mayors, can be repeated—I hope it will be repeated. This is a principle that might well be extended to the territories. The Local Government Association signed agreements with both the local government associations of Palestine and Israel, and here local government can play a small positive role in developing the kind of structures—and ultimately the kind of contacts—that can only help lead to a peaceful resolution. If we were to concentrate more on the practical issues and a little less on the rhetoric about the serious problems of the region, we might see more progress.

20:18

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I think we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Dykes for giving us an opportunity to address this serious question again, albeit in a very short time. Most of us have only three minutes. I will raise just three points; the first is an observation, the second is a fear, the third is an appeal.

My observation is that in these conflicts in general, and in this conflict in particular, it is not only those who are in the conflict who are exceptionally passionate about it; those outside who have any interest and concern—indeed, almost anyone who gets involved—are passionate on one side of the argument. It seems extremely difficult to contain the problem and feel strongly about it, but not feel strongly for one side and against another. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, will recognise that very much from our own experience, and we have seen that demonstrated here tonight. When people become very passionate, it becomes difficult to think clearly and reflectively about a problem.

My second point expresses a fear. I have been going backwards and forwards to the region for a number of years. When I first started to go, I was a little optimistic about the possibilities. In Israel, I met people in the Government, in the Opposition and in civic society. I met people on the Palestinian side in Fatah and Hamas, and in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, and I had a sense that people wanted to move forward, but in the past couple of years I have felt that opportunity for progress slipping away. A two-state solution would be an ideal thing to achieve, but increasingly it is beginning to slip off the agenda. Israel is the country that needs a two-state solution because I cannot for the life of me see how you can have a Jewish democratic state unless you have a homeland for the Palestinians, yet it is becoming harder seriously to believe that a two-state solution remains possible.

I hope that I can be persuaded otherwise by the facts and I want to see it, but those who believe in an historic existential right for Israel to extend the whole way from the sea to Jordan are mixed together with those who would like a two-state solution but feel that there is no possibility of a partner for peace in the Palestinians and those who want a two-state solution but now see no prospect of one. They are all mixed together and there is almost no other side of the argument in Israel. That is extremely worrying.

My final point is an appeal for international law. I tried to address the question of Gilad Shalit, which was mentioned by noble Baroness. I met his family and senior officials in Hamas and they said, “We found that this is the only way we can get our prisoners out. We cannot get them out by legal means so we get them out this way. We have found that we can do a deal with the Israeli Government”. I hope for his sake and for his family that Gilad Shalit gets home soon. I hope that the Palestinian prisoners also get home soon, but that is what happens when international and domestic law are set aside because of passions. I appeal for a return to the rule of law, for without it there is only chaos in the Middle East.

20:22

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for giving us the opportunity to debate this crucial issue this evening. As several noble Lords have said, the movement for democracy across the Middle East, while causing short-term anxiety about the loss of life and the intransigence of some regimes, must ultimately offer a precious moment when new politics and real change can be delivered. That is why the Foreign Secretary was right to say that the turmoil in the Middle East should be used as a springboard to reignite the peace process.

At the same time, it goes without saying that we have to be sensitive about our comments and/or interventions when the region is in such flux, particularly in the context of our own history. That is why the United Nations, imperfect though it is, continues to provide a respected forum for determining the common good and the rule of international law. That is why it continues to have an important role to play in the Middle East peace process.

We remain concerned that the peace talks initiated by the Obama Government appear to have stalled. No one underestimates the difficulty of the task involved in bringing the two sides together for meaningful dialogue, but with any new Government there is hope for a fresh approach and a renewed determination that they might make progress. In addition, President Obama himself signalled from an early stage that this would be a priority for his Administration and we desperately want him to succeed, but since the 10-month moratorium expired last September Israel has resumed construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—an act that it knows to be provocative not only to the Palestinians but to much of the rest of the world.

We also know that the Obama Administration has called on Israel to cease construction and return to the peace talks. However, that appeal appears to have been ignored and it may well be time to face the fact that diplomatic initiatives of the past need to be backed by other forms of pressure. Perhaps the Minister can update the House as to any discussions that are taking place between the Foreign Secretary and his US counterpart in this regard.

This brings us to the recent UN resolution that condemned the Israeli settlement construction in Palestinian territory. It was a resolution in accord with the stated policy of the US, but nevertheless the Administration chose to stand alone and veto it at the Security Council. As we have heard, their justification for this decision was that it would complicate efforts to resume the peace talks. With some sadness, I have to say that this position might have had some legitimacy if there had been any evidence of a pending breakthrough in kick-starting the peace talks, but as things stand, the US position has weakened both its own role and the UN’s voice in bringing the parties together, and has regrettably encouraged further illegal construction of Israeli settlements.

I welcome our own Government’s intervention on this, and the fact that we supported the UN resolution, and I hope that the Minister can update us on some further discussions that have taken place behind the scenes on this. Whatever route it takes, and whoever ultimately succeeds in bringing the two sides together, it remains the case that any settlement should include a two-state solution, with a permanent end to hostilities, an agreement on the boundaries of a new country of Palestine, an end to the West Bank settlement expansion, and a resettlement of illegal occupiers.

Finally, I hope that both our own Government and the United States can seize this chance and play their role in bringing about a lasting Middle East peace settlement based on these principles.

20:26

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My Lords, I give warm thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for opening this brief debate in such a robust fashion. I will come to some of his points in a moment. It has inevitably been a somewhat staccato debate, given the very short time in which noble Lords have been able to speak, but quite often in these very short debates we get the distillation of remarkable wisdom in very few words. Some very profound things have been said very clearly by a number of your Lordships who obviously have a huge hinterland of knowledge, but three minutes places a severe limit on what can be said. Whether in my few minutes I will be able to comment on every one of the contributions is in the hands of the gods. If I cannot do that, I apologise in advance, and will certainly discuss with or write to noble Lords who feel I have not addressed their points sufficiently.

Before I come to the detailed points in the debate, let me say that the United Kingdom Government are committed to upholding international law, as enshrined in the United Nations resolutions and the Geneva Conventions, and the Israel-Palestine conflict which we have been debating this evening is no exception. Our commitment was most recently demonstrated when, on Friday 18 February at the UN Security Council, the United Kingdom and others, including France and Germany, voted to reinforce our long-standing view that the Israeli settlements, including those in East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, are an obstacle to peace, and constitute a threat to the two-state solution. It was a matter of regret that it remained a draft resolution, and that the UN Security Council could not speak with one voice on this issue. A number of your Lordships have concentrated on that very point.

The reasons for the US veto were given at some length by the spokesperson. They are, in a sense, the US’s own reasons. They argue, as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, reminded us, that the UN Security Council was the wrong place, and that pursuing the issue there might make negotiations harder. The US delegate also reminded us that they rejected the legitimacy of settlement activity, which may be some sliver of comfort for those who have found this such a pity, but that they saw this as the wrong forum in which to push forward the proposals of the Palestinians and the Palestinian-initiated draft, and therefore opposed it. We were in regular contact with the US on the run-up to the vote. I have been asked what contact there has been between the Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The answer is that there has been contact; there was in the run-up and there has been since on this matter. The Foreign Secretary made it clear that Israel’s obligations under international law are central to making progress toward a two-state solution. That remains our view.

I have heard some argue that current events in the region mean that this whole matter may be pushed aside by the turmoil that we have seen in north Africa and elsewhere. I think that that is completely wrong. Indeed, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said as much this afternoon in his Statement in another place. We believe that Israel’s security and the realisation of the Palestinians’ right to statehood are not opposing goals at all. On the contrary, they are intimately intertwined objectives, and we should push ahead and make them with the MEPP, which becomes even more vital in the present circumstances.

Our main goal is to work with the United States and other international partners to return the parties as soon as possible to direct negotiations towards a two-state solution, on the basis of clear parameters. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, with his great experience cast doubt on whether the two-state solution is still possible. We believe that it is, and that it remains a goal, and that we should go for an agreement on the borders of the two states, based on 4 June 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, as may be agreed between the parties. That is the first basis of our approach. The second is to have security arrangements which, for Palestinians, respect their sovereignty and show that the occupation is over and, for Israelis, protect their security, prevent the resurgence of terrorism and deal effectively with new and emerging threats. That was a point of view that the noble Lord, Lord Janner, and others put in this debate, where we have witnessed the same divisions of view as exist in the wider world about this whole difficult matter, even in our brief contributions.

Thirdly, we believe that a just, fair and agreed solution to the refugee question should be the basis of progress. Fourthly, we believe in the fulfilment of the aspirations of both parties for Jerusalem. A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states.

In a few more of these precious minutes, I turn to a number of specific points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, spoke out very forcefully of his regrets about the position of the USA. Without necessarily approving of it—on the contrary, we voted the other way—I have tried to describe the view that the United States took. He also urged, as have other of your Lordships, both in this debate and many others, that we should talk to Hamas. The United Kingdom’s view is that we should not talk to them until it renounces the ideology of violence, and that it should begin to emerge as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. That is the view of the Government at this time, although I know that some of your Lordships disagree with it.

My noble friend Lord Bates made an impassioned plea to comply with UN resolutions and reminded us of the vital point that the UN gave birth to Israel. Therefore, it is the duty of Israel to do all that it can to comply with UN resolutions. The noble Lord, Lord Janner, said that in many respects it has—but clearly in others it has not.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, also said that negotiations ought to include Hamas, and made some sharp remarks on arms sales. He criticised my right honourable friend and his colleagues for travelling through the Middle East and arguing both that there should be more democracy and that there should be an arms trade. He has to face the fact, as my right honourable friend said, that democracies have to arm. The question is whether they should be armed by Chinese or Russian weapons, which are in ample supply—they can produce all kinds of unregulated, dangerous and lethal weapons—or whether the legitimate and properly controlled arms exports of this country should continue to play a part. That question has to be answered before one denounces completely the arms trade of this country.

My noble friend Lady Falkner spoke, as always, with great feeling. She asked whether we could normalise relations between the Arabs and Israel in the right context. I believe that we can. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, put the point of view of the United States quite fairly, as I, too, have done. We do not agree with it, but now at least we understand where they are coming from. My noble friend Lord Tugendhat gave an eloquent plea to listen to the moderate voices of Israel—those who really want to secure the longer range security of Israel, rather than some of the more extreme voices that many of us feel are anti-Israeli, though they come from Israeli personnel.

I have mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Janner, who believes that Hamas are terrorists. I have stated the UK Government’s view towards them. My noble friend Lady Tonge, who is immensely experienced in these issues and in the details, asked about Palestinian prisoners. We raise the issue continuously, particularly the very worrying concerns about underage and juvenile prisoners and how they are held. We raise them all the time with the Israelis and will continue to do so. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned the virtue of the kind of approach outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, the other day: to make enterprise and business the way we can see Arabs and Israelis sew themselves and work together again, rather than be in endless conflict. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, took the side of those who said, like the Americans, that the UN was not the best forum for the way forward.

I think I have covered everything, including the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about the Foreign Secretary speaking with the Americans. He does so all the time. I have now run out of further time, so will say only that we believe in a peaceful and safe future for Israel that is best secured through a peace with the Palestinians which can, in turn, lead to a peace with the entire region that will strengthen the stability of the region. That is our hope and intention; we have demonstrated it by our position in the recent vote, and we have demonstrated it by our continuous actions. We will continue to do so in order that we can move forward through the agonising difficulties and divisions which this great issue has produced again and again.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Committee (7th Day) (Continued)

20:38

Debate on Amendment 49 resumed.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I intervene briefly because I shall concentrate my remarks during proceedings on the Report stage of the Bill. I want to say a few words about how we need to consider what has happened historically when considering the future of the development agencies. I believe that the closure of the RDAs, particularly in the north of England—and when I talk about the north of England, I mean the north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside and the north-east—is ill-advised and misconceived, and will ultimately be damaging to the regions.

We really need to learn the lessons of history. My mind goes back to the early 1980s, around 30 years ago, when I was a young MP. The debates in the Commons at that time were totally dominated by the decline in the regional economy in the north of England—particularly in shipbuilding, steel, heavy engineering, mining and textiles. Week after week, Question Time after Question Time, Labour MPs—sometimes with Conservatives joining in as well—got up to object to what was happening in the region and to ask how the problems of the region were to be resolved. I was a member of the northern group of Labour MPs. We were constantly being lobbied by industry, employer groups, the trade unions and the local authorities. The CBI in the northern region was prominent in lobbying Labour Members of Parliament to ensure a change in the Government’s regional strategy at that time. I remember a man called James Cran, whom some of us might recall. He subsequently became the Member of Parliament for Beverley in Yorkshire but was then the leading figure in the northern CBI. I remember him appearing on Border Television and north-east television repeatedly, week after week, demanding a reversal of the strategy and some alteration in regional policy. The cry was universal: “We need a regional strategy”. The constant refrain was, “The centre cannot deliver”, because the centre was not delivering. Laissez-faire regional strategy, despite European money, meant that the concentration of footloose investment and capital accumulation more widely was in the south. That was our problem.

Time and again, the differential in house prices and unemployment rates between the north and the south was cited as evidence of a north-south divide in economic development. As the late John Smith put it 26 years ago, in a debate on regional policy and the need for a regional strategy with agencies delivering, which I remember well from 17 January 1985:

“What is frightening is that the Government appear to be impervious to the damage that they are causing. As the economic storm clouds gather over Britain and become more serious every day, the Government plunge blindly on destroying as they go. When they are finally called to account, the missed opportunities and wanton destruction of regional development policy will, I hope, be high on the indictment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/1/85; cols. 543-44.]

I say that history will repeat itself. What John said then will be relevant in these coming years unless there is a change in strategy by the Government.

Then I remember the Labour Party conferences in the north of England being dominated by the debate on the need for a regional strategy. Often at the forefront of those debates was the then north-east Member of Parliament Ian Wrigglesworth—now Sir Ian—who I understand the Government have brought in to help with their new regional strategy. Maybe that is no longer true and my noble friends can correct me if I am wrong, but I read somewhere that he has now been brought in. I remember it all as though it were yesterday. It was the debate that dominated all of my 21 years in the House of Commons.

I remember the huge debate that was launched in the north in the early 1980s following the publication of a paper entitled—I know my noble friends will remember this—Let’s Pull Together for a Better North. If I recall correctly, it was a paper jointly sponsored by the late Joe Mills of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the late Lord Burlison, who was in this House. I go on about this because history will repeat itself if we go down this route. Even at this late stage, the Government should revise their strategy.

20:45

The paper was closely followed by a substantial piece of work—a paper published by my noble friend Lord Prescott on an alternative regional economic strategy. He is not here but he was certainly in his place earlier. He will not mind my saying that it was a very significant paper for Labour MPs; it dominated debates in the parliamentary party over several months. It formed the embryo of the regional strategy that Labour subsequently adopted when we came into government. There were innumerable debates in Parliament on the need for a rethink on regional strategy at the time. During that period there were only two Conservative Ministers who really understood what was happening. One was a chap called Jim Lester. He was a Member of Parliament in a Nottinghamshire constituency—Beeston, if I remember rightly. He had come from the shoe industry and he was an employment and skills Minister. On the Labour Benches, we always felt that he was the one who understood the problems that we had. Surprisingly there was another one, and it was Michael Heseltine. He took the decision to establish the enterprise agencies. Some of them went to the north of England, south Wales and the north-east. He also took the vital decision to put money into Toxteth in Liverpool, the effect of which was to pump prime and bring in additional money from the private sector for environment improvements in Liverpool. The reason I mention those two is that both men, in their own way, were introducing measures to leverage in substantial private investment, a role which ultimately fell upon the broader remit of the RDAs. They were carrying out the functions which subsequently were to be carried out by the RDAs set up by the Labour Government in 1997.

I am reminded of the work of the Regional Policy Commission, a non-political initiative established by, again, my noble friend Lord Prescott, and chaired by Bruce Millan, then European Commissioner for Regional Policy. The commission’s recommendations helped steer us towards the regional structures that we subsequently created. Indeed, by the mid-1990s and the eve of the 1997 landslide Labour victory, there was widespread support from the CBI, the TUC, the chambers of commerce and all the political parties across the regions. All opinion across the regions in the north was for an ambitious regional strategy under regional development agencies, bringing in both domestic and European money to fund investment in skills, training and regeneration of physical decay, small business services, assistance to industry, innovation and inward investment initiatives more widely. That is what we delivered against this background of feverish debate in the 1980s and well into the 1990s. It is now all to be destroyed.

People throughout the north of England are worried about these developments. I know that we have some friends in there. It may well be that Vince Cable is more sympathetic to our position than he makes public. If he is, and if he is listening to this debate, let him realise that we can no longer rely on Mr Pickles. We want him to intervene and indeed, in many ways, perhaps undermine this strategy before it does damage in the region. If Mr Cable sympathises with our position, let him use the structures within BIS, in a way perhaps that the Government are not intending at this stage, to bring about at least some residual regional structure that can deliver. I say that this is all now at risk, and we appeal even at this late stage for the Government to reverse their position.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I just wanted to follow my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours because he has put so powerfully the case for the north, particularly with his origins in the north-west. He is, in every sense, a son of the north-west. He speaks with authority.

I simply say that there is a cultural dimension to all this. It has to be faced. There are many good people living in the south-east, the south and more prosperous parts of the Midlands who just have not seen for themselves the social reality of what happened in the north in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Lord opposite have referred to Cumbria. Just come to Cumbria. I often speak about the inheritance and the beauties of the national park, but come to the west coast of Cumbria and see the physical and living evidence of what happened before. The communities are broken, disheartened and demoralised still.

The challenges are huge and, given the economic stringency that faces the nation, this is the very time that one needs strategic and powerful authorities to look after the interests of those who will find themselves in the toughest position, as economic policy takes effect. If we have any pretence of commitment to social justice, this is the very time that there should be strong voices speaking, not just tactically but strategically, for the people of a region. Those voices should look at the issues of communications and transport, and at the work that can be done with the universities in the north, to find ways of regenerating and building a new future.

Some will argue that in Cumbria we will have the one bright prospect of becoming the energy coast of Britain. If that is a prospect—and I fervently hope that we can make a contribution in that context—this is the time that we need a strategic authority speaking for us and making sure that the plan is developed to the full, not just thrown to the vagaries of the market.

What is sad about the Government having rushed into this ill considered Bill, with all its ill considered propositions that have not been properly researched, investigated and analysed, is that we might have had a case for coming up with a review of regional policy. I agree with the argument that there was a great deal of room for adjustments to the regional structure. I am not sure that my noble and very good friend Lord Campbell-Savours will agree with me on this, but I am a sceptic about whether Cumbria—particularly north Cumbria, where I live—is in the right region. It seems to me that the natural links of north Cumbria are with the north-east—up around the coast, through Carlisle and into Newcastle and the rest. We do not think of Manchester and Liverpool. We think of the north-east. Our health service is oriented in that direction. When I needed neurosurgery, I ended up, through the National Health Service, in Newcastle. When I turn on my television in the evening, I see Newcastle-based television.

There was therefore a case for a review to make sure that the regions, in their administration and structure, were best geared to meet the real social challenges that were out there. However, instead of going down that exciting route, this new Government, who pride themselves on being so radical and imaginative, just dodged all that and went for an ideological destruction of the regional development authorities at the very time that they were most needed. I know that the Minister listens. He is a sensitive man and has not only a social conscience but a feel for social issues and people. I urge him, even at this 11th hour plus, to plead with his colleagues and say, “This is a step too far. Think again”.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I have been listening to the debate, but the truth is that there is no single solution to economic development policy. There is no perfect model. There is a variety of models throughout the United Kingdom, some of which work better than others. However, the amendment is a fairly blunt instrument. The decision on the number of regional development agencies in England has to be taken in conjunction with the devolved regions. Until a few months ago, I had responsibility in Northern Ireland for certain aspects of economic development policy. Prior to that, I had responsibility for establishing Invest Northern Ireland, which at that time consisted of some 700 staff and had a budget of about £160 million.

However, the whole scene has changed. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, but what applies today is totally different from what applied in the 1980s. Europe has a big influence in this, because one of the big weapons that organisations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere had was selective financial assistance. Since 1 January, that assistance has been largely reducing and by 2013 it will be virtually gone. Therefore, the model that we used for distributing it and the mechanism that we used for trying to bid for foreign direct investment are going to be denied us. All that will be left is soft assistance, with management plans and various other things, but the hardcore employment grants and capital grants that regions depended on to buy in business and investors will be denied us because of European regulations.

I can tell the Committee that a protocol exists within the United Kingdom to prevent all the different RDAs, the regional administrations and the national Government from bidding against each other. Foreign direct investors are not stupid. They knew that people in the regions were hungry and they went about their business going from one to the other. We had to establish protocols.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Is it not the case that the noble Lord in Northern Ireland, we in Scotland and colleagues in Wales will continue to have development agencies, so why is he denying them to the regions of England?

[Lord Empey]

First, I have not denied anybody anything. I am just beginning to develop my argument. The fundamental point is that these organisations in the devolved regions are becoming systematically weaker. They have less ability to direct financial aid because the selective financial assistance, which was their principal weapon, is diminishing very rapidly and in a couple of years’ time will be gone altogether. The whole emphasis is shifting on to the development of skills. We had a fantastic conference in the United States last September and October hosted by the State Department at which we were given the opportunity to put Northern Ireland’s case. What was really interesting to potential investors was no longer grant aid; it was whether a region had a sufficient centre of gravity and critical mass of skilled people with the right skills in the right place to attract people. You can no longer buy in companies.

Sitting in the Chamber tonight is the noble Lord, Lord Ballyedmond, one of our premier entrepreneurs. I dealt with him and his colleagues on a number of occasions, and they were frustrated because the agencies and organisations could sometimes get in the way of business. Therefore, the question is: what is the right balance? Is it going to be possible to develop a national policy that will allow for the creation of the correct skill base? That will be far more important to foreign direct investment—and indeed, I believe, to indigenous investment—than financial aid in the future because the latter is going to be reduced and will be so small. I remember examples of £20,000 being offered per job created and perhaps even more. On average, it was £7,000, £8,000 or £10,000 per job created, but those days are gone and are not coming back. I certainly feel that this list of agencies is no longer sustainable but, at the same time, it is perfectly clear that you cannot create a complete vacuum.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If the responsibility that the noble Lord is referring to in the case of Northern Ireland were transferred to London, does he believe that the centre in London could deliver?

21:00

[Lord Empey]

I have always been a devolutionist and felt that there had to be a local dimension to most things. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was asking whether people fully understood the social and other implications of what has been happening in this country over recent years. The answer for me is yes. I still have a constituency. It is largely an inner-city constituency in east Belfast. The people at my advice centres are queueing up, looking for help with DLA, housing benefit and how we can get them training, so I am very familiar with all of that. But having elaborate structures today, whether they be in Northern Ireland, in Scotland or anywhere else, is not the whole answer. There is another dimension.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, will be well aware that we have another dimension in Northern Ireland, where we are up against the Republic, which has a very attractive corporation tax rate. At the end of the day, that was attracting more inward investment to that region than anything that any of our industrial development organisations could do.

Local government also has a role to play. There is no model that is absolutely applicable in every part of the UK. I would be very afraid to take a position on the north-east of England, about which a vast array of people seem to be extremely passionate. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, made a powerful speech in respect of what she saw in her region and many other noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Bates and Lord Greaves, spoke on it as well.

[Lord Greaves]

I actually spoke about the north-west and not the north-east, but I will back the north-east as well.

[Lord Empey]

The noble Lord was saying at one stage, if I recall, that part of his region felt that it belonged to the north-east. The point is that there is a large pool of people who feel passionately that the north-east in particular has a critical mass and should have representation. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, attempted to offer regional government to that region and it did not want it at that stage. Otherwise, I dare say, it would have, just as Scotland and London and other places have, its own economic development unit, probably with a Minister working full-time on that area.

The question for us is whether this is going to be solved simply by structures or by a combination of structures and a policy involving close linkages with higher and further education and training. I am not convinced, having established one of these bodies in the past, that the model that we need to go forward for the next 10 or 20 years is necessarily the model that we have adopted in the past. I am not saying that everything that is being proposed by the Secretary of State is the right solution. Local people in those areas would have a better grasp of that than I would have from a distance. But I no longer put my faith in the structures. When you talk to businesspeople, they are very dismissive of bureaucracy. Their real interest is not in any grants that you can offer them; it is whether you have the people on the ground who can do the job. That is the thing that matters most.

There seems to be a new dimension opening up. I do not have all the answers and it is not entirely clear that the Secretary of State for Business has them either. But things have changed dramatically in the past few years, not least because of Europe and what it is now deciding. We have signed up to that. The ability of local organisations to take strategic decisions and effectively to buy in the businesses that come to invest has diminished. We have to be aware of what is happening in the rest of Europe. We feel that people in other parts of Europe do not apply the rules as strictly and rigorously as we do. I am sure that noble Lords from Scotland and elsewhere have had that repeated to them time and again. We play by the rules while others ignore them. That is one source of considerable concern to people in the regions, who feel that we are not necessarily playing on a level pitch.

When one is next door to a region where there is 12.5 per cent corporation tax versus what we have, that is what I call real competition. It is something to which no individual organisation, whether regionally based or otherwise, has a solution on its own. I am for regional solutions but I am no longer putting my faith simply in the structures that we develop. Those structures themselves sometimes get in the way of business; they frustrate businesspeople and, of course, they are very expensive. Whether we have the balance right remains to be seen and I have no doubt that there will be further debate to establish that.

[Lord Whitty]

My aim is to speak to Amendment 56 which deals with the south-west region. It is not simply to convince the Committee that there are concerns on these Benches somewhat south of Watford, but as my noble friend Lord Knight spelt out before the break, the South-West Regional Development Agency has done a fantastic job in many respects, from projects such as the Eden project through to the Osprey Quay in his previous constituency where I was only a couple of weeks ago, through to the deals with the universities, science parks, and so forth. The majority of its interventions have been relatively small and, to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, most of what the regional development agency has done has involved not large sums of money but soft policies, such as putting together patches of land, developing skills, getting people talking to each other who do not normally talk to each other, in the universities, professional associations, local government and small businesses.

The South-West Regional Development Agency may not have had the right geographical boundaries and it was probably not as universally loved as those in the north-east appear to be, but the prospect of its absence is causing deep and grave concern among small businesses and others within the region. Its replacement by the so-called LEPs is a shambles. It is a crazy situation. The Government who profess to want localism and to have industry-led alternatives to the agency have ended up with a situation where Whitehall is telling groups of business people and others who put their heads above the parapet what the basis to organise should be. On what basis is the man in Whitehall telling the putative LEPs in the M4 belt in Gloucester, Swindon and Wiltshire that that is not the appropriate sub-region? It seems a very appropriate sub-region to me and, more importantly, to them. Yet, they are being told that it is not the right region. People in Dorset—in Bournemouth and Poole—are being told to talk to Southampton and the Solent areas. Why? How is that allowing local businesses to decide on their own remits?

It is clear that the Government have set out on a process not on the basis of what is best for the regions or best individually for each of the English regions, but on the straightforward basis that they do not like RDAs and want to abolish them. What has happened in the south-west, which I suspect has happened in all regions, is that business men and women who some months ago were not particularly supportive of the RDA are now saying that with the abolition of the RDA in prospect, the government office for the region going and regional planning disappearing, they do not know who to talk to if they want to put together a deal, if they want to try to bring in public and private partnerships, if they want to make arrangements to develop the skills within the region that will achieve delivery of the ideas that they, as entrepreneurs, have. They are asking, “Who do we talk to?”.

At the same time, the big potential investors are asking precisely the same question. The areas that miss out are going to be the more peripheral ones in the north and the west of the country and maybe in parts of East Anglia and the Midlands as well. In London, there is always somebody to talk to. In Wales and Scotland you have government-backed organisations but in these other regions you have not. It is not just a question of the industrial heartlands; we are talking about rural counties in the south-west. Indeed, it is not a question of the Labour heartlands, in case Members opposite feel that we are parti pris to this—these are the heartlands of the Liberal Democrats and many Tories as well. As the consequences of the disappearance of the RDA and the regional offices of government become clear, I imagine that many of the MPs in their parties are going to have deputations from businesses and from local government asking how to deal with this.

What has happened in the south-west and what people now fear in the south-west is that there is no point at which small businesses can talk to Government about their problems and there is no point at which outside investors can talk on a regional or sub-regional basis with some authority behind those discussions. What will they do? They will go elsewhere. It is true, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, says, that the interventions will not be so much financial in the future, although there will be some money there and there will be money in things such as the European Regional Development Fund and money from the agricultural side of this dimension. However, they will say it is easier to do this in France or Germany or Spain. It may be slightly easier to do it in London or Scotland or Wales but with nobody to talk to in dispersed regions such as the south-west the absence of the RDA will come to be a dreadful brake on developments which were beginning to see fruition.

I do not think that is what the political representatives of the south-west would wish to see. I do not therefore think it is what the coalition Government would wish to see. But by their own universal decree that RDAs are bad, that is likely to be the consequence.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, before we remove RDAs entirely from our lexicon, I would like to put on record the really excellent work done by Yorkshire Forward. I make no apology for being parochial. It has helped nearly 30,000 businesses a year to improve performance, which is one in 12 of the region’s business, with a typical turnover gain for each of those businesses of around £15,000 a year. About one in 30 people in the region’s workforce are in a job because of Yorkshire Forward’s work in the past five years. It has been one of the two most successful regional development agencies at turning investment into jobs.

Yorkshire Forward was created in 1999, and by 2000 it was already investing in business parks in small rural areas in my particular part of north Yorkshire, making a huge difference to those communities. Through its investment, it was to lever several millions of Objective 2 European funding into my local district, and transformational projects were initiated through the pilot Renaissance Market Towns programme. In my town of Richmond, money was granted to the award-winning Georgian Theatre Royal. One project that is dear to my heart and which we would have had great difficulty getting off the ground—I played a small fundraising role with our local MP—was the award-winning station development and the award-winning heritage partnership scheme. None of these would have taken place without the foresight and the funding of Yorkshire Forward.

Over the years, its investment helped to transform Richmond from an underperforming market town to Great Town of the Year in 2009. It is interesting to note that the Academy of Urbanism has awarded that national accolade to three Yorkshire towns—Richmond, Scarborough and Hebden Bridge—by a vote of its members over the five years for which it has been run. All those towns had strategic investment through Yorkshire Forward’s Renaissance Market Towns programme. Because of the speed at which Yorkshire Forward has been disbanded, funding contracted to complete the Richmond heritage partnership scheme had to be withdrawn. It would have brought redundant property back into economic use and, at the same time, restored the character of that beautiful Georgian market town. That is indeed a most terrible shame.

21:15

The regional growth fund is about jobs, so it will almost certainly go to large companies, not to the SMEs that need it. Important though the large companies are, it is equally important to help and support the communities that need funding to keep small businesses from falling apart. Where, in future, will we get the money to keep our rural communities going, providing jobs for people and maintaining and improving the infrastructure?

Perhaps I may make a suggestion? I was talking earlier to one of the Lords’ most sympathetic and thoughtful Members, who will remain anonymous. He suggested that it would be a good idea to offer tax breaks to individuals or companies that offered matched funding for a project. I commend that excellent idea to my noble friend and ask him to look carefully into that. We also need to look at the mountains of red tape surrounding applications for even small sums of funding. That, too, should be addressed. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider those suggestions.

[Lord Hoyle]

This has been a very interesting debate on RDAs so far. I refer to some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, before I develop my theme. The noble Lord mentioned the difficulties faced by the Republic of Ireland because of its economic policies. As I understand it, it has been in a little difficulty recently, has it not? The noble Lord talks about Stormont, where power is devolved. I think he will understand that we want the best for our regions as well. I agree with him completely on one thing; this is about training. If that is left completely to industry, it might well, as it has in the past, go to the south-east rather than to the other regions. As has been said tonight, whether noble Lords have been speaking about the north-east, the north-west—as has the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—or other regions, such as the south-west, which my noble friend Lord Whitty spoke about, it is about ensuring that provision is spread more widely than the south-east, which, if it was left to the market, is where it would go. Because of that, I am totally against the Government's proposal and hope that, in the light of the debate and certain disquiet, as I sense it, from part of the coalition, they might just think again about their policy.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raised this issue, but I want to speak a little more about what the Northwest Regional Development Agency has done and what successes it has had. In doing so, I pay tribute to the chairman, Robert Hough, and his colleagues, and the dedicated staff for their vision when they were led by Steve Broomhead, who until recently was the chief executive. I want to spell out more concretely for the Minister what the agency has done for the community. It has created or safeguarded just over 220,000 jobs; it has created 23,000 new businesses; it has reclaimed 4,000 hectares of brownfield land; and it has levered in £3.2 billion of private sector investment. This is quite a record in itself.

Data from the independent evaluation by PwC of the north-west’s development activity over the period 2002-07 reported—and this is very important—that, for every £1 invested, the Northwest Regional Development Agency had achieved a £5.20 increase in GVA. Independent X-ray inspections by the NAO in 2007 showed that the NWDA was performing strongly. At the time, this was the top mark possible. A subsequent report in 2010—let us bring things more up to date—showed that the NWDA was strong on reprioritising to deal with the economic challenges of the recession. That will be lost to us. Recently, the NWDA moved into the IiP gold standard. The big thing about this in relation to development agencies generally and the north-west in particular is that they built on the region’s heritage and strengths to provide the investment where it was needed—that is the important thing—and the leadership and support to ensure that the places, assets and industries of the north-west were best able to seize the opportunities for a sustainable future.

The Northwest Regional Development Agency supported the north-west in dealing with the tremors and shocks—particularly economic shocks—that can appear. They dealt with foot and mouth, which was very important in Cumbria in particular, and with the more recent flooding in Cumbria, getting practical support to businesses within four days of the floods. All that was very important indeed, especially in Cumbria. Could that be done by any other agency? I do not think so. The agency has also worked with partners to attract, host and develop a legacy from a wide range of events in the north-west, including the extremely successful Commonwealth Games—which everyone remembers—and Liverpool as the European capital of culture. This was largely based on the funds that came. The agency led the development of economic strategy in the region and produced the strategies needed. The important thing was that it brought together the regional agencies to develop the whole of the north-west economy, from Cheshire in the south to Cumbria in the north-west.

Let me go even further and develop in more detail how the agency played a part in the regeneration of Ancoats in east Manchester. In 2002, it undertook England’s largest compulsory purchase order to regenerate Ancoats, revitalising historic cotton mills and ensuring the north-west’s history as the birthplace of the industrial revolution, while bringing back derelict buildings for new economic use.

Let us talk a little about what they did in Liverpool. As Members here understand, the agency invested heavily in the regeneration of Liverpool’s waterfront, particularly the world famous “Three Graces” and the Albert Dock. How will we do that in the future? It helped to secure the arena, the convention centre and the new museum. It reopened the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, as we know, and the Mann Island development. These investments have paved the way for a fully private sector-funded redevelopment of Liverpool’s city centre. How will we do that without an agency that looks at the whole region?

I am sorry if I am going on a bit but, because we have been talking about development agencies, I want to put into context what has happened in the north-west. On businesses, the agency secured support for the nuclear industry, the supply chains, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in west Cumbria. It also secured the national skills academy, the nuclear headquarters and the flagship energy facility in west Cumbria. We have talked a lot about west Cumbria because it is an area that could be forgotten. It has been said that it should perhaps have been with the north-east, but let us say what has actually been done. I notice my noble friend, who made a very powerful speech, nodding his head in agreement with what I am saying in relation to this.

Let us take Business Link Northwest. In 2007, the development agency launched a one-stop regional business link service to provide a primary access point for business support in 2008 and 2009. Over 92,000 businesses accepted the service, which was a 30 per cent increase on the previous subregional arrangements, with an 89 per cent customer satisfaction rate. What it has done is worth recalling. We talked earlier about skills. The noble Lord talked about the need for them. In Manchester, in 2004, the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST combined to form a single university. The investment by the development agency helped to pave the way for integrating the two institutions and enabled the construction of new state of the art facilities. As a result of the help that it received, the University of Manchester is now Europe’s largest single-campus university, with over 27,000 undergraduate students. It is steadily climbing in the rankings to one of the top universities in the world, not just in this country.

A bit nearer home to me in Warrington is the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus. Investment and leadership from the agency to create a critical mass of research knowledge, expertise and capacity has resulted in extensive spillover with over 100 high-tech enterprises now located in the Daresbury Innovation Centre. They benefited from all the help they were given by the agency. Are we going to throw all that away?

The noble Lord talked about RDAs competing. Does he imagine that the local enterprise partnerships will not compete with each other? I do not know where he is coming from. The RDA was split into Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Liverpool city region, Cheshire and Warrington, plus—the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, mentioned one of them—possibly three overlapping supporting approaches for local enterprise partnerships in Lancashire. Indeed, as he said, a lot of work has been done in a territory that both of us know well: the Pendle area and Burnley. There is the Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, and an approach is being made by Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre. All these can go together in relation to it. The question is whether that will be the powerful voice that the RDA has been in the past. I do not think so. The needs of the whole region will be neglected. I am afraid that the competition between the two cities of Manchester and Liverpool will be to the detriment of the rest of the region. That is what we are hoping to get away from. We hope to look at the north-west region as a whole. That is the way in which we should go, but I am sorry that the Government have taken this approach. They have taken the idea—

21:30

[Lord Greaves]

I wonder whether the noble Lord—as he says, both of us know the Pennines well—will agree that when a region such as the north-west finally gets a complete set of local enterprise partnerships, or LEPs, whatever pattern it is, what will happen—and it is already being discussed—is that at regional level all the LEPs will come together to form some sort of association or confederation of LEPs to recreate a structure at a regional level. However you look at it, this will be necessary.

[Lord Hoyle]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord. Of course that is what is going to happen. Something is being tossed away needlessly by the Government in a very hasty decision, without due thought being given to either region. I certainly agree with him that these things will need to come together if the various regions throughout the country are to benefit. Unless we do that—unless we get them together—we have failed. I am so sorry that they are being split up in this way, only for them all to come together under another name, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says. In view of the pleas that have been made from these Benches and from other Benches, particularly from the Benches within the coalition—they seem to sit a little bit apart at times—will the Government please think again before destroying the RDAs?

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 51, which opposes the abolition of the East of England Development Agency. I am perhaps a lonely voice for the east, although it is a region that I know the Minister knows well, so I look for some particular favour in his response tonight. I do not think that the east as a region has the innate identity that we have heard about tonight, particularly with the north-east and the passion that goes with that. We are probably a bit more like the south-west; we have grown to be a region. Before I develop my theme, I just say in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, who I think was arguing for the benefits of some regional selective tax breaks, that selective tax breaks can be good for job creation, but mostly for accountants and lawyers. For me, it is a slippery slope and we need to think about it very hard.

I take this opportunity to reflect on the opportunities for the east, which EEDA has encapsulated in its Blueprint for Growth, and on why the fragmentation of the regional effort will diminish those opportunities. I caution that the replacement local enterprise partnerships are no substitute for the RDA. In any event, in the east some 27 per cent of the population and 26 per cent of the businesses will not be covered by a LEP.

My first encounter with the RDA was about a decade ago, as leader of the council, when we heard the news that the Vauxhall car plant was to close; in fact it was—would you believe?—heard over the radio while people were still working on the production line. I did my job as leader of the council in my office in Luton town hall; I sent off a fax to the chief executive of General Motors in Detroit demanding that it rescind this closure notice. I still await a reply. It was the RDA that sprung into action and convened a strong local partnership, which took action around skills training, supply chain diversification, job placement, investment and infrastructure. It was the RDA’s efforts that made a significant difference to the local economy and to literally thousands of local people in Luton and the surrounding area.

EEDA has a clear mission to improve the economy of the east of England. It works across the six counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The east of England is one of the fastest-growing regions in the UK in terms of population. It is a beautiful and diverse region, rich with cultural heritage and international trade links. It can be proud of its many achievements, but it faces many challenges, especially from intensifying global competition.

Despite the lack of homogeneity across the region, EEDA’s efforts have been spread right across the area—in its impact in Bedfordshire borough, central Bedfordshire and Luton, for example. In the past 10 years, EEDA has invested more than £100 million in this sub-region. Some 6,000 jobs have been created or safeguarded, 13,000 people have improved skills, 1,000 businesses have been helped to start or grow, 2,300 people have been supported into employment and 43 hectares of brownfield land have been reclaimed. Funding of the UK Centre for Carnival Arts in Luton has created a national centre for carnival excellence, boosting the local economy and the cultural heritage.

In Norfolk over that period, EEDA similarly has created or safeguarded some 6,000 jobs, improved the skills of 22,000 people, helped 1,100 start-ups and reclaimed 72 hectares of land. It has also supported projects such as the Hethel technology park in its bid to be a globally recognised centre of excellence for low-carbon engineering and manufacturing. The Cambridge rural enterprise and mentoring initiative is encouraging start-ups in economically disadvantaged parts of the region.

The East of England Manufacturing Advisory Service has supported Vacuumatic, the world leader in paper counting technology, to implement lean manufacturing principles. Over the past 10 years, EEDA has invested £81 million directly in the Hertfordshire economy, helping some 22,600 businesses to start up. Highly skilled jobs for research companies are to be created as part of a £120 million expansion of the GlaxoSmithKline bioscience campus at Stevenage. Some £8 million has helped to support small life science companies and to protect jobs in the biopark in Welwyn Garden City. EEDA investment has regenerated Ipswich waterfront. EEDA has also invested in the Haven Gateway Partnership, the single most important cluster of ports in the UK. Everywhere you look in the region, it is possible to see the impact of the RDA.

Looking back is one thing, but what of the future? One in every nine UK businesses is based in the east of England—more than 430,000. Business investment in R&D is three times higher than the UK average. It has the most successful life sciences cluster outside the US. The world-renowned Cambridge technology cluster is in the region representing 1,400 companies and employing 43,000 people. The east of England has significant capability in both mature and developing high-value knowledge-based markets. It is already a major generator and supplier of energy, including leading the way in renewable energy generation, which makes it the centre of one of the world’s largest markets for offshore wind energy and the UK’s most dense area of offshore development between the Humber, the Greater Wash and the Thames estuary.

Despite these successes, the region requires a skills base that better suits its needs. There are disparities in economic performance within the region and areas such as Luton have high deprivation. The region suffers from an infrastructure deficit, with congestion on the transport network costing the UK more than £1 billion per annum. There is only one commercial broadband network in the east of England, which provides coverage to only around 60 per cent of the region.

It is at this time of huge opportunities but significant challenges that the Government choose to pull the plug on the agency that has been at the heart of the success of the east of England and best placed to address its challenges. In parallel, they are killing off regional spatial strategies. There is a continuing need for joined-up interventions in support of skills, infrastructure, business support and supply chain managers.

The focus that the RDA brought to the region is being scattered, as we heard from others, in all sorts of directions—the EU programme to DCLG and Defra, inward investment to UKTI, manufacturing support to BIS, and Business Link, eventually, to some national scheme. Other noble Lords have mentioned issues of asset disposal. One of the issues that needs to be addressed, especially when regeneration funding is involved, is the potential for clawbacks, particularly for local authorities.

So much for localism. The local enterprise partnership does not cover the whole region; it covers parts of three old RDAs. By all accounts the process locally fits the Cable description of being,

“a little Maoist and chaotic”.

As we have heard, LEPs have inadequate funding, there are no significant resources for their development and local authorities are going to be very hard pressed to fund even the secretarial support. It is not too late to draw back from the hasty and ill thought-through decision to abolish RDAs. The east of England will certainly be less well placed to realise its potential without the RDA. This is a loss not only for the region but for UK plc.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I begin by thanking noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It has been an excellent opportunity to consider the expertise that this House can provide on a subject covering all points of the United Kingdom. I understand the passion; I speak as a provincial myself. We are all in politics, to a lesser or greater extent, simply because we believe in where we come from and in the communities from which we originate and because we care about the people with whom we live and work. However, there may be other ways of dealing with the imbalances in the economy in the United Kingdom and I ask noble Lords to listen to the argument as to why the Government are proposing a changed approach. Given the breadth and detail of this debate, I regret that I am not likely to be able to respond to every point that has been raised, but I assure noble Lords that I will go through the record and seek to answer the points in a letter, which I will circulate to all noble Lords who have spoken this evening.

The Government’s economic ambition is to create a fairer and better balanced economy. We wish to see business opportunities in a broad range of sectors balanced across the country and between businesses. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, spoke with experience and authority and indicated that the real challenge of building investment and providing job opportunities was probably outside the traditional structures represented by the RDAs. Our Local Growth White Paper sets out how we will put businesses and local communities in charge of their own futures, rather than having to rely on centrally imposed regional development agencies. If I may say so, I felt that some of the speeches confused the effectiveness of critical mass with the greater strength of coherence and real local empowerment and focus.

The amendments that we are debating as a group would preserve the regional development agencies as a whole, or those in specified individual regions. We believe that preserving all or any of them would be a retrograde step. In December, we placed in the Library of the House a short briefing paper, which sets out the reasons for abolishing the RDAs and gives a snapshot of the situation in each region. This has now been updated. Indeed, the number of LEPs has increased dramatically since that time. That update has been placed in the Library and I will build on this information in the course of my remarks.

We set out the rationale for our proposals in the Local Growth White Paper, which was published in October 2010. One key theme in the document is the need to shift power to local communities and businesses. We believe that localities should lead their own development and have the flexibility to tailor their approach to this and to their individual circumstances. If this is to work, they must own their own economic strategy; one imposed from regional or national level would not have this local ownership. For all the good work that they did, the RDAs did not really belong to the communities within the regions. Many of the policies and initiatives that they delivered were on behalf of national government and did not always recognise the varied needs and opportunities that individual places have.

The RDAs were also designed around administrative regions rather than real economic geography. While it would be possible to discuss this matter in the context of every one of the individual RDAs, I would like to discuss two specific examples now. My first example is the south-west region, stretching from Swindon in the east to Penzance in the west and covering an enormous geographical and economic range, from the prosperous and relatively well connected places in the upper Thames valley to relatively isolated and deprived areas in Cornwall. Bristol has many problems in common with our largest cities—those of economic success and of economic inclusion. The issues faced in rural parts of the region are quite different. Linkages, too, differ, with parts of the region having close ties to London, the south-east, the West Midlands and Wales, and others having no such link at all. The relevant policies in each case are quite different. RDAs sought to address that problem and to recognise the differences within their regions, but it makes no real sense to establish a single body to cover the entire region and to expect it somehow to understand and cope with that huge variety. It is far better for the local partners in Bristol to develop policies dealing with the specific issues that they face and for those in Cornwall to do likewise.

21:45

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I do not want to delay the House, because I know that there is other business that we want to get done. The Minister is talking about the south-west, where the rivalries between Plymouth and Cornwall are well known; left to their own devices, the Tamar will remain the border between them and it will be difficult to persuade a LEP to form across that river. But I also think that it is very difficult to see in economic geography terms how you can develop parts of Cornwall and Devon without taking into account Plymouth and the city region approach. That relationship between a deprived rural county, Cornwall, and the only major city and centre of population needs to be thought through in terms of economic strategy, but the LEP approach will not do that.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention because it gives me the opportunity to respond by saying that there is almost a mathematical relationship between size and the importance of the boundary that exists between different regions. One difficulty with regional boundaries is that they are frequently quite dramatic, although there may be a geographical coherence. I am a Fenman. The Fens are in the eastern region, about which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, spoke, but they are also in the east Midlands. Yet it makes sense for them to work together as a geographical whole. One great advantage of the LEP approach is that, when the models are smaller, the boundaries are slightly less severe and there is an opportunity for LEPs to work together. That is the whole point of the policy—to create greater flexibility in how the units of economic development can work together where they wish to. That supports the argument of One North East and the degree to which common policies across the north-east can work. I accept that it is possible to have a different point of view, but I am telling noble Lords how we see this. If we really want to address the regional imbalance in this country, we have not succeeded with RDAs.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

Does the Minister accept that the Government are out of step with virtually everyone in the north-east?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I take a great deal of comfort from my noble friend Lord Bates, who shares my view of the ability of the north-east to develop common policies where it wishes to do so. There are individual differences between Teeside, Tyneside and Wearside. You would not want to say you were in Newcastle when you were in Washington—I remember somebody getting into terrible trouble for doing so. Locality is very specific and the north-east has different characteristics. It is not homogenous and there are methods of getting economic development in the north-east which do not depend on having a single body to deliver it. A coalition of different bodies with a common policy may well be a much more effective method for doing so.

I gave way to my noble friend when I was talking about the West Country. If I might take Bristol as an example, it is far better for the local partners to develop policies for the specific issues it faces, and for Cornwall to do likewise. I strongly believe that any economies of scale that a regional approach may have are more than outweighed by an absence of local knowledge and commitment and the consequent loss of responsiveness to local circumstances. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who asked why the Gloucester, Swindon and Wiltshire LEP was rejected, I would say that, although there was some business support for the proposal, other businesses in the area felt that a different geographical approach was right. Ministers have gone back and asked the partners to discuss their proposals again in order to develop an approach which takes the full range of local views into account. So the matter is not concluded; it is still under debate, and the Government await evidence on which to make their decision.

[Lord Greaves]

I will give my noble friend a slight rest. Does he not accept that not only are the Government apparently out of step with what most people in the north-east think but their thinking on regionalism is completely out of step with pretty well every other country in Europe of a similar size? It really risks England becoming the most centralised country in the whole of western Europe. While what he says about LEPS and putting the emphasis at a more local level might well be a perfectly acceptable way forward, the real problem is that the LEPs are being deprived of pretty well all the resources which the RDAs and regional bodies have at the moment. Therefore, unless they are lucky enough to get some of this relatively small amount of regional development fund money, they are going to be toothless.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I should remind the noble Lord that I do not consider £1.4 billion in the regional growth fund to be insignificant. Noble Lords may well feel—and they clearly do—that it is better that the taxpayer should fund large redistributions through RDAs, but there may be other ways in which economic policy can be directed, as my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond mentioned. She talked about tax incentives. Far be it for me, as a very lowly member of the Government, to challenge the Treasury on tax incentives, but there are different ways of doing these things other than handing out taxpayers’ largesse. I emphasise that that is the way in which this Government are thinking.

Perhaps if I talk about the north-east, I might be steering into danger. I am not too frightened of doing so because we should recognise that the north-east does not have a single monolithic economy. The region has a varied economic geography, with significant economic poles, across the Rivers Tyne and Wear and the River Tees. Each place has a different industrial heritage and different strengths, opportunities and threats. The local authorities in Tees Valley have a strong track record in working together and were quick to put forward an application to form a local enterprise partnership. This argues that they recognise the benefits of these new arrangements. A partnership has now been established, covering the authorities in the rest of the region. As Vince Cable has made clear, this is not to say that some form of co-operative arrangement across the north-east is not justified if local partners want it. I said that at Second Reading and I have just said it again. However, I strongly question whether a regional development agency, with all its attendant complexity and bureaucracy, is necessary to achieve this.

The previous Government gave RDAs the task of narrowing the gap in growth rates between the prosperous region of the greater south-east and the rest of England, and provided them with significant resources over a sustained period to help them achieve this. However, it was a target that they failed to meet. Between 1990 and 1999, the real gross value added per head in the greater south-east grew by around 1.8 per cent in each year, compared with around 1.4 per cent in the other six regions—a gap of 0.4 of a percentage point. Between 1999 and 2009, annual growth in the greater south-east fell to 1.4 per cent, compared to 0.8 per cent in the other regions—a gap of 0.6 of a percentage point. Therefore, the gap in growth rates has widened by around 0.2 of a percentage point. It is time to try a new policy, even in the north-east.

As the White Paper makes clear, we are encouraging businesses, local authorities and their partners to develop local enterprise partnerships based on real economic areas, rather than artificial administrative regions. The new partnerships are based on where people live and work. Businesses and civic leaders will work together to drive sustainable economic growth and create the conditions for private sector job growth in their communities. Partners have responded to this invitation in an enthusiastic and innovative way. So far, 31 partnerships have been asked to form boards, covering 87 per cent of England’s population and a similar proportion of businesses. We are actively engaged with partners in the remaining areas, helping them to develop proposals that will meet our broad criteria.

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, that five LEPs have been asked to establish their bases in areas that cover the east of England. I assure the noble Lord that there will be partnerships covering the entire region. There will be no businesses or parts of the population that are not covered by an LEP.

[Baroness Whitaker]

What the noble Lord has to say about LEPs does not exactly fit the situation of Newhaven, where the LEP is just wrong for it.

22:00

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I was coming to the whole business of Newhaven. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for mentioning earlier that she wanted to talk about Newhaven. As she will know, Newhaven is currently covered by the LEP for East Sussex, Kent and Essex. It is perfectly possible for Newhaven and the Lewes district to work with the Coast to Capital LEP as well. The whole point is that boundaries are not as important with LEPs as they are with RDAs. I hope that Newhaven’s position will indeed be recognised by Lewes District Council in the way that it operates within the LEP framework. It is perfectly at liberty to do just that.

I come to a few other parts of the country; we have mentioned everywhere, I suspect. There is perhaps an example of cross-regional development that I should also draw your Lordships’ attention to. The partnership in the south-east Midlands attempted to deal with an economic area in which the former regional boundaries were particularly irrational and obstructive—the area around Milton Keynes, which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, will know. To an extent, the RDAs recognised this but they were largely ineffective in responding because their structures hampered them in doing so. The local partners do recognise it fully. They are basing their proposals around a practical response, and I regard this as progress.

The White Paper also described the regional growth fund, which, as I said, is worth £1.4 billion over three years. This is money to be spent outside the south-east of England. This complements the other measures that the Government are taking to support growth through investment and to provide support for education and skills. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, emphasised the role of skills, improvements in competition and support for research and innovation. These are the focus of the measures and will lead to real jobs and skills. Without a skills base, we have no opportunity of building the jobs and the industries that will provide employment in the future.

[Lord Hoyle]

Will the Minister say why he thinks he will develop skills better than the RDAs have done?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The skills will be developed as part of the skills policy of the Government. My honourable friend in another place, the Minister, Mr John Hayes, has recently announced a skills strategy for the country. If we have not debated it in this House, it is because we have been very busy debating other things. However, it is a very important strategy, and it is part and parcel of the strategy for economic growth in this country.

Perhaps I may continue to describe the regional growth fund. It is intended to encourage private sector enterprise and create sustainable jobs. In particular, it is designed to help places currently reliant on the public sector to make the transition to private sector-led growth. I suspect that there is a feeling across the House that this is important. Once again we are encouraging proposals to come from the bottom up, responding to local circumstances. When the first round of bidding closed at the end of January, we had received nearly 450 proposals, showing that there is a significant appetite for an approach of this kind. My noble friend Lord Heseltine is chairing the panel which will be selecting the best of these proposals; and noble Lords have referred to my noble friend in contributions to this debate. Noble Lords will need no reminding that encouraging growth throughout the country is a cause dear to his heart.

[Lord Greaves]

I apologise for intervening again. The resources may be significant, as the Minister said, but they are considerably less than the resources available at the moment, either through RDA or through the regional housing pots and all the other resources, which are being either dramatically cut back or scrapped altogether. Is not the problem that many of these places that have put forward good, exciting schemes and want to get ahead will be denied a penny because they will not win the competition that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is presiding over?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I cannot guarantee that all the 450 proposals will find funding. However, I can be sure that the ones for which funding is found will be successful and provide opportunities for the people in those areas.

[Lord Beecham]

Can the Minister indicate in monetary terms the extent of the bids that have been made?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

No, I do not have that information available, but we know the amount of money that is available for the fund, which I have stated.

Finally, noble Lords raised the question of what will happen to RDA assets and activities. There has been some concern that there might be a fire sale. That is not the case. These bodies will be run down, the relevant clauses of the Bill will become law, and the RDAs will finally be abolished. RDAs have been liaising with the relevant local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and other local partners. On 31 January, all RDAs submitted detailed plans for the disposal of their assets. They recognised that there will be a variety of destinations for these assets, depending on their nature and associated liabilities. These plans are currently being scrutinised by the Government. After scrutiny, each RDA management board will sign off its plan and begin implementation. RDA asset-disposal plans have been developed while taking into account the principles that we set out in the White Paper. These include maximising value for money from these assets, ensuring that liabilities follow assets and passing control down to local level where possible. Where this is not appropriate—where, for example, an asset is of national importance, such as that set up in the south-west and mentioned in the debate, and considerable resources are needed to run it—other options will be considered.

Similarly, co-ordination of some activities formerly undertaken by RDAs will be taken back to national level, and some activities, such as those of the England Rural Development Programme, will retain local accessible support. In some cases, such as managing the European Regional Development Fund and the England Rural Development Programme, we need to ensure compliance with our obligations to the European Union. In other cases, such as co-ordination of inward investment activity, we need to ensure that we can put over a coherent and effective message to potential investors. However, even in those cases, we are setting up mechanisms under which local partnerships have the opportunity to influence policy and help drive the decisions we make. For all these reasons, we do not believe that retaining all or any of the nine RDAs will help to achieve local growth. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment, and for noble Lords not to move theirs.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, which I will carefully consider, and I look forward to the letters that he has undertaken to write. All around the Chamber we would agree that regional development is key to the economic recovery of this country. RDAs have been, and for the moment are, excellent strategic catalysts for growth. I have to say that I am not confident that their replacement by LEPs will suffice. However, I will take into consideration what the noble Lord has said. At this juncture I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I reserve the right to bring something back at Report.

Amendment 49 withdrawn.

Amendments 50 to 58 not moved.

Amendment 59

Moved by

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

59: Schedule 1, page 17, line 23, leave out “Security Industry Authority.”

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, this amendment is on the abolition of the Security Industry Authority. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Henig, who has been its chair. My Government established the SIA in 2004 to reduce criminality in the security profession and to raise standards in the industry. This is exactly what the SIA has done and what I would like it to continue to do. The body has two main duties: the compulsory licensing of individuals undertaking designated activities within the private security industry, such as security guarding, door supervision, close protection, public space surveillance by CCTV, and protecting cash and valuables in transit; and to manage the voluntary approved-contractor scheme.

It is easy to understand why the police campaigned for the industry to be regulated, why they are content with the way in which the authority is working and why they do not want it to be abolished. Neither do I. It is not difficult to see why such an industry should have been regulated. You just have to think about how the actions of nightclub bouncers have, according to my children and their friends, improved exponentially over the past few years. You just have to think about the potential for people who wish to harm our society with acts of terrorism and how much easier it would be for them to find employment in an unregulated industry. You just have to think about the potential for employing people—perhaps illegal immigrants—at below the minimum wage. I realise that employers in the industry have a responsibility but I am sure that they are greatly assisted by the SIA.

Can the Minister confirm that the Home Secretary has decided that there will be no significant changes to the SIA until after the Olympics in 2012? If that is the case, it is certainly very telling. I suggest that our citizens should be able to enjoy a properly regulated security industry at any time, not just in the period leading up to and during the Olympics. I ask the Minister whether there are plans for a smooth transition to a self-regulated industry and whether the police are content with the transition. Finally, what reviews do the Government intend to carry out following the proposed changes to ensure that the public can continue to have confidence in the system? I simply do not understand why the Government wish to abolish this body and I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment. I do so partly because I was in on the beginning of the campaign to regulate the security industry when I still worked for my trade union, which organised the more respectable end of the security industry. However, 20 years ago, and indeed more recently, it was an industry with some very dodgy people in it. There was an element of criminality; there were occasional outbursts of violence; there was fraud; and there was a straightforward dereliction of duty to the businesses and individuals that employed so-called security companies. There was much in the industry that, to put it at its mildest, was short of customer service.

It was not a pleasant industry but in many respects it was one on which, because of the nature of our society and the value of the goods in which we trade, more and more businesses came to rely. They needed to be assured that the people they brought in to protect their premises, their transit arrangements, their valuables and, in many respects, their staff and customers knew what they were doing and did not have any record of transgression. That is what, after a long campaign, led to the setting up of the Security Industry Authority.

The Home Office has ummed and ahed about this for many years and has done absolutely nothing about it. The first time the authority’s abolition was proposed, it was suggested that its responsibilities went back to the Home Office, but that would have been absolutely disastrous. Now, a degree of self-regulation for the industry is proposed. However, the problem with that is that the more respectable end of the industry will undoubtedly attempt very effectively to ensure a degree of quality of service and vetting of staff and individuals but the less respectable end will re-emerge and so-called security firms will spring up all over the place employing people who have not been through the vetting procedure. Therefore, any self-regulation is dependent on the majority of the industry participating in it and being able to exclude others.

There may have been criticisms of the SIA but most of those have probably been invalid. I feel that there should have been a mandatory system of approving companies, as well as individuals, but the authority, together with the police, undoubtedly helped to clean up the industry. Taking away this protection from businesses and individuals is a big risk for the Government to take. I hope that the Home Office will think again, because it cannot do this job itself. Those at the respectable end of the industry do not really want to be reduced to self-regulation. They will operate such a system if the Government insist on it but it will not be as effective as the development of the SIA. For that reason, and in the interests of protecting a lot of small and large businesses and public premises, I ask the Government to think again.

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the current chair of the Security Industry Authority and president of the Association of Police Authorities. In the speech I made at Second Reading I told the House about the enormous concern with which the Government’s proposal to abolish the organisation and return to self-regulation of the industry was greeted, particularly by people in the industry and also by Scotland and Northern Ireland. Last week the chairman of Security Alliance said how the inclusion of the SIA on the list for abolition came as a great surprise to the industry. He said that since regulation was introduced, there had been a general acceptance in the industry that licensing had been a force for good. So that is clearly understood and agreed across the industry.

We know there has been a lot of criticism recently in the other place by the Public Administration Committee about the handling of the bonfire of the quangos. The committee said it was a rushed, botched job with no clear evidence of savings or concern for value for money or efficiency. More important for the SIA was the lack of consistency in applying the three questions and the issue of whether they were even the right questions to ask. I asked at Second Reading why the SIA was being abolished when the Gangmasters Licensing Authority was being spared—a question which has not yet been satisfactorily answered. The Public Administration Committee’s report asked exactly the same question. The silence in response is deafening.

I asked another question to which there has been no response: why is it that the Government believe the industry is mature enough at this moment in time to regulate itself when the Scottish Government, the Northern Ireland Administration and even large parts of the industry disagree very strongly. Yet the Minister told us at Second Reading that there had been no major disagreements on the legislation between the Government and the Scottish Government. I do not think that is entirely an accurate description but obviously I defer to others on that.

The most serious issue I had with the Government on this matter was their lack of consultation with the industry. After all it was the BSIA and other bodies and individuals within the private security industry which consistently pressed for regulation of the industry in the 1980s and 1990s and they have supported it and for the most part paid for it. Surely, therefore, the views of the industry should have been sought before the policies were drawn up, not to mention the uncertainty caused to 350,000 individuals working in the industry_, many of whom funded their own licence fee and invested in their training. Surely there should have been consultation with all these people. Certainly the view of the Public Administration Committee was that there should be consultation with all the bodies listed in this Bill, even at this late hour, and who can say that it is wrong?

In the case of the security industry, its leaders sensibly were not prepared to wait that long. Indeed, they made their opposition to the ending of regulation and the abolition of the SIA very clear. They wrote to the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. They organised and they highlighted the tremendous risks inherent in the Government’s proposals, forcing the Government to change their mind. Instead of abolition the Government agreed that there should be a phased transition to a new regulatory regime and that the SIA should no longer be an NDPB.

So there has been a change and therefore this Bill is already out of date in terms of regulation of the private security industry. In the exchange of views that took place between the Government and the industry, industry leaders made it clear that they were already discussing with the Security Industry Authority a blueprint for the evolution of regulation whereby the regulator and the industry would work together to produce smarter, more cost-effective regulation and would press the Government to introduce business registration alongside individual licensing so that we could move to a more efficient, effective and lighter-touch regulatory regime—“better for less”, to use the Government’s own phrase. That was certainly what the industry was working towards with the SIA. As the Public Administration Committee so rightly observed, the major issue at stake in relation to quangos should not be about their status or structure but about effectiveness and delivering value for money. Since last summer the SIA has been in discussion with the industry about precisely these matters.

The issue before us in this discussion on the Security Industry Authority is not a simple should it or should it not be abolished, but how best to facilitate a phased transition from the current regulatory regime to lighter touch, smarter regulation in which industry bodies and leaders play an increasingly active and important role alongside the SIA. There is no disagreement about that. The issue is that it is a process which will take time. It cannot be rushed. It has to include all sections of the industry that are currently regulated. While the recent emergence of the Security Alliance as a unified voice for the industry is to be welcomed as a very positive development, it is by no means fully established across the industry. So there is a lot of work to be done, and along the way the decisions made by the Home Office and the Government in relation to the extent of regulation—for example, that it should not include in-house security, or for the time being private investigators or security consultants—will undoubtedly be queried and challenged by many in the industry. If we are discussing the industry’s future, people working in it want to raise many things.

Then there are the views of Scotland and Northern Ireland. I cannot speak with enormous knowledge about these areas but the licensing of private security has been a huge success both in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It has been in Scotland since 2007 but licensing in Northern Ireland is just a year old. The Northern Ireland Administration are in no rush to change it and we can understand why. They think that it has made a big difference. Both those areas have elections in the spring and we will have to wait to find out the views of the new Administrations and Governments that result. A lot is standing in the way of progress at the moment. As part of the phased transition process, the industry is strongly of the view that the Government should play their part by showing a willingness to bring in business registration in the industry, alongside the licensing of individuals. I hope that the Minister will be able to commit the Government to action in relation to business registration when she replies, as the industry is keen to see that.

We are working to move forward. We in the SIA are consulting a whole range of bodies, including the strategic consultation group, a Security Alliance industry panel, and so on, because it is important to have agreement with the industry and major stakeholders on key principles and milestones for the future, while being conscious, as was said, of the need to proceed cautiously before the Olympics in 2012. There are also the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in 2014 and we must not forget that. It is important to put on the record that many senior figures in the industry are urging caution. They do not believe that the industry is yet ready for self-regulation. I strongly support giving the industry more responsibility in terms of licensing and training, but I share its view that there is no evidence at present that it is sufficiently mature at this point for self-regulation. We have to move very gradually towards that goal. Substantial progress will have been made towards establishing a new regulatory regime by 2014 but there is the big issue of effective intelligence and enforcement operations. It is important that they continue and that the state continues to maintain a strong regulatory regime in respect of criminality; in respect of criminals and their associates; and in respect of those who continue to seek to undermine and weaken the regime. Everyone who works in the industry wants the regime to be effective in driving out and keeping out criminality and in upholding robust standards. That is extremely important because the credibility of the industry requires strong intelligence and enforcement activity, which has to continue in any new regime.

There is a considerable way to travel. Listing the SIA in Schedule 1 to the Bill was a misguided and inappropriate step for the Government to take. We are talking about Schedule 3 and changing the nature of the organisation and moving it to something different. The important thing is that we all want to build on and improve the regulation that has been introduced. It has been a great success and we want to continue it both with the industry and the devolved Administrations. We have to work with them at their pace, which I hope the Government will be supporting so that we can move forward together.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, the current chairman of the SIA. I should mention that I was the first chairman of the Security Industry Authority some years ago and in that capacity I came to respect very highly the considerable number of companies that control the vast majority of companies within the security industry. However, I was introduced to the industry prior to regulation and can certainly endorse the comments already made that the industry does attract a large number of highly unscrupulous individuals who, without very tight controls, are more than willing to take advantage of the unsuspecting, either employers or members of the public.

The two big achievements of the SIA, and a credit to its current chairman, have been the raising of the educational level of the 350,000 or so security officers and also, as others have mentioned, the protection of the public and employers from these unscrupulous security guards. I am sure the Minister would like to recognise the value of its work.

There is of course merit in the proposal to focus in future on the system of business registration, leaving the individual licensing largely in the hands of the industry. However, I too do not accept the Government’s argument that none of the SIA functions needs to be carried out by a public body. In view of the extent of criminality within the industry, and the potential for far greater amounts of criminality, this just does not seem realistic. It is difficult to imagine that all aspects of the SIA can effectively be carried out by the industry itself.

The Government refer to employers in other industries taking responsibility for making appropriate recruitment decisions and suggest that this approach would be appropriate for the private security industry. My understanding is that the industry just is not ready. I do not think the Government have at all taken into account the degree of criminality in the industry. It must be quite alone—in fact I cannot think of any other industry that has comparable problems.

It is certainly most encouraging that Ministers have now agreed to the SIA’s plan for evolution towards a new system based upon business registration. However, Ministers do not seem to be taking account at all of the degree of opposition to these changes both in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It seems the Government will need to move much more slowly if they are to have any hope at all of bringing the devolved Administrations with them. I hope the Minister will take very seriously the points already made by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig.

I want to mention one small but particularly threatening sector of the security industry—the security officers who control parking on private land. The Government are committed to ending the right to clamp vehicles on private land. I applaud this move wholeheartedly. However, there is no move to prevent, as I understand it, these operators charging unsuspecting members of the public extortionate fees for parking on private land. It is in this area that threats are made and extortionate quantities of money are demanded, increasing over time if people do not pay up quickly, that lead to people submitting to the fees charged. I hope the Government will be able to deal with that relatively small but really alarming sector of the security industry in the course of their deliberations about reform.

I was very pleased to note in the Government’s briefing that any proposed changes will be subject to parliamentary approval. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to applaud the Minister, who told us in a meeting recently that he will be eliminating Clause 11 and Schedule 7 from the Bill. This does seem to me an enormous step forward and I imagine I am speaking on behalf of others too in saying that this is extremely welcome. That is at least an excellent piece of good news.

Finally, as others have said, the SIA regulatory system is self funding. There are no public spending implications in this reform. Perhaps the noble Baroness will explain to the House the motivation for a reform which seems to be opposed not only by the devolved Administrations but also by the industry which currently pays the bill for the Security Industry Authority. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

22:30

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I add my congratulations and thanks to my noble friend Lady Henig for the work she does as the chair of the authority. I have had a number of discussions with her over the past year or so about the situation in Scotland, and she has been most helpful. She carries out her work in a modest but very effective way. I also echo what my noble friend Lord Whitty said earlier: before the SIA was established, the industry was characterised by cowboys and gangsters. I remember it well—not that I was part of it in any way, but I remember how it operated. I remember its links with organised crime. It was also characterised by low pay, which created particular problems with bribery in the running of operations.

That did not all change through self-regulation. It changed because we legislated and because the Government took clear and decisive action to ensure that the industry was properly regulated.

My main point relates to Scotland. I see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, here. I think that he will confirm that there is no doubt what is the view of the Scottish Executive in relation to the future of the SIA. On 8 September, the Home Secretary wrote to the Scottish Government seeking their views on the UK Government’s intention for the future of the Security Industry Authority. Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister in Scotland, in a reply to my colleague in the Scottish Parliament—he is not my noble friend yet—Richard Baker, stated on 11 November:

“I responded on behalf of the Scottish Government on 13 September 2010, setting out my concerns about the UK Government's proposals and strongly emphasising the need for continued regulation of the private security industry in Scotland. These views were also set out in a letter that I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister on 24 September 2010 and in a further letter to the Home Secretary following my meeting with the Scottish security industry representatives on 13 October 2010”.

There is no doubt about their view, which was made very clear to the Home Office and the Deputy Prime Minister. In another reply, also on 11 November, Kenny MacAskill stated:

“The Scottish Government does not support the decision of the UK Government. The Security Industry Authority has been working very well in Scotland, and the Scottish Government made a very strong case to the UK Government for its continuation as the independent body responsible for regulating the private security industry”.

There is no doubt about the view of the Scottish Government. As my noble friend Lady Henig has heard directly, I can confirm that the shadow Justice Secretary, Richard Baker, who asked the Question, agrees. It is not often that he agrees with Kenny MacAskill, but on this occasion, he agrees 100 per cent with him.

So we have the two largest parties in the Scottish Parliament at one in wanting to keep the Security Industry Authority in operation. One might say, “It can continue to operate in Scotland”, but it would be ridiculous for a United Kingdom industry—which it is, because Securicor and G4 security operate north and south of the border—to have completely different regulation, a completely different kind of supervision.

The issues for the industry are the same in Scotland as they are in England. There are other areas where things are different in Scotland, where we are proud of the differences, but in this area, there are no differences in the operation of the industry and there should not be any difference in the regulation of the industry.

As my noble friend Lord Whitty said in a robust way and as my noble friend Lady Henig said in her usual gentle way, I say to the Minister: think again about this. Have further discussions with the Scottish Executive to find out more about their concerns, have discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government and with Northern Ireland about their concerns to try to find something which is acceptable to all parts of the United Kingdom, and come back to this House and the other place with alternatives. The very co-operative way in which the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, started off the discussion on the Bill at about 3 o’clock—all those hours ago—was very refreshing. I hope that, on this particular issue, the Minister will act similarly to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, look at it positively, take account of the views that have been expressed and take the matter away, think again and come back with revised proposals.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I add just one concern to what has already been said. That is in relation to the criminal justice system and the use of private security companies in it, coupled with my increasing concern about their involvement in the activities of the UK Border Agency. The Green Paper published by the Ministry of Justice, Breaking the Cycle, envisages increased use of private sector companies, for example in providing probation services. At present they are conducting a number of private sector prisons. Those are under supervision of the Inspectorate of Prisons but the training and the selection of staff has always caused concern.

As far as the UK Border Agency is concerned, the activities of the private sector in such activities as the deportation of people was drawn into high relief the other day with the death of someone who was put under restraint while being deported in an airplane from Heathrow. As a result, the activities of private sector guards have come under greater scrutiny rather than less. Therefore, with this increased activity, I have to admit that I am nervous at the thought of the SIA being removed from a role that it could have if raised to the stature of that work, in favour of self-regulation, which I do not believe is right in this particular area.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon. I am most surprised that the Government proposed the abolition of the Security Industry Authority in the first place and that they have not moved on this matter. The Security Industry Authority is a great success story. It has professionalised the private security industry, driven out criminality and ensured that people are safe when attending a variety of events in pubs, clubs and elsewhere. I am aware that they have their own licensing body. I was at a football match on Saturday and it was reassuring, walking around the ground, to see security professionals with accreditation on their arms. How different that was only a few years ago.

I read the Government’s brief. It provides no reassurance on the position going forward. In the document, the Government say that Ministers decided that there is no evidence that the Security Industry Authority carried out a function that needed to be undertaken by a public body. Will the Minister expand on that in her response? Also, whatever is decided in the future, it must surely be inferior to what we have at present, if for no other reason than the fact, as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, that different systems operate different authorities round the country. It is ridiculous.

I also ask, as my noble friend Lady Royall did, how the Government will ensure that criminality is kept out of the industry. I am pleased that the Government say in the briefing note that there will be little change this side of the Olympics in 2012—though, for me, that highlights the weakness of the proposals in the first place. I would like the Minister to comment on that in her response as well.

I agree with the comments of my noble friend Lord Whitty about the respectable and less respectable arms of the industry. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Henig for all the work that she has done. In conclusion, I hope that the Minister has something to say and is at least prepared to take away this proposal and come back with something on Report.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and made some important points. Many of them I accept. In putting forward the Government’s proposed measure, I hope to convince the Committee that many of the anxieties they have expressed will prove unfounded.

The Government intend to resist this amendment, which would remove the Security Industry Authority from the list of public bodies that Ministers will be able to abolish via secondary legislation. We will do so because we consider it unnecessary. I want to explain what the Government intend to do because I believe that many of the things that have been said on the Floor this evening perhaps represent a situation that no longer pertains.

Before I do that, I join other noble Lords in expressing my appreciation for the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, as chairman of the SIA. There is no doubt that under her guidance the authority has raised the standards of the industry, which is one of the things that give us confidence that we can move on to a different regime. I will come back to that in a moment. Many of the things that she said are points on which there is a very large measure of agreement between her, the Government and, I hope, other Members of your Lordships' House.

In looking at the SIA, the Government have applied a number of tests to retention in the public bodies review. We concluded that there was not compelling evidence that, given the standards that are now being reached, the SIA’s functions need to continue to be performed by a public body. The SIA was established by the Private Security Industry Act 2001, as has been said, and it has succeeded, as was the intention, in reducing criminality in the security industry. It also set out to improve standards. The approval system has undoubtedly resulted in improvements in those standards and uses the compulsory licensing of individuals to achieve the reduction in criminality. It carries out criminality and identity checks in addition to confirming the training that has to be completed before issuing a licence.

The Government do not intend that any alternative regime should result in a lowering of these standards. Licensing began in 2004, and there are currently more than 350,000 licensed individuals. The SIA has done something else important, which is to raise standards through the voluntary approved contractor scheme that allows companies to demonstrate that they meet a wide range of standards and are therefore worthy of being accredited as approved providers of security industry services. That is also something that will continue. More than 650 companies employing about two-thirds of the industry now have the ACS standard. That is a record of achievement and I pay tribute to it.

On that basis, however, we believe that it is now right to move over time to a new regulatory regime. I stress that it will be a regulatory regime. The private security industry has matured under the aegis of the SIA since SIA regulation began, and there is evidence of increased standards in the industry. We believe that employers should now be given more responsibility for making safe and legal recruitment decisions in the same way as employers in other professions. In other words, they should not have normal responsibilities removed from them.

As was mentioned in the debate, the security industry has formed a so-called security alliance of trade bodies which by their own reckoning represent more than 80 per cent of the regulated security industry. This group recently wrote to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary responsible for equalities and criminal information, Miss Lynne Featherstone, and outlined its willingness to work with the Government. It has already been working with the SIA to shape the future regulation of its industry, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, mentioned. Indeed, we intend to build on the work that has already been done. There is no doubt that challenges still lie ahead for the industry, but I have a slightly different picture of the attitude of the industry and some of those who are affected by the changes that lie ahead. It is more positive than has been noted in discussions so far. There is no doubt that they are willing. They have shown considerable alacrity in stepping up to take responsibility. That should encourage noble Lords.

22:45

[Baroness Meacher]

The Minister has repeatedly referred to the industry as though it was some uniform set of organisations. Does she accept that there is a tremendous divide between the reputable end of the industry and these highly dubious individuals and pairs of people who go about taking work in the security industry? You cannot refer to them in the same breath—and certainly not in the same phrase. Does she accept that?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I accept that this industry—I do not know what other term I can use: perhaps “this occupation”—has a wide spectrum of activities and individuals in it. I will come to that in a moment. I want to encourage your Lordships to have more confidence that those in this industry can be relied on and are willing to take further responsibility and be more accountable for their own actions in future. I understand that there is some concern that if the SIA is abolished there will be no effective regulation of the private security industry. I want to offer reassurance on that point. We are not going to do anything immediate. We have been convinced by those who have argued that that would be unwise and that it would not be sensible to do that. The regulation of the private security industry will continue in its present form. The SIA will not be abolished until the new regulatory regime has been fully established and is properly functioning.

Since the outcome of the public bodies review was announced by the Cabinet Office on 14 October, Home Office Ministers and officials have been in close contact with the SIA to discuss how to take this forward. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities and Criminal Information, who is the lead Home Office Minister for the SIA, has met the SIA representatives. The Home Secretary herself has been in correspondence with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, about the future.

Ministers have asked the SIA to work with the private security industry and key stakeholders to put together a detailed plan to achieve a phased transition to a new regulatory regime. We do not intend to do this in anything but careful detail. To inform the plan, the SIA started targeted consultations with stakeholders, including industry and law enforcement partners. The police were mentioned, and they are involved in the consultation process. A detail of the phased introduction of the new regulatory regime that will replace regulation by the SIA will be the product. The SIA started this work by hosting an initial meeting with a number of industry stakeholders on 28 October. I understand that this work is progressing well.

In the Second Reading debate on this Bill on 9 November, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, stated that the SIA had already agreed with the industry,

“a blueprint for the next few years to move to greater industry involvement in the regulatory regime”.—[Official Report, 9/11/10; col. 133]

She also quoted from a letter that she had had from the Home Secretary in which she very kindly said that she was happy to accede to the Home Secretary’s wish to ensure that,

“any transition to a new regulatory regime is phased in smoothly and takes into account the needs of the industry as well as the priorities of the Government including the devolved Administrations”.

To confirm the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the Home Secretary has agreed that there should be no significant change prior to the Olympic Games in 2012. That is in line with a number of measures in other areas in which we are staying any kind of change until after the Olympic Games.

My point in all this is that the SIA itself is involved in the work to move towards something that is described as self-regulation by the private security industry but which is a pretty tough form of self-regulation. I will come back to some of the details in a moment. The SIA plan was presented to Home Office Ministers earlier this month for consideration, and on 16 February there was another meeting with Lynne Featherstone to discuss the plan further. We have now considered and agreed that this will form the basis for moving forward on phased transition. I hope I am reassuring the Committee that this process is being done in careful consultation with the SIA and the industry on the basis of trying to ensure, therefore, that we come out with a regime that offers the same degree of assurance of high standards that has already been established.

As a result of the consultation, we are now in a position to give a few more details of the shape of the new regulatory regime, although the Committee will understand that as we are still in discussion—the whole point of the discussions is to get an agreed format between the parties—not all the details have been decided. So far, the agreed proposals will ensure that responsibility for the private security industry is transferred to a new body for self-regulation as soon as that is sensible after 2012—not before it is sensible and not before the Olympics in 2012. No significant change will happen before that.

Primary legislation will then be needed to set up the new regulatory body that will succeed the SIA. We will ensure that provision is included in a future Home Office Bill. Full transition to the new regime should, we hope, be completed by the end of 2013. Again, this is not a rushed process.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Would that be a new regulatory body for England or for the United Kingdom? If only for England, what will the situation be in other parts of United Kingdom?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I will come to the noble Lord’s point about the relationship with the devolved Administrations. I have it in mind.

The new regime will also see a significant shift of responsibility from individual workers to businesses. That is one of the changes in structure. We believe that that will be efficient and that it will also reduce regulatory costs and burdens. Instead of every single employee having to be registered separately at a cost of something like £250 each, it will be a business paying for the registration. In getting that registration, businesses will be required to show that they meet a comprehensive set of conditions set by the new body.

The industry itself has a strong interest in ensuring that the standards it sets are maintained and that they are high. Clearly, that has to be one of the really important parts of the new regime. Businesses that fail to meet these comprehensive conditions will have their rights to trade in private security removed. There is no reason to suppose that somehow a transition to another regime will by definition, and automatically, result in a lowering of standards. On the contrary, the industry will have a strong self-interest in ensuring that the cowboys are not allowed in and are not permitted to sully the reputation of an industry that is responsible for its regulation. There is a strong incentive actually to take this regime and make it work well.

It is obviously too early to give full details on costs, but we know that instead of more than 350,000 individuals paying £245 each for licences, much of which is currently paid for by the companies that employ them, the new regime will involve fewer than 5,000 companies having to register, giving considerable saving to the industry.

One of the other things that we are doing, however, is to ensure that the impact on smaller businesses is minimised by reflecting business size in the registration fees in the new regime, so that we do not get a situation in which small companies are paying a flat fee which is the same size as very large ones. They will be gradated. There will also be a sensibly phased transition to the new regime, the details of which are still to be worked out. We do not expect all businesses to move to the regime at the same time. Some of the big boys are clearly going to be ready to move at an early stage. Some of the smaller companies will not necessarily be so ready, and they will be given time to achieve the necessary transition. The big ones that have already met the high standards of the approved contractor scheme will be able and willing to move immediately, but we will maintain mechanisms to ensure that smaller companies, which may not be in the position immediately to transition to the new regime, can continue to trade.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Does the Minister envisage, in the new regime, that the individuals themselves will undergo CRB checks?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

Clearly, CRB checks will be relevant. I cannot immediately answer whether they have to be done by the individuals themselves or by their businesses to ensure that they are employing fit and proper people. I would have to write to the noble Lord. The registering of these individuals is another point that worried some noble Lords, who thought that this new method of regulation would somehow allow the bottom end of the industry to have free rein, if I can put it that way. This will not be permitted, because a registry of individuals will also be maintained by the new body to support the needs of the customer and the industry. That will do two things. First, it will ensure that named individuals are known to the regulatory body. Secondly, it will enable those individuals who are of fit and proper standing to move from one company to another with greater ease than would otherwise be the case. Any proposed changes will be subject to parliamentary approval. I thank the SIA for the help that they are giving in moving the industry along to the new regime. We have also asked the SIA if they will take forward the work necessary to ensure the full delivery. This Bill confers an ability to abolish the SIA, but this will be done only at an appropriate time in the transition to the regulatory regime.

Some noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, raised the issue of the response of the devolved Administrations. Since the correspondence to which he referred, and which I have seen, there have been further contacts with the devolved Administrations, and we are now in consultation with both the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. Although it is the case that, on a voluntary basis, both the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive decided that they would accept the regulation of the SIA, the regulation of the private security industry is a policy decision for the devolved Administrations. It is a devolved matter, which we fully respect, and they will have the opportunity, if they choose to exercise it, to have a different regime. However, I agree with the noble Lord, that, given the nature of the industry, which operates across the country, it would be highly desirable if we could get agreement on a single regime.

[Lord Empey]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, raised this earlier. I declare an interest as a member of the justice committee of the Northern Ireland Executive. The reason why we have a particular issue must be fairly obvious to most Members. We have a lot of people who, sadly, have come from a background where they were, shall I put it, organised, and were able to bring intimidation and pressure and other things to bear. Consequently, we are not talking about precisely the same situation that would exist here, albeit that there are always criminal elements there. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, asked whether the results of the election in May would make any difference. I think that they will not, because the circumstances that we have had to deal with have a long history and will take some further time yet to work their way out of the system. I do not anticipate any immediate change in the regime following the elections in May.

23:00

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I understand entirely the point that the noble Lord makes. I would say two things about that. Clearly, it is desirable if the regulatory regime that operates throughout the United Kingdom makes it easy for companies to operate across all three Administrations. It does not follow from that that these regimes have to be identical. Certainly, the Home Office takes the view that if, for regional and local needs, variation is needed, we would want to accommodate that. The object is to get an effective regulatory regime that does not put obstacles in the way of companies operating across the country but permits local variation, if it is necessary.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I know that there are other topics that we need to discuss and I apologise for intervening, but it looks as if we are moving inevitably towards a separate regime, with a Scottish and a Northern Ireland Security Industry Authority operating as the Security Industry Authority in the UK does at present and a move to a completely different regulatory regime in England. Is that not absolutely daft? It will create huge problems for the security industry. Why are we doing it? Would it not be better to accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, the Security Industry Authority, all the people in the security industry and the Scottish and Northern Irish Parliaments have said, and stick to the present arrangement? Why are the Government so determined to change, when no money is going to be saved and no advantage will be given? Also, I hope that at some point the Minister will answer the question asked by my noble friend Lord Kennedy. If it is so important to keep the authority going for the Olympics, does not that undermine the whole argument for changing at all?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

To take the noble Lord’s last point, I do not think that it follows that, because one decides not to make a change before a big event, there is no case for change at all. It does not follow at all. It is a sensible thing not to institute change immediately before a big event. However, it does not follow that no change is possible or desirable.

On the noble Lord’s other point, I think that he is jumping to conclusions. It is not our impression that the attitude of the Scottish Government is as negative as he fears it may be. We are in consultation and I do not think that what I said indicated that we were suddenly leaping to entirely different regimes. We are going to have consultation; we believe that it will be possible to have a national regime. We may need, and it may be fitting, to have a certain amount of local variation. However, as I say, that is an area that is still being consulted about. We will work for a sensible outcome and we want one that fits the needs of all UK Administrations.

Some noble Lords raised the issue of wheel clamping. I should mention it briefly. As was rightly mentioned, the Government are taking measures to regulate this area, which include the abolition of the right to clamp and tow away on private land. This legislation will be put into effect through the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The ban will end the abuse by devious firms and their employees who prey on motorists with signage, excessive fees and unscrupulous towing. That regime is going to come to an end, which obviously means that the power does not need to be included in the new regulatory regime.

The noble Baroness asked whether we were also going to cover parking tickets. That is not an SIA issue. It is regulated by the Department for Transport and the DVLA, so it lies outside the scope of this piece of legislation.

The SIA had already proposed the move to a more self-regulatory model before the Government took this issue on. It is in the spirit of building on that that we want to proceed. If the amendment were accepted, it would create an administrative anomaly that would deliver, in our view, no benefits to the public, even after the SIA had successfully implemented its plans to transition to the new regulatory regime. We are endeavouring to work in close co-operation with the existing authority on a transition to a regime that we hope the authority itself will feel fulfils the job, so I hope that, on that basis, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, before my noble friend decides what to do with this amendment, I should like to ask a question. I understood the noble Baroness to say that, at the final stage of this, we will need further primary legislation. If that is the case, I do not understand her last point. Why do we need to include the SIA in this Bill if we are going to deal with it later in primary legislation?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

Having removed the basis for the present regime, we obviously need to have a basis for the new regime.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am utterly perplexed at the end of this very good debate. We have a regime which was introduced seven years ago at the behest of the police and the industry itself—the good elements of the industry—as well as Parliamentarians. The Minister herself has said that standards have been raised as a consequence of this good regime; it is working well throughout the United Kingdom. Usually, when there are demands for a regulatory body to be disbanded, it is because the industry itself wants it to be disbanded or because of an exorbitant cost. It seems to me that there is no cost in this; the industry is very happy to meet the bills and is content with the present situation. It looks very much as though the Government are tinkering around the edges—forgive me if it sounds rude—and they are tinkering with a system which is working well and that everybody is content with. I simply do not understand why we are dealing with this issue now.

I recognise, as the noble Baroness has said, that the industry is content to have a phased transition, but it seems to be a complex way of going about things. I do not feel at all reassured by what she has said this evening. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the interaction between the security industry and the prison service—which, if I had thought about it, I would have been dismayed and concerned about—makes me even more concerned about the proposal before us today. The noble Baroness has talked about the need for transition and has said that consultation is already taking place. She has also said that primary legislation will be needed for a new body, so I am slightly perplexed as to what we are doing now. Notwithstanding that, I am content to withdraw my amendment now, but I will certainly bring back an amendment on Report.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, there are hazards in going away from London in the middle of a Bill. Rapid developments sometimes change the situation. I rise to move this amendment in the knowledge, which I should share with the House, that—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

We were not planning on proceeding further tonight.

[Lord Judd]

I am so sorry.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 11.11 pm.