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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
1. What recent representations he has received on his proposals to create fewer and more equally sized constituencies.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
The last representation that I received on this matter was from Parliament, to say that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 received Royal Assent on 16 February, and I am sure that many Members of this House and the other place were grateful that it did.
Gavin Barwell
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics last Wednesday showed that on 1 December the Wirral—represented in this House by four Members of Parliament—had 239,000 electors, whereas my borough of Croydon, with just three MPs, had 243,000 electors. Can my hon. Friend tell me when the boundary commissions will publish their draft proposals to deal with this shocking injustice?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend puts his finger on exactly why it was necessary to have more equally sized constituencies across the country, so that voters will have equal weight when they cast their votes. He will know that the boundary commissions have to report finally to Ministers by 1 October 2013. We expect that they will set out their initial proposals some time this year, but that is a matter for the independent boundary commissions.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Democratic Audit has said that equalising constituency sizes will lead to chaotic boundaries. Does the Minister think that the Deputy Prime Minister—or, to be more precise, his immediate successor in 2015—will be happy representing not only parts of Fullwood and Broom Hill, but Glossop, 20 miles away?
Mr Harper
I simply do not agree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The 2011 Act provides for a spread of plus or minus 5% of the quota, which is quite a significant number—around 8,000 electors—so that the boundary commissions can take into account all the traditional things, such as local ties and local government boundaries, but ultimately they have to deliver constituencies of more equal size. At the moment, constituencies can vary by over 50%, which is simply not right.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
2. What plans he has to introduce a power for electors in a constituency to recall their elected Member of Parliament.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
5. What plans he has to introduce a power for electors in a constituency to recall their elected Member of Parliament.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
7. When he plans to publish his proposals to allow electors in a constituency to recall their elected Member of Parliament.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
The Government are committed to bringing forward legislation to introduce a power to recall Members of Parliament. We are currently considering what would be the fairest, and most appropriate and robust, procedure, and we will make a statement soon setting out our plans to establish a recall mechanism.
Nadhim Zahawi
Will the Government’s proposals provide a definition of serious wrongdoing, enabling voters to know clearly what could trigger a recall? That is important in providing clarity about what voters can do.
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is exactly right: that is precisely the kind of detail that we need to get right in the Bill. In some cases it is clear: if someone is sentenced to prison for 12 months or more they are automatically disqualified already, under the present rules. There is certainly a case for removing that 12-month cut-off line. If someone is imprisoned for any period, it seems to me that there is a strong case for disqualifying them. The key problem is when wrongdoings do not lead to a prison sentence, and that is exactly why we would want to engage the House authorities, to provide a means by which they could be clearly proven.
Chris Skidmore
In other countries that already have a right of recall, there is a significant annual cost in having departments to administer public petitions. Has the Minister considered making an impact assessment of the annual cost of introducing such a measure?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend may know, we want the recall mechanism to be based on two simple steps: first, proof that wrongdoing has been committed, as I explained in answer to the previous question; and secondly, a petition by at least 10% of the electors to trigger a by-election in the constituency concerned. That is slightly different from some of the models to which my hon. Friend referred, in California and elsewhere, where there is a much more open-ended process.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House whether he still believes that MPs should be recalled for breaking their promises—and if he does, how many Liberal Democrat MPs does he expect would be subject to that system?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The recall mechanism—as supported, I think, in the manifestos of all three parties—is for serious wrongdoing, as I explained in answer to previous questions.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am not quite sure that that is right, is it? Did not the Liberal Democrat manifesto say that people would be given the right to sack MPs who had broken the rules? The question then is: who gets to decide who has broken the rules? If, as the right hon. Gentleman says, it is the courts, that is a fairly straightforward process. However, if it was left up to voters, might they not think that if someone promised 3,000 more police officers and then cut 10,000, or promised not to raise VAT and then put it up by 2.5%, they had broken the rules?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As I said before, wrongdoing has clearly been committed if someone is given a prison sentence, and I think that any prison sentence of any length should disqualify MPs. Otherwise, we clearly need to establish a mechanism here in the House to prove serious wrongdoing, and only once that has been established would we grant electors the right, following a petition of 10% of the electors, to trigger a by-election—[Interruption.] I think that the hon. Gentleman is asking from a sedentary position whether that mechanism should be without any kind of filtering here in the House. The honest truth is that if we did it like that, and had a sort of free-for-all, there would be a real danger of a lot of vexatious and unjustified claims being made against one Member by others.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Will extreme care be taken in the drafting of the legislation to ensure that in absolutely no circumstances will a recall of a Member of Parliament be possible because of the way in which a Member votes or speaks—however objectionably—or because he changes party, as Winston Churchill did on two occasions?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We certainly would not want a recall mechanism that would have disqualified Winston Churchill. Precisely for the reasons that my hon. Friend has alluded to, we need to ensure that the system contains checks and balances so that it does not impinge on the freedom of Members on both sides of the House to speak out and articulate our views. That will not be the purpose of the recall mechanism. Its purpose will be to bear down on serious wrongdoing and to give people a chance to have their say in their own constituencies without having to wait until the next election for an opportunity to do so.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
4. What estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of holding constituency boundary reviews every five years.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
Our current estimate of the costs of undertaking a boundary review under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 is £11.2 million. We are currently working on that estimate to update it to take into account all the changes made to that legislation in the later stages of its progress through Parliament.
Steve Rotheram
Although it appears that the Deputy Prime Minister has calculated the cost of the changes in pound notes, he does not have a clue about the social cost of his plans, which will lead to the fragmentation of communities as new constituencies cut through historical, political and cultural boundaries simply to achieve his arbitrary arithmetical norm. Does the Minister not wish that he had simply decoupled that part of the Bill to secure his miserable little compromise?
Mr Harper
I do not agree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. There is a 10% margin, plus or minus 5%, within which the independent boundary commissions can take account of factors such as local ties and local government boundaries, but it has to be right that constituencies should be more equal in size. In the part of the world that the hon. Gentleman represents voters have more weight in the House of Commons than they should, compared with those in other parts of the country, and that is simply not right.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Does the Minister not agree that holding a boundary review every five years will be a recipe for chaos and uncertainty, given that the number of seats allocated in each country within the United Kingdom could change in that period? That would create great uncertainty among local electors, local authorities and local communities, who will not know what constituency they are going to be in. That will have a direct impact on the make-up of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
Mr Harper
There is a choice: we can have either infrequent boundary reviews, which would be more disruptive, or more frequent ones, which—all other things being equal—would be smaller. Clearly the first boundary review, with a change in the rules that will result in a reduction in the number of seats in the House from 650 to 600, will be a fairly significant one. After that, however, boundary reviews will simply reflect the movements of the electorate, and I think that that will be a much less disruptive process.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
6. What progress he is making on proposals for the reform of the House of Lords.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
The cross-party Committee, which I chair, has been considering proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. The Government will publish a draft Bill shortly, which will then be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government hope that that will be carried out by a Joint Committee of both Houses.
Paul Blomfield
I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for that answer. Will the proposals include a fulfilment of the Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment to a fully elected House of Lords?
The Deputy Prime Minister
From what the hon. Gentleman has said, I take it that he supports 100% election to the other place, which is a great advance on the 0% of elected Members that the Labour Government delivered over the past 13 years. My party’s manifesto was very clear about a fully elected House of Lords, so it is no secret that that would be my preference, but as I have explained, we want to proceed with this process on a cross-party basis as much as possible. That is why I have been chairing the cross-party Committee, and why I would like all the proposals in the draft Bill to be subjected to rigorous scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses. My preference is clear, but all I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that, given the fact that the reform of the other place has been stalled for about 150 years, there is always a danger of making the best the enemy of the good.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister said that it had taken 150 years to get to this stage. May I urge him to take another 150 years before we have to vote?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for the simple reason that a principle is at stake—that those who make the laws of the land should be accountable, as is common to bicameral systems across the democratic world, to the people who have to abide by those laws. That is a simple principle. As he knows, we are committed by the coalition agreement to introducing legislation for a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords. As I said, we shall publish a Bill shortly, and it will then be subject to extensive scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister has just confirmed what he said at the last Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, which is that he has not made up him mind whether the draft Bill will keep his promise to have a 100% fully elected second Chamber, or whether there will only be a partially elected one.
On another issue of timing, the Deputy Prime Minister has said that he will publish the draft Bill shortly. Before the general election he said that a Bill would be published within six to seven weeks of a new Parliament being formed, and the coalition agreement said that one would be published by December 2010. I know that he is a busy, hard-working Deputy Prime Minister, so when exactly can we expect to see this draft Bill, and what is the reason for the delay?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I profess to being a little surprised, given that the right hon. Gentleman sat in the cross-party Committee that I chair, and I seem to remember that our last meeting was shortly before Christmas. He may profess ignorance of this matter, but he knows very well that the Committee, which I think has been proceeding in a methodical, co-operative and cross-party manner to try to create a cross-party consensus, concluded its work only relatively recently. He attended the last meeting shortly before Christmas, and we are now doing the work in government, which is entirely reasonable, to present a draft Bill based on that Committee’s work—and as I said, we shall do that shortly.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on the full range of Government policies and initiatives. Within that, I take special responsibility for this Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.
Kelvin Hopkins
We have heard that while the Prime Minister was touring the middle east, the Deputy Prime Minister was skiing in the Alps. Does that suggest that the Prime Minister prefers to have the Foreign Secretary in charge, rather than leave the Deputy Prime Minister running the shop?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As for the events of last week, I am sure everyone will agree that we should all pay tribute to the extraordinary courage and professionalism of the armed services personnel who did so much—last week, again this weekend and ongoing now—to secure the safe return of British citizens from Libya, which was the first priority of the Government throughout last week. In the end, I spent just short of two days—two working days—away last week, but as soon as it became obvious that I was needed here, I returned.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
T3. Can my right hon. Friend please tell me what steps he is taking to restore the public’s faith in politics, and in their Members of Parliament?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Our whole constitutional reform programme is directed towards restoring the public’s faith in politics, and in their MPs. That is why we have legislated to give people a choice in the electoral system for the House of Commons. We have also legislated to introduce more evenly sized constituencies so that people feel they are equally represented in the House of Commons. As was discussed earlier, we will introduce a recall mechanism so that when an MP is found to have committed serious wrongdoing, a by-election can be held. We will introduce a statutory register of lobbyists, and our plans for fixed-term Parliaments will mean that Prime Ministers can no longer manipulate the timing of general elections for their own party’s advantage. Finally, our plans for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber will mean that the people, not the Prime Minister, will have a role in determining how our legislatures work.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister back to the Dispatch Box. At least today it has not slipped his mind that he is Deputy Prime Minister. May I follow up on the question asked by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)? The Deputy Prime Minister talked about how the Lib Dems represent trust in politics—a politics that keeps its promises. Will he remind the House what he promised at the general election about police numbers?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the right hon. and learned Lady knows very well, this Government have the unenviable, difficult task of clearing up the unholy mess that she left. I know that she and her colleagues want to live in complete denial, but because of the mistakes and economic incompetence of the Labour Government, we are spending £120 million, every single day of every single week, simply to pay off the interest on her debts. That is why, as the outgoing Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, “There’s no money left.” Unfortunately, when there is no money left, we must make savings across the public services.
Ms Harman
But that has not stopped the Government spending £100 million on elected police commissioners, and the Deputy Prime Minister has not answered the question; perhaps it has slipped his memory again. May I remind him? He promised 3,000 more police, and he has voted for 10,000 fewer police. Is the problem not just his forgetting that he is Deputy Prime Minister, but that he has forgotten every promise he ever made? Is he aware that his complete betrayal on tuition fees, VAT, the NHS and the police has led to a new word in the English language: if someone has been the victim of a total sell-out, we say that they have been “clegged”? Is he proud of that?
The Deputy Prime Minister
What an extraordinarily laboured question! The right hon. and learned Lady may have forgotten that her party promised an emergency Budget some time soon, and £14 billion of cuts starting in a few weeks. She complains about the difficult decisions that we are having to take, yet I have not heard her and her colleagues make a single suggestion about how to fill the enormous black hole in the public finances that they left to us to sort out.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
T5. Will my right hon. Friend agree to consider extending the terms of the Protection of Freedoms Bill to give stronger powers to the Information Commissioner to fine internet companies who misuse people’s personal data? Does he not agree that we need an internet Bill of Rights to stop the advance of the privatised surveillance society?
The Deputy Prime Minister
This is a very important issue. As it happens, since April last year the Information Commissioner has had the power to impose a penalty of up to half a million pounds for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act, and that applies to internet companies who misuse personal data. The commissioner can also serve information notices and enforcement notices, apply for warrants, pursue prosecutions and accept undertakings. As my hon. Friend may know, the commissioner has issued a code of practice for collecting personal information online. Finally, he might be interested to know that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are working on updating the relevant regulations and are considering extending the powers of the Information Commissioner and the sanctions available when privacy is breached.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
T2. Will the Deputy Prime Minister give the House his definition of front-line policing? If he cannot, does he understand that the House will have great difficulty in believing that he can protect essential services?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Actually, I think that one of the problems in policing, as is widely recognised, has been that there are not enough police officers out on the front line, on the beat, in our communities. By some estimates, only 11% of police officers are out and about in our communities at any one time. Yes, we are having to deal with financial pressures because of the reasons that I explained earlier, but at the same time we must reform policing to minimise the amount of time that police officers allocate to work in the back office, and to ensure that they are free to be out on the streets, which is where we want them, for as much time as possible.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
T7. In a sample of more than 80 immigration cases coming through my constituency, more than 15% of those involved were found to be on the electoral roll when they had no entitlement to be there. Does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that urgent, immediate steps are needed to introduce positive voter identification?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I strongly agree that we must introduce measures to tackle electoral fraud. As my hon. Friend may know, we have announced that we will legislate to speed up the introduction of individual electoral registration to before the next general election, in 2014. Under that new scheme each person will have to register individually, whereas the current system is registration by household, and they will be asked to provide personal identifiers, including their national insurance number, to enable registration officers to verify the identity of a person before they are added to the register. That should tackle fraudulent or inaccurate register entries, which my hon. Friend rightly highlights.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab /Co-op)
T4. Before the election the Deputy Prime Minister said that providing more police was “the only way to create safer streets.” Now the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice says that there is no link between crime and police numbers. Which is it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As I explained in answer to an earlier question, of course we want the police officers who are available to be out on the streets as much as possible. It is true that this is partly a question of resources—[Interruption.] Nothing is possible when there is no money. It was the outgoing Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury who said, “There’s no money left.” Those were not our words; they were his words.
We cannot provide for our schools, hospitals and police forces unless we have money. Because of the mistakes made by the hon. Lady’s party, we are pouring £120 million down the drain every single day simply to pay off the interest on her party’s debts. That is the problem that we face. At the same time, we need to reform policing to ensure that police officers can spend as much time as possible out on the beat rather than behind their desks.
Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
T8. In both Nantwich and Crewe, and in the surrounding rural areas, many people feel strongly that the current planning system is not on their side, particularly when it comes to wind turbines, mobile phone masts and overdevelopment. Can my right hon. Friend tell me what the Government are doing to improve the situation?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The basic principle is that we want people to feel that they have a stake in the planning system rather than feeling that things are being done to them. That is why, in the Localism Bill and in further measures that we wish to take, we are introducing new powers enabling local communities and neighbourhoods to determine for themselves what kind of decisions they want to be pursued in their areas, if necessary by triggering local referendums. For too long planning has been obscure, difficult to understand, very technocratic and highly over-centralised, and that is what we will be trying to change in the coming years.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
T6. The first Deputy Prime Minister in British history to fail to turn up for work when the Prime Minister has gone abroad for a week! I think what I want to ask is, “What is the point of Nick Clegg?”
The Deputy Prime Minister
That was another much-rehearsed question. [Interruption.] I merely sigh at the laborious way in which these questions have been rehearsed and over-rehearsed.
The Prime Minister was away on an official trip. The fact that the Prime Minister is away on an official trip does not mean that he is not the Prime Minister any more. When the chief executive of a company goes on a business trip, he is still the chief executive. When the manager of a football club attends an away game, he is still the manager. As I sought to explain earlier, last week I was away for just under two working days, and I returned as soon as it became clear that I was needed back here.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T9. The pilot for the public reading stage of the Protection of Freedoms Bill is an innovative way of opening up the legislative process to the public. In that context, can my right hon. Friend update the House on progress on the delivery of a mechanism allowing formal parliamentary debate of petitions bearing at least 100,000 signatures?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is working on a proposal to deliver precisely what my hon. Friend has described: the ability of people who petition the House to ensure that their demands are heard on the Floor of the House of Commons. That is one of a number of innovations that will open up the way in which we scrutinise legislation and allow the public, as well as ourselves, to have a say in how we do it.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
How will the boundary reviews take the 2011 census into account, given that the preliminary results will not be available until the middle of next year?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady may know, we are basing the boundary reviews on the electoral register rather than the census. That has been standard practice for a long time, and we do not intend to change it.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
What action can the Deputy Prime Minister take to ensure that local authorities make every effort to ensure that young people find their way on to the electoral roll?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is a vital issue of concern for all Members on both sides of the House that those who are not registered should be registered. One step that we will soon be piloting is to allow electoral registration officers to compare their databases with other publicly available databases, so that they can literally go from door to door and say, “You’re on this database, but you’re not on that one,” and thereby encourage people to register. Drawing international comparisons, our registration rates of just over 90% are pretty respectable, but of course we want to continue to do whatever we can to raise that standard even further.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Birmingham city council will today vote through the biggest local government cuts in history, with cuts of £212 million for next year. Two weeks ago the council’s deputy leader, Liberal Democrat Councillor Paul Tilsley, wrote to The Times protesting against the cuts, but 24 hours later he signed the budget. As the Deputy Prime Minister believes in restoring faith in politics, how would he describe the actions of Councillor Tilsley, or is he too on a slippery slope?
The Deputy Prime Minister
All local authorities of whatever political persuasion are clearly facing a very tough local government finance settlement, and we have never hidden the fact that it is extremely difficult. I think there is a great deal of discretion in how local councils can respond to those same pressures, however. For example, I am very struck by the fact that in Sheffield, the city where I am an MP, the Liberal Democrat council has kept every library and swimming pool open and has not made any major cuts to adult social services, and only 270 people will be laid off next year, whereas across the Pennines in Labour-controlled Manchester, 2,500 people have been laid off and almost everything has been closed across the whole city. In Birmingham, as in all great cities, difficult decisions are being made, and I trust that they are being made in a way that safeguards the services for the most vulnerable in that city.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I too welcome the excellent innovation of a public reading stage for the Protection of Freedoms Bill, to involve the public in the law-making process. Can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that the Government intend ultimately to extend that process of public engagement to all Bills? Will they also consider improving it even further—for example, by putting a Bill’s explanatory notes on the consultation website and considering the public’s suggestions at Committee stage?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend may know, using the Protection of Freedoms Bill as the first pilot for providing the public with a public reading stage is precisely that: a pilot. We must learn the lessons from that, and see whether a public reading stage sufficiently engages people and makes the whole legislative process accessible to the public. If it does prove to be successful, and if we can make all the technical adjustments that might be needed work, then yes of course, in principle we would like to see this extended to all other pieces of legislation and draft Bills.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry but demand has exceeded supply as usual, and we must now move on.
Mr Speaker
I call Tom Harris to ask Question 1. He is not here, so I call Hugh Bayley.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
2. What the policy of the Serious Fraud Office is on seeking costs from those convicted as a result of a prosecution brought by the office.
The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
The SFO considers costs in all criminal proceedings where a conviction is secured.
Hugh Bayley
I am extremely pleased about the change of policy in the case of the British Aerospace contract in Tanzania, for which costs were sought and paid. Will the Attorney-General make sure that costs are always sought where there is a conviction? At a time of very tight public expenditure, it is important for the SFO to get income from wherever it can in order to investigate and prosecute such cases.
The Attorney-General
I entirely agree that costs should normally be sought. Of course there may be instances where that is simply not appropriate, such as where the defendant is destitute or penniless and it is clear that a cost order will serve no purpose—and, indeed, a court is unlikely to make one. Subject to that, however, it is the normal policy that where a conviction is secured, costs are sought.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
3. What plans the Crown Prosecution Service has to improve the effectiveness of prosecution policy in human trafficking cases.
The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)
The CPS keeps the effectiveness of prosecution policy and guidance to prosecutors on human trafficking under review, and updates them on a regular basis. The CPS will soon publish a new public policy statement on human trafficking to explain the prosecutor’s role in such cases and the approach taken by the CPS.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Solicitor-General for his answer. In June 2010 there were 139 convictions for human trafficking. Will he write to me with an updated figure for such convictions?
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Attorney-General meet the officers of the all-party group on human trafficking, because one thing we have learned is that there is a considerable problem in prosecuting human trafficking cases and prosecutors often decide to pursue a lesser offence as it is easier to get a conviction?
The Solicitor-General
On the first point, both my right hon. and learned Friend and I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and the group at some mutually convenient time, and I look forward to doing so. On the second point, all successful prosecutions depend on bringing the available evidence to court. It is not only our policy, but that of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, that every assistance should be given to vulnerable witnesses, particularly those in cases of the sort that my hon. Friend describes, so that we can achieve prosecutions. We take this matter extremely seriously—indeed, I was in the Court of Appeal just before Christmas applying successfully to have an unduly lenient sentence increased.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But the Solicitor-General will be aware that often in human trafficking cases the victim is reluctant to give evidence or does not assist the progress of the case. Can he assure the House that in such cases, where the victim is more frightened of the police than she is of her abusers, the CPS is committed to carrying forward prosecutions wherever possible?
The Solicitor-General
Yes, I can. The hon. Lady is perfectly right to say that many victims of human trafficking come from countries and jurisdictions where the police are seen as oppressors, rather than as assistants to the criminal justice system and to victims. However, the CPS and this country’s police forces are acutely aware of that and are sensitive to the needs of those traumatised victims. I can assure her that everything will be done to assist the prosecution of traffickers, with or without the evidence of the victim.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The Solicitor-General will be aware of the recent legal challenge to the Government threatened by the POPPY project, the organisation that supports victims of trafficking. It is based on the Ministry of Justice’s failure to consult and to publish an equality impact assessment on the proposed funding cuts, which the POPPY project claims breaches the Council of Europe convention against human trafficking. Given the High Court’s recent damning verdict on the way in which the Department for Education cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme and given the Fawcett Society’s challenge relating to the disproportionate impact on women of the emergency Budget, will the Solicitor-General assure the House that Departments are aware of their duties to consult properly and consider rigorously equality impacts before decisions are made? Will he place a guidance note on the matter in the Library so that Parliament can better understand the obligations, thereby avoiding such abuses of power?
The Solicitor-General
The hon. Lady’s first paragraph or so would be better directed at the relevant Departments—the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education—but the points that she makes will doubtless have been noted. On the later points, I will certainly consider what she has to say and see whether it is appropriate to put such a note in the Library.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
5. If he will place in the Library a copy of the speech he made to Politeia on 14 February 2011.
The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
I did not make a formal speech during the Politeia event, so any comments I made were in response to points raised during a seminar. I therefore regret that I do not have any written record that can be placed in the Library.
Tony Baldry
The Attorney-General is reported as having said the following at the Politeia seminar:
“The court”—
the European Court of Human Rights—
“doesn’t have the last word. It only has the last word so far as parliament has decided that it should. We could, if we wanted to, undo that—I think we should always bear that in mind—and actually undo it without some of the consequences we have over the European Union.”
Did he say that? If so, what does it mean?
The Attorney-General
The question arose in the context of parliamentary sovereignty. What I said to the seminar was what I also said to this House on the previous Thursday, which was that the operation of the European convention on human rights and the jurisdiction of the Court are based on the UK having signed up to the convention in the late 1940s and having ratified it through Parliament, with Parliament thereby accepting the jurisdiction of the Court. It is legally open to Parliament to enact primary legislation or otherwise to withdraw from the convention if it wished to do so and if the Government wished that through Parliament. That was the point that I was making; I was simply trying to explain the legal framework under which parliamentary sovereignty works in this context. I would add that any withdrawal would not come without costs or consequences, and it is not Government policy to withdraw.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
6. What steps he is taking to ensure better co-ordination between the Crown Prosecution Service and police forces.
The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)
The Crown Prosecution Service and the police have a close working relationship. They are working together on returning the charging of some offences to the police, eradicating duplicated work and improving communications, making greater use of information technology through the service and delivery of electronic case files and providing a better service to victims and witnesses.
Andrew Selous
In 2010, more than a fifth of abandoned prosecutions were because of the CPS’s failure to review cases before they came to trial, which was extremely upsetting for the victims concerned. What steps can my hon. and learned Friend take to make sure that the police and the CPS work together more collaboratively and share information so that this does not happen so much in future?
The Solicitor-General
I commend my hon. Friend on his close interest, both within his county and nationally, in matters of this sort. Police charging of some offences will clearly help to cut time-wasting, as will doing away with the unnecessary duplication of case file preparation and the better use of IT. The police and the CPS need to co-operate and work together from a very early stage so that the gathering and assessment of evidence can be effectively and efficiently directed towards achieving justice.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Will the Minister advise the House what contact his Department has had with the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland, the public prosecutor, the Police Service for Northern Ireland and our Justice Minister to ensure that cases in our courts are processed expeditiously and that there is not a two-gear system in which cases in Northern Ireland progress considerably more slowly than in the rest of the United Kingdom?
The Solicitor-General
My right hon. and learned Friend and I meet and speak to the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland from time to time, but the hon. Gentleman will understand that the justice system in Northern Ireland is devolved to Northern Ireland and that it would not be right for us to interfere in its day-to-day work.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
My hon. and learned Friend will be aware that one problem faced by the CPS is that there often is not sufficient time for those who have the charge of cases to review them, partly because they have to spend so much time on administration. What steps is he taking to ensure that changes?
The Solicitor-General
I am not sure that the picture my hon. and learned Friend paints is of general application, although I am sure it is true in some cases. Certainly, the Attorney-General’s office and the senior management of the CPS, from the Director of Public Prosecutions downwards, are determined to ensure that we have a system of prosecution that is not only just but efficient and effective.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
How can the CPS and the police work together better to persuade courts not to give bail to persistent and prolific offenders? Nothing annoys the police more than regular offenders appearing before a court only to be released to commit offences while on bail.
The Solicitor-General
I understand the point of frustration that my hon. Friend raises. The Law Officers are not here to direct judges on what to do in any given case, but the CPS and the police need to co-operate to make sure that relevant evidence is put before the court so that it can make a decision based on its application of the facts to the law and the sort of cases to which my hon. Friend refers happen on fewer occasions.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
9. What steps he plans to take to ensure that the outcome of the comprehensive spending review will not have an adverse effect on the provision of services by witness care units.
The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
The Crown Prosecution Service is committed to ensuring that the provision of services by witness care units is protected. Future funding for witness care units will still be made from the CPS baseline budget along with the commitment that also comes from the Ministry of Justice. Consequently, the outcome of the comprehensive spending review will not have an adverse effect on the provision of those services.
The Attorney-General
It is my experience, from the importance that the Home Secretary attaches to ensuring that witnesses and victims are properly cared for, that she gives this matter considerable priority. I have not been made aware of anything that suggests that my Department’s work will be adversely affected in this area by anything being done by the police, but I will certainly raise the matter with my right hon. Friend. If she or I can provide the right hon. Gentleman with some reassurance, I am sure we will be happy to do so.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
1. What steps the Electoral Commission is taking to improve levels of voter registration among students.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The commission runs campaigns before every election to encourage electors to register to vote. These typically include activities targeted at students. The commission is running a public awareness campaign ahead of the May 2011 elections and referendum, which will include working with student unions and other student groups across the UK to promote awareness of the election and referendum and the voter registration deadline.
Nicky Morgan
In the Loughborough constituency, 12,000 students are studying at university, yet only 50% or so are on the electoral register. Registration is patchy among those in halls and those living out. It is important that students register to vote because for many of them this will be the first election in which they can vote. Is my hon. Friend happy that the Electoral Commission is providing specific guidance on the fact that they can be registered at their home and also where they are studying?
Mr Streeter
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are confident that all the information that students need is on the Electoral Commission website, but the role of local electoral registration officers, student unions and universities in getting that information across to students is critical.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The Electoral Commission has had discussions with the Deputy Prime Minister about the use of national data sources to aid registration levels. Does this extend to the use of the national insurance database, which contains rising 16-year-olds? Giving them early experience of electoral registration might improve subsequent levels of registration by students.
Mr Streeter
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I know that these matters are being discussed between the Deputy Prime Minister’s Department and the Electoral Commission. Hopefully, these discussions will come to a fruitful conclusion before too long.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
2. What steps the Electoral Commission plans to take to inform members of the public about the merits and demerits of the alternative vote system for elections to the House of Commons.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
5. What steps the Electoral Commission plans to take to provide information to voters on the forthcoming referendum on the alternative vote system for elections to the House of Commons.
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission plans to send an information booklet to each household in the United Kingdom. The booklet will include a factual description of the first-past-the-post and alternative vote systems. It will not comment on the merits of different electoral systems used for particular elections. That is a matter for the yes and no campaigns. The booklet will also include information on the devolved elections and how to register to vote, and will be supported by an advertising campaign.
Hugh Bayley
I have already seen some palpably false claims about the alternative vote system from the no campaign, which the yes campaign will obviously need to rebut, yet I note that it has been awarded only £380,000 to make its arguments, as of course has the no campaign, whereas a maximum of £600,000 was available. Is there any chance that the Electoral Commission will increase the funding equally to both sides?
Mr Streeter
Nobody has been awarded any money yet because nobody has been designated to run the yes and no campaigns. That will happen later in March. I am not aware of the specific figures that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but I will refer his comments to the Electoral Commission. If there is an opportunity to do more and do better, we will certainly take it.
Mr Streeter
I am happy to be able to reassure my hon. Friend on that point. As part of the development of the text for the core section of the information booklet, the commission consulted academic experts on electoral systems. These were Professor Colin Rallings of the university of Plymouth and Professor David Sanders of the university of Essex. The consultation was intended to ensure that the explanations of the first-past-the-post and alternative vote systems were accurate. The commission also consulted the Plain Language Commission to ensure that the text was as accessible as possible, and undertook research co-ordinated by the Central Office of Information to ensure that the text was understood by voters. This involved in-depth interviews with members of the public in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
3. What procedure exists for resolving disputes between the Church Commissioners and third parties over the ownership of property.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)
There is no set procedure for resolving disputes of property ownership. Each dispute is treated individually, having regard for the particular circumstances of the case.
Robert Halfon
In one of the villages in my constituency, just outside Harlow, a community group is in dispute with the local parish church over the ownership of a hall and its land. Does my hon. Friend agree that an arbitration service would surely be preferable to a costly court case in such matters, as the community group concerned does not have the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle?
Tony Baldry
In such instances, I suggest that mediation is always preferable. I understand that the Archdeacon of Harlow offered to act as a mediator but was turned down. I am a qualified and trained mediator, so if I was acceptable to Roydon parochial church council and the Dobbs Weir residents association, I would be willing, pro bono, to act as mediator.
Mr Speaker
We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as obviously is the House.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
4. What assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the adequacy of the time available for provision of information to the public on the forthcoming referendum on the alternative vote system for elections to the House of Commons.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The Electoral Commission believes that there is sufficient time for it to provide factual information to the public on the alternative vote and first-past-the-post voting systems and for campaigners to put across their arguments effectively. The commission has been preparing for the referendum since the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill was introduced in Parliament last summer.
Fiona Bruce
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his reply. However, in response to an earlier question he indicated that the Electoral Commission will not even designate the yes and no campaigns until the end of March, or thereabouts, leaving only April and five days in May for the campaigns. Is that really long enough?
Mr Streeter
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The designation of the yes and no campaigns will happen as soon as possible after 15 March—anyone can bid to become part of those campaigns before then—and in any event by 29 March. The Electoral Commission is confident that the campaign period is adequate for the purpose.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman condemn the outlandish and wholly fictitious claims being made by the no campaign about the costs of introducing the alternative vote if there is a yes vote? These include claims about voting machines, which the Electoral Commission has confirmed would not be necessary, about the cost of the referendum itself, which will be the same whichever campaign wins, and about the cost of an education campaign, which the commission has made quite clear would not be necessary. Will he deprecate those false claims?
Mr Streeter
I am delighted to say that it is not the role of the Electoral Commission to act as a referee between the yes and no campaigns. It is up to those campaigns to make their political arguments and rebut those with which they do not agree.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
6. How many former Roman Catholic priests have sought ordination in the Church of England since 2005; and if he will make a statement.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)
Figures held by the Archbishops Council show that in the past five years 14 former Roman Catholic priests have sought to be received into ordained ministry within the Church of England. As there is also discretion at diocesan level for acceptance into the ministry, not all candidates are centrally recorded, so the national figure is likely to be higher.
Bob Russell
National newspapers suggest that there is a one-way road leading from Canterbury to Rome. I have no brief for the established Church—I come from good non-conformist stock—but does the hon. Gentleman agree that more should be done to make it clear to those Roman Catholic priests who are unhappy that there is a welcome for them in the Church of England?
Tony Baldry
I say to my hon. Friend that there is a welcome for everyone in the Church of England. He makes a good point; national newspapers give the impression that there is a one-way street for disaffected Church of England priests going to the Roman Catholic Church, but that is certainly not the case. There are very good ecumenical relations between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, as was demonstrated by Pope Benedict’s recent visit to the UK. There is certainly two-way traffic, and long may that continue.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
7. What recent representations the Electoral Commission has received on its report on fraud in the 2010 elections.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The Electoral Commission published its report on cases of alleged electoral malpractice in 2010 on 16 February 2011 and has received no representations on it.
Mr Spellar
I will make one representation. The commission’s report stated that it was not aware at the time of any case reported to the police that affected the outcome of the election to which it related. In fact, there has been one case of alleged electoral malpractice resulting in prosecution and conviction, and court proceedings have been initiated in another case. Does that not make absolutely absurd the claim made in September by the Conservative party chair, Baroness Warsi, that the Conservatives failed to win an overall majority in the general election because of electoral fraud, predominantly within the Asian community, that benefited Labour? Does the Baroness not owe the Electoral Commission an apology for the slur on its oversight of electoral proceedings? Frankly, does she not owe an apology to the Labour party and the Asian community as well?
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission is not responsible for the comments of any politician in this country, I am delighted to say. The report on electoral fraud showed that there were 232 cases of alleged electoral malpractice in 2010, 137 of which required no further action. Sixty-eight cases remain under investigation; in 23 cases police advice was given; two cases resulted in a caution; and court proceedings were brought in two cases, resulting in one conviction.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The House will know that, regrettably, six individuals have been found guilty of election malpractice arising from personation and postal vote fraud in Peterborough in the past four years. What specific strategies are the Electoral Commission pursuing to concentrate on postal vote fraud?
Mr Streeter
The Electoral Commission has made recommendations to the Government about tightening up voter identification, and the Government are considering that report. Naturally, the Electoral Commission takes all allegations of fraud seriously, but it is a matter for the police to investigate each and every incident.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
8. What the policy of the Church of England is on the retention of freehold accommodation for clergy.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)
There is no single Church of England policy on the retention of freehold accommodation for clergy.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer, but does he not think that there should be such a policy in the light of what is happening in Christchurch at the moment? The vicarage adjoining the priory lies empty, but the diocese pays more than £2,000 a month to rent alternative accommodation, several miles from the priory, for the new priest in charge, who is quite willing to occupy the priory should the diocese be willing to allow that to happen. Will my hon. Friend convene a meeting, using his powers of mediation, to try to drum some common sense and economic sense into the diocese on that issue?
Tony Baldry
The Christchurch parsonage is a very large building, being twice the recommended size, and it is very expensive for the diocese to maintain and for the occupier to run. The diocese is looking to replace it with a more suitable property, and the newly appointed priest in charge has therefore simply been housed temporarily in a rented property. In this instance, I do not need to act as a mediator, because there is a perfectly good remedy. If the parochial church council is unhappy with what the diocese is doing, it can make representations that the Church Commissioners will have to consider.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
9. What recent discussions the Electoral Commission has had with Ministers on increasing the level of (a) registration and (b) turnout of electors resident outside the UK.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
The Electoral Commission meets Ministers regularly to discuss the delivery of elections and referendums, including how to ensure that all electors, whether overseas or in the UK, can cast their votes easily and securely.
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend will be aware of the shockingly low participation by overseas electors in UK elections. Of the potential 5.5 million British subjects living abroad, only about 15,000 are registered. What work has the Electoral Commission done on the implications of fixed-term Parliaments for sending out postal ballot papers significantly earlier in the electoral cycle, thereby improving the participation rate of overseas electors?
Mr Streeter
My hon. Friend is a consistent advocate of overseas voters. The Electoral Commission has done work on the issue and submitted representations to the Deputy Prime Minister as part of a comprehensive modernisation strategy for our electoral system. We wait to see what the Government will do with that report.
Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
As I am out knocking on doors just now in East Lothian, encouraging people who are not on the register to register, or those who are on the register to register for a postal vote, I am not always confident that the forms will be returned. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a freepost return facility on all the forms would increase participation and registration?
Mr Streeter
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her recommendation, which I shall certainly pass on to the Electoral Commission. I thought that that already happened. Obviously it does not, so I shall make representations, and we will write to her with our response.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
10. What discussions the Electoral Commission has had with electoral registration officers on their performance in respect of voter registration.
Mr Streeter
Since 2008, the Electoral Commission has monitored the performance of electoral registration officers in Great Britain against a set of standards, and it publishes an annual assessment of those standards which covers the key planning and management processes put in place by EROs. The Electoral Commission advises and works closely with EROs who do not meet these standards in order to improve their performance.
Sajid Javid
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer and welcome the steps that he has outlined. Should those steps not bear fruit, has the Electoral Commission considered any other, more directly interventionist actions that it could possibly take?
Mr Streeter
Once again, my hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Electoral Commission does work with EROs who underperform, but they remain at all times employees of the local authority, and the commission has no statutory power to intervene. It is of course a matter for this House whether we wish to consider further powers to enable the Electoral Commission to do an even better job.
Aid Reviews
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Government’s bilateral and multilateral aid reviews, which are published today.
The coalition Government’s decision to increase the UK’s aid budget to 0.7% of national income from 2013 reflects the values we hold as a nation. It is also firmly in Britain’s national interest, but this decision imposes on us a double duty to spend this money well. On my first day in office, I took immediate steps to make our aid as focused and effective as possible. I commissioned reviews of the Department for International Development’s bilateral programmes in developing countries and of the UK’s aid funding to international organisations. These reviews have been thorough, rigorous, evidence-based and scrutinised by independent development experts. They will fundamentally change the way in which aid is allocated.
Recent events in north Africa and the wider middle east have demonstrated why it is critical that the UK increases its focus on helping countries to build open and responsive political systems, tackle the root causes of fragility, and empower citizens to hold their Governments to account. It is the best investment we can make to avoid violence and protect the poorest and most vulnerable. In the middle east and north Africa, we are monitoring events closely and will respond as appropriate.
The bilateral aid review considered where and how we should spend UK aid. Each DFID country team was asked to develop a “results offer” setting out what they could achieve for poor people over the next four years. Each offer was underpinned by evidence, analysis of value for money, and a focus on girls and women. The results offers were scrutinised by more than 100 internal technical reviewers and a panel of independent experts. Ministers then considered the whole picture, deciding which results should be prioritised in each country. Consultation with civil society and other Government Departments was undertaken throughout.
As a result of the bilateral aid review, we will dramatically increase our focus on tackling ill health and killer diseases in poor countries, with a particular emphasis on immunisation, malaria, maternal and newborn health, extending choice to girls and women over when and whether they have children; and polio eradication. We will do more to tackle malnutrition, which stunts children’s development and destroys their life chances, and do more to get children, particularly girls, into school. We will put wealth creation at the heart of our efforts, with far more emphasis on giving poor people property rights and encouraging investment and trade in the poorest countries. We will deal with the root causes of conflict and help to build more stable societies, as people who live amidst violence have no chance of lifting themselves out of poverty. And we will help the poorest, who will be hit first and hardest by floods, drought and extreme weather—the effects of climate change.
As a result of this review, we have decided to focus British aid more tightly on the countries where Britain is well placed to have a significant long-term impact on poverty. By 2016, DFID will have closed significant bilateral programmes in 16 countries. This will be a phased process, honouring our existing commitments and exiting responsibly. These countries are China, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Moldova, Bosnia, Cameroon, Lesotho, Niger, Kosovo, Angola, Burundi, Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq and Serbia. This will allow us to focus our bilateral resources in the following 27 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, the occupied Palestinian territories, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Together, those countries account for three quarters of global maternal mortality, nearly three quarters of global malaria deaths and almost two thirds of children out of school. Many of them are affected by fragility and conflict, so we will meet the commitment made through the strategic defence and security review to spend 30% of British aid on supporting fragile and conflict-affected states, and to help some of the poorest countries in the world to address the root causes of their problems.
We will have three regional programmes in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, and an ongoing aid relationship with three aid-dependent overseas territories, namely St Helena, the Pitcairn Islands and Montserrat.
The multilateral aid review took a hard look at the value for money offered by 43 international funds and organisations through which the UK spends aid. It considered how effective each organisation was at tackling poverty. It provides a detailed evidence base on which Ministers can take decisions about where to increase funding, where to press for reforms and improvements, and in some cases where to withdraw taxpayer funding altogether. The 43 multilateral agencies fall into four broad categories.
First, I am delighted to tell the House that nine organisations have been assessed as providing very good value for the British taxpayer. They include UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, or GAVI, the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We will increase funding to those organisations, because they have a proven track record of delivering excellent results for poor people. Of course there is always room for improvement and we will still require strong commitments to continued reform and even better performance.
Funding for the next group of agencies—those rated as good or adequate value for money, such as the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation—will be accompanied by specific pressure from the UK for a series of reforms and improvements that we expect to see in the coming years.
We are placing four organisations in special measures and demanding that they improve their performance as a matter of urgency. Those organisations are UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the development programmes of the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the International Organisation for Migration. Those organisations offer poor value for money for UK aid, but they have a potentially critical niche development or humanitarian role that is not well covered elsewhere in the international system, or they contribute to broader UK Government objectives. We expect to see serious reforms and improvements in performance. We will take stock within two years and DFID’s core funding may be reconsidered if improvements are not made.
Finally, the review found that four agencies performed poorly or failed to demonstrate relevance to Britain’s development objectives. The review therefore concluded that it is no longer acceptable for taxpayers’ money from my Department to continue to fund them centrally. I can therefore tell the House today that the British Government will withdraw their membership of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, and that DFID will stop voluntary core funding to UN-Habitat, the International Labour Organisation and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. That will allow more than £50 million of taxpayers’ money to be redirected immediately to better performing agencies. We are working closely with other countries to build a coalition for ambitious reform and improvement of all multilateral agencies.
As a result of the reviews, over the next four years British aid will secure schooling for 11 million children, which is more than we educate throughout the UK, but at 2.5% of the cost; vaccinate more children against preventable diseases than there are people in England; provide access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation to more people than there are in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined; save the lives of 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth; stop 250,000 newborn babies dying needlessly; support 13 countries to hold freer and fairer elections; and help 10 million women to access modern family planning.
I believe that those results, which will transform the lives of millions of people across the world, will make everyone in the House and this country proud. They reflect our values as a nation—generosity, compassion and humanity. However, those results are not only delivered from the British people; they are for the British people. They contribute to building a safer, more stable and more prosperous world, which in turn helps to keep our country safe from instability, infectious disease and organised crime.
Aid can perform miracles, but it must be well spent and properly targeted. The UK’s development programme has now been reshaped and refocused so that it can meet that challenge. I commend this statement to the House.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for giving me advance copies of it.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s declaration that our aid programme is both morally right and in our national interest. As he argues against those who decry aid, he will have our strong support. This is not just about charity; it is about justice, tackling global inequality and fulfilling our responsibilities to the world. We put development at the heart of our agenda because we believe we must struggle for a fairer and more equal world.
As things change in the world, as we are seeing in north Africa and the middle east, it is right to review our aid programme, but what should not and must not change is the commitment to spend 0.7% of our national income on aid by 2013. There must be no slipping back on that. Will the Secretary of State tell the House when he will bring forward the Bill to put that promise into law?
Will the Secretary of State campaign vigorously to show that our aid matters and saves lives? The girls and boys sitting in classrooms in Nepal, the Nigerian women who no longer have to walk miles to fetch water and the millions of children who no longer die from preventable disease are proof of that. Is not that the way to build support for aid, rather than by announcing as “new” decisions that we had already made? Will the Secretary of State admit that there is nothing new about ending significant bilateral aid to Russia? We ended it in 2007. Grand gestures of shutting down already closed programmes create a misleading picture of aid and undermine rather than support it. He should know better. As tackling poverty depends greatly on trade as well as aid, will he implement the Bribery Act 2010 now?
Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that after 13 years in which the Labour Government tripled the aid budget, reversing the cuts of the previous Tory Government, this country led the world in tackling global poverty? Is he not concerned that that leadership, which is so important during a global economic downturn, is undermined by his decision to freeze the percentage of aid as a share of national income for the next two years? Can he tell the House how many lives will be lost and how many fewer children will go to school because of the lost £2.2 billion in aid?
Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will protect his Department from raids by other Government Departments? DFID’s budget is for the world’s poorest, and he must not let other Government Departments use his budget as a source of cash. Will he reclaim the £1.8 million that he gave to fund the Pope’s visit? That was not tackling global poverty, nor was his Department’s loan of £161 million to the Turks and Caicos Islands. He has to be strong and stop his ministerial colleagues using DFID as a hole in the wall.
In our 2009 White Paper, we recognised the need to help people who suffer the twin problems of grinding poverty and living in an area ravaged by violence. It is right that we co-ordinate our development, diplomatic and security efforts, but our aid programme must not become subsumed in our military and security objectives. Of course, in places such as Yemen it is right that our aid efforts complement our foreign and security policy objectives where they can. We are absolutely committed to upholding our security and countering terrorism, but that must be the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Will the Secretary of State confirm that poverty reduction will remain the focus of DFID money?
I welcome the Government’s continuation of Labour’s commitment to the international co-ordination of aid through multilateral organisations, and in particular the Secretary of State’s reaffirmation of the EU’s work, but will he reconsider his decision on the ILO?
The Secretary of State’s men-only ministerial team talk a lot about how they will empower women in the developing world. Why, then, has he still not decided how much he will contribute to the new UN women’s agency? Why should the women of the world have to wait for the men in his Government to put their money where their mouth is?
On bilateral aid, we welcome the focus on setting aid objectives for each country, but did the recipient countries play a part in that? Will the Secretary of State continue the spirit of the 2005 Paris declaration, which put the developing country in the driving seat and did so much to end the problematic post-colonial relationship between donor and recipient countries? Will he confirm that the decisions to cut aid to very poor countries such as Niger and Lesotho involved co-ordination with other donor countries, to ensure that our decisions do not leave them high and dry? Will he also explain his decision to end aid to Burundi, where there is deep poverty, and which is in the great lakes region, where there is still instability?
I welcome the Secretary of State’s continuation of the previous Labour Government’s focus on results and value for money. We made progress towards the millennium development goals, such as cutting maternal mortality and increasing child survival. To say that that was wasting money is an insult to all those who worked on those programmes, and it is to deny the value of those lives that were saved. I hope we will hear no more of that.
With more than 1 billion people still living in poverty, the Secretary of State is right to recognise that there is a long way to go. As Secretary of State for International Development, he will have the Opposition’s support. We will back him in his work if he keeps faith with British generosity and our duty to the world’s poor.
Mr Mitchell
I think I will take that as qualified support for the Government’s position.
The right hon. and learned Lady emphasises that it is morally right and in our national interests to stand by the very strong commitments that have been made by all parties in the House, which I welcome. We made it absolutely clear when we took office that in sorting out the dreadful economic inheritance we received from the Labour Government, we would not balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world, and we honour that promise today. On that point, let me make it clear to her that the legislation agreed before the election in support of the 0.7% pledge from 2013 will come before the House as soon as the parliamentary business managers can find a convenient time.
Let me make it clear that I have cut back the programmes in Russia and China that we inherited. The programme in Russia will be completed by the end of April, and the programme in China will be completed by the end of March, but the coalition Government have made the decision to rein back those programmes—we inherited a continuing programme.
I should make it clear to the right hon. and learned Lady that support came in equal proportions from a number of British Government Departments involved with the Pope’s visit, but that included DFID because, as she will be aware, the Catholic Church and its organisations deliver health care and education in some of the most difficult parts of the world, and DFID has a very strong relationship with the Church on that basis. However, let me put her mind at rest: my Department’s share of the cost of the visit did not come out of the 0.7% budget or the official development assistance budget.
The right hon. and learned Lady also asks whether other Departments are raiding the DFID budget. She should know, because we have made it absolutely clear, that we will stand by the OECD development assistance committee definition of what is and is not aid. We stand by that, and it governs what can and cannot be spent by the British taxpayer under the ODA budget.
The right hon. and learned Lady referred to the guarantee that has been so skilfully negotiated in the Turks and Caicos Islands by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. The islands are a dependent territory, and we stand by our dependent territories—she will be aware that that is one of the first commitments in the International Development Act 2002. However, thanks to my right hon. Friend’s skill, we have negotiated a guarantee while they sort themselves out, rather than funding from the British taxpayer.
The right hon. and learned Lady asked whether we would reconsider our decision about the ILO. I emphasise to the House that the decision came from a recommendation in the multilateral aid review, which I strongly encourage her to look at, and in which the professional analysis reads:
“The ILO has a wide range of organisational weaknesses including weak cost control and results reporting”
and
“limited transparency”.
It continued:
“We will consider, on a case by case basis, funding the ILO in country on specific projects—provided it represents good value for money and is consistent with UK poverty reduction goals”.
That is a fair analysis. However, I invite hon. Members who do not agree with it to have a look at the multilateral aid review and reach their own conclusions. I want to emphasise that the four elements of a decent work agenda—employment, social protection, labour standards and social dialogue—form a core part of my Department’s work in this area, and will continue to do so.
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman mentions trade unions from a sedentary position. Let me make it clear that the trade unions, for the work they do, will be able to apply to the global poverty action fund, and I look forward to their doing so.
The right hon. and learned Lady made three other points. The first related to support for the new United Nations women’s agency. The Government strongly support the agency and argued for it to be set up. One of my noble Friends was there last week, and I saw Michelle Bachelet, the brilliant new head of UN Women, on—I think—her first day in office. We have offered her staff in order to assist in her tasks, and when she comes forward with a strategic plan in July, I have no doubt that we will be able to fund it. We will urge other countries to share the burden appropriately, but we will be very strong supporters of what she is doing.
The right hon. and learned Lady asked me about Niger and whether I would confirm that other donors were involved in the decision. We decided that it was not appropriate to keep a bilateral programme in Niger. Other donors were certainly involved in the decision. Much of the work that is being done in Niger, which she will know is an enormously food-insecure part of the world, is done on a multilateral basis. Last year, I agreed specific support on a humanitarian basis to feed 810,000 people, including 35,500 children suffering from acute malnutrition. Some 81,000 families received seeds, and we sent specific support for 15,000 livestock, which of course is very important to people continuing their lives. We are very much engaged in Niger on a humanitarian basis, but we look to other countries to share the burden, and we strongly support the multilateral architecture in addressing the situation in Niger.
The right hon. and learned Lady also asked about Burundi. We have completed our work on revenue capacity-building. We had a very small programme there, but we judged that it was right to close it. These are tough and difficult decisions, but we thought that we could spend the money better elsewhere. However, TradeMark East Africa, which we strongly support, will be based there as well. Wiring that into the regional infrastructure is extremely important, and work is ongoing on that.
Finally, a letter and a copy of the document “Changing lives, delivering results”, which sets out the results of the review, are available to all Members on the Board. Furthermore, the full multilateral aid review can be read on the internet by anyone who wishes to do so.
Mr Speaker
Order. A great many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, but I remind the House that there is another statement to follow and thereafter an important Second Reading debate. If I am to accommodate the level of interest, brevity in questions and answers alike is of the essence.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
May I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on a truly impressive statement, which was both highly practical and highly moral? May I also make a micro-economic point? It is one thing—and difficult enough—to establish projects in poor countries, but the most difficult thing of all is ensuring their subsequent daily, humble maintenance. When I walked around poor villages in Africa and Asia, I often came across a tap with clean water in it—one of the greatest assets that we can provide through aid—in the middle of the village. However, very often the tap was either dripping or gushing, and when one asked why, one was told that the rubber washer was always stolen within a few days of being installed. Nobody has ever told me what subsequent use the rubber washers are put to, but if the tap does not work or runs out of water, the whole scheme collapses.
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend said he was going to make a micro-economic point! He has great experience of such matters from his distinguished past, and he is absolutely right. Seeing assets that have been installed but are not in working order is an enormously depressing aspect of international development. Seeing empty schools in Africa that do not have children to go to them or teachers to serve them is similar to what he described. All our work is designed to achieve effective and transparent results that work not only for British taxpayers but for those we are trying to help.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party friends of CAFOD—the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development—group. Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge the contribution of aid agencies and non-governmental organisations to the current focus of his Department’s work? Does he also agree with the overwhelming view that the greater the transparency, the greater the support will be from the British people for our objectives in this field? As two examples of how he can act quickly on such matters, may I urge him to accept the advice about implementing the Bribery Act 2010 as quickly as possible and to consider the role of British companies involved in mineral extraction in developing countries?
Mr Mitchell
I certainly pay tribute to CAFOD and the brilliant work of Chris Bain in leading it. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of transparency, which is why one of the coalition Government’s first acts was to publish our transparency guarantee. He is right about results and openness. We are all strongly behind the Bribery Act 2010. There are some standing instructions that need to be worked out by a number of Departments, but that will happen relatively quickly and the Act will be fully implemented.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
The review was right, and the tighter focus is welcome. The Select Committee on International Development will monitor not just the quantity and transparency of aid, but its effectiveness in tackling poverty and creating the space for development. However, will he explain one or two anomalies in his announcement? Burundi, which has already been mentioned, is a surprising omission, given that it is a poor country, but South Africa is included. What is the case for that, given that every other country on the list is a low-income country? Finally, will he confirm that targeting fewer countries will enable some of the staffing shortfalls that have been so apparent to be addressed, so that DFID staff are fully complemented where they are operating bilaterally?
Mr Mitchell
The Chairman of the Select Committee makes an important point. Programme staffing will be set to ensure that we can implement all the programmes. South Africa is a regional hub—an engine of economic development throughout the region—and much of our programme there is devoted to that. I have explained the position on Burundi, but, clearly, it too benefits from that engine of regional economic development. On his first point, the independent commission for aid impact, which is led by chief commissioner Graham Ward, one of Britain’s most distinguished accountants, reports to his Committee, not me, injecting that independent evaluation of British aid that is so important in maintaining taxpayer confidence in what we are doing.
Mr Speaker
Order. My exhortations to brevity have not been quite as faithfully heeded as I might have hoped, but I feel sure that we will return to the path of virtue with a question from Mr Chris Ruane.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Today is St David’s day, and Wales is twinned with Lesotho. Will the Secretary of State tell us why Lesotho has been victimised in these cuts, and whether he had any discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government about his decision?
Mr Mitchell
The Under-Secretary of State for International Development will be visiting Wales shortly. I reciprocate the comments of the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) about St David’s day. In regard to Lesotho, we think that there are better ways of supporting that country than through a bilateral programme, for the reasons that I set out earlier. When my hon. Friend goes to Wales and meets Members of the Welsh Assembly, I am sure that this is one of the matters that can be discussed.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend make two things clear to the NGOs? The first is that they have a shared responsibility with us to make it clear that international development is a moral obligation as well as being in our national interest? The second is that, given that international development aid is now at 0.6% of GDP and will soon be at 0.7%, if people want more aid spent on a specific topic or area, it behoves them to explain which part of my right hon. Friend’s programme they want money to be taken away from, because the Department has now reached the maximum amount of funds that it is going to have during the course of this Parliament.
Mr Mitchell
I will certainly pass on my hon. Friend’s message to the NGOs. They also have a strong agenda of accountability and transparency, and we encourage them strongly in that. The workings of the Global Poverty Action Fund will greatly simplify the way in which NGOs access taxpayer support, and will also be very effective in driving forward that agenda.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State join me in applauding the generosity of the British people, not least at the moment through their donations to Comic Relief? Will he also say something about his review’s impact on the poorest of the very poor—namely, the children and men and women with severe disabilities in the developing world, who constantly get lost in these debates, not least because they were not included in the millennium development goals?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on that point. Some four years ago, I went to Laos and Cambodia deliberately to look at the way in which disability impacted on development. We have not forgotten about this, and disability is clearly recognised in the work that we are taking forward.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give me an indication of how he intends to work with the Dalit community, some 65,000 of whom live in Dhaka, to ensure that they are not excluded in spite of the best efforts to deliver aid to poor people?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Dalit community represent the poorest of the poor in India, and we are looking specifically at ways of introducing a scholarship scheme to bring advantage to hundreds of thousands of Dalit girls in that country.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and less than half in the countryside. Just over a year ago the International Development Select Committee published a report on urbanisation which recommended a large increase in funding for UN-Habitat. I am astonished at the decision to pull the plug on UN-Habitat. Will the Secretary of State look at the report’s recommendations and write a note to the Select Committee explaining how his Department is going to meet them?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about urbanisation. Only in the very recent past has the majority of the world lived in towns and cities rather than in the countryside, and the report to which he refers is a very good one. If he looks at the multilateral aid review, he will see the comments that were made about UN-Habitat, and I think that he will find them helpful in understanding the Government’s approach.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on putting such a strong emphasis on the effectiveness of aid, given that its purpose is not to make us feel good but to do good? Does he agree with the all-party parliamentary group on Trade Out of Poverty that, although effective aid is important in alleviating poverty, countries can leave poverty behind in the long run only if they have opportunities to trade their way out of it? Will he place great emphasis on encouraging the rich unilaterally to remove tariffs, quotas and other barriers to poor countries trading with us?
Mr Mitchell
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his remarks. He, of course, led our party’s approach to the “globalisation of poverty” review of 2005—a most important document. I entirely endorse what he says about the importance of trade and trading out of poverty. The fact that there is such a strong coalition—if I may put it that way—between my right hon. Friend and Clare Short, who are driving forward this issue, emphasises how wide the support is for what he is doing. That underlines the importance of continuing to work flat out for a successful outcome to the Doha round.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
The Secretary of State has said that there will be a new focus on both bilateral and multilateral aid. Will that focus include giving priority consideration to marginal farmers, with women numbering heavily among them? Did he have them in mind in his reference to property rights? How will he ensure that the special measures attaching to the Food and Agriculture Organisation do not interfere with improved focus on the position of women marginal farmers?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman will have heard the contrast between what I said about the Food and Agriculture Organisation, which has been placed in a form of special measures, and the World Food Programme, which is doing extremely well under the leadership of Josette Sheeran. We would probably have pulled out of the FAO but it is about to recruit a new director and we want to work with that new director to ensure that the FAO becomes a much more effective organisation. I completely endorse what the hon. Gentleman says about the importance of my Department’s focus on farming and agriculture.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, giving a renewed focus to British aid policy. He will know that improving good governance is one of the most effective ways of lifting people out of poverty. Will he confirm that, under his new order, there will still be a significant investment in capacity as he develops his targets for developing countries, as this will help them improve their democratic systems and their good governance?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right in the emphasis he places on good governance. Helping people to hold their leaders and their politicians to account is an extremely important part of an open and free society, as events—not least, in the middle east—have made clear in recent weeks. This is an important focus of my Department’s work.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will recognise that among the most exploited workers in the world are Dalits, garment makers and brick makers working in the very poorest countries. Their way out of poverty is organisation, better employment practices and decent wages. In that light, why is the right hon. Gentleman cutting money for the International Labour Organisation, which provides an important benchmark on the employment basis of those people and, of course, on the rights of migrant workers as well?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to emphasise that there are four key elements of the decent work agenda, which I mentioned earlier: social dialogue, labour standards, social protection and employment. It is a common purpose across the House that those elements should be supported, and we will work in a variety of ways, including with the trade unions, to ensure that we uphold them.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Secretary of State will know that the all-party groups on Kenya, Uganda and sanitation and water will be extremely glad to hear that they are still going to receive aid. I notice, however, that Commonwealth Secretariat and UNESCO are being placed into special measures as a matter of urgency. Is there a case for putting the EU in the same category?
Mr Mitchell
We have looked carefully at EU aid spending and while it is true that the spending through the Commission is not as good as it should be, it is nevertheless also true that the European development fund spends British taxpayers’ money quite well. Let me also make it clear to my hon. Friend that although some 17% of the funding comes from Britain, 40% of it is spent on the Commonwealth countries for which I know he has a particular affection.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
The Secretary of State suggests terminating the aid programme in Vietnam. I suggest that he look again at the report of the Select Committee after its visit to the country in 2007. It recognised that although the aid relationship needed to change, the graduation of Vietnam to middle-income status was fragile, that many good ideas that could be used elsewhere in the world were being tested, and that the aid relationship, although changing, should continue. Will the right hon. Gentleman look at that again?
Mr Mitchell
We had specific discussions with Vietnam on our programme there, which does not wind down, I think, until 2016—it has the longest tail of any of the wind-down programmes. Vietnam is powering out of poverty, and ensuring that the role of the private sector is fully embraced is a big part of the work that my Department is undertaking. We have agreed the scale-down with the Government of Vietnam, and it works for us and them.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
I too commend the Secretary of State and his colleagues on today’s statement and the review behind it. On a visit to Kashmir last week, the outcomes of British aid that I saw in the capital, Muzaffarabad, impressed me. Given his mention of the European development fund, is he satisfied about the hundreds of millions of euros that go via the development fund to Turkey and Croatia, which are neither contaminated with a lot of poverty nor fragile states? If he is dissatisfied, will he take measures in future to ensure that the money is redirected to other countries.
Mr Mitchell
I hear what my hon. Friend says, but many people would agree that building up Turkey’s capacity to trade with us through such assistance is a sensible use of European Union funds. I will have a good look at his point in respect of Croatia.
Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)
Today’s announcement of the continuation of bilateral aid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is welcome, but will the Secretary of State continue to press the DRC Government on the importance of transparency in getting UK companies to engage and take risks in that country?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to stress the importance of that agenda in the DRC, which is a strong partner of ours. Over the next four years, we will be doing a great deal of work there, spending on average £198 million, with a strong focus on tackling malaria, ensuring that 6 million people get access to clean water, boosting the electoral system, and ensuring that girls get into school.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Unfolding events in north Africa and the wider middle east could not have been anticipated when the review began. Will the Government’s proposals allow enough flexibility to deal with these issues and with others that are bound to arise in future?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we are watching extremely carefully what is happening. We are fully engaged on issues of humanitarian relief on Libya’s borders with Egypt and Tunisia, and I will be going there in the next couple of days.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that when he refers to the occupied Palestinian territories, he includes the prison camp of Gaza and the hells on earth that are the refugee camps in Lebanon? Is he aware that the $2.4 million that his Department has awarded for medical aid in the Lebanese refugee camps is enormously appreciated but will last for only a month, which is a symbol of the dire need in these places?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman is extremely experienced in the issues of the occupied Palestinian territories and of Gaza. Through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, we take a careful interest in what is happening in Gaza and will continue to do so.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Having visited the flood-hit areas of Pakistan and Kashmir before Christmas, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he will confirm that the money saved on aid to China and Russia will go to such areas and to the other poorest areas in the world that need the aid most?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As a result of the much more careful prioritisation of aid and aid programmes, we are able to re-channel British taxpayer’s money into the kind of causes that he identifies.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
How does the Secretary of State justify ending bilateral aid to Cambodia, given that last year 31% of the population were estimated as living under the poverty line, and the country is in danger of missing seven of its eight millennium development goals?
Mr Mitchell
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is important to recognise whether a British bilateral programme that is small compared with several other bilateral and multilateral programmes was having a real impact. We concluded that such a programme was not the best way of spending taxpayer’s money.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his team on an important piece of work that is in the national interest, but may I press him a little further on the subject of the European Union? Would he consider discussing with the EU the possibility of a pan-European review conducted on the basis on which he conducted his valuable review of this country’s aid, to establish whether that would help the EU to deliver its aid more effectively?
Mr Mitchell
We continue to discuss a range of matters with the EU and with Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who is in charge of development. The multilateral aid review examined the work of the European development fund in much the same way as the bilateral review examined our country-to-country programme. There is ongoing work to be done, but I assure my hon. Friend that we are very much on the case.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
Last week I was in Ghana with the all-party parliamentary group on agriculture and food for development. Members of both Houses observed for themselves the critical importance of agriculture not just to the sustaining of livelihoods but to the potential for economic growth in developing countries. I noted the Secretary of State’s concern about the Food and Agriculture Organisation, but what strategic role will agriculture play in DFID’s plans for the future?
Mr Mitchell
Food security and agriculture are at the heart of many of the programmes that we operate in food-stressed areas. We are working increasingly closely with the World Food Programme, not only on the provision of emergency aid but on trying to enable food-insecure areas to change the way in which they secure their food so that it is sustainable in the long term. Very good work is being done in Karamoja, in northern Uganda, and we intend to intensify it.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State said that he would put more money into the development of democracy in 13 of the 16 countries that he listed. Elections have already taken place last year and this year, so we have missed the boat on those. Can we be certain that the programme will continue and that we will carry out intensive work with some of the countries that have not done as well as they might have in reducing corruption in the electoral process, not just during the four-year period that has been mentioned but, if necessary, for five or six years?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend has asked a very good question. Over the next four years, we will work intensively to try to boost freer and fairer elections. As I said in my statement, we shall be working in 13 countries, notably Zimbabwe. We have made it clear that if there is a proper route map towards freer and fairer elections in that country, we shall be able engage much more directly in development work there.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
It is all very well for the Secretary of State to be charming about Mrs Bachelet, the head of UN Women, but when I heard her speak at the Commission on the Status of Women last week, she pointed out that she still had to raise the bulk of the $500 million dollar budget of UN Women. Britain was the fourth biggest donor to UN Women last year, but although some 30 other countries have made commitments for 2011, we have thus far failed to do so. UN Women has an ambitious programme to tackle violence against women, to empower women, and to ensure that women’s voices are heard in some of the poorest countries in the world. Why has the Secretary of State not yet made a decision?
Mr Mitchell
I think that I was respectful rather than charming about Mrs Bachelet, but as soon as we have a plan that we can fund, we will fund it. We have already provided some transitional funds. As the hon. Lady will know, there is specific funding to tackle violence against women, and she can rest assured that the Government strongly support this agency, as we always have. When we see the plan, we will fund it.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
I welcome the tighter focus of the aid programme, but the India programme continues to present a juicy target for aid sceptics who criticise it for being directed at a nuclear power and a space power. Does the Secretary of State agree that it would be fairer for them to acknowledge that the civil nuclear programme is playing an essential part in meeting India’s energy deficit, and that since its inception the space programme has focused largely on development, using satellite technology to give Indians in rural areas access to long-distance learning opportunities, remote health care and crop-related weather analysis?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. India presents a paradox, because although it has the programmes to which he refers, there are also more poor people in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Our programme is in transition: we are shifting its focus on to only three of the poorest states in India, and over the next four years up to half the programme will be spent on pro-poor private sector investment for development. We will not be there for ever, but now is not the time to end this programme.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
How will the increase in aid to conflict-affected countries be evaluated to ensure it is having the greatest impact?
Mr Mitchell
In future, all our programmes will have detailed evaluation criteria from day one whether or not they are in conflict-affected areas, and, of course, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact will evaluate whether the taxpayer is getting good value for money. These criteria therefore apply across all our programmes, not just those that are easiest to evaluate.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement on the refocusing of our aid to target it and get value for money from it. Does he agree that education, particularly for girls, remains a top priority? What is his Department doing, and what more can it do, to encourage education throughout the developing world?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For reasons he will readily appreciate, one of the best development investments we can make in terms of outcomes is to get girls into school, which is why that is such a key target for us. Over the next four years, Britain will educate 11 million children overseas, far more than in the whole of Britain, and, as I have said, at 2.5% of the cost. Therefore, if any of my hon. Friend’s constituents say that this programme should be repatriated, he should point out that 2.5% of the cost would not even get one laptop per class.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
An Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation visiting a former communist country last week was shocked to hear from the head of a trade union that she was under pressure to relinquish her post so that she could be replaced by a Government stooge. We offered her hope from the International Labour Organisation, which is the only effective body that can influence her Government. Why are we denying the ILO funds?
Mr Mitchell
As the hon. Gentleman will have heard me say, we are maintaining our membership of the ILO. However, if he looks at the report—which he can download from the internet immediately after this statement—he will see the professional analysis of the ILO’s work, and he may then decide that there are organisations that might be better than the ILO in assisting the lady he mentioned in the specific circumstances he described.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Save the Children, which is a very well-supported charity in West Worcestershire, has particularly welcomed this review. The Secretary of State has just emphasised the importance of educating girls. Can he tell us how many more girls will receive an education as a result of this review?
Mr Mitchell
I am afraid that I cannot give that precise figure to my hon. Friend off the top of my head, but I shall write to her on the matter. What I can tell her is that last year Britain educated about 5 million children overseas, but that figure will rise substantially in the future.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), does the Secretary of State recognise that the new agency UN Women needs some certainty about its budget in order to prepare its strategic plan, rather than the other way around? Will he therefore lead from the front, instead of delaying his decision as to how much to commit to this vital UN agency?
Mr Mitchell
I can reassure the hon. Lady that we are in very close touch with UN Women. When the plan is produced, I am sure we will be able to fund it. Meanwhile, we have given some hundreds of thousands of pounds in transitional funding to assist the agency to get to that point. This agency has only just been started; the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) suggested we failed to fund it last year, but it has only just come into existence. With the transitional funding, it will be able to produce its strategic plan, and then I am sure we will be able to fund it.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s excellent statement. Will he join me in paying tribute to the excellent work of UNICEF, which saves the lives of millions of children around the world, and will he now publish, in full and in detail, the review’s analysis of UNICEF’s performance?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend will be able to download the review straight after this statement. UNICEF is doing a brilliant job, and I can assure him that we are going to be able to double its funding in the next two years and support it because of the excellent results that it is achieving and the very good work that it does.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State tell us what proportion of the current aid programme is allocated to multilateral aid, what proportion is allocated to bilateral aid and what the proportions will be after his reviews are put in place?
Mr Mitchell
If the hon. Gentleman downloads the reviews, he will be able to see the precise figures. The proportion used to be about 50:50, but it will be slightly different in the future. I stand to be corrected but, as I recall it, the multilateral element increases slightly, principally because of the very strong support for the World Bank. I will write to him on this matter.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his commitment to an ongoing aid relationship with the island of St Helena, whose citizens are, of course, British citizens. Can he confirm that proposals for the airfield on the island are still firmly on track?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is right to identify St Helena as an important dependent territory which rightly has our support. He will know that negotiations are ongoing on three key areas which, when they are the subject of agreement, will form the basis of a contract. I hope to be able to give the House more information in due course.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. He categorised the multilateral organisations as the good, the bad and the ugly, so will he say where, in his assessments, CDC falls?
Mr Mitchell
CDC is not one of the organisations that has been assessed as part of the multilateral aid review, because we are in the process of reforming the way in which it operates. The point that we have made in a written statement to the House is that widespread consultation is taking place on how we inject more development genes into CDC. Those negotiations and discussions are continuing, and I hope to be able to say more to the House shortly about how that will proceed.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
What proportion of the ongoing aid budget will be absorbed by India, and across the global programme what is the split between funding direct to Governments and funding to non-governmental organisations?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend will be able to see that the figure for India is frozen at its current level for the next four years. If he looks at the results, which are available on the internet, he will see the different proportions of spending, but I can tell him that there will be less direct budget support under this Government’s programme than there was under the previous Government’s.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Prime Minister, both in Kuwait last week and yesterday, has held up freedom of association as something that Britain should support, so this attack on the International Labour Organisation will horrify every trade union worker around the world. Britain founded the ILO, and in the 1980s the ILO was central to getting rid of Soviet communism and apartheid in South Africa. I know that the Secretary of State has to represent Lazard and the banking community, but this attack on working people around the world is shameful.
Mr Mitchell
That may have been a little over the top. First, we are not withdrawing from the ILO. We have made it clear that we will not be making any voluntary contributions to it. We remain a member of the ILO, but the subscription is paid for by the Department for Work and Pensions. Where countries find that the ILO is able to provide a specific service that offers value for money and effectiveness, they will be able to take on its services.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State’s performance today has confirmed, yet again, that he is the only Member of this House who can really run overseas aid. Given that, will he confirm that the extra £21 billion the previous Government forced us to pay to the EU to provide aid in the poorer EU states should come into his Department?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend has a long record of speaking out vigorously on European issues and the whole House will have heard his comments today.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), that the Bribery Act 2010 will be implemented soon. Given that combating bribery, fraud and corruption is paramount in ensuring that aid gets to the right people and the right places, could he be a little more specific about when he anticipates Labour’s Bribery Act being implemented and what he is doing to press his Government on this very important matter?
Mr Mitchell
I have made no secret of my very strong support for the Bribery Act—anyone who holds this office realises how incredibly important it is. I would say that the hon. Lady is a member of a party that did not do an awful lot about this in its 13 years in government. However, we will ensure that, once the wrinkles are ironed out, the legislation is up and running as soon as possible.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is always a pleasure to hear the hon. Gentleman but I have a faint suspicion that he toddled out of the Chamber at one point, which is of itself not a criminal offence, but it does rather disqualify him from participating in the exchanges on the statement. We will hear from him again soon I am sure.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Why on earth are the Government lending £160 million to the Turks and Caicos Islands, which have a very high gross domestic product per head, and why are we also allowing the Cayman Islands to borrow a similar amount of money without introducing anything to tackle their tax haven status?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman did not listen carefully to my earlier response, which was that the Government are supplying a guarantee to the Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands so that they have a period of time in which to sort out their financial difficulties. If all goes well, there will not be any costs at all to the British taxpayer as a result.
Mr Speaker
I must thank the Secretary of State and colleagues for their succinctness, which has meant that everybody who wanted to get in was able to do so.
Intercity Express and Rail Electrification
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement on the Government’s plans for extension of the electrification of the Great Western main line and for the procurement of a replacement for the existing diesel inter-city trains. The two issues are closely connected. First, I shall address the provision of a new generation of inter-city 125 mph trains to take advantage of the electrification of the Great Western main line and to allow the phasing out of most of the ageing diesel InterCity 125s.
In February 2009, the intercity express programme, launched by the previous Government, identified Agility Trains, a consortium of Hitachi Rail and John Laing plc, as the preferred bidder to provide a new fleet of inter-city trains. Subsequently, the previous Government placed the process on hold and ordered a review of the procurement by Sir Andrew Foster. Last summer, recognising the fiscal challenges that the UK faces and the impact of the new Government’s plans for high-speed rail to Leeds and Manchester, Agility put forward an improved, lower-cost proposal to provide the required service through a mixed IEP fleet with some all-electric trains and some with a combination of electric and diesel power, allowing it to operate through services beyond the electrified railway. The proposal retained the more modern electric InterCity 225s on the east coast main line, as the previous Administration had proposed.
We have reviewed the proposal against the alternative of an all-electric fleet, with purpose-built diesel locomotives coupled to trains to haul them beyond the electrified railway. Either way, it would represent a multi-billion pound investment for this country, underpinning the operation of inter-city services on the conventional railway for many years to come, and it is imperative that the right choice be made.
As I said at the time of my statement to the House on 25 November, there were complex legal, technical and commercial issues to be addressed and both the Government and Agility Trains, as preferred bidder, recognised that. Over the past few months, we have worked together on these issues and I can now announce that I am resuming the IEP procurement and proceeding with the proposal that Agility Trains has put forward as preferred bidder. We will now work with Agility Trains with a view to reaching financial close by the end of this year. That is, of course, subject to the Government’s continuing to be satisfied that the proposal offers value for money as the commercial negotiations are concluded and that the final arrangements are compliant with the United Kingdom’s European Union obligations. This deal will allow us to provide better, faster, more comfortable services and to continue providing through journeys between London and parts of the rail network that are not electrified. In total, there will be over 11,000 more peak-time seats each day on the Great Western main line and the east coast main line post-IEP compared with today.
Hitachi is today confirming its plans to locate its European train manufacturing and assembly centre at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. That investment is expected to create at least 500 direct permanent jobs, as well as hundreds of temporary construction jobs. Thousands more job opportunities will be created in the UK manufacturing and service supply chains. Coming just days after the news of the reopening of the Redcar steelworks, this is a massive and very welcome shot in the arm for the skilled work forces of the north-east’s industrial heartland.
I turn now to the related issue of electrification of the Great Western main line. I announced to the House on 25 November that, over the next six years, Network Rail will electrify the commuter services on the Great Western main line from London to Didcot, Oxford and Newbury. I recognise that this announcement, although welcomed in the Thames valley, left unanswered the clear aspirations of rail users further west for the extension of electrification to Bristol and into Wales. I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales have subsequently considered the options for extending electrification, alongside the Government’s consideration of the proposals for replacement of the current diesel InterCity trains, and in close consultation with the Welsh Assembly Government.
We have concluded that there is a case for extending electrification westwards to Bristol and Cardiff, and I am today asking Network Rail to add that major extension to its electrification programme immediately. This is good news for Wales and the south-west against a backdrop of public spending constraint as we deal with the legacy of debt that we inherited. Bringing electrification to Cardiff will mean that we are linking, for the first time, the capital cities of England, Scotland and Wales by electrified rail. These measures will deliver a London to Cardiff journey time of 1 hour and 42 minutes and will shave 22 minutes off the London to Bristol journey.
I have received representations calling for the electrification of the Great Western main line to be extended as far west as Swansea and we have looked carefully at the arguments. The business case for electrification is heavily dependent on the frequency of service. Services between London and Swansea currently operate at a frequency of only one train an hour off-peak. There is no evidence of a pattern of demand that would be likely to lead imminently to an increase in this frequency. Consequently, I regret to have to say that there is not, at present, a viable business case for electrification of the main line between Cardiff and Swansea.
However, because of the decision to proceed with Agility’s proposal for a bi-mode train, journey times from London to Swansea will be shortened to 2 hours and 39 minutes—20 minutes faster than today—with trains switching automatically to diesel power as they leave Cardiff. As the constraining factor on the south Wales main line is speed limitations dictated by the geometry of the line, there would be no time-saving benefits from electrifying the line from Cardiff to Swansea. However, the policy of the Government is to support a progressive electrification of the rail network in England and Wales, for environmental reasons among others. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I will therefore keep under active review the business case for future electrification of the Great Western main line between Cardiff and Swansea in the light of developing future service patterns.
I have a further announcement to make to the House. In the course of the examination of the case for electrification in south Wales that I and my right hon. Friend have undertaken, we have established, at an initial high level, that there appears to be a good case for electrifying the key valley commuter lines north of Cardiff via Pontypridd and Caerphilly to Treherbert, Aberdare, Merthyr Tydfil, Coryton and Rhymney, as well as the lines to Penarth and Barry Island to the west. My Department will therefore work with the Welsh Assembly Government to develop a full business case for the electrification of the Cardiff valley lines during the next rail investment control period beginning in 2014. The Welsh Assembly Government will need, in parallel, to consider the case for specifying suitable electric trains for those routes when the Wales and Borders franchise is re-let in 2018. That would, of course, be a prerequisite for electrification proceeding, and the timetable for franchise re-letting and re-specification necessarily dictates the time scale of the proposed electrification.
On the basis of our preliminary evaluation, the valleys electrification represents the best value for money rail electrification investment that can be made in Wales. It promises to bring all the benefits of electric commuter trains—faster acceleration, greater comfort, cleaner and greener travel, and greater reliability—to rail users in south Wales. It would have a significant effect on the economy of Cardiff and the valleys by deepening labour markets, improving connectivity and significantly enhancing the attractiveness of the area to investors. Coupled with the electrification of the Great Western main line, it would represent a major boost to the economy of south Wales as a whole. These three decisions—on the intercity express programme, on Great Western main line electrification and on building the business case for electrification of the valleys commuter lines—represent a major further investment in UK rail infrastructure. They follow the announcements that I have already made on Crossrail, Thameslink, tube upgrades, Thames valley and north western electrification and additional rolling stock.
The decisions sit alongside the Government’s proposals for high-speed rail, the consultation on which I announced to the House in a written statement yesterday, as testimony to this Government’s commitment to investment in the future of Britain’s railways. They represent excellent news for passengers on the Great Western main line and the east coast main line, for commuters on the Cardiff valley lines and for the economies of south Wales and north-east England as a whole. I commend this statement to the House.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the early sight of his statement—he actually sent me two statements, although they appear to be the same. I will begin by welcoming the much delayed green light that he has today given to the new intercity express programme, which was launched by Labour before the last election. That this programme is now to go ahead, with the significant boost for jobs that he referred to, is testament to the tenacity and tireless campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), The Northern Echo, the local community trade unions, particularly Unite, and the local work force. I congratulate them all on what has been an incredible triumph for their campaign.
Can the Secretary of State confirm when passengers will first be able to enjoy these new trains? Have the delays in making the announcement had any impact on the delivery date for the trains? Will he confirm whether he has made any other changes to the contract, for example to the number of trains or the cascading plan for the existing rolling stock, as a result of today’s announcement?
The Opposition obviously welcome the decision to go ahead with the electrification of a further stretch of the Great Western main line to Cardiff. It is the result of the commitment we made in government and also the efforts made since the Secretary of State’s last statement in November by my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, other MPs and Assembly Members, and the business community across south Wales. I am glad that the Secretary of State has listened to them about the vital need for modernisation, which will speed up the journey time between our capitals from 2 hours five minutes to 1 hour 40 minutes, which has to be welcome. It is a real boost to business, with the potential for investment and jobs, and to Wales.
However, does the Secretary of State understand the deep upset that will be felt by people in Swansea and across Wales at the St David’s day disappointment that the electrification will not continue as far as Swansea, as Labour had intended? He has broken his manifesto commitment to
“support the electrification of the Great Western line to South Wales.”
The Secretary of State for Wales, who I am glad to see is in her place, was pretty quiet yesterday when the Transport Secretary confirmed plans for a high-speed rail route through her constituency, which she previously said she could not support. The people of south Wales will expect her to be more vocal today in explaining why the Government have let down the people and businesses that are further south and west than Cardiff.
The Transport Secretary has just extolled the virtues of electrification, including, in his own words, its “significant effect on the economy of Cardiff and the valleys—deepening labour markets, improving connectivity and significantly enhancing the attractiveness of the area to investors.” Why cannot the people of Swansea, and of west Wales beyond Swansea, also have that advantage? Can he confirm when the electrification of the line to Cardiff will be completed, and why, as far as he is concerned, electrifying just 40 more miles of track to Swansea appears to be such a bad idea?
Is it not true that the case for electrification was previously approved by the Treasury? Anybody who has dealt with the Treasury, as we now all have, knows that the rate of return would have had to meet its tough criteria, so why does the right hon. Gentleman continue to suggest that there is no proper business case for electrification all the way to Swansea? Does he accept that, if Swansea is not a part of the single roll-out construction programme, the Government will incur 20% additional costs to stop construction and then take it up again? He is in fact saying that the stretch of line from Cardiff to Swansea will not be electrified at all—except by incurring unnecessarily high extra costs.
I welcome in the right hon. Gentleman’s statement the part about looking at further electrification in Wales on the valleys train lines, but he is holding out the promise of potentially producing a post-dated cheque at a later date, because there is no funding available in this spending review period. He says that he has made a decision about the matter, but his only decision has been to look at whether there is a business case, so there is no guarantee of his carrying out the project. Perhaps he is trying to deflect attention from the fact that he is failing to meet his manifesto commitment to take electrification all the way to Swansea.
Will the right hon. Gentleman update the House on where his Department is with the procurement of the 1,200 new carriages for Thameslink? We still have not heard about that major project, in which many UK jobs are at stake, and it would be good if we did not have to put up with Thameslink being hit by the same delays that have beset the IEP project. Does he have an updated time scale for when the new Thameslink and Crossrail trains will benefit passengers by actually being in service? Will he explain what impact the delay will have on the plans for cascading the existing rolling stock?
Why, when the right hon. Gentleman must have known that he was making a statement today, did he choose yesterday to slip out by written answer—without informing the media or the House—a decision to end all funding for local rail schemes that local authorities and integrated transport authorities develop? His decision means that no new schemes will be able to go ahead between now and April 2015. Can he explain why that decision was not made in the comprehensive spending review, and why he put it out yesterday under cover of his publication of the high-speed rail consultation?
As I have made clear, I welcome today’s confirmation of the investment in the rail network that Labour planned and announced when in government. The additional electrification and the major project to replace our outdated inter-city fleet will significantly improve the passenger experience on our rail network and bring economic benefits to the country. However, the unnecessary delays in bringing forward those plans, and the decision to bring disappointment to south Wales on St David’s day, are just further evidence of the dither and delay that seems to grip the right hon. Gentleman’s Department. Both of his announcements today imply more delay than the original plans. His third announcement on further electrification in Wales is another example of jam tomorrow but no money today, and no guarantee of progress. In the end, he will be judged on what he delivers, and Labour Members will be looking closely at that.
Mr Hammond
We have been treated to a classic rant. There are two types of people in this world: the glass-half-full brigade and the glass-half-empty brigade—and let us guess which one the hon. Lady belongs to. She is determined resolutely to find bad news even in a statement about massive investment at a time of constrained public spending.
The hon. Lady, apart from treating us to a read-out of her contacts book, which was fascinating, had the nerve to accuse us of unnecessary delays. I would like to remind her that it was the previous Administration who pulled the IEP procurement and asked Sir Andrew Foster to review it, reopening the issues. I can tell her today that trains will start to be delivered to the Great Western main line from 2016 and on to the east coast main line from 2018.
On the question of electrification, the hon. Lady mentioned the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), the man who talks a good talk about electrification but was, if I remember rightly, Secretary of State for Wales in the previous Administration—an Administration who, in 13 years, did not manage to electrify a single inch of railway in the Principality. A couple of weeks ago, the hon. Lady, who is now so keen on electrification in Wales, was telling us that Labour had no commitment to electrification in Wales because it was conducting a spending review and everything was up for grabs. That was until the very same right hon. Member for Neath came along and slapped her down, and made her change her tune.
The hon. Lady talked about our manifesto commitment at the last general election. I can tell her—[Interruption.] I have it right here; I will quote it back to her in a minute if she wants. Our manifesto commitment at the last general election was to electrify the railway into south Wales. I know that she is not shadow Secretary of State for Wales, but even she should know that Cardiff is in south Wales. We have delivered today on the commitment that we made.
The hon. Lady made a plea for electrification to Swansea. I understand that people in Swansea will be disappointed by the announcement that I have made today because of the expectations that the previous Government raised without bothering to establish that there was a sound business case for the proposed expenditure. However, she has not, at any point, made a logical argument for the electrification that she pleads for. I have told her that the bi-mode trains that we are procuring will deliver a journey time saving of 20 minutes to Swansea—the same journey time saving that the previous Government were promising through electrification. We will deliver the benefits to the people of Swansea from electrification to Cardiff and continuing bi-mode train operation onward from Cardiff to Swansea. She asked me about the electrification to Cardiff. That will be completed in 2017.
On the valleys electrification, the hon. Lady says that there is no funding in the spending review. I am disappointed that she has not yet grasped the complexities of rail capital funding. Network Rail funds electrification through its regulated asset base. The investment programme is set in control periods, the next of which starts in 2014. What I have announced today is that we have established that there is, on the face of it, a strong business case for this investment in the valleys electrification. We will work it up with Network Rail and the Welsh Assembly Government, with a view to including it in the next investment programme period.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. A lot of Members wish to get in on this statement, so single and short questions would be welcome.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
In the face of gloom, doom and whingeing from the Opposition, this is really good news for Wales. St David’s day will be toasted with a full glass in Cardiff and a nearly full glass in Swansea. I am pleased that the Secretary of State said that he will continue to review the case for electrification to Swansea. Will he confirm that he will do so?
Mr Hammond
As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I will continue actively to look at the case for electrification to Swansea. I said that we would do so in the light of developing service patterns. The important point is that once the valleys lines are electrified, it is quite possible that new electric services could be provided that head through Cardiff and to the west, which might change the economics, and thus the business case, for the Cardiff to Swansea section.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his announcement on the intercity express programme. As he knows, the investment and jobs involved are very important for my constituents in north-east England. Will he join me in congratulating the Back on Track campaign, which was led by The Northern Echo, Durham county council, the chamber of commerce and the northern TUC? Will he also congratulate my constituents on the way in which they brought this matter to the attention of the Department for Transport, and helped it to make the right decision?
Mr Hammond
I am happy to acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s tireless battle for the IEP. He has arranged for various worthies from his constituency to visit me and the Department to make the case. This has been a complex process with legal, technical, financial and commercial issues to resolve. We have worked closely with Hitachi to get to this point. I understand that he wanted us to get here more quickly, but I assure him that we have progressed as fast as possible.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
As a Cardiff Member of Parliament, I thank my right hon. Friend unequivocally for today’s announcement. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, who has fought her corner wonderfully. Making the case for the electrification of the valley lines in the announcement was something that Opposition Members did not expect and that they were never committed to. From June 2009, they were supposedly committed to electrification, and yet nothing whatsoever was done. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport commit to ensuring that this announcement is carried forward, unlike the announcements that were made by those who are now on the Opposition Benches?
Mr Hammond
Absolutely; I give my hon. Friend that commitment. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) used most of her time in responding to the statement by talking about Swansea. The evidence shows that there is a much stronger business case for the electrification of the valley lines. When a limited amount of public money is available, it is absolutely incumbent on us—she can ask her sister about this—to ensure that it is spent on the areas that deliver the best value for money to the Exchequer.
Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)
Having fought a long and hard campaign to get rail electrification in Swansea, I congratulate Cardiff and the valleys because their glass is very much full at the moment—I will raise a glass to them. Unfortunately, I will have to go back to my constituents in Swansea and explain that they are not as important. I will have to explain that modern transport and infrastructure, and opportunities for investment and tourism are not on the cards for them. The Secretary of State spoke about there being no good financial case for rail electrification to Swansea. All the trains along the south Wales main line—I will talk slowly to make this point—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I know how passionate the hon. Lady is about this matter, but please can we have single, short questions, because a lot of Members wish to get in?
Mr Hammond
Obviously I understand that the hon. Lady is disappointed. She has made her pitch to me repeatedly, having caught me every time I have passed behind the Chair over the past few months. I am sorry that I have had to be rather uncommunicative, but she will understand the reasons. I am disappointed that she has not acknowledged that the huge time-saving benefit from electrification will be delivered through the introduction of bi-mode IEP trains and the electrification of the route as far as Cardiff. Because of the line speed restrictions, there would be no further time savings for Swansea even if we electrified the rest of the line. Huge benefits will be delivered to Swansea—a 20 minute time saving is extremely significant. I hope she will at least acknowledge that that will be a huge benefit for the area that she represents.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement this afternoon. Will he confirm my memory that Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western main line runs from Swindon, through Chippenham and Bath, to Bristol Temple Meads, not on the branch line from Bristol Parkway and onwards to Wales? Does he intend to allow the electrification of the line to Bristol Temple Meads, as well as the branch line to Wales?
Mr Hammond
I am not sure whether I mentioned this in my statement, but my hon. Friend is absolutely correct—the electrification will include the line through Bath to Bristol Temple Meads and also the line from Bristol Parkway to Bristol Temple Meads. That will ensure that we can increase the frequency of London-Bristol Temple Meads trains to four per hour and shave 20 minutes off the journey time to Bristol Temple Meads from London, using the Bristol Parkway route rather than the Bath route to get the additional time saving.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I fully appreciate the announcement as far as Cardiff and the valley lines are concerned, and I congratulate the Government on it. In a spirit of, I hope, reasonable suggestion, may I ask the Government to ensure that work is done urgently to see how the line speed from Cardiff to Swansea can be improved in due course, so that electrification can be taken across to Swansea with, I am sure, a good business case?
Mr Hammond
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comment, because it is at least a constructive comment that plays into the need to develop a proper business case for a proposal. We can consider line speed improvements, and indeed the current rail investment programme includes a significant number of them, including some on the network in south Wales. However, I understand that the geography of the area creates some difficulties and potentially some very significant expense in enhancing the line speed between Cardiff and Swansea.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Having travelled the Great Western main line this morning, may I welcome the statement warmly? It promises far more quiet, efficient, reliable and energy-efficient trains for my constituents and many others than the last Government ever delivered. It is good news for English and Welsh jobs, and incidentally it makes an even stronger case for the redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line, which would add resilience.
In the Department’s long-term thinking, will Ministers still look favourably on eventual electrification to Swansea and on longer franchises for train operators, which might in time enable them to specify their own rolling stock? That would add even more to an increasingly bright future for Britain’s railways.
Mr Hammond
As the hon. Gentleman will know, we have already announced that we intend to operate a longer default franchise period of 15 years, to start to stimulate exactly the type of behaviour that he talks about.
It is the Government’s policy to support a progressive electrification of the railway throughout England and Wales—Scotland makes its own rail infrastructure investment decisions—not only because of time savings but because of the environmental case for an electric railway. Through progressive investment control periods, we will continue to look to roll out the electrification of the railway across England and Wales.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
This is a sad and disappointing St David’s day for Swansea—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Well, it is, particularly in the light of the fact that the Secretary of State denied a meeting with private sector stakeholders and Swansea university, alongside the MPs of Swansea and west Wales, to examine the business case for inward investment in further electrification. Given that Swansea is the second worst-hit city in the UK from Government cuts, will he undertake to have that meeting at long last with those stakeholders, including the university, even though he has made the decision already? That would enable them to discuss the co-operation and inward investment of Rolls-Royce, Tata, Boots and other companies that are coming to Swansea. They would have made that case had he been bothered to have a meeting with them.
Mr Hammond
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that my officials discussed the business case for electrification to Swansea with Welsh Assembly Government officials exhaustively, but he misses the fundamental point. He talks about Rolls-Royce and Tata, and if they are looking at rail investment as a criterion for investment, they will be examining journey time savings. The IEP announcement that I have just made introduces a journey time saving of 20 minutes to Swansea. He should go back to Swansea, rejoice in that saving and pick up the phone to Rolls-Royce and Tata to tell them how it improves the case for investment in his city.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
This is a first-class announcement on St David’s day for my constituency and the whole south Wales economy. Announcing electrification of just the main line would have been good, but to consider the valleys lines and the line to Barry Island, which is in my constituency, gives the statement gravitas.
My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary has mentioned the inaction of the former Secretary of State for Wales, but will he outline what action was taken by the current Secretary of State for Wales in bringing about pressure for this announcement?
Mr Hammond
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I discuss such matters all the time—I always discuss with them matters that trespass into the jurisdictions of my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland—but it would be inappropriate for me to give the House details of discussions that occur between Cabinet colleagues.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the announcement of major investment in rail, although there is considerable disappointment in relation to Swansea. Will the Secretary of State indicate what the benefits of that investment will be in terms of jobs and economic growth, and when does he expect them to materialise?
Mr Hammond
If the hon. Lady is talking about the wider package, I can tell her that there are obviously many components to it. Jobs will be created through the electrification process over a number of years as Network Rail gears up to deliver that programme, and others will be created at Newton Aycliffe for the IEP. Further jobs—thousands of jobs—will be created in the UK supply chain that will support that major investment which, incidentally, is not just about delivering the UK IEP, but about Hitachi’s manufacturing and development base for its involvement in European rail in future.
In addition, of course, there will be huge benefits in the south Wales area from the electrification of the valleys lines—what economists like to call agglomeration benefits, meaning the reinforcement of the economy that happens when connectivity is improved and labour markets are deepened. Those will allow people in towns up the valleys lines, some of which, frankly, are among the most deprived in Wales, more readily to access the markets and economy of Cardiff, which is a powerhouse for the area. That will bring significantly increasing prosperity and wider opportunities for people who live in the Cardiff hinterland.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Had the Secretary of State announced that he was electrifying and putting a high-speed train on every branch line in Wales, Opposition Members would still object. Will he instead accept the congratulations of all those who are worried that some want Wales to become more separate? His statement is a tangible way of putting Wales at the heart of the UK. Dewi Sant will be looking down today with a glass not half full, but almost overflowing.
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend puts it very eloquently. He has clearly spotted the glass-half-empty tendency of Opposition Members, which disappoints me. I cannot think why they would wish to score political points today.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The Secretary of State probably knows that the first steam trains were made in Shildon, so it is quite right that the skills of the County Durham work force should be recognised in his statement. He says that he will work for financial close over the course of this year, but can he say when jobs will materialise?
Mr Hammond
I understand that Hitachi will issue a press release broadly simultaneously with my statement that will set out more details of its plans, but clearly, it will be unable to start building factories until financial close occurs later this year. There will then be a factory to build, which will create hundreds of temporary jobs in the area. I have heard that the owners of the industrial estate on which the factory will be built have also indicated that they will expect to build other units simultaneously on a speculative basis in anticipation of suppliers to Hitachi wanting to locate around the factory. I therefore hope that there will be significant construction job creation quite early in the programme. Then, of course, Hitachi will begin recruiting for the permanent jobs for the actual building of the trains—my guess is that this will happen later next year, but it is for the company to confirm.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s clarification that electrification to Bristol will also take in the line through Bath and Chippenham. Can he confirm my estimation that this proposal might even bring down journey times from London Paddington to Chippenham to less than one hour?
Mr Hammond
It may surprise the hon. Gentleman to know that among the many destinations for which I have journey time savings, Chippenham does not appear, I am afraid. However, I will be very happy to get back to him immediately after this statement.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
My constituents will be very disappointed that electrification will be starting in Cardiff, but not in Swansea. However, will the Secretary of State look into the franchising agreement and consider whether anything can be done so that my constituents can benefit more from reductions in journey times by having more through bi-mode trains that go all the way from London to Llanelli, Kidwelly and beyond to the Irish ferries, rather than having to change? That is the case with nearly all the trains at the moment, and it involves an enormous amount of delay and wasted time.
Mr Hammond
I am happy to look at the issues that the hon. Lady raises. Of course, responsibility for franchised operations is shared between the UK Government, in respect of the through services from London, and the Welsh Assembly Government, in respect of locally originating services. However, I will certainly consider her point. The IEP train fleet will give us greater flexibility.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I welcome the statement, particularly the increase in passenger capacity that will result. My right hon. Friend will be aware that over the next five years Reading station will undergo a major redevelopment through Government investment. Will he ensure that all necessary works for IEP and electrification are undertaken alongside the alterations made to Reading station, because I am sure that it would result in cost savings?
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend makes a very sensible point. I will raise it at my next meeting with the chief executive of Network Rail, and ensure that it is being done in a properly co-ordinated manner.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I welcome today’s announcement on the intercity express programme, and I look forward to welcoming the trains themselves to Newcastle in due course. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he will work with his colleagues across Government to ensure that local communities, businesses, universities and further education colleges receive the kind of support that they need to ensure that the Hitachi centre can be a platform for jobs and growth for the region as a whole?
Mr Hammond
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that when we get such an opportunity to reinforce our skills base and move up the value-adding curve with our work force, we have to seize it. There is already a project in Nottingham that I am hoping to visit very shortly that involves rail engineering apprenticeships, and there is another project in Crewe that I have been invited to go and see. We need to generate more of these projects in response to the investment opportunities arising. I agree completely with the sentiment that she expresses.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I welcome unequivocally my right hon. Friend’s statement and its excellent news for rail infrastructure. He will be aware that ongoing designs for existing platforms are usually more cost-effective than new designs. Will he confirm to the House, therefore, that the revised Agility proposal represents better value for the British taxpayer both in what it represents and in cost terms?
Mr Hammond
The value-for-money appraisal certainly shows that the revised Agility proposal represents the highest value for money of the proposals that we have considered for the replacement of the inter-city diesel express trains. It represents a strong value-for-money case and is affordable. Hitachi has responded in an exemplary way to the Government’s commitment to high-speed rail—that changes the dynamics—and to the UK’s fiscal situation in order to ensure that we can go ahead with the programme.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I welcome both the statement and having had early sight of it. I agree with the Secretary of State that the purchase of the locomotives will represent a multi-billion pound investment that, as he said, will underpin the provision of inter-city services. May I ask him whether the decision is for bi-mode hybrid trains or for a mixed fleet of diesel and electric trains, and whether sufficient numbers will be bought on time to guarantee the continuity and frequency of direct services from London on the east coast main line north of Edinburgh, through Fife, Dundee, Angus and Aberdeen?
Mr Hammond
It is not about diesels. There will be no diesel traction locomotives in the mix; there will be bi-mode electric-diesel trains and all-electric trains. The services to Aberdeen and Inverness will be provided by the bi-mode trains, running straight off the wires at Edinburgh and on to the existing routes, so that service will be protected.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
In the spirit of St David’s day, I respectfully remind the Secretary of State that St David probably lived in west Wales. Has he made any assessment of the extent to which west Wales and Swansea will lose out from his partial electrification of the south Wales line?
Mr Hammond
Many people coming from England will access west Wales through Cardiff, and journey times to Cardiff are being reduced. Everybody would like a high-speed railway running right to their front door, but as we—[Interruption.] Okay, to the next street. As we progressively modernise our infrastructure with electrification and new train services, the impact will be felt by all locations. Even those locations not directly benefiting from the new, faster services will benefit from the savings in time, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in west Wales will benefit significantly from today’s announcement.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
In congratulating the Secretary of State on a first-class example of investment in infrastructure that, in the context of protecting the environment, will bring jobs and further growth, may I remind him that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said, it also strengthens the case for taking action to continue doubling the line from Swindon up to Kemble and Stroud?
Mr Hammond
I am well aware of the vigorous campaign to redouble the Kemble to Swindon link, and I know that the case will continue to be made for it as a major investment programme, and also for its possible inclusion in Network Rail’s next control period.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Following the delivery of the IEP, will the Secretary of State tell the House how many ageing InterCity 125s will still be on the network and for how long?
Mr Hammond
Only a small number of diesel 125s will remain on the network, and they will be serving the route down to Penzance in Cornwall. All the other 125s will be replaced by bi-mode trains under today’s proposal. I cannot say for how long those diesel 125s will remain on the network. There are no specific proposals to replace them at the moment, but I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the intercity express programme was always conceived as a commitment to a firm fleet of trains as the first phase, with options on further trains for future phases. It will therefore be for my successors at some point in the future to consider whether the remaining InterCity 125s should in due course be replaced by bi-mode IEPs.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
It is a matter for hon. Members whether they see their glasses as half empty or half full, but I am pleased to see the Government busily topping glasses up. As a representative of a north-east constituency, I am also pleased to say that last week we had the excellent news that Teesside Cast Products was being sold to SSI—Sahaviriya Steel Industries—and now we have today’s announcement from the Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a vote of confidence—not just by the private sector, but by the Government—in the skills and abilities of those working in manufacturing right across the north-east?
Mr Hammond
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend: it is a vote of confidence in UK manufacturing. This Government are committed to rebalancing the economy, reviving manufacturing and reasserting the value of Britain’s manufacturing skills base, and both announcements play to that theme.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Let me bring the Secretary of State to the question of the midland main line—the forgotten line in this country—and ask him about the ageing high-speed trains, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) has just done. Those trains were second-hand when they were introduced on the line. Can he give a commitment that we will actually see bi-mode trains introduced on the midland main line? We have the immediate advantage of being able to use the electric line up to Bedford, allowing electrification of the rest of the line progressively and incrementally in the future.
Mr Hammond
The announcement today does not include provision for the midland main line. The hon. Gentleman mentioned bi-mode trains, and I am sure that he has also been lobbying for the electrification of the line, as have many other midlands Members. The debate about the line’s future also has to take account of the implications of High Speed 2, however. Once the High Speed 2 consultation, which began yesterday, has been completed and the Government have announced their definitive plans later this year, it will be much easier to plan for the long-term future of the midland main line.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
This might not be quite as headline-grabbing as my right hon. Friend’s statement today, but he will be aware that, on 22 May this year, my constituents will see the reintroduction of a direct link to London. However, this will be only a single daily service—once up and down. Does he think that the old diesel stock whose replacement he has announced today could be put to good use in increasing the level of service to and from my constituency?
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend is certainly right to say that one of the benefits of any announcement of new rolling stock is that it creates a larger pool of retired rolling stock and thus creates greater opportunities for train operators to acquire rolling stock leases at sensible prices. This helps to change the dynamics of the rolling stock market for the benefit of passengers and train operators.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
A word of croeso for the report, but my constituents are still greatly irritated by the fact that the Ebbw Vale to Cardiff line, which was reopened by the previous Government and is hugely successful, passes through the city of Newport but does not stop at the main station there. This affects many passengers who normally commute to Newport and whose access to the shopping centre there is now being denied. When can the appropriate link be put in place?
Mr Hammond
I am looking at my map, and, as the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) reminds me, it is a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government to specify services on the Wales and west franchise.
Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend ensure that, should the preferred consortium for the IEP contract be unable to deliver all that is has offered, other bidders in the procurement process, including Bombardier Transportation, which has a site in my constituency, will be given due and proper consideration in any future procurement that might result from such a situation? Will he also ensure that its strong, advanced technical expertise is taken into account?
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend makes a plea for Bombardier, which has a site in his constituency. Bombardier is involved in programmes for the delivery of other trains in the United Kingdom, and I think that it has a very bright future in the UK train market. The IEP project is a train availability contract to supply trains, ready for use and fully maintained. Hitachi or the Agility consortium will therefore be entering into an obligation to deliver specified numbers of trains ready and available for use in accordance with that contract, and it will be a matter for them to ensure that those trains are made available.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
This statement will be warmly welcomed in Bristol. As an émigré valleys boy, may I also point out that it will be welcomed in my home village of Abercynon, where the world’s first railway journey ended in 1804? The Secretary of State mentioned that the line from Bristol Temple Meads to Bristol Parkway was to be included in the electrification plans. Will that open the window for looking at the business case for electrifying the Severn Beach line, which the Rail Minister will be visiting with me on Friday?
Mr Hammond
I always learn something in these situations. I thought that the world’s first railway journey started somewhere up near Darlington, so if it ended in the Welsh valleys, it was doing extremely well. My right hon. Friend the Rail Minister will be happy to discuss this matter further with my hon. Friend. I know that she has already discussed the proposal with him and is looking at the business case for it with a view to its inclusion in future programmes.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
May I press the case for the midland main line and encourage the Secretary of State to look at the introduction of upgraded, bi-mode inter-city trains on that line, not least because that might well facilitate the reintroduction of an inter-city service between Kettering and London, which was taken away when it was effectively downgraded to an outer suburban service?
Mr Hammond
I can only say to my hon. Friend what I said to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts)—that the future use of the midland main line is bound to change if the high-speed rail network proposal goes ahead. By the end of this year—once the high-speed network is to be built, if that is the decision taken, following the consultation—we will be in a much better position to talk about the future plans for the midland main line and, indeed, for the east coast and west coast main lines.
Point of Order
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Some months ago, the Foreign Secretary announced a cut to the funding of the BBC’s World Service and devolved the budget to the BBC itself. The first wave of cuts to the World Service’s services has now been announced and they apply to Africa, Latin America and eastern Europe. Those cuts have consequences not just for job losses but for the role of the World Service in purveying independent information in those world regions.
I would have expected—and I think the House would have expected—a statement from the Foreign Secretary to inform us about this wave of cuts, so that we could debate them. At the very least, we should have had a written statement, but no statement of any kind has been provided for Members. May I, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, express the House’s concern that a Minister has not kept Members informed of these important decisions and say that, in future, Members should be afforded at least a written ministerial statement, even if not an oral one in which we could question a Minister?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I have been given no indication of any statement today on the World Service. Although this is not a matter for the Chair, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s remarks on the World Service.
Resource Extraction (Transparency and Reporting)
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require certain companies engaged in oil or gas extraction, and other mining activities, to disclose the type and total amount of payments made to any national government, or any company wholly or partly owned by a national government; and for connected purposes.
This Bill is designed to make it a legally binding requirement for companies involved in natural resource extraction that are listed on the London stock exchange to provide in their annual report details of the payments they have made to national Governments on a project-by-project and country-by-country basis.
I am a passionate believer in international development because I deeply believe in the principles of equality and social justice, both at home and abroad. That is why, on entering the House, I immediately put myself forward for election to the International Development Committee.
I hope you will indulge me for a moment, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I ask you to picture a country filled with vast areas of natural beauty and heritage—a country in which there is an abundance of natural resources. You will be surprised at my next request when I ask you to picture that very same country as being home to some of the most impoverished and poorest people in the world. Sadly, there are many countries around the world where this is precisely the case—countries that have significant natural resource wealth in terms of oil, gas and precious metal reserves but for which this natural wealth has not translated into the economic prosperity that it should have.
Right hon. and hon. Members may have heard this situation described as “the resource curse”. In the absence of strong democratic institutions and strong governance, the people of these countries are unable to hold corrupt officials to account, as those officials siphon off public money for their own benefit instead of using it for the public good.
The figures from Equatorial Guinea display just one example. Equatorial Guinea had the 12th highest gross domestic product in the world in 2008, with more than $30,000 per capita. However, it also ranked 121st out of 177 countries on the United Nations human development index. Africa as a whole exported over £400 billion-worth of oil and minerals in 2008—nearly nine times the value of international aid to the continent, yet millions still struggle to survive.
One major problem is a lack of transparency. As Paul Collier, the director of Oxford university’s centre for the study of African economics points out, the sale of natural resource extraction rights in the developing world has so far
“been spectacularly deficient in respect of transparency”.
In recent years, the UK has been a leader in the promotion of corporate transparency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) put tax transparency on the agenda for the G20 in 2009. The international extractive industries transparency initiative, EITI, launched by the former Member for Sedgefield when he was Prime Minister, has also played a fantastic role in improving voluntary transparency in the extractive industries.
This time, however, America is blazing the trail for improvements in tax transparency. The bipartisan Cardin-Lugar amendment to the Dodd-Frank Bill, passed in the United States last year, has given the voluntary rules of the EITI the force of law in the US. Backing that amendment, President Obama said:
“We know that countries are more likely to prosper when governments are accountable to their people…That’s why we now require oil, gas and mining companies that raise capital in the United States to disclose all payments they make to foreign governments”.
It represents a long-awaited regulatory change, championed globally by a 600-strong group of non-governmental organisations and charities known as Publish What You Pay, and could ultimately improve the lives of millions of people in developing countries that are consistently resource-rich but cash-poor.
In effect, the Bill would replicate the measures in the Cardin-Lugar amendment for UK listed extractive companies, supporting the move towards a global standard on the issue and a first step towards full tax justice for developing countries. The changes would enable civil society and NGOs to hold Governments to account. Albert Oduman, Uganda’s shadow Minister for Finance, in a recent video interview for the ONE campaign, expressed incredibly powerfully his support and appreciation for the new global transparency efforts, which will empower him with the information to challenge corruption in his own country.
In one of my first speeches in the House, I emphasised the importance of aid in the developing world. At the same time, however, I stressed the need to promote stronger governance through an accountable state-citizen relationship. The Bill seeks to do precisely that, and the potential benefits are huge. Transparent, effective tax systems and the reduction of corruption could allow money otherwise lost to be spent on schools, doctors, clean water and infrastructure—exactly the kind of projects on which British aid money is spent now. Improving access to their own wealth could lead many developing countries out of poverty, away from aid dependency, and into self-sufficiency and sustainable growth—the ultimate development goal.
With more than 80 extractive companies listed on the London stock exchange, representing more than £1 trillion of capital, the UK has a responsibility to take action on the issue, for the benefit not only of the developing world but of UK business. Many of the British companies that would be caught by a UK rule are already listed on the New York stock exchange, and therefore will already be providing the information in the near future. Bringing the London stock exchange in line with the New York stock exchange would level the playing field for those organisations already reporting, by requiring the remaining companies in the UK extractive sector to do exactly the same.
Transparent disclosure of payments will also help responsible companies reduce the reputational risk in operating in unstable nations and states where false accusations of supporting corruption are only too easily made. Transparency would also help UK investors to value companies and evaluate regulatory, taxation and geopolitical risks, while enhancing company accountability and governance. The improved stability that we hope would develop in resource-rich nations would also provide a better environment for investment, both for British business ventures and UK-sponsored aid projects.
Although I have been working on the Bill for several months, its introduction could not have come at a much better time. During the recess, we had the welcome news that the Chancellor and the Business Secretary are backing President Sarkozy’s plans for Europe-wide rules on the issue. I believe that EU legislation is crucial if the global drive for increased transparency in the extractive industries is to be truly successful. That is why I anxiously await a statement in the House from the Chancellor, clarifying what active steps the Government will take to ensure swift progress at EU level.
However, potential EU regulation should not be seen as a reason for us to withhold from legislating independently. Natural resources are finite, and obtaining EU approval and implementation of such rules could take a considerable time. The amount of money disappearing every day could translate into lifting millions of people out of poverty in developing countries. Independent action by the UK would not jeopardise EU progress, but would strengthen the campaign by setting an important example. It would represent a big contribution to international development at little or no cost, while at the same time promoting the kind of corporate social responsibility of which we can all be proud.
I am delighted to say that the Bill enjoys strong support from all three main political parties. As with many development issues, it can be said genuinely to transcend party politics. I thank all the Members who have shown their support by being present today, and I especially thank those who have agreed to sponsor the Bill.
This Bill has the support of non-governmental organisations, independent economists, and leaders of the developing world and developing countries. It has cross-party support in the House, and above all it has the support of the British people. In the last 10 days alone, nearly 9,000 people have signed a ONE campaign petition on the issue with which it deals. The Financial Times has said that the United States has shone a light into an area that is widely considered to be shrouded in mystery, and has applauded the brave leadership that it has demonstrated on the issue. It is now up to us to show similar leadership here in Europe.
International development is not just about cash and “percentage of GDP” commitments; it is also about leading by example and setting global standards. The developing world does not have time to wait for Europe to catch up. A genuinely sustainable and cost-effective approach to international development demands that the UK Government act now.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Anas Sarwar, Tony Baldry, Fiona Bruce, Malcolm Bruce, Richard Burden, Mr Tom Clarke, Mr Tobias Ellwood, John Glen, Eric Joyce, Jeremy Lefroy, Catherine McKinnell and John Thurso present the Bill.
Anas Sarwar accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 156).
Protection of Freedoms Bill
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Today we have a rare opportunity. The Bill gives us a chance to roll back the creeping intrusion of the state into our everyday lives, and to return individual freedoms to the heart of our legislation. Under the last Government, we saw a steady erosion of traditional British liberties and a slow march towards authoritarian government. They presented us with a false choice between our future security and our historic liberties, disregarding any notion of balance between the two.
The House rejected that choice on many noble occasions, notably when an extraordinary attempt was made to increase the period of pre-charge detention of terrorist suspects to 90 days. On other occasions, illiberal laws were passed, and on yet others, well-intentioned schemes were left open to abuse. The Bill gives us an opportunity to redress the balance and to right some of those wrongs, although it is not the only such opportunity. We have already repealed some measures, and we will repeal others.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to give way?
Mr Cash
I note that my right hon. Friend did not actually say that she would be happy to do so.
Does my right hon. Friend accept that however good the intentions may be, one of the great problems with the Bill is that it serially adopts, endorses and puts into British legislation European Court rulings, and that that in itself runs counter to the sentiments expressed only a few weeks ago when the House voted against a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights by 222 votes to 15?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right, I am afraid; but I almost said I was happy to give way to him. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments we have had on the issue he raises. I am well aware of the vote in the House on the Backbench Business Committee motion on prisoner votes, and the Government have made it absolutely clear that we are not happy about having to give prisoners votes and we will be looking to do so in the most minimal way possible.
The first issue the Bill addresses is DNA. The police national DNA database, established in 1995, has led to a great many criminals being convicted who otherwise would not have been caught, and I am sure all sensible people support it, but in a democracy there must be limits to any such form of police power, and we simply do not accept that innocent people’s DNA should be kept for ever on a database, as the last Government seemed to think was appropriate. Storing indefinitely the DNA and fingerprints of more than 1 million innocent people undermines public trust in policing and goes against any sense of natural justice, so we will be taking innocent people off the DNA database and putting guilty people on.
The Bill introduces a new regime, whereby retention periods depend on a number of different factors, including the age of the individual concerned, the seriousness of the offence or alleged offence, whether they have been convicted, and, for under-18s, whether it is a first conviction. So in future, as now, an adult who is convicted or cautioned will have their fingerprints and DNA profile retained indefinitely, and we will take steps to plug the inexcusable gaps in the DNA database where the profiles of those who have previously been convicted of a serious offence are not currently included on the database.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Although I recognise the Home Secretary’s concerns about privacy, does she accept that these moves will inevitably mean—this should be stated—that some people who have committed crimes will not be caught and convicted?
Mrs May
No I do not agree, and my hon. Friend will see that that will not be the case if he looks at the many provisions in the Bill setting out the circumstances in which people’s DNA can be retained. I come back to the fundamental issue, which is whether we think it is right for the DNA profile of innocent people to be retained on the database. Before and since the election, both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have consistently taken the view that it is not right for the DNA of innocent people to be retained on the database, but that it is right for guilty people’s DNA to be retained. The last Labour Government did not do that.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary confirm that under her proposals the DNA of innocent people will be kept on the database? She is not removing from the database the DNA of everyone who has not been convicted.
Mrs May
Indeed, the police will be able to apply for the DNA of some people who are arrested but not charged to be retained. I would expect that application to be made in certain circumstances, such as when the victim has been vulnerable, which may mean there is very good evidence that the individual concerned has committed a crime but the victim is not able or not willing to come forward and see that case through.
I also say this to the right hon. Lady: the last Government wanted the DNA of all innocent people to be retained on the database indefinitely. We do not think that is a proportionate response, and what we are introducing today is a proportionate response. We would expect the DNA of the majority of the 1 million innocent people on the database would now to be removed from it.
An adult who is charged with, but not convicted of, a serious offence will have their fingerprints and DNA profile retained for three years, with the option of a single extension for two years with the approval of a district judge in the magistrates court, and an adult who is arrested for a minor offence but not convicted will have their fingerprints and DNA profile destroyed as soon as possible once a decision has been taken not to charge them or once they have been found not guilty by the courts. Different arrangements will apply for under-18s who are convicted of a first minor offence, and there will be special provisions for DNA and fingerprints to be retained for national security purposes. If the police believe there are sufficient public protection grounds to justify the retention of material following an arrest for a qualifying offence that does not lead to a charge, the Bill allows them to apply to the new commissioner for the retention and use of biometric material, who will decide whether retention of the DNA profile and fingerprints of the arrested person is justified.
We must protect the most vulnerable in society, so when the victim of the alleged offence is under 18, vulnerable or in a close personal relationship with the arrested person the expectation is that the police will apply to the commissioner for retention. I believe that these rules give the police the tools they need without putting the DNA of a large number of innocent people on the database. In all cases, the DNA profile and fingerprints of any person arrested for a recordable offence will be subjected to a speculative search against the national databases. That means that those who have committed crimes in the past and have left their DNA or fingerprints at the scene will not escape justice.
The Bill also fulfils our coalition agreement commitment to outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission. I must say that I found it amazing that any school ever thought it appropriate to fingerprint schoolchildren without their parents’ permission. The Bill will contain a double lock, whereby a school or college must obtain the consent of the parents and the child before processing their biometric data. If either opts out, the school or college must ensure that reasonable arrangements are in place to enable the child to access the full range of school services.
I shall deal now with surveillance. As with DNA, it is clear that CCTV can act as a deterrent to criminals, can help to convict the guilty and is warmly welcomed by many communities. This Government wholeheartedly support the use of CCTV and DNA to fight crime.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
On this sensitive issue of surveillance, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is being abused by local authorities which have taken it upon themselves to film such things as dog fouling and littering? Were the measures not introduced to deal with far graver issues?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will be referring specifically to the abuse of powers by local authorities, so if he could be a little patient, I will deal with that point. On the specific issue of CCTV, it is not right that surveillance cameras are being used without a proper regulatory framework. That is why the Bill will place a duty on the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a code of practice, which will contain guidance on surveillance camera systems. I have today launched the consultation on what that code of practice should contain. Local authorities and chief officers of police will be required to have regard to the code and, over time, we will consider extending this duty to other operators of CCTV and automatic number plate recognition systems. The Bill will also allow for the appointment of a surveillance camera commissioner responsible for encouraging compliance with the code of practice, reviewing its operation and providing advice on it, including on any changes that might be necessary. This sensible and measured approach will help to ensure that CCTV is used proportionately and best serves the purpose for which it was designed: tackling crime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) mentioned local authorities. I think that the public have been disturbed by the many stories of councils using intrusive techniques, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, to deal with trivial offences. Breaching school catchment area rules and dog fouling are not offences that warrant being subject to surveillance. These tactics are more appropriately used for tackling serious crime and terrorism, and it was irresponsible of the Labour Government not to put in place stronger safeguards for their use. That is why the coalition agreement contained a commitment to ban the use of these powers by councils unless they are signed off by a magistrate and are required to stop serious crime. The Bill enacts that commitment because it will require local authorities’ use of the powers to be subject to approval by a magistrate. In parallel with the passage of this Bill, an order will be made to introduce a seriousness threshold for the use of the most controversial power: directed surveillance. Local authorities will be authorised to use directed surveillance only for offences that carry a maximum custodial sentence of at least six months. Subject to limited exemptions relating to the under-age sale of alcohol and tobacco, this measure will restrict local authorities’ use of surveillance to serious cases.
As we restrict state powers of surveillance to serious offences, we should also ensure that state powers of entry into people’s homes or business premises are reasonable and proportionate. There has been a huge increase in the number of powers of entry in recent years, and there are now some 1,200 separate powers of entry. That means there are 1,200 reasons why state agencies or other bodies can invade people’s privacy. We need to protect the privacy of home owners, so we will remove unjustified powers and ensure that the remainder are subject to appropriate safeguards.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
This is all wonderful news and I am a strong supporter of the Bill. Given that there are 1,200 such powers, will my right hon. Friend make sure that her Cabinet colleagues are assiduous in rooting out dozens or hundreds of them, not just a handful, so that we make a real impact on this disgrace?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention and I absolutely agree with him. We will provide three order-making powers in the Bill to allow the repeal of unnecessary powers of entry, the addition of safeguards and the rewriting of powers of entry with a view to consolidating a number of powers in a similar area coupled with the inclusion of extra safeguards. Within two years of Royal Assent, the Government will be required to carry out a review of all existing powers of entry and to report the findings to Parliament. Provision will also be made for a code of practice for powers of entry, adding further protections for home owners.
Mr Cash
Will my right hon. Friend note that the Library research paper on the Bill indicates that a third of all powers of entry are based on EU requirements? Will she explain why and how she is going to repeal the provisions that are entrenched in our legislation through the European Communities Act 1972? What formula will she use—will it be the “notwithstanding” formula?
Mrs May
When I gave way to my hon. Friend, I almost said I had a deep suspicion that I knew what he was going to say, and I was absolutely right. Of course we will not be able to get rid of all powers of entry, nor would that be appropriate. It will be appropriate to keep some, and with others we will need to look at the implementation of a request or desire to gain entry in relation to what is at stake, what is the most appropriate use of power and how that power should be used. The process will take some time, but it is essential that the Government are committed to reducing the number of powers of entry, whereas the previous Government oversaw a significant increase in that number.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend reassure the House that at the end of this process the number of powers will be sufficiently small and simple that home owners will be able to determine for themselves whether someone who knocks on the door has a right to enter?
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Has the Home Secretary had discussions with Ministers and the Justice Secretary about the overlap with issues relating to bailiffs and credit enforcement agencies and their rights of entry?
Mrs May
I have been in touch with colleagues across Departments about powers of entry, because they are found in all sorts of places. All Departments will be required to review powers of entry, and duplication is exactly the sort of issue we will be looking at.
We know that powers of entry are of great concern to the public, and another issue of great concern is wheel-clamping. The Bill will protect motorists from cowboy clampers, making it a criminal offence to immobilise, move or restrict the movement of a vehicle without lawful authority. For too long, motorists have fallen victim to extortion and abuse from rogue clamping companies. We have heard stories of drivers being frogmarched to cash points late at night or left stranded by rogue operators who have towed their vehicle away. Clearly that is unacceptable.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
There will be support from across the House for measures to restrict the efforts of cowboy clampers, but what would the Home Secretary say to my constituent Mary Harrison, who has concerns about her residential area being overrun with cars because the existing structures to enforce parking restrictions are not sufficient?
Mrs May
Other powers will be available to control parking, such as barriers and ticketing. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman point out to his constituent the experience in Scotland, where such clamping was banned in 1992, I think. No problems have arisen from that change, so that is a good example for him to consider.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
I just want to say that this part of the Bill is fantastic and that the Home Secretary has my full support for it. [Hon. Members: “Where’s the barb?”] There is none—I just want to be nice. The thousands of people who signed my cowboy clampers petition will thank her for finally listening to the people of West Bromwich.
Mrs May
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those remarks. It is good to have cross-party support on such issues as this one, which affects many MPs whose constituents have suffered from cowboy clampers. By criminalising clamping and towing without lawful authority, the Government are committing rogue clampers to history and putting an end to intimidation and excessive charges once and for all.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
Further to my right hon. Friend’s answer to the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), will she confirm that local authorities will continue to have the power to clamp on the public highway? Will residents in private developments be able to contract with their local authority to clamp on private developments? I have been contacted by a large number of people in my constituency who have tried ticketing and barriers but found that they do not work close to the town centre and public transport hubs. Could local authorities continue to clamp on private land?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Local authorities already have the ability to take a controlling interest and to run parking on private land, subject to the agreement and request of the landowner, although that facility has not been much used.
To ensure continued access to key buildings, existing powers for the police to remove vehicles that are illegally, dangerously or obstructively parked on roads will be extended to other land. The registered keeper of a vehicle will also be made liable, in certain circumstances, for charges incurred as a result of parking on private land.
Let me address the counter-terrorism measures in the Bill, starting with pre-charge detention. Both coalition parties and many Opposition Members are clear that in the area of counter-terrorism legislation the previous Government went too far. I have already announced to the House the outcome of our review of counter-terrorism and security powers, and the Bill puts many of those changes into practice. I announced that we would not renew current legislation on the 28-day pre-charge detention period, which means that the sunset clause inserted by the previous Government has now brought the maximum period of pre-charge detention down to 14 days. The Bill will finally repeal the power to increase the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 28 days by means of secondary legislation. As I said to the House in January, police, prosecutors and the Government are clear that the normal maximum period of pre-charge detention should be 14 days, but we recognise that in exceptional circumstances that might need to be temporarily increased to 28 days. I have therefore published draft legislation that could be introduced to Parliament only in such circumstances. The draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extension) Bills will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, the arrangements for which will be discussed through the usual channels.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
This has been asked before, but what will happen during parliamentary recesses? What if the right hon. Lady was seeking that extension on 30 July when Parliament was in recess? Will she expect to recall Parliament?
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
My question follows that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). I had to propose a recall of Parliament, to which the Prime Minister and the Speaker agreed, to introduce emergency legislation following the Omagh bombing. The bombing took place on 15 August 1998, but with the very best will in the world we were not able to get a recall for almost three weeks, so Parliament was not recalled until 3 September, as the right hon. Lady might remember. That was a three-week period. If the prosecutors have a suspect whom they wish to continue to question, how in practice will the Home Secretary be able to shorten that time? The right hon. Lady shakes her head. I promise her that we were seeking the shortest possible time, and it is very complicated. How far has she thought about that?
Mrs May
I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making about his experience in relation to the Omagh bombing. I believe that it is possible to shorten that period to ensure that we can recall Parliament in such exceptional circumstances if that is needed. It would be wrong for hon. Members to expect that the only circumstances in which that would be required would be towards the end of a 14-day period of pre-charge detention. The period that would be available for the recall and for the new measures to be put through might be a little longer than the right hon. Gentleman is considering.
I want to move on to stop and search, which is the other aspect of counter-terrorism legislation that we will deal with in the Bill. As well as scaling back the excessive counter-terrorism legislation of the past, we need to stop the misuse of these laws. The extensive and disproportionate use of stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is one example of that misuse. It has eroded public trust and dented public confidence. But the evidence, particularly in Northern Ireland, has demonstrated that when there is a credible threat of an imminent terrorist attack, the absence of such powers might create a gap in the ability of the police to protect the public.
The Bill therefore repeals section 44 and replaces it with a tightly defined power which would allow a senior police officer to make a targeted authorisation of much more limited scope and duration for no-suspicion stop-and-search powers. These would be authorised to prevent a terrorist attack only when there is a specific threat. The new power to search a person or vehicle would be subject to a number of additional safeguards, including a requirement that a senior police officer should reasonably suspect that an act of terrorism would take place and that the use of these powers was necessary to prevent the act of terrorism. The duration of any authorisation must now be no longer and no greater than is necessary to prevent the act of terrorism.
The purposes for which an officer may search a person or vehicle will be limited to looking for evidence that the individual is a terrorist or that a vehicle is being used for the purposes of terrorism. The Secretary of State would have the option of amending the authorisation, rather than only accepting or refusing it, as previously. Finally, the Secretary of State will be required to prepare a code of practice containing guidance on the use of the powers. These changes will provide the police with the powers that they need to deal with terrorist threats, while also ensuring that the public are not needlessly stopped and searched. The measures will also prevent the misuse of stop-and-search powers against photographers, which I know was a significant concern with the previous regime.
As recommended by the counter-terrorism powers review, I have considered whether the police need these revised powers more quickly than the Bill would allow. Given the current threat environment, I have concluded that they do. The most appropriate way of meeting the legal and operational requirements is to make an urgent remedial order under section 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to make immediate changes to the legislation. I will be doing this shortly. This is only an interim solution. The proposed new powers will remain in the Bill to ensure full scrutiny of the provisions.
Another important area where we will roll back the state’s power to common-sense levels is in the vetting and barring and criminal records regimes. The previous Government created the vetting and barring scheme with reasonable intentions, but, as with much that they did, their implementation was disproportionate and over-reliant on the state. There is no doubt that a small minority pose a risk to vulnerable people, including children, but requiring more than 9 million people to register and be monitored is not an appropriate response. We should be encouraging volunteers, not treating them like criminals.
The Bill will therefore introduce a new regime, whereby employers will be given a much more central role in ensuring safe recruitment practices, supported by a proportionate central barring scheme. We will retain the sensible features of the vetting and barring scheme, but will not require registration or monitoring, which means that there will no longer be an intrusive state-run database containing the details of 9.3 million people. The scheme will cover only those who have regular or close contact with vulnerable groups. This will create a more convenient and proportionate system for both employers and voluntary organisations and the people seeking to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults.
On the criminal records regime specifically, the Bill will enable criminal records disclosures to become portable, through a system which allows for continuous updating. This would enable an employer to establish whether new information had been recorded since the certificate was issued. It will also remove the provision requiring a copy of a certificate to be sent directly to an employer. This will allow an applicant legitimately to dispute the information released on the certificate, without this information already having been seen by the employer.
To administer the new scheme, the Criminal Records Bureau and the Independent Safeguarding Authority will be merged into a single, new organisation. These changes will ensure the continued protection of vulnerable people and children, while at the same time allowing those who want to volunteer to do so without fear or suspicion. It will end the unnecessary state scrutiny of law-abiding people.
As well as dealing with recent illiberal laws, today’s Bill rights historic wrongs. Consensual sex between men over the age of consent was decriminalised in 1967, yet more than 40 years on, gay men can still be penalised and discriminated against because of convictions for conduct which is now perfectly lawful. It is right that we should change the law and wipe the slate clean. The Bill establishes a scheme whereby an individual with a conviction that would today not be considered an offence would be able to apply to the Home Office to have the conviction and caution disregarded. If an application were approved, details of the conviction or caution would be removed from police records and the individual would be able legally to conceal their previous conviction in any circumstances. It would also no longer appear on a criminal record disclosure.
Greater transparency is at the heart of our commitment to open up government to greater scrutiny and to allow public authorities to be held to account, so the Bill makes a number of changes to the Freedom of Information Act to extend its provisions. We will consult the House authorities on these provisions before the Committee stage to ensure that parliamentary copyright is properly safeguarded. The Bill also makes changes to the Freedom of Information Act and to the Data Protection Act to enhance the independence of the Information Commissioner.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The Home Secretary will be surprised to hear that I agree with quite a lot of the Bill, but on data protection, will she consider a constituent of mine who is extremely worried about the amount of information being collected about him and retained? For privacy reasons, I will not give his name, but let us call him Mr N Clegg. He is worried that in the next four weeks information will be gathered from him which he does not wish to give and which he does not wish the Government to retain. It is called the census. What advice would the right hon. Lady give to my constituent in such circumstances?
Mrs May
I was waiting for the dénouement of the right hon. Gentleman’s question. There is a requirement for people to fill in the census. It is an extremely useful tool for Government. Previous Governments wanted a census because it informs Government in the production of policy. What I would say to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent is that the census can provide useful information better to inform Government to produce better policy.
David T. C. Davies
I am grateful to the Home Secretary. I was waiting for her to be specific about surveillance cameras. I understand that it will be much harder for the police and local authorities to use them. Will newspaper editors be subject to the same restrictions?
Mrs May
I always wait with interest and occasionally trepidation for the points that my hon. Friend makes. [Interruption] I could make a response to the sedentary comment by the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), but it would probably be better not to do so in the context of the Chamber of the House.
On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Bill contains a great number of significant measures that will be to the benefit of the people of this country and will ensure that surveillance cameras are used for the proper purposes for which they were introduced.
Mr Watson
The Home Secretary is indeed being incredibly generous. What will be her approach in Committee to the Information Commissioner’s powers? The relevant clause seems rather weak. Part of it mentions hearings for the appointment, but it does not really free the commissioner from a Department. The commissioner is currently under the yoke of the Ministry of Justice, but previous Select Committees have recommended that the commissioner be answerable to Parliament, not a Department. Will she take a generous approach in Committee to helpful amendments on those provisions?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman’s previous intervention was extremely helpful in supporting parts of the Bill. Members might wish to discuss that issue in Committee. It has been suggested that the Information Commissioner should be responsible to Parliament. The role goes rather wider than Parliament, however, which is why it has been placed where it has. We intend to increase the commissioner’s independence, so I am sure that the issue will be debated and discussed in Committee.
Finally, the Bill protects one of the most historic freedoms and liberties enjoyed by the British people: the right to trial by jury. The Bill repeals section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allows the prosecution to apply for a serious or complex fraud trial to proceed in the absence of a jury. We sacrifice the cornerstones of our justice system at our peril.
I have told the House today that the Bill contains a number of provisions that put into effect commitments contained in the coalition agreement, but that does not mean that it should fail to gain support from across the House. Indeed, a number of positive statements have been made by hon. and right hon. Opposition Members.
Any Government and any Parliament must seek to protect not only the security of the British public but the freedoms that we hold dear. The Bill achieves those aims. All those who believe in liberty and the rights of the individual should support the Bill, and I commend it to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I suggest to the Home Secretary that some of the rhetoric in her speech was perhaps unwise. She is probably still thinking too much like an Opposition politician three months before an election, and not enough like a Home Secretary less than a year into a Parliament who will have to live with the consequences of her decisions and the laws that she changes.
There are difficult balances to be struck between protecting people’s freedoms from police or Government interference and protecting their freedom not to become victims of interference or violence by criminals and terrorists. Those balances should be guided by the evidence, not by the political rhetoric that she has used today about the march to authoritarianism or the ending of British liberties. Although some of the measures that she is introducing are perfectly sensible—we will support many of the sensible measures and arrangements—they are not, as the Deputy Prime Minister has tried to claim, a fundamental rolling back of the powers of the state. There are other areas where we think she has got the balance wrong.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Will the right hon. Lady tell Members what evidence there was for 90-day pre-charge detention?
Yvette Cooper
As I have said before, I do not think that it was right to go for 90-day detention and it was not justified by the evidence. There will always be areas where Governments need to be cautious in getting the balance right. Equally, however, they must be cautious not to over-hype the rhetoric and inappropriately claim that problems will somehow be easily solved. There is always a difficult balance to be struck.
I hope that the right hon. Lady, in her tenure as Home Secretary, will not have to deal with some of the extremely difficult and dangerous terrorist incidents that her Labour predecessors had to cope with, such as the Omagh bombing, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred, and the London 7/7 bombings, that led to many of the stronger counter-terrorism measures that her predecessors introduced. I also hope that she will rarely have to deal with some of the deeply disturbing and serious crimes, such as the Soham case, which led to the new procedures on vetting and barring.
The Home Secretary will know that when in the Home Office one can never predict what is coming around the corner, what problems might be uncovered or how one might need to respond in order to protect people’s freedom not to become victims of crime or terrorist threats. In those circumstances, it is wise to build consensus, rather than engaging in the kind of over-simplified political rhetoric that will make it more difficult to strike the right balance in future.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Does the shadow Home Secretary think it right that the details of 1 million innocent people should be on the DNA database, which is exactly what the 2009 report stated? Can that possibly be right?
Michael Ellis
Is that not a damning indictment of Labour’s record on civil liberties?
Mr Speaker
Order. May I say from an advisory point of view that Members normally make one intervention at a time? They cannot suddenly pop up again when they remember a point that momentarily eluded them.
Yvette Cooper
I will discuss the DNA database later. It is important to have safeguards, but it is equally important to ensure that proper processes are in place to protect people against crime.
Mr Blunkett
I want to reassure my right hon. Friend that my DNA is on the database, and I have never been arrested or convicted of anything. I was proud to do that because I thought that it was an example that would encourage people not to see the database as something that should be feared, but as a safeguard and a real asset to policing and security.
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In many cases, the DNA database is also a way of protecting the innocent by ensuring that they are not wrongfully convicted of crimes. DNA evidence will ensure that the person who is guilty of the crime is convicted.
Let me cover some of the areas of the Bill where we agree with the Government. We agree wholeheartedly with removing old convictions for gay sex, which is now legal. We think that it is right to remove them, just as we thought that it was right to abolish section 28 and introduce civil partnerships. We also agree that we should remove the restrictions on when people can get married or become civil partners. If people want to get married at 2 o’clock in the morning and can find someone nocturnal enough to conduct the ceremony, Parliament should not prevent them from doing so.
We support sensible extensions to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. As the party that introduced that Act, we believe that it is a vital way of ensuring proper transparency and accountability. In passing, I would appreciate it if the Home Secretary would have a word with the Chancellor and ask him to stop blocking my freedom of information requests on the impact of his changes on women.
We agree that action was needed against rogue car clampers. In fact, the Opposition Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), has run some fantastic campaigns against wheel-clamping bullies. Some action had been taken to legislate for new licensing measures, but we are ready to support alternatives that work and will discuss those in Committee.
We also agree with tighter restrictions on stop-and- search powers, which were being used more widely than originally intended under the legislation. The Home Secretary will be aware that her predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), had already taken some action in that area and that the provisional data had shown a significant drop in stop-and-search cases in 2009-10, but we are ready to support sensible changes that bring the legislation more closely in line with the original intention. As I have said to the Home Secretary before, I am still worried about the implications in Northern Ireland. I hope that she will be able to reassure me, and the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, about the measures that she is taking in those areas.
For all those reasons, we will not oppose the Bill on Second Reading, although we have serious concerns about some elements and believe that significant amendments will be needed in Committee.
I also agree that in some cases the implementation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 has gone beyond Parliament’s original intention and that further safeguards are needed. Again, we will scrutinise the detail, as it is important that the new procedures are not so bureaucratic that they prevent councils from doing a sensible job. We believe that communities across the country will be concerned if they find that a new code of practice makes it harder to get the CCTV they have been campaigning for, because they know it is critical to preventing crime and antisocial behaviour in their areas.
There is a massive contradiction in the Government’s approach to councils’ powers and abilities. In the Bill before us, the Home Secretary wants to make it harder for councils to gather information or to use surveillance. Yet, in her other Home Office Bill, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, which is also going through the House at the moment, she wants to give local councils extra powers to seize people’s property if byelaws are breached. So she does not want council officers watching people, but she does not seem to mind them taking people’s property away.
The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill states that byelaws will be able to
“include provision for or in connection with the seizure and retention of any property in connection with any contravention of the byelaw”.
Local councils have byelaws on things such as dog fouling, mud falling on roads, music outside churches or, in the case of Westminster, giving out free refreshment, all of which could be covered by future byelaw seizure powers. The Bill before us contains an entire clause entitled “Protection of Property from Disproportionate Enforcement Action”, but at the very same time disproportionate enforcement action is being actively encouraged in the other Bill. Imagine: a council cannot monitor the noise from a nuisance neighbour, but it can, if a child is playing a tune in the church square, seize the recorder; it cannot check if any dog fouling is taking place, but, if an officer happens to pass by at the critical moment, they can confiscate the dog.
So what on earth are the Government up to? We are used to chaos and confusion in this Government, but that is usually because the Deputy Prime Minister says one thing while the Home Secretary does another: he abolishes control orders; she renames them; he abolishes antisocial behaviour orders; she introduces criminal behaviour orders. We know that she does not agree with lots of what the Deputy Prime Minister says and does, but now it seems that she does not even agree with herself. Such chaos and confusion is absurd when it comes to council byelaws, but it is rather more worrying when it comes to counter-terrorism, because the process has been chaotic from beginning to end.
We can agree to support limiting pre-charge detention to 14 rather than 28 days, on the basis of the evidence from experts, but we also take very seriously the conclusion of the Home Secretary’s own counter-terrorism review, which states that the Government must provide for the possibility of needing to hold someone for longer in exceptional circumstances.
The right hon. Lady’s original plan was to allow the old limit of 28 days to lapse without even showing us the review or telling us the Government’s plans. Then, the Immigration Minister told the House that the draft emergency legislation would be put directly in the Library. Then, the Home Secretary said that it would not and the order-making power to increase detention to 28 days would suffice. Then, we learned that the Government’s own review stated that the order-making power would not be fast enough. Then, the Home Secretary said that she would consult the Opposition on the emergency legislation so that it could be agreed as soon as possible. We are still waiting on that one. The legislation has finally been published, but, while the draft Bill refers to three months, the explanatory notes refer to six months, and the Government’s intention is still not clear.
Mr Ellwood
The right hon. Lady has rattled on a bit, but I wonder whether I can take her back to 90 days, because she did not really answer the question about the evidence on which that limit was based. I have taken a personal interest in the matter and in the issue of 14 and 28 days. When there is a case for more than 14 days but there are difficulties in recalling Parliament, officers can choose to put forward a lesser charge that can result in a conviction, thus allowing the person to be detained. The police say that that is easy to do, rather than having to go for the super-charge that would result in the major conviction. It is a simple solution to an easy problem.
Yvette Cooper
That might be possible in some cases, and officers might be able to use it, but there is an issue, because, although it is right to make 14 days the norm, it is also right to have the provision to move to 28 days if needed. Doing so through emergency legislation, as the Government propose, however, raises some significant difficulties.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn has raised the question of what happens if Parliament is not sitting, and whether it will be possible in those circumstances to move fast enough. The Home Secretary says, “Well, it’ll be all right because we’ll find out on day one whether we might need longer,” but we might not. We might not find out until day 10 of an interrogation that, in fact, a longer period is required.
Let us suppose, for example, that the police have a serious case, including credible intelligence on an imminent terrorist attack or some extreme situation. After 10 days it becomes clear that they need more time before they can charge, but they are afraid of releasing the suspect because they might abscond abroad or even trigger the attack. What happens in those circumstances? The Home Secretary will come to Parliament and say, “We need emergency legislation,” but neither she nor anyone else in the House will be able to discuss why we need it, for fear of prejudicing an investigation or a possible trial. Parliamentary scrutiny will be very difficult, so, given how difficult and risky it might prove, I urge her to look again at options such as special bail conditions, which could reduce the need for emergency legislation.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I have listened to my right hon. Friend’s reservations, which I share: I am very much in favour of a reduction from 28 to 14 days; that goes without saying. Leaving aside whether the House is to be recalled, and assuming that it is sitting, what details will be given to us about those whom it is felt should be held for longer than 14 days? If we cannot have the relevant information because it will prejudice any proceedings that will take place if the person is charged, what are we supposed to do? Are we just supposed to nod our approval? If we are not, and the details are given out, it will be argued in any later court proceedings that the House has prejudiced the case.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes a really important point that goes to the heart of the problem. The reason for emergency legislation through primary legislation to change those powers is, in theory, to give Parliament the chance to scrutinise, debate and decide whether the action is reasonable. In practice, however, it is very hard to see how Parliament will be able to discuss the detail at all without being at serious risk of prejudicing a potentially dangerous investigation and important case, which we would all want to see go properly through the courts, with the proper judicial process followed.
That is why I say to the Home Secretary that it seems sensible to explore whether there are alternatives, such as bail conditions and other procedures with a judicial process, that might be used in such extreme circumstances. We all hope that the circumstances do not arise, but those alternatives would reduce our need to use emergency legislation.
Mr Cash
Has it occurred to the right hon. Lady or, indeed, to those on the Government Front Bench that we have habeas corpus, and that in such conditions it is the first duty of any judge to give effect to that provision? It does not matter what statute says; habeas corpus comes first, unless it has been expressly excluded by statute.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman has considerable legal expertise, and I shall not attempt to get into a detailed debate about that point, but the critical issue is the complicated interaction between not only the work of the police and the role of Parliament, but the necessary role of the judiciary, and the alternatives merit more thoughtful debate, so that we do not prejudice individual cases or put the House in a difficult position.
Yvette Cooper
Legislation is not the right way to respond in such extreme circumstances. In the end, it might be the backstop that the right hon. Lady needs, but she should do more to avoid the situation arising. She is not even looking at what the appropriate special bail conditions might be, for example, or at other measures that could prevent her from ever needing to use emergency legislation in the middle of an extreme situation. She should look at the possible alternatives.
Part 5 makes significant changes to the vetting and barring regime, which works to protect children from abuse. As the Home Secretary knows, the Labour Government said that changes were needed to the system to ensure the right balance between protecting children and vulnerable adults without being unnecessarily burdensome. Indeed, Sir Roger Singleton recommended removing a series of unnecessary checks, and we welcome the recent technological developments that will enable portable Criminal Records Bureau checks and substantially simplify the system.
Some practical issues have been raised, and we will want to pursue those further in Committee.
We think that this is an important development. However, the Home Secretary’s proposals go too far. She is creating a series of loopholes in child protection that parents will rightly be very worried about. The evidence from the NSPCC makes that clear. It says that her proposals leave
“a disturbing gap in the planned legislation that could put children at harm.”
Under these plans, it will be possible for people to spend long hours in positions of authority and in regular intensive contact with children without being covered by the barring arrangements because someone else is in a supervisory role. For example, voluntary teaching assistants may well not be covered. As the NSPCC points out,
“supervised employees and volunteers are still able to develop and exploit relationships with children…A volunteer part time teaching assistant in a classroom of 30 children with only light touch supervision by the classroom teacher has plenty of opportunity to develop inappropriate relationships and groom children.”
Mrs May
Perhaps I can help the right hon. Lady and the House. This afternoon, the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), who is responsible for criminal information matters, had a meeting with a number of children’s charities, including the NSPCC, and was able to reassure them on that precise point. The employer will be able to get an enhanced CRB check for an individual who is volunteering in a capacity such as a teaching assistant, which will contain the same information that has been available in making the decision on the barring of that individual. The employer will therefore be able to make a decision based on exactly the same information as that on which the decision on barring was taken.
Yvette Cooper
If the Home Secretary is changing her policy, perhaps she will take the opportunity to intervene again to clarify this point. Will somebody in these circumstances—
Yvette Cooper
Let me ask the question. Will somebody in these circumstances be able to find out whether the Independent Safeguarding Authority has made the judgment that somebody should be barred?
Mrs May
I am very happy to intervene again on the right hon. Lady, but may I just correct her on one thing? I have not changed the policy. The policy remains exactly as it was, and the Bill remains exactly as it was. A misinterpretation of what was in the Bill has led to the comments from the NSPCC, which, as I said, is one of the children’s charities to which my hon. Friend the Minister has been speaking today. In the circumstances that the right hon. Lady outlines, the fact of the barring will not be available to the employer, but the information that led to the decision on the barring will be available to the employer. We take a slightly different position from that of the right hon. Lady and her party—that the employer must then take some responsibility for making a decision as to who it is appropriate to have potentially dealing with children in the classroom.
Yvette Cooper
This is really weird. It means that somebody—a teacher, for example—who has been working with children and has been barred for grooming a child, may then apply for a job, perhaps a voluntary post as a teaching assistant, and the school will not be told whether they are barred, but the Home Secretary thinks that that is okay because the school may be able to get some of the information that led to the barring in the first place if it is summarised on the CRB check. Why not give the school the information about the fact that someone has been previously barred?
The Home Office guidance says:
“Some people who may previously have been barred…may be able to gain posts in other areas where they are able to work less closely with children or adults. It will be up to employers to weigh up the risks involved”,
but let us think of the position in which that puts employers. They will not even know if they have got the full information; nor will they have the judgment of the experts at the safeguarding authority who have made a decision, based on their professional experience and expertise, that the person should be barred. The guidance also says that
“employers will not be able to find out the barred status of people who are not working in regulated activity roles.”
A lot of parents will find this puzzling and worrying. Why should they not be able to find out whether someone has previously been barred for working with children if they are going to be working with children again in a similar way?
Let us consider the other consequences. If a voluntary teaching assistant is caught grooming a child, then as long as they have never been a teacher, worked in regulated activity, or expressed a desire to do so in future, they will not even be added to the barred list. So two years later they can apply for teacher training and no one will know that they were kicked out of another school for deeply inappropriate behaviour. Future employers may be able to get a criminal records check but, as the NSPCC has made clear,
“This is highly concerning as most people who pose a risk to children are not prosecuted, and thus future employers may not be alerted to the risks they pose.”
I have to say to the Home Secretary that most parents will not just think that it is “highly concerning”—they will think, like me, that it is wrong.
Mr Watson
My right hon. Friend is right that this is a complex and puzzling piece of the Bill, and the devil will be in the detail when it comes before the Committee. I hope that the Home Secretary is in no doubt, though, that what is very clear is that if a child is harmed as a result of this deregulatory measure, she will carry the responsibility for it.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary needs to think again about this matter and take responsibility for the changes that she is making. As parents, we want to be sure that someone who has a history of inappropriate behaviour towards children will not end up as a voluntary teaching assistant in our child’s class. The Deputy Prime Minister has described the proposed new arrangements as common sense. I am afraid that the truth is that they look, at best, naive and confused, and at worst, extremely irresponsible. I urge the Home Secretary to change this proposal and not to put political rhetoric above the safety of children.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Although there are many excellent things in the Bill that I welcome, the right hon. Lady is absolutely right on this point. When it comes to the protection of children and to giving confidence to parents, is it not right always to err on the side of caution?
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Gentleman is right. This is a difficult area. People will raise concerns if they feel that there are inappropriate burdens in reporting arrangements, and of course it is right to try to reduce those and to prevent inappropriate checks or bureaucracy, but it is also right to put safeguards for our children at the heart of the measures that we set out, and not to do things that feel inappropriate given the potential risks, given the evidence, and given the security that parents want for their children.
Robert Flello
My right hon. Friend is talking about the incredibly important issue of safeguarding our children. Given what we have seen in the media over the past week about the risks to vulnerable adults, would she care to comment on the fact that, although those of us who are parents are deeply concerned about children, including other people’s children, there are serious implications for vulnerable adults too?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. Some cases of very distressing abuse have taken place involving vulnerable adults, and it is important that they, too, should have protection against that. The key is to ensure that if one authority or organisation knows that somebody has a history of abuse, that person should not be allowed to work again in a position where they may put vulnerable adults or children at risk in a way that other authorities, or the families, were not aware of, and which might lead to harm.
I want finally to turn to DNA, which is another area where we believe that the Government are going too far. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle had already legislated for safeguards on DNA use, including a six-year limit on retention for those who were not convicted. He based those safeguards on analysis of reoffending rates and the benefits in terms of preventing and solving crimes. The Government have decided to reject those safeguards and to go much further in restricting the use of DNA, but not on the basis of evidence. Some people object, as a matter of principle, to DNA being held at all if the person has not been convicted. I do not agree with that, but neither does the Home Secretary. She claimed that nobody’s DNA should be kept at all if they were innocent, but that is not what the proposals in her Bill achieve. Rightly, she recognises that there must be a balance that supports the needs to prevent crime and to ensure that crimes are solved. A balance needs to be struck, but she is not striking the right one. The changes go too far in restricting the use of DNA and will make it harder for the police to solve and prevent serious crimes.
This is a particular problem in rape cases. As the Home Secretary knows, rape cases not only have a notoriously low conviction rate, but a notoriously low charge rate. That is because the trauma for the victim is so great and because of problems with evidence. Many perpetrators of serious sexual crimes are not brought to justice for their first offence. In about 70% of cases in which a rape suspect is arrested, there is no charge. According to Home Office papers, in cases where there is no charge, DNA will be kept only in very limited circumstances, so in most of these cases the DNA will be destroyed, even though it might be critical in catching a repeat offender for a nasty and violent sexual offence.
The Home Secretary will know that a considerable number of cases have been solved because of DNA. Kensley Larrier was arrested in 2002 for the possession of an offensive weapon. The case never reached court, but two years later he raped someone and was found because of a DNA match. Lee and Stephen Ainsby raped and kidnapped a 17-year-old girl in Barnsley. A match with Lee Ainsby’s DNA was found years later in a case review. It had been taken because he had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Under the Home Secretary’s system, his DNA would not have been kept. Without that DNA, those two men would still be free, and justice for that young girl would not have been done. Abdul Azad was arrested for violent disorder in Birmingham in February 2005, but released without charge, according to the Forensic Science Service. In July 2005, he raped somebody in Stafford and was identified only because the police had his DNA. The senior investigating officer for the case said:
“We would never have caught him had his DNA not already been on the database—he didn’t even live locally so we had no intelligence leads either.”
Case after case would have been much harder for the police to solve under the Home Secretary’s new rules. Yes, she has an obligation to ensure that individuals are protected from unjustified interference, but she also has an obligation to protect people from crime and to deliver justice for the victims of horrific crimes.
Mr Cash
I am sure that the right hon. Lady will appreciate, given the importance of this debate, that many of the points that she has made about those cases derive from European rulings and the European convention on human rights. The problem with almost everything she has said is that it was her Government who were responsible for bringing in and endorsing many of these provisions, including through the Human Rights Act 1998. Does she not accept that there is a dilemma, which has to be resolved in Committee, about whether we should go down the human rights route and follow article 8 or legislate in this House to ensure that we achieve justice for the people concerned?
Yvette Cooper
The Crime and Security Act 2010, which was passed before the election, addressed many of those issues and concerns. A wider discussion, which we will not stray into, is about whether one of the benefits of the Human Rights Act is that it refers issues back to Parliament and allows it to respond.
Mr Hanson
Is my right hon. Friend aware that when my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) and I took the DNA provisions through this House at the beginning of last year, the then Opposition did not oppose the six-year retention period? That was because they recognised that many murderers, rapists, sexual offenders and others were caught after committing crimes because of DNA profiles, meaning that other victims were not created. Does she agree that the proposals threaten to create more victims?
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend is right about the importance of protecting victims, as well as protecting other people. It is a shame that the Government, having supported the measures in the 2010 Act and allowed it to go through, have not chosen to implement it. The revised measures will take much longer to put in place.
Mr Watson
I was not aware of the cases that my right hon. Friend raised. Before we decide where we stand on this matter, I think that the people of Stafford, Birmingham and Barnsley deserve an explanation from the Home Secretary about why these measures would have allowed serious criminals to remain free.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend raises an important point. If these restrictions go through and make it harder for the police to solve serious crimes, the Home Secretary will have to explain to the victims of crime and those who are worried about serious crimes and offences why she has chosen to draw the line where she has, and to strike the balance in a way that will mean that more victims will not get the justice that they deserve and that we have a responsibility to pursue on their behalf.
Protecting freedom means getting the balance right. It means protecting the freedom of victims as well as protecting everyone else from unnecessary suspicion or interference. It means making sure that there are safeguards, checks and balances that protect people’s freedoms and protect the innocent. It also means making sure that the police have the tools they need to fight and prevent crime that hurts innocent people.
In reality, what are the Home Secretary and her Government doing? Their record on protecting freedoms and ensuring checks and balances is a mass of confusion and contradiction that makes a mockery of their rhetoric: new powers of confiscation for local councils; restrictions on protest in Parliament square and powers for non-warranted officers to move people on physically; substantial powers over the police concentrated in the hands of a single politician—the police commissioner; and a populist assault on the courts and the Human Rights Act, which play an important role in preventing arbitrary state power. The Government are not putting in place checks and balances or protecting freedoms. At the same time, they are making it harder, not easier, for the police to fight crime and bring offenders to justice—through restrictions on DNA, loopholes in child protection, weakening the sex offenders register, ending antisocial behaviour orders, weakening control orders and by having more than 10,000 fewer police officers thanks to the 20% front-loaded cuts. That is not a good list.
The Bill does not do what it says on the tin. It does not deliver a fundamental change in the protection of freedom for the innocent, and it does not protect the freedom of victims. The Home Secretary has given in to the rhetoric of the Deputy Prime Minister and she will be judged by the reality of her decisions today. She is getting some of those decisions wrong.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I welcome the Bill. How could one not support clamping down on the wheel clampers? Some of my constituents have had terrible experiences at their hands.
Although I listened carefully to the shadow Home Secretary’s arguments, and although she made some fair points about DNA, one cannot, on civil liberties grounds, oppose removing the DNA of innocent people from the DNA database. It is a fundamental principle of British law that when people are found innocent by the courts, they are innocent.
My speech will be rather like the speeches that we used to have at Conservative party conferences, which said that the motion was fine, but did not go nearly far enough. Much of the Bill is, frankly, pretty unexceptional. Compared with the Deputy Prime Minister’s rhetoric last year about bringing in a Bill to
“protect our hard won liberties”
much of it is a bit tame. What happened, I wonder, to the 14,000 ideas that were suggested by members of the public via the “Your Freedom” consultation? It is like a scene from “Yes Minister”. An enthusiastic new Minister says, “I want to have a Freedom Bill,” and 14,000 replies come in. One can imagine Sir Humphrey, in his most mellifluous tone, advising the Minister that freedom can be a very incendiary device when it comes to Government.
I suggest that the Bill should go further, and I hope that I will get support not only from those on the Government Benches, but from Opposition Members. The Leader of the Opposition has admitted that Labour was
“too draconian on aspects of our civil liberties”.
Where can we go further? I am particularly worried about freedom of speech. I believe that political speech and debate, even in this place, are becoming very bland. There is a chilling effect on free speech, because people are discouraged from expressing unpopular opinions that do not fit with the winds of political fashion. Did not George Orwell once say:
“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”?
I would add that the right to speak against received wisdom is the only way to make social progress, as I hope many Opposition Members would agree. We have to protect the ability to express widely differing opinions in strong terms in the public square.
One reason why I was worried about the Phil Woolas case, as I said at the time on the Floor of the House, is that if someone has a British National party candidate standing against them, for example, they have to be able to denounce them for what they are without fearing legal sanctions. We have a more and more active and activist judiciary, not just in the Supreme Court and the lower courts but in the European Court of Human Rights. Again, that has a somewhat chilling effect. We should examine some of the debates that there used to be during general elections, certainly 100 years ago but even 50 or 40 years ago. They were a lot more robust than they are now.
With that in mind, and in the spirit of warm and cosy friendship with my Liberal Democrat friends, I wish to try to persuade the Home Secretary to give some thought to adopting a Liberal Democrat proposal for inclusion in the Bill. It was made by Dr Evan Harris, who at the time was the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon. May I say how much we all miss him? Although I disagreed with him on virtually everything, he was a kind of foil to some of my arguments. In March 2009, he tabled an interesting proposal to amend the Public Order Act 1986. He wanted to delete the word “insulting” from section 5, because he was concerned that that section was being used to trample on free speech. As I have said, I did not agree with a lot of what he said, but I did agree with that.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend remember the Hayes dictum, named after my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes)? It was that if a Member was in the same Lobby as Dr Evan Harris, they were in the wrong Lobby.
Mr Leigh
That is enough about our friend, I think.
Section 5 of the 1986 Act outlaws
“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”
if they are likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress”. The proposal that I wish to make, which I and the Liberals supported before, is the deletion of the lowest threshold of that offence, which is the word “insulting”. That would still leave the two higher thresholds of “threatening” and “abusive”.
The 1986 Act was brought in to replace the Public Order Act 1936, which had worked very well in dealing with the blackshirts and all that. The 1986 Act does not define the terms “threats” and “abuse”, but we all know them when we see them. The courts have often said that. Threat is obvious, is it not? It is when someone is in your face and there is a fear of violence, and abuse is when someone uses obscene language. Insult, however, is clearly something less serious and more subjective, and that is the problem. I believe that removing the word “insulting” would be enough to stop section 5 being misused and generating a chilling effect on free speech.
Mr Leigh
Good, I am very glad. That just shows that there is support for that from all over the House, and indeed from outside.
Section 5 of the 1986 Act is a classic example of a law that was brought in for a fair reason, to deal with a particular state of affairs long ago, but has been used in practice for something quite different. It was brought in to tackle hooliganism, but it is increasingly used by police to silence peaceful protestors and street preachers.
I shall give a couple of examples of how section 5 has been used, to show what has been going on. It has been used to prosecute a couple of hotel owners, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, who had a breakfast-table dispute with a Muslim guest. I do not comment one way or the other on their views, but they said that Mohammed was a warlord and that Islamic dress oppressed women. For that breakfast-table dispute, they were prosecuted. True, the judge threw the case out and apparently hinted that the police should have handled it differently, but the point is that for some reason, Merseyside police thought that section 5 applied to theological debates over breakfast. Even though the couple were acquitted, their business went to the wall. It is not enough to say, “Well, we don’t need to worry, because they were not convicted.” We should worry, because people are increasingly worried about expressing strong opinions.
There are other examples. In 2008, a 16-year-old protestor was issued a summons by police under section 5 of the 1986 Act for holding a placard outside a scientology centre that read, “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult”, which is something that many people agree with. City of London police referred the allegation that the sign was abusive or insulting to the Crown Prosecution Service. I am glad to say that Liberty, which is supporting the campaign for the change, intervened and the case was finally dropped. However, it shows the problem that exists.
Then there were the animal rights protestors in Worcester, who were threatened with arrest and seizure of property under section 5 for protesting against seal culling using toy seals coloured with red dye. Police told them that the toys were deemed distressing by two members of the public and ordered them to move on.
The last and most ridiculous case is that of Kyle Little. After being warned by the police for using bad language, he was arrested and prosecuted under section 5 for a daft little growl and woof aimed towards two Labrador dogs. I have a dog, my own dearly beloved William, and I am sure he has never felt insulted by anything that I have ever said to him. But this poor Kyle Little, for growling at a dog, was detained for five hours, despite the dog owners not wanting any prosecution, at a cost of £8,000 to the taxpayer. Unbelievably, Newcastle Crown court finally had to acquit Little of the charge. We can see what is going on. [Hon. Members: “It’s barking!”] The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and others are right. We need to bring it to an end.
We should all worry about this. There is something wrong with a law when the police think that it requires them to regulate debate. As I have said, the 1986 Act was introduced to replace the 1936 Act during a period of football hooliganism, as people might remember. At the time, a White Paper identified the mischief at which the Act was aimed—hooligans on housing estates throwing things down stairs and banging on doors, and groups of youths persistently shouting abuse and obscenities. Section 5 was a fairly reasonable response to that. The then Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, told the House that it would not undermine civil liberties, but 25 years later, we see a major difference between what was intended and what has happened since. We therefore need to examine the wording. I cannot act very easily, as a Back Bencher, but Ministers can do so very easily.
Liberty has argued that we should use the Bill to repeal section 5 of the 1986 Act in its entirety. That may be going too far for Ministers, and I do not follow Liberty as far as that, but in a classic triangulation exercise, why cannot we just remove the word “insulting” and leave the higher grades? I have support from our own Joint Committee on Human Rights, which heard evidence that section 5 was being used to suppress free speech and made representations to the previous Government, which were resisted. That Government rejected the advice of our own Committee on human rights.
I say to the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire)—please will he listen for a moment, as the responsible Minister?—that it appears that civil servants at the Home Office are still using, almost verbatim in correspondence signed by him, the arguments used by the last Government against amending section 5. I wonder whether he knows that the letters that he is sending out use exactly the same language as was used by the Labour Government to resist what our own JCHR suggested.
In response to the JCHR recommendations, the previous Government said that they believed that problems with section 5 could be addressed by “guidance”, which is a classic cop-out for civil servants. It is true that the Association of Chief Police Officers recently produced new guidance on breach of the peace, which covers section 5. However, that still encourages police to pursue insulting words or behaviour, because of course, that is what the law tells them to do. If we tell the police that it is wrong for people to use insulting language, they will pursue them. It is up to us to make the law clear so that the police can operate in an entirely sensible fashion. Frankly, it is not good enough for Ministers to say, “We can solve this with guidance,” especially when there is a Protection of Freedoms Bill on the stocks. In any case, an issue as serious and significant as civil liberties should not be left to mere guidance. It is for MPs to make such decisions.
The previous Government used another argument that is still used by Ministers in correspondence. They say that if the word “insulting” is removed from section 5, the police will not have sufficient power to protect the public, but that is not the case. Neil Addison, a barrister who spent 10 years prosecuting cases in Newcastle, has suggested that the “threatening” and “abusive” limbs of section 5 will cover all genuine public order cases. He says:
“Looking back on the large number of s5 cases I have either prosecuted or defended over the years I cannot think of any ‘normal’ public order situation which could not be covered by the words ‘threatening and abusive’. Most cases under s5 involve people (often drunk) yelling aggressively and making frequent use of the ‘F’ word and that is the sort of situation that s5 and indeed the entire Public Order Act was supposed to deal with, it was never supposed to deal with the situation where individuals, whether street preachers or otherwise”,
including demonstrators or people we do not like,
“were expressing their personal opinions.”
We use other laws if we get complaints from distressed individuals. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 criminalises any repeated harassment of an individual, which I support. Therefore, deleting the word “insulting” from the Public Order Act 1986 would not leave police and prosecutors without powers to deal with low-level public disorder.
One of the silliest arguments used to defend that part of section 5 is that removing the word “insulting” would mean that the courts would have to adjudicate on the difference between abuse, which is criminal, and insult, which is not—we see that argument in letters from Ministers both of the previous Government and of the current one. However, courts make such adjudications all the time. We could equally say that under section 5, the courts must adjudicate between insult, which is criminal, and incivility, which is not. Criminal courts decide whether an activity is criminal—it is their raison d’être. All the arguments put up by this and the previous Government on why “insulting” cannot be removed from section 5 fall to pieces.
I am sure we all agree that free speech is a bedrock of true democracy. It encompasses the freedom to disagree and to challenge received opinion. We might not like what someone says and we might take offence, but lively debate and a robust exchange of ideas are integral parts of a true democracy. Lord Justice Sedley, in his landmark ruling in the case of Richmond-Bate in 1999, put it better than anybody. He said:
“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”
In my view, the criminal law does not exist to protect people from feeling insulted. I urge Ministers to think about addressing section 5 of the 1986 Act in the Bill. They and no one else have the power to do so.
The JCHR, Liberty, Justice, the Christian Institute and Dr Evan Harris are calling on us to do something about section 5. I note the Liberal Democrats specifically referred to reforming the 1986 Act on page 93 of their manifesto last year. It is a Lib Dem idea that we would be wise to adopt. I urge such a measure on the House in the name of that most precious commodity—freedom of speech.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). This is the first time that I have ever heard him endorse anything Liberal Democrat.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s opinion of the Bill, which he described as pretty unimpressive. The content of the Bill does not remotely justify its extraordinary and wholly inaccurate title. We would expect a debate on a Bill to protect our freedoms to include a far more wide-ranging discussion by the Home Secretary of the nature of freedoms in this country and how they should be properly balanced. We would also see a description of such essential freedoms in the Bill. However, the Bill, parts of which are worthy and others downright dangerous, is no more than a standard criminal justice amendment Bill.
Mr Straw
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman endorses that view.
I am sorry that the Home Secretary has left the Chamber, although I understand the pressures on her. She made some extraordinarily hyperbolic remarks, and described the situation under the previous Government as the creeping intrusion of the state and a slow march to authoritarianism. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has accepted, the previous Government got some things wrong, and, in the light of experience, some things turned out not as intended. I will deal with those later, but on our record of balancing necessary security with the expansion of freedoms, I and the Labour party defer to no one.
Labour was the party that introduced the Human Rights Act 1998. I remind the Conservatives that they voted against it on Second Reading. I am glad that, following amendments to the Bill, which I sought to make to build the kind of consensus of which my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary spoke today, the then Conservative Opposition supported it on Third Reading. The then shadow Attorney-General, the late Nicholas Lyell, said from the Opposition Dispatch Box that he wished the Bill well.
I also remind the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that the 1998 Act is about bringing British rights home, so that they can be adjudicated on by British courts. The Act does not create a sovereign Supreme Court. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, under section 4, even if the British Supreme Court declares that legislation made by this House is incompatible with the incorporated European convention on human rights articles—that happens rarely, and not in the cases of DNA or votes for prisoners—the legislation is not unenforceable: it stays in force unless and until this House decides otherwise.
The Labour Government introduced the Human Rights Act 1998, the title of which was never disputed, because it was indeed about human rights—we could have called it the “Human Rights and Freedom Act”. We also introduced the Freedom of Information Act. I am proud that I was the Home Secretary who produced those measures and a number of others. The previous Conservative Government opposed the freedom of information legislation at every stage for 18 years. They wanted only a non-statutory, unenforceable code. That is all they would have introduced.
David T. C. Davies
I wonder what the right hon. Gentleman made of the claim in Tony Blair’s book that one of the two worst things he did was to pass the Freedom of Information Act—the other one being to pass the Hunting Act 2004.
Mr Straw
I will pass lightly over the Hunting Act, if I may. I do not happen to agree with Tony Blair on that point. Although freedom of information requests can be irritating, especially if one is in government, I did not change how I operated as a Minister. It did not mean that I ceased to record my decisions or comments on submissions. As was brought out by the Dacre report, whichever party is in power there is a case for the proper protection of Cabinet discussions and collective responsibility—that issue might need to be reconsidered, because it has not worked out as intended—but I am in no doubt that overall the Freedom of Information Act has been a force for good.
In addition to those two Acts, we passed the Data Protection Act 1998. There had been no provision to protect people’s personal data before I introduced that Act in 1998. We also introduced extraordinarily important freedoms and protections for people who do not happen to have white skin, including in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 following the Lawrence inquiry.
I am sorry that the Home Secretary is not here, but while we are on the subject of freedoms, I would draw to the House’s attention the extraordinary difficulty that we had in providing freedoms for gay men and women by reducing the age of consent—equalising it at 16. The first attempt, which was an amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, was defeated in the Lords so strongly that we lost the whole Bill. I then had to introduce a further Bill containing simply a reduction in the age of consent to 16. That, too, was defeated in the Lords, and it was not until we used the Parliament Act that it got through, against vehement Conservative opposition, including from some in this Chamber—to the shame of the Conservative party—and a huge amount in the other place. So let us hear no more nonsense from the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats suggesting that we in the Labour party failed to balance liberty and order effectively and properly. Yes, we introduced a number of measures on the other side of that equation, but most of those—as far as I can recall, all of them during my period—were actively supported by the Conservative party in opposition.
Tom Brake
I do not think that any Government Member is saying that the previous Government achieved nothing in relation to civil liberties. However, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that on the other side of the balance, in terms of what the Government did, were the fiasco over 90 days’ detention, control orders, blanket stop-and-search powers and some very draconian measures that went to the heart of threatening our civil liberties?
Mr Straw
I will deal with each of those measures in turn, and then come to the contents of the Bill. I will run through them in the order they appear in my notes. On surveillance measures, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 was introduced, again by me, to do what it says in the title—to regulate investigatory powers. My predecessor, now Lord Howard, had started that regulation. Before 1996, there was no regulation of those powers, and the most extraordinary situation obtained inside the police. They suited themselves whether to put microphones in walls. They had guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers, but there was no statutory supervision or proper regulation, and no account was taken of the equipment used. That was improved, to some extent, by my predecessor, and then comprehensively by RIPA. However, I accept that the provisions in RIPA have been used by local authorities, in respect of minor offences, in a way that was never intended, so I support the change proposed in the Bill.
I also support the change on wheel-clamping. I will have to look at some of the detail, but like my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary I strongly celebrate the campaign by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), who has been promoted partly because of this and has now had to take Trappist vows as Opposition Chief Whip. I also strongly support a campaign that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) began on the elimination of all convictions involving consensual relations with gay men.
The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) asked me about counter-terrorism powers. Although we did not get everything right, the introduction of those powers needs to be seen in context. The Terrorism Act 2000 was approved by the House—I cannot remember where the Liberal Democrats were, but I remember that the Conservatives supported it. However, section 44 was intended to be used in a much narrower way than has been the case, so I have no objection to its effective redefinition in the Bill.
We got it wrong on 90 days—I am perfectly happy to say that—but it must be seen in the context of what happened on 11 September 2001. People were terrified, and the first responsibility of any Government is to secure the most fundamental liberty—the right to life. Of course, we still needed to have a balance, and we sought one, but we did not quite get it right. I am perfectly happy to say that. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman, however, that although the prescription in the Bill of 14 days is fine as a standard, the contortions in the Bill and in draft legislation that would provide for a reserve power of 28 days will prove impractical. The reserve power, which we all agree ought to be there, has to be used in circumstances in which it is virtually impossible for the Home Secretary to disclose the details. The full-scale parliamentary legislative process that would follow a recall of Parliament—you can bet your life that that is how it would happen, because that is how terrorists operate—would be the most extraordinary and mocking ever seen: the Home Secretary would have to come to the House and say, “I want this legislation to double the period of maximum detention, but I can’t tell you why.” It would be far better, in those circumstances, to say, “Here is a power for the Secretary of State for which he or she will be accountable in due time.” Given that he or she is the only individual in possession of all the information that should trigger this power, the responsibility for triggering it should rest with the Secretary of State by way of a special order.
Mr Cash
Will the right hon. Gentleman, to whom I am listening carefully, seek, as a former Home Secretary, to answer the question I put to the shadow Home Secretary regarding habeas corpus? I also asked Charles Clarke, another former Home Secretary, whether habeas corpus would survive these provisions. I never got a satisfactory answer. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that these provisions do affect habeas corpus, but that, as I insist in my Bill, which comes out tomorrow, habeas corpus is absolute and must apply in all terrorism cases?
Mr Straw
I do not want to get drawn too far down this road, but the hon. Gentleman will know that until the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the recommendations of the royal commission that preceded it, there was no statutory regulation of the length of time for which, or the circumstances in which, the police could hold a suspect. It is extraordinary, if we think about it. There were judges’ rules, which were non-statutory, and the only effective check on an arbitrary use of power—apart from practice—was habeas corpus. If somebody was locked up for too long, his solicitor or friends would threaten a writ of habeas corpus. That was how it worked, and I would refer those who think that those were halcyon days for criminal justice to the 2010 Judicial Studies Board lecture in which the current Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, reflected on his time as a junior at the Bar and on how that non-statutory system of regulation led—as I saw when I was a young barrister in the 1970s—to fitting up, to words being put into criminals’ mouths and sometimes to very substantial and totally unacceptable physical pressure and violence against suspects. Of course, one consequence was that confession statements were often successfully challenged. Habeas corpus is one part of the law, but where there is more recent statute, the courts will go to that first.
Let me turn now to other matters in the Bill about which I have some serious reservations. As the Member of Parliament for Blackburn, I have had many representations about closed circuit television. I do not know whether my experience is any different from that of anyone else in the Chamber, but all the representations I have received about closed circuit television have been requests from constituents to introduce more of it. In the whole of my 32 years in this House, I have never had a single representation seeking the removal of CCTV monitors. Not one. The demand is there because it makes people feel safe, and I bet that this experience is shared across the Chamber. I cannot remember an occasion as Home Secretary when I received any representations suggesting that the existing system, which we should bear in mind is subject to control under data protection and other measures, was unsatisfactory.
Steve Baker
Just on a point of information—as the right hon. Gentleman invites it—during the election campaign I received at least one request to reduce the amount of CCTV.
Mr Straw
I am grateful for that intervention, which makes my point, because that one representation is balanced by the large number that we receive the other way. I just wonder whether the Government are setting up significant and costly bureaucracy to solve a problem that does not exist.
On criminal record certificates, let me say this. I have been a governor of Blackburn college—a further and higher education college—for the last 20 years. Following the post-Soham measures, each member of the governing body had to fill in a lengthy form and produce their passport, as part of the application process for an enhanced CRB certificate, a process that I regarded as frankly rather tedious. I am pleased to say that it confirmed what I had already told the clerk to the governors, which was that I had no convictions since, as far as I knew, nothing adverse had been recorded by the police. At first blush I thought, “This is going a bit over the top.” I certainly accept that there ought to be a lighter regime for the generality of volunteers, but I would just offer this salutary point to the House.
Just before we were asked to fill in those CRB checks, there was an apparently entirely respectable man on the governing body who, to shorten the story, was convicted of very serious sexual offences against someone who was vulnerable—albeit an adult, and not at the college—and he went to prison. I cannot be certain about this, because I do not have access to the information, but I know enough about that man to know that there was information that could not have led to an earlier arrest but which was on the police database and would almost certainly have been included in a CRB check. I happen to believe that although it was tedious for me and everybody else on the governing body to apply for a CRB check, the balance in terms of public safety—and particularly the safety of young people and children—favours having such checks.
I just think—I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on the Front Bench believes this too—that this issue has to be examined with the greatest care. We forget too quickly the context in which the measures in question were put in place. The Soham murders were awful. Huntley, like many serious sexual offenders, was brilliant at deception. Indeed, there are no better deceivers—of themselves as well as everybody else—than serious sexually predatory men such as Huntley. If it means a bit more bureaucracy, but also that our children and grandchildren do not become the next victims, we should err on the side of safety.
Finally, let me come to DNA and the taking of other biometric data, including fingerprints. The hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who is no longer in his place, asked about the 1 million “innocent” people on the database. That prompts the question whether people who are “innocent” actually mind having their DNA on the database. Again, I do not believe that my constituents are significantly different in character or profile from those elsewhere, but plenty have had their DNA or fingerprints taken when either the case has not proceeded to charge or they have been acquitted, yet I cannot remember a single case of someone complaining to me about it. On two occasions in my life—this was before DNA was available—I have had my fingerprints taken. The first was at school when there was a burglary and it was necessary to eliminate a group of us as potential perpetrators, and I was happy enough to give my fingerprints.
As an adult, when I was a special adviser there was a criminal investigation into the leak of a limited circulation annexe to some Cabinet documents, and a Commander Habershon, with a sergeant who looked like Oddjob out of “Goldfinger”—I should tell the House this was before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—came to interview me. I was invited to give my fingerprints; and, looking at Oddjob, I decided that this was probably an invitation I should accept. I gave my fingerprints, not least in the belief—which turned out to be accurate—that doing so would be a means by which I would be eliminated from the police inquiries. They asked me, “What should we do if you are eliminated?”, and I said, “I really don’t mind if you hang on to these.”
As it happens, I have not given my DNA, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), but I would be perfectly happy to do so. Most people believe—I know that some Conservative Members also take this view—that that is sensible for two reasons. One is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said from the Front Bench, doing so helps to protect the innocent. Since the introduction of DNA, not only have more guilty people been convicted of serious crimes, but a number of serious miscarriages of justice have at long been last ended, resulting in justice for the innocent person who had ended up in prison.
I would also remind the House why I introduced the change that meant that once there had been an arrest or charge, the samples should be retained indefinitely. There were two cases in 2000—one was called Weir, the other was called R v. B—one of which involved a murder, the other involving a rape. In both cases DNA samples had been taken in respect of offences for which the defendants had been subsequently acquitted, but the courts held that that DNA evidence could not be used to convict them later. In the case of R v. B, there was a rape—an awful rape—in 1997 of an elderly person where DNA swabs were subsequently taken from the victim. In 1998, this man B was arrested and charged with an unrelated burglary and his DNA was taken. He was subsequently acquitted of the burglary; meanwhile, the forensic examination of the DNA taken from the rape victim was proceeding. After that acquittal, that DNA and B’s DNA were matched and he was charged with rape.
The case went to trial, and the trial judge took a submission from the defence that the critical evidence—in fact, the only evidence; but as the trial judge himself said, it was compelling evidence—of the defendant’s guilt, namely the DNA, could not be adduced in evidence because it should have been destroyed.
The matter went to the Court of Appeal, which said that, on a construction of the Act, that was correct. I do not criticise the senior judiciary for that decision, because they have a job to do, and it is to construe the law, not to invent it. We should not criticise them in any circumstances. It was quite inappropriate for the Prime Minister to criticise the judiciary recently. Any decision that they make, including those made by the Supreme Court, can be overturned by this House. It is different in respect of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, but I shall not tread that particular path just now.
As a result of the Weir case and the R v. B case, someone who was unquestionably guilty of murder and a guilty rapist were found not guilty because of the inadmissibility of the evidence. They were both allowed to go free and, my guess is, to commit further crimes. I then introduced changes in what became the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough then amended the legislation further.
I mention those cases to remind the Home Secretary that, in talking about freedoms, we must strike a balance between the important rights of defendants charged with crimes—which have been strengthened quite profoundly, not least by the Human Rights Act 1998—and the rights of victims and the public. The Law Lords said in their judgment, when they reluctantly had to endorse part of the Court of Appeal’s decision, that there had to be a triangulation—their word, not mine—to balance the three sets of rights.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford spoke of the risks that the Home Secretary is taking by introducing these measures. It is a truth about being Home Secretary that something will go wrong, and that when one thing goes wrong, something else normally does as well. Indeed, when I was Home Secretary, there was one week in which I had to come to the House to make an emergency statement each day. That was exceeded only by the late Lord Whitelaw, who had to make two statements on one day about things that had gone wrong—sometimes very badly wrong.
It is possible that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) will turn out to be the luckiest Home Secretary since 1782, when the post was created, and I wish her well. I do not think that she will be, however. She is the person proposing these dangerous measures that will put freedoms at risk for the vast majority of the British public, and she needs to have a care both for the British public and for her own future. In her speech, she denied that these changes would undermine the detection of crime or lead to fewer guilty criminals being convicted. She said that she would go on to explain how and why she was able to make that statement, but I noticed that the rest of her speech was completely silent on that point. I was not surprised. The changes are bound to lead to some people whom we all know to be guilty and dangerous being allowed to go free.
After the right to life, the next most important right and freedom is the right to security. We were the first Government since the war to preside over a year-by-year reduction in crimes of all kinds, as the Library paper makes clear. There was a 43% reduction, according to the British crime survey. That dramatic reduction made this country safer. I celebrate all the freedoms, including those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gainsborough, but I also celebrate the fact that, although we are a long way from perfection, this country is now safer for people living in their homes, for people out on the streets and for people driving their cars. Those are real freedoms, and some of the changes in the Bill will put them at grave risk.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I am please to be able to contribute to the debate, and to be able to follow the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who made his points very forcefully. This is an important Bill as it builds on a fundamental principle of this Government—namely, the empowering of the individual. It will ensure that more power is vested in people and not in the state, and it trusts people to take control of their lives. In short, it will create a smaller state and bigger people.
Much of the Bill involves trying to strike a balance between two undesirable extremes. With DNA, for example, we need to strike a balance between everyone having their DNA taken and no one having it taken. With CCTV, the balance needs to be struck between having no limits at all on its usage and a total ban. With parking restrictions, we need to find a balance between allowing clampers to do just as they like and allowing anyone to park anywhere on private land. Similarly, with CRB checks, we must strike a balance between having no checks on people who work with children and treating everyone as though they were a paedophile.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about balance. I am a voluntary youth worker with Girlguiding UK, and I would be slightly concerned if volunteers thought that there was an implication of guilt in their being asked to undergo checks. We need to be careful not to over-hype the language involved, because most of us who work with vulnerable young people are quite comfortable with being checked in order to protect them.
Gareth Johnson
The hon. Lady makes a good point. The intention of the Bill is not to put off volunteers. I have worked on the governing body of an organisation that assists young children. We all joined in September and submitted our CRB checks at that time, but we did not get the results back until the following June, which highlights the farcical nature of the system. The Bill is about trying to strike a balance; we need to protect children without putting off the volunteers who want to work with them. The Bill is all about trying to find that sensible balance, and I suspect that the debate will largely centre on that today. There will be as many opinions on where that balance should be struck as there are people voicing an opinion. I believe, however, that the Bill gets it about right in balancing our basic right to freedom with protecting us from those who abuse freedom.
The Bill covers many issues but I will concentrate on just three. The first is the retention of DNA. The right hon. Member for Blackburn told the House how he had allowed his fingerprints to be taken to eliminate him from suspicion of committing a crime. That, however, was a choice that he was able to make, as distinct from the circumstances envisaged by the Bill in which people have no choice. Even if he had to face Mr Oddjob when giving his fingerprints, he nevertheless had a choice about doing so for the purposes of elimination.
Gareth Johnson
Of course the difficulty at the moment is that unconvicted people remain on the list, but the Bill’s proposals will ensure that such unconvicted people will not have their DNA on a list for ever and a day. That is the fundamental change that the Bill brings about.
Before the general election, there was general agreement between all political parties that the laws surrounding DNA retention had to change. The arguments centred on where the line should be drawn. Few would want every man, woman and child to be on the register, while few would want to scrap the register in its entirety. Generally speaking, the DNA register has been very successful, but we must find a balance between the two extremes.
At present, the only safeguard an innocent person has after arrest is that DNA can be removed from the register by the police in exceptional circumstances—and that is it. Being not guilty does not necessarily constitute exceptional circumstances. That is the difficulty. It is unacceptable if a completely innocent person can be wrongly accused, entirely cleared of any wrongdoing and not charged with an offence, yet their DNA is never returned and instead remains on the register. An innocent man is not an exceptional man, so his DNA remains on the register for life, which cannot be right. Those who preach that “if you do no wrong, you have nothing to fear” embark on a very dangerous journey where the state is master and the individual is subservient to those in control.
The second issue is the proliferation of CCTV cameras, and I shall again pick up a point made by the right hon. Member for Blackburn. I agree that constituents only rarely contact us to ask for fewer CCTV cameras. Our constituents are more likely to contact us to ask for more of them or for mobile CCTV cameras to be moved to their particular estate or house so that an issue of concern can be monitored. My problem is not with the idea of having more CCTV cameras; it is their non-regulated basis that I object to.
When CCTV first came about and the boom took place, we all expected some sort of code of conduct to be drawn up to which councils or any other public bodies would have to adhere. That will now happen if the Bill is successful and becomes an Act, and, in my opinion, it is long overdue. We need protection from the small number of abuses that can take place. Public confidence in CCTV systems is essential and an unregulated system is unlikely to convey public confidence for much longer. Currently, only the Data Protection Act 1998 provides any safeguards, but that legislation was not designed to regulate CCTV, so it is far from satisfactory for that purpose. As I say, I do not object to CCTV cameras, but to their unregulated use, and I am pleased that this Bill mirrors that view.
Finally, let me deal with the number of powers of entry currently in force. So many powers of entry create a confusing and complex system that is open to abuse. Those who want to abuse their position and enter premises illegally can hide behind our present multi-faceted system. There are so many ways of entering premises that it is often too easy for a property owner to assume that somewhere out there is a power to do so, although that might not be the case. How can occupiers know their rights when there are so many powers of entry and an inconsistent approach to dealing with how those laws came about? It makes sense to have a simplified system that is clearer to understand for both the occupier and those seeking access.
In my experience, requests for warrants of entry by the police are rightly open to vigorous inquiry, yet warrants of entry by utility companies, for example, are almost rubber-stamped. That inconsistency has to change. There will be many occasions when it is correct to have a right of entry, but the combination of so many different powers under so many different pieces of legislation makes it almost impossible for people to know where they stand. Estimates have been made, and the Home Secretary mentioned 1,200 different powers. That is an estimate—just that. Nobody knows exactly how many different rights of entry there are, so how can anyone be certain whether a person is acting lawfully when entering a property against the occupier’s will? Again, we require a balance in which property can be entered to protect against crime, but clarity and certainty also exist so that people are aware of their rights and obligations. That cannot occur in a system as complicated as the present one.
In conclusion, freedoms are easy to lose, but very difficult to claw back. This Bill seeks to empower the individual and lessen the control of the state. I want to see less government, not more. I want power to be vested in the individual and not the state, and I support this Bill’s attempt to further that cause.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It was Winston Churchill who said:
“All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope”.
It is under the banner of freedom and democracy that our troops fight on foreign fields, and it is freedom that we celebrate in Northern Ireland on 12 July each year.
I support much of what is put forward by the coalition Government in the Bill, but I have some concerns. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, clearly and eloquently outlined one of our main concerns: the relaxation of the vetting procedures. I am concerned to see that through their deliberations members of the Committee protect children. If that does not happen—I suspect that it will—we will take the opportunity to table amendments on Report.
On the subject of regulation of biometric data—we have all heard the comments about that—I am firmly opposed to any kind of nanny state, but I do not believe that freedom can or should be used as a licence to behave in any way with no consequence. In other words, people must be accountable for their actions and those who break the law must pay the price; they have, in my opinion, limited their own freedom by their choice of action. I firmly believe that, in accordance with section 63D of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, people’s DNA should be held on record if they are found guilty of any crime. I am somewhat perturbed, however, that section 63D(2)(a) allows for the destruction of DNA if
“the taking of the fingerprint or, in the case of a DNA profile, the taking of the sample from which the DNA profile was derived, was unlawful”.
That is clear, and I am concerned about it.
In my opinion, even if correct protocol has been followed and the sample has been taken lawfully, if the suspect is subsequently found innocent they should have their DNA record destroyed, as they have no criminal conviction. Is the Minister aware, and will she clarify it in her response, that as of 24 April 2009 almost 1 million unconvicted persons had records on the national DNA database? A very small minority of those people are still under investigation; the remainder will have been found innocent of any crime. During 2008-09, only 283 innocent individuals were successful in getting their records deleted under the “exceptional cases” provisions. That was touched on by the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and many others in the debate. This issue must be specified clearly in the Bill, and we will seek to achieve that in Committee.
There are many other issues with biometric information, such as the collection and retention of schoolchildren’s DNA information, which caused upset of late in a school not far from my constituency. It became clear that parents must and should have a complete veto on the collection and storage of their children’s genetic make-up. Children have been particularly affected by the expansion of the DNA database, as there has been a significant increase in the number of young people arrested following minor crimes or even false accusations. Some offences have been as minor as pulling each other’s hair or damage to trees and fences. Labelling children as criminals at an early age can be counter-productive, and I hope that will be taken on board in Committee.
Under part 3, “Protection of property from disproportionate enforcement action”, I welcome the provision in clause 54 to make it unlawful for clampers to clamp on private land. I have heard the clamping by one firm described as legalised mugging, and although that brought a laugh, there is some truth in it. All Members have had examples of abuses by clampers brought to their attention.
Naomi Long
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the matter is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Although the problem has not been as significant there as it has been elsewhere, I believe that a review of clamping regulations in Northern Ireland is to be undertaken.
Jim Shannon
Perhaps I have cornered the market in those who have problems with clampers, but I have heard plenty of concerns expressed. I have had complaints nearly every other week. It got to the stage where I was on first name terms with the people in the companies concerned, although I am not sure whether that was good for them or me.
In my area, a firm of clampers was brought in by residents, but the clampers began to clamp visitors to those residents along with everyone else, and it was realised that there was no regulation of clamping and that the clampers were a law unto themselves. We have all heard horror stories about clamping firms. I won a case in which a lady was clamped who had a disabled child and needed her vehicle for transportation and so paid the fine. Unbelievably, the clampers informed her after payment that the guys who unclamped vehicles were headed home for the weekend and she would have to wait until Monday. After a number of phone calls, I got them to come back and do the right thing by letting her drive away. It is abhorrent that such daylight robbery, though morally defunct, was legally acceptable. The Home Office estimates that 500,000 drivers every year are clamped on private land. The week before last, I read in a newspaper that a lady who worked in a taxi firm had come outside to find her car had been clamped. She contacted her firm, and the taxi drivers, like a wagon train, surrounded the clamping car until the impasse was sorted out.
It is estimated that the public pay out £55 million in clamping fees, which benefit nobody apart from the clamping companies. Towing away will also be outlawed, with private landowners still able to regulate parking by erecting a barrier to keep drivers out or charging regulated parking fees. The ban will apply only on private land and will not affect clamping and towing by lawful authorities such as the police, local authorities or Driver and Vehicle Licensing Northern Ireland. That means that those who do not pay appropriate tax or adhere to signage will be held accountable. That must be good news, and a system is in place to ensure that that happens. Councils will continue to have the power to tow away cars abandoned on private land. Police can also remove vehicles that are causing an obstruction or are dangerously parked, providing a redress for home and business owners. In relation to clause 56, however, I believe that a reasonable standardised fee should be introduced to regulate extortionate fees that may still be levied. I hope that the Minister will address that point, because the Bill provides the opportunity to clarify maximum fees.
In one of his plays, Shakespeare wrote, “Kill all lawyers,” which was a bit extreme, but some people have used similar terminology in relation to clamping companies. I tell them that that is just words and does not mean much, but I am hopeful that it will no longer be the quotation used in my constituency if the Bill is amended and tightened up.
Harking back to the need to control legislation, there was a great deal of concern some time ago about local councils spying on people through bugged litter bins. I hope that the Bill will provide protection in that regard. I would commend the use of CCTV, which is a kind of sleeping policeman that observes at a distance all that takes place. While one Member mentioned that he had only one complaint against CCTV, every person who comes to me tells me that they want more CCTV. In my opinion, CCTV is a weapon that we should use, as the coverage that such cameras record enables us to catch those involved in unlawful incidents. As someone who watches late-night television programmes such as “CSI”, I am always impressed by the number of policemen who come on to a crime scene outside a pub or restaurant or in the street, and I just wish that some cases in the past had had the same level of response.
I commend the Bill, although I have concerns that I hope will be addressed in Committee. If that is not the case, I put down a marker that we will address those matters on the Floor of the House when the opportunity arises.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who made a sensible and measured contribution, as have other hon. Members. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) made a fair assessment of what the previous Government had done. They improved some aspects of civil liberties through the Freedom of Information Act, but he also recognised that some measures had been extremely counter-productive. In any scenario in which a Government, over the course of their lifetime, introduce an extra 3,500 offences, there will inevitably be problems with how the police interpret and apply the rules.
Let me give just one example of how some of the powers introduced by the previous Government have been used in an unfortunate way. The example was given to me by a very good friend of mine who now sits in the other place, and whose son-in-law, who is black and from America, has stopped coming to the UK with his son, because every time he went out in London, irrespective of where he was going, he was guaranteed to be stopped by the police under stop-and-search powers. He did not want to have to explain to his son why his dad was being stopped every time they went out.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman explain why the coalition has taken away the requirement on police officers to record the ethnicity of people whom they stop on the street?
Tom Brake
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware that many police forces intend to continue to seize that information. It appears that they are exercising discretion in that respect. He should reflect on the fact that his Government introduced those stop-and-search powers, which were applied in a blanket way across London and allowed the action that I have described to take place.
Although I welcome the announcement by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that the Opposition will not vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, I think that the tone of her comments in relation to the Home Secretary were a touch patronising. I am sure that our Home Secretary fully appreciates the need to balance security with liberty and freedom. That is what the coalition Government are doing by presenting a Bill to restore personal freedoms that were threatened by the last Government, and to end excessive surveillance of individuals.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn seemed to acknowledge that some of the policies implemented by the last Government were—if not draconian—an infringement of the rights of the individual, expensive, and in many cases ineffective. The Deputy Prime Minister was right to describe the Bill as a rolling back of the state. However, although I will not over-hype it, because I trust that many of the measures referred to by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is no longer in the Chamber—[Interruption.] He is, in fact, present. I trust that many of the measures that he mentioned will be subject to a protection of freedoms (No. 2) Bill, because I do not see this as the endgame when it comes to protecting our freedoms. I believe that we cannot place too high a value on liberty and freedom.
The Bill has received support from a number of quarters. The Law Society, for instance, has described the destruction of DNA profiles of innocent people as “an improvement”, welcomes the reduction in the maximum pre-charge detention time, and believes that the new stop-and-search powers are “far more proportional”. It has listed a number of other proposals that it supports, including the changes in the vetting and barring system.
The Bill proposes regulation of biometric data, and I am pleased that we are adopting the protections of the Scottish model in regard to retention of DNA and fingerprints. Although the Bill will not ensure that all innocent people are removed from the DNA database, it will ensure that hundreds of thousands of those who are currently on it are removed from it. In Committee, those who have received a briefing from the Forensic Science Society will want to examine aspects of the deletion process to establish what deleting a DNA profile means and what constitutes the totality of such a profile.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
As one who practised at the Bar before becoming a Member of Parliament, I know that the whole ethos of the DNA database was that the data of those found innocent of offences should no longer be on the record. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the system used to be administered in a shocking way? Half a million records on the database were completely wrong: names and details were false. Although the Bill contains much that is welcome, we must ensure that the database is fully and thoroughly managed.
Tom Brake
Of course we must. Whenever a massive database is introduced, there is significant potential for errors such as mismatches to be hidden in it. I hope that the Committee stage will provide scope for further examination of the details relating to the database. I am thinking particularly of the retention of children’s DNA. In its briefing, Liberty expressed concern about the fact that a child who was caught shoplifting at the age of 10 and again at the age of 12 would remain on the database for the rest of his or her life. If Liberty’s understanding is correct, that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
I am pleased that children will no longer be fingerprinted in schools. I am astonished that schools have never been required to seek permission for that from parents. As for the regulation of surveillance and CCTV, my experience is similar to that of the right hon. Member for Blackburn and others who have spoken today. The most frequent request that I have received as a Member of Parliament has been for additional CCTV systems, but many people have approached me expressing concern about, for instance, the fact that CCTV cameras were pointing straight through their front windows, or their bedroom windows, from premises opposite. I believe that better regulation could solve the problems that have been reported to me, and I therefore welcome the proposals in the Bill.
Jim Shannon
In my experience, when CCTV has been introduced in what might be described as hot spots where there is plenty of antisocial behaviour such as violence and robbery, there has been a marked reduction in the number of such incidents. Does the hon. Gentleman share that experience?
Tom Brake
I certainly think that CCTV deals partly with the fear of crime. However, I know from the results of an inquiry conducted by the Home Affairs Committee that its effectiveness in cutting crime is not so clear-cut. It obviously makes a difference in, for instance, car parks, but it is less obvious whether it makes a difference on a wider scale. The evidence may not be as strong as Members wish it to be.
I am pleased that we are considering the issue of automatic number plate recognition systems. I have raised with Ministers in the past the extent to which bailiffs and private contractors can use such systems, and have suggested that more regulation might be necessary. In Committee, we will doubtless wish to clarify the relationship between the Information Commissioner and the surveillance camera commissioner to ensure that there will be no overlap between them. The regulation that is being discussed at present clearly relates to CCTV in the public sector, involving local authorities and police, but that constitutes a relatively small proportion of the CCTV that is available. We may have to consider whether the boundaries specified in the Bill should be extended.
An issue that is closely related to the issues of CCTV and ANPR systems is that of the use of identification systems in pubs and clubs. Like, I suspect, a number of Members, I took up an offer a couple of weeks ago during special constables week, when we were encouraged to go out with our local special constables to observe their valuable and committed work. On Friday night I spent some time in Sutton high street, visiting pubs and clubs virtually all of which were using systems that captured people’s ID—typically, their driving licences. I know that there is significant concern among the police about the extent to which any of those systems comply with the relevant data protection legislation by ensuring that the data that they capture are secure and are handled in an appropriate manner. I realise that that may be beyond the scope of the Bill, but I think that the Government could usefully consider it.
As for counter-terrorism, Members will know from what I said earlier about stop-and-search powers that I am pleased that they will be much more tightly defined. I also welcome the reduction in the maximum period for pre-charge detention from 28 days to 14, although organisations such as the Law Society and Liberty want to push us much further and faster in that regard. I consider 14 days to be a good starting point, but I am happy to leave open the option of introducing a shorter period.
In relation to terrorism prevention and investigation measures, which are being dealt with separately to some extent, let me say as an aside that I hope we will be given more clarification of precisely what is being proposed. I do not want control orders to be replaced by something that looks very much like them. I should also like clarification of what will replace curfews, and I want to know that what we propose as a Government is a system that will focus on securing prosecutions rather than simply containing people.
On safeguarding vulnerable groups and criminal records, I welcome the fact that the vetting and barring scheme will be changed, and that 9 million people will be taken out of the scheme. Simply classifying and categorising people does not guarantee safety, and creating massive databases does not necessarily provide a solution to all the security and safety problems. We have to be more subtle and sophisticated than that.
I welcome the changes on consensual gay sex, and I am sure the Minister is aware of the concerns that, as far as possible, every single record that relates to that previously illegal activity should be deleted. I know there are challenges in terms of how to go beyond cleaning electronic data, but I hope that that can be dealt with comprehensively.
The freedom of information changes are very welcome, although not all aspects of the freedom of information ten-minute rule Bill that I have pressed on two separate occasions in the last three or four years will be picked up. I hope they will be, perhaps in the protection of freedoms (No. 2) Bill, when we get round to that in, I hope, the second half of this Parliament. I do not see any reason why very large private sector organisations that are, in effect, doing public sector work should not be subject to FOI in the same way as the public sector. If they are simply taking on what was previously done by the public sector, to which FOI legislation would have applied, it would be appropriate for it to apply to private sector organisations now doing that work.
I welcome the fact that we will preserve trial by jury and that we are restoring such rights.
In the past couple of weeks, we have watched with astonishment the courage, bravery and thirst for freedom of the Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, who have been desperate to embed some of the most basic freedoms in their societies. We have a more straightforward task. We have started the process of restoring some of our most cherished rights in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, and will, I hope, continue that process in the protection of freedoms (No. 2) Bill, which I hope will be introduced in the second half of this Parliament, and which I would expect to pick up on some of the issues raised—such as what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said about free speech, so that the concerns of Dr Evan Harris about removing the word “insulting” can be addressed.
We must maintain the momentum. With freedoms, we can never afford to stand still; we are always swimming against the current. This Bill demonstrates that the coalition is starting to reverse the tide, and that an unprecedentedly great rolling back of the state is under way.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I want to highlight my concerns about the Government’s proposals, which seek to restrict the scope for using DNA to convict dangerous criminals. First however, I shall briefly touch on CCTV, which many of my colleagues have also mentioned this evening.
Although in doing so I run the risk of receiving an avalanche of e-mails by tomorrow morning, I want to take this opportunity to say that I have only once been approached by a constituent who was concerned about the level of CCTV coverage in my constituency. That speaks volumes when we take into account the fact that Airdrie was the first town in Scotland to have open-street CCTV, and that many lists indicate that its centre has a particularly high ratio of such cameras in comparison with other Scottish town centres. On the other hand, many constituents have requested the installation of CCTV on their streets, to protect them and their neighbours from crime, vandalism and other antisocial behaviour. In fact, we now seem to have an issue with crime being driven into areas that are not covered by CCTV. I therefore support the expansion of CCTV coverage in my constituency. Crime in Airdrie town centre fell by 24% in the first two years after the introduction of open-street CCTV. It continues to be supported locally, and is seen to be a great success in reducing crime and antisocial behaviour.
DNA evidence has proved to be a powerful tool in helping us bring to justice violent criminals and sexual offenders. Although I support many of the Bill’s proposals, I have serious concerns about any change that will make it much more difficult for the police to catch criminals and build cases against them. It was my hope that the Scottish law on DNA storage would move towards that currently in place in England and Wales. However, instead I find myself today criticising Government attempts to restrict the use of DNA, even though the way it is currently used has led to rapists and murderers being convicted when they otherwise might not even have been identified.
As Members may know, there is currently a different law on DNA retention in Scotland. North of the border, DNA that is taken as part of a police inquiry is automatically removed if the person concerned is not convicted, with the exception that in extreme cases someone charged with a violent or sexual offence but not found guilty can have their details stored for up to three years. In England and Wales there is currently much greater retention of DNA samples by police. At present, people charged with, but not convicted of, a crime will have their DNA samples held indefinitely. As a result, several serious crimes have been solved and many more criminals convicted than would otherwise have been the case. Violent and sexual offenders have been brought to justice by virtue of the fact that their DNA had been taken during inquiries into previous, unrelated and often minor offences and then matched up.
David T. C. Davies
Is the hon. Lady critical of both the Government here in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament for the changes they are making? The Government’s changes on DNA will bring them into line with what the Scottish Parliament are doing, so I presume she is critical of both institutions.
Pamela Nash
That is correct. As I have said, I would hope the Scottish Parliament would move more towards the current system in England and Wales, rather than have us go in the opposite direction as we are doing this evening.
Let us look at the crime figures for 2007-08. Some 17,614 crimes were detected in England and Wales where a DNA match was available. These included 83 murder and manslaughter cases, and 184 rape cases. Some of these cases have been very high profile. For example, Steve Wright, the so-called “Suffolk strangler”, convicted of murdering five prostitutes in Ipswich, and Mark Dixie, jailed for life for killing Sally Anne Bowman, were both identified through DNA samples taken in relation to other crimes. Without the DNA information held on these individuals, they might never have been caught and brought to justice for their horrendous crimes, and might have gone on to commit even more serious offences. I hope that in summing up the Minister will offer an explanation to their victims’ families of why it is acceptable to change a law to allow criminals such as these to escape justice. Equally, had they committed their crimes in Scotland, they might, because of the more restrictive rules on holding DNA samples, have got away with those crimes.
If the law on the storage of DNA samples were to change radically, I would have hoped it would happen in the Scottish Parliament. Police in Scotland have made it clear that a new regime that allowed more DNA samples to be retained would increase clear-up rates and make the public safer. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has repeatedly called for the situation in England and Wales to be mirrored in the Scottish judicial system. Labour politicians in Scotland agree with them. Of course there should be safeguards in the system, but we believe police should be given effective tools to help bring rapists, murderers and other criminals to justice.
Labour MSPs recently proposed an amendment to the Scottish Government’s Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill to give police the power to retain for up to six years the DNA of those arrested for, but not convicted of, a crime. From my point of view and that of most Scots, who want the police to be able to catch criminals, it was unfortunate that the Scottish National party Government joined forces with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to stop this.
It is therefore deeply disappointing to stand here debating Government plans to restrict further the retention of DNA samples in England and Wales. In some cases retention will be restricted to three years, but in many cases, particularly those involving minor crimes, the police will be prevented from storing samples at all. We all know that the rate of charging and prosecuting suspected rapists is very low. The Government’s proposals in this Bill mean that someone arrested but not charged with rape—this is what happens in the vast majority of rape cases—may not have their DNA retained. Under these restrictions several high-profile crimes, including those I mentioned earlier, could have remained unsolved. It is difficult to understand the Government’s purpose in doing this. It is doubtless about pandering to the Deputy Prime Minister’s political rhetoric, but it is certainly not based on evidence about what works in the fight against crime, and it is certainly not about protecting the liberty of our country.
I am going to read out a quote and I will then tell hon. Members who said it:
“I have not yet been aware of any innocent person adversely affected by having their details on the DNA database. Actually, rather than impinge on freedoms, it enhances our freedoms. The rapists, murderers and other criminals brought to justice by DNA—these people being taken off the street enhances my freedom. Why on earth the Conservative Party would want to try to take people off the DNA database, Lord only knows.”
Those are not my words but those of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who represents the Conservative party, and I could not agree with him more. I urge the Government to think again about these plans. We owe it to the victims of crime and their families to ensure that laws that work and that have brought serious criminals to justice continue to do so. If the Government push ahead with this proposal, they should not be surprised to find themselves labelled “soft on crime”. Their coalition partners have always been happy with such a label, but I am surprised that Conservative Members are allowing themselves to be dragged into this nonsense. Freedom for violent criminals is a sorry price to pay for staying in power. Our freedom is enhanced by violent criminals being taken off our streets. The Government should bear in mind the fact that being soft on crime achieves absolutely nothing for anybody’s civil liberties.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) is no longer in his place, but I hope he will forgive me for being here in place of my predecessor, and perhaps the fact that I share his concerns about section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 will act as some consolation.
It is a joy to have the opportunity to speak in this debate on another coalition move to try to redress the current imbalance between security and civil liberties. All Governments must, of course, be fully committed to public safety and protecting victims of crime, but under the previous Government far too many of our liberties were sacrificed in the name of apparent short-term securities. In too many cases, the previous Government acted before establishing a causal link between that sacrifice and the claimed “greater security”. In the absence of the necessary evidence or, in some cases, even public debate, actions including the indefinite retention of DNA of children never convicted, the creation of more than 500 new powers of entry and the careless scattering of a patchwork of surveillance powers across the statute book, not to mention the spectre of 90-day detention without trial, all left us wondering whether some members of the previous Government had had a “common sense-ectomy”. Even the Human Rights Act 1998 cannot make up for the disproportionate and draconian measures that they introduced.
In that context, I am pleased that the coalition Government are living up to their promise to cut back on the previous Government’s aberrations and to begin restoring the civil liberties that for so long defined British democracy. I apologise if that language seems hyperbolic, but let us think for a moment about the mother who finds herself being spied on by her local authority because she has said that she lives in a certain school catchment area; the child who needs an iris scan to borrow a library book; or the archbishop who finds himself the subject of five Criminal Records Bureau checks, not to mention the innocent man who suddenly finds himself without the right to a trial by jury. Given that the Labour party is so apparently committed to human rights, I find it inexplicable that that state of affairs should have ever arisen. Thankfully, we can always rely on the electorate to draw the line when their Government lose their grip, and I am greatly reassured that the coalition Government have been so prompt in introducing this Bill. As must be obvious by now, I support its intentions and I would have been voting for it today had the Opposition decided to push for a vote.
I would, however, like to take this opportunity to raise a few points of detail with the Minister. Nobody is questioning the fact that DNA can play an invaluable role in crime detection, but under Labour a new profile was added to the new DNA database every 45 seconds. Unsurprisingly, the Home Office had to admit that the database contained more than 500,000 false or wrongly recorded entries. The new biometric data retention regime proposed in part 1 seems to strike the right balance between greater proportionality and targeting, while still protecting the public from those who would commit heinous crimes. That is a great step forward and the regime seems likely to meet the requirements of the European Court of Human Rights ruling. However, I am unclear why the Government have not chosen to distinguish between an adult and a child who is charged but not convicted of a serious crime. In general, legislation does make the distinction between the adult and the child. Childhood convictions are considered spent in half the time of those of adults, childhood lawbreaking has not been found to be necessarily indicative of future behaviour, and the principles of restorative justice are now commonly associated with youth justice. It would be helpful if the Minister could clarify the decision-making process on that point.
Secondly, except in the specific case of an application for extended retention to be heard by the magistrates court with right of appeal for both sides to the Crown Court, I am unclear whether there is a right of appeal to a judicial or otherwise independent body for individuals who feel that their biometric data have been retained unlawfully or inappropriately. I have no doubt that many colleagues have had the same experience as I have of constituents whose data have been taken and retained in error. I even have one constituent who was inaccurately registered as a sex offender for 15 years owing to a clerical error. We cannot overestimate the damage that this sort of error can cause to a person’s life. It is vital that a clear route of appeal and system of remedies are available to innocent individuals who get accidentally caught up in the system.
I am also a little unclear where the new regime will sit in relation to the Association of Chief Police Officers guidelines. I am particularly concerned that there should be clarity about the role of the “exceptional case procedure” in the new system. As the Minister knows, the guidance states that an individual’s record will be retained until that person has attained 100 years of age but it may be removed before this date by way of the exceptional case procedure. The guidelines state:
“Chief Officers have the discretion to authorise the deletion of any specific data entry on the PNC ‘owned’ by them”
but only
“in exceptional cases.”
Those might include
“cases where the original arrest or sampling was found to be unlawful”
or cases
“where it is established beyond doubt that no offence existed”.
I believe it is helpful for chief officers to have some degree of discretion, especially in relation to scenarios outlined in the exceptional case procedure. I am anxious to learn how such circumstances are to be addressed under the new system.
Finally, on part 1 of the Bill, I welcome wholeheartedly the regulation of schools’ retention of biometric data, especially the requirement for the consent of the parents and the child before such data are recorded. I do not understand why schools need to retain these data and I was rather shocked by the Library’s estimates that 30% of secondary schools and 5% of primary schools already use such biometric systems. I would like to see official figures on this issue so that policy in this very sensitive area can be made on the basis of evidence. Is the Minister considering requiring schools to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office if they intend to hold such data, and if not, will he tell us why not?
The surveillance regulation proposals in part 2 are well overdue. No one challenges the value of well-located, targeted surveillance, which has undeniable importance for crime detection and public safety, but there has been an exponential growth of CCTV and automatic number plate recognition systems, which has for the most part taken place outside formal regulation. The UK now has an estimated 5 million to 6 million surveillance systems. The British Security Industry Association claims that state-owned CCTV accounts for less than 10% of these and that
“it is the privately owned surveillance systems that provide the majority of evidence in prosecutions.”
It would therefore be helpful if the Minister clarified how the new code of practice will apply to privately owned systems and whether the “relevant authorities” mentioned in clause 33 will include private owners whose surveillance systems cover public areas.
Nicola Blackwood
I cannot imagine why the Government’s understanding where surveillance systems are held and who holds them could in any way limit the improvement of justice in this country.
I also welcome the proposals in part 3 to insert judicial oversight in relation to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This is an excellent start in reforming the confusing jumble of legislation dealing with access to communications data. However, we have some way to go before we have a system which tightly defines the reasons for which access can be granted—a particularly vague example of which is
“the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”—
and which offers a straightforward legislative framework so that not only the bodies that use surveillance powers but the citizens who may be subject to them can clearly understand their rights and responsibilities.
I could go on and welcome the permanent reduction of pre-charge detention to 14 days, the reinstatement of the right to trial by jury and the progressive proposals on stop and search without suspicion, but the point is clear. In large part, the Bill returns the state’s powers to common-sense levels and signals a significant step forward for the civil libertarians among us. The Bill is the answer to the calls of many in this country, including those who had felt, under the previous Government, that state abuse of power had reached a new low, that they had become guilty until proven innocent or that they were being forced to make a false choice between democracy and security. Of course there is a difficult balance to strike between liberty and security, and any adjustments need to be made with the utmost care, but there can be no doubt that in the past decade that balance had tilted much too far in the direction of security and away from civil liberties. That is why I support the Bill and hope that it will mark the end of the Government-sponsored fallacy that absolute security can be achieved by the unacceptable erosion of civil liberties.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
Let me start by welcoming the broad thrust of the Bill, which has much to commend it. I believe that the protection of civil liberties, privacy and personal freedoms is incredibly important and is a fundamental building block of a democratic society, but it must be sensitively balanced against the need to provide security, safety and public confidence, which is where the debate hinges. As I said in an intervention, I am a volunteer with young people—an adult leader in Girlguiding—and I am particularly interested in the proposed changes to the vetting and barring scheme, on which I shall focus my remarks.
I agree entirely with the Home Secretary that we do not want to place unnecessary barriers in the way of people who wish to volunteer. Many youth organisations depend almost entirely on people who are willing to give freely of their time to benefit our young people, and those volunteers often find themselves caught up in an incredibly intrusive situation that can be a bureaucratic nightmare and incredibly off-putting. I hope that the Home Secretary agrees that our primary concern as we try to resolve those issues must be the safety and protection of young people and vulnerable adults. If there is a balance to be struck, the emphasis and greater weight must be on protecting the vulnerable; it is incredibly important that we do not lose sight of that. We must therefore proceed with a degree of caution as we try to change those protections and we should recall the context in which they were introduced. The earlier comments of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) greatly assisted us in recalling some of the incidents that led to the introduction of the protections, their very serious nature and the public outcry that surrounded them when people felt that children were not being adequately protected from predatory adults.
Although no one would question the need to redress the balance, given that the pendulum has swung almost too far in one direction, we need to be careful not to take it too far in the other direction, but instead try to find some sensible balance. Most people would welcome simplification of the system—for example, a system of vetting and barring that would allow clearance in one role to be carried forward into other roles, rather than repeated checks being carried out on the same individual. However, if that is to happen, the detail of the Bill poses a challenge. People would still be checked only for the immediate role that they would be fulfilling and would not be able to carry those checks with them. That has not been addressed, but it is important to people who work with young children.
One of my concerns arising from reading the Bill is that if someone working in a non-regulated activity displays behaviour that would cause concern—behaviour which, were that activity regulated, could lead to their being barred—it is not clear that that would trigger a referral to the Independent Safeguarding Authority or to barring. My concern is that that individual could later move into a regulated activity, and young people would be left vulnerable.
A further area of concern to me is the treatment of 16 and 17-year-olds in the context of the Bill. The changes proposed appear to remove some of the protections afforded to 16 and 17-year-olds in matters of sport, faith and education. The young people with whom I work directly are aged 14 to 25 and therefore include that group. Despite the fact that they are entering adulthood, they are still young and vulnerable and they still require protection as children. They appear to fall into some kind of gap between regulated activity for children and the vulnerable adults provision in the Bill. I seek reassurance from the Home Secretary that that grey area will be clarified. We do not want children of 16 or 17 to become easier prey for predatory adults.
Finally, I want to examine the relationship between the Bill and what will happen in Northern Ireland. At present, with respect to vetting and barring schemes, England, Wales and Northern Ireland operate within a single framework. The reforms set out in the Bill are not proposed to be extended to Northern Ireland. The mix of responsibilities between the Department of Justice and the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety would largely cover the areas encompassed by the vetting and barring scheme. It would be a matter for the Executive and the Assembly whether or not to extend that to Northern Ireland by a legislative consent motion or an Assembly Bill, if they choose to do it.
However, there is significant merit in the Home Office pursuing with the devolved Administration every opportunity to maintain the common approach that currently exists, as that is one way to maximise protection for young people throughout the country. We would not want to see the protection reduced, and the Assembly would have the right, if it considered that the Bill would reduce protection, to go its own way on these matters. During the Bill’s Committee stage and beyond, it is important for the Home Office to listen carefully to the concerns that are raised and to work closely with the devolved Administrations so that we can achieve a UK-wide consensus on this serious issue and maintain the common framework that has served us well.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
One of the beliefs that unites Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is that the past 13 years of Labour Government saw a squeeze on civil liberties. The Leader of the Opposition admitted that the Labour Government were
“too draconian on aspects of our civil liberties”.
He is right. That is why the Bill is so welcome, trimming away, as it does, some of the vast undergrowth of legislation that has undermined our traditional liberties. DNA retention, CCTV, wheel clamping, vetting and barring have all become synonyms for the erosion of freedoms, and most people will be glad to see the Bill tackle them head on. However, there is something else that concerns a wide cross-section of the general public and, sadly, has not been addressed in the Bill: the way freedom of speech has been undermined by what we might call over-enthusiastic policing. It is often generated by the pressures of political correctness and causes officers to overreact to situations when no harm is being caused.
To voice one’s opinion without fear of punishment or censorship is a fundamental human right. Without it, political action and resistance to injustice and oppression are impossible. It is a precious right, and we must not allow it to be undermined. Several pieces of legislation have been suggested for amendments to improve free speech, but I want to focus, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), on section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which outlaws threatening, abusive or insulting words if they are likely to cause distress.
As we have heard, section 5 has been at the heart of several high-profile cases in recent years. Liberty wisely took up the cause of a 16-year-old protester who was given a court summons by police for holding a placard outside a Scientology centre stating, “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult”. The boy claims that police told him that he could not use the word “cult”. City of London police gave him the court summons and confiscated his placard after he refused to take it down. They referred to the Crown Prosecution Service an allegation that the sign was “abusive or insulting”. When Liberty took up the issue, there was widespread criticism and the CPS dropped the case. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, the defence of the existing law has been that guidance can be given to the police, but it did not work and has not worked in a number of cases.
Dale Mcalpine, a Christian street preacher, was arrested in Cumbria for answering a question from a police community support officer about his views on sexual ethics. He said that the Bible described homosexual conduct as a sin. He was arrested and detained by police for nearly eight hours. Even the president of the National Secular Society has said that the police response was ridiculous and over the top. I find myself in agreement with the renowned campaigner, Peter Tatchell, who said:
“If offending others is accepted as a basis for prosecution, most of the population of the UK would end up in court.”
He is quite right.
In a similar case, another street preacher, Anthony Rollins, was arrested, handcuffed and kept in a police cell for four hours after a passer-by was offended by him reciting a biblical list of those who would not inherit the kingdom of God. I am a Christian, and personally I might not agree with that method of evangelism, but the idea that someone can be arrested for reading from the Bible in public is very worrying. Once again, the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers did not work. Mr Rollins got help from a Christian campaign group, the charges against him were dropped and they helped him bring a legal action against the police. The court decided that Mr Rollins’ right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech had been breached, that he had been wrongfully arrested, had suffered assault and battery by being handcuffed and had been unlawfully detained. However, the police are appealing against that ruling. Despite everything, West Midlands police think that section 5 of the 1986 Act allows them to arrest street preachers for reciting the Bible. Clearly, the police have difficulty applying the law and the guidance that the Home Office says should deal with the problem.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said, some cases are just plain ridiculous, and it is astonishing that the police waste time with them. In 2006, demonstrators in Worcester protested against seal culling by using toy seals coloured with red food dye—a harmless way of making a point. They were, however, threatened with arrest and the seizure of their property under section 5. The police told them that the toys were deemed distressing by two members of the public, and they ordered them to move on. Ridiculous.
As the grandson of a police officer, I feel sorry for the police. They have to make extremely tough decisions day in, day out, and often under the most extreme pressure. They are criticised by all sides for being too rough, too soft, insensitive or over-sensitive. They just cannot win, and the media rarely give them a break. I do not want to run down the police. I want to focus on what we as legislators can do to avoid putting them in the situation where they have to decide whether a complaint from someone who feels insulted should result in an arrest.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an important and strong case. Is he aware that, before he became a Member, whom we welcome, the House was occupied with debates about public order, particularly when dealing with cases of homophobic hatred? Many examples were cited and many concerns were expressed about application in that case. Such examples illustrate the problem with section 5 and its wide interpretation, and the need for us to take a proper, thorough look at it. This is an important opportunity to do so.
John Glen
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. He makes a powerful point and underscores the fact that this Bill should take account of that anomaly. It is unfortunate that it does not.
We have to ask ourselves, “Should the law really criminalise insulting words?” Surely insult is in the eye of the beholder, so how can the police be expected to regulate that? Abusive behaviour is clear-cut: we all know it when we see it, and it is right that the law addresses it. Threatening behaviour is absolutely unacceptable, and we need laws to tackle it. But “insulting”? What would debate be like in this Chamber if an hon. Member could be silenced by an allegation from another hon. Member that he felt insulted by what was said?
In July last year my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister told us that this Bill would
“protect hard-won liberties and repeal unnecessary laws”.
The Government have made a good start, but they should seize the opportunity that the Bill presents to bolster freedom of expression by removing “insulting” from section 5 of the 1986 Act. There will be freedom from wheel clampers, but no freedom of speech. It does not make sense.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). I shall focus on certain aspects of the Bill, some of which have already been covered, but the pertinent point about freedom of speech has not been lost on the House or, no doubt, the Minister. My hon. Friend certainly made that point very well.
I welcome the Bill not only because of the measures that it introduces, but because it is another demonstration of the Government’s commitment to reversing the intrusiveness of Labour’s big-state, big-government approach to running the country. As right hon. and hon. Members know, the more the state does and the larger the state is, the more powers it inevitably takes away from individuals and the more control it exercises over the public. This legislation sits alongside other Government Bills in taking away powers and control from politicians and bureaucrats and restoring them to the people. I think that that is welcome. It is also a hallmark of a Government who trust people and respect the majority of the law-abiding public instead of automatically treating everyone with a degree of suspicion. By contrast, for 13 years the British people not only had to put up with the previous Government’s “nanny knows best” attitude but had to face the burdens of a Government who were prepared to ride roughshod over civil liberties.
Part 1 of the Bill deals with powers of entry. Despite their claims to support and promote human rights, the previous Government seemed to neglect the rights of individuals to enjoy a private life. It is obscene that the state can exercise some 1,200 different types of powers of entry, with an estimated 20,000—this is probably a conservative figure—unaccountable town hall officials having the right to enter private property without a warrant. There are powers to check anything from the height of hedges, to plant passports, to the energy ratings on people’s refrigerators, and even, bizarrely, households containing dancing bears without a permit. This system has been left unchecked for far too long and has expanded to erode people’s freedoms. I therefore welcome the new measures in the Bill to enable Ministers to review the powers of entry and then repeal those that are absolutely unnecessary or inappropriate, or to include the relevant safeguards. Having such powers on the statute book and open to abuse not only represents an attack on people’s privacy and freedoms but undermines the occasions when there may be a genuine need for powers of entry to be exercised.
Part 2 covers surveillance and CCTV. We hear about bin inspectors going through people’s rubbish, CCTV cameras pointing at people’s homes and being utterly intrusive, councils using powers designed to prevent terrorism to snoop on people, and other frivolous acts of espionage on the private lives of our constituents.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
Part of the hon. Lady’s constituency includes the borough of Colchester. Does she accept from me that there is a code of practice for the CCTV security cameras in Colchester town centre that prevents any of the intrusions that she is talking about? Only public areas and public buildings are covered, not private dwellings, which is particularly important where we have residences in town centres.
Priti Patel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I absolutely agree. This shows not only the extent to which we need the Bill but the extent to which some of these powers have got out of control. CCTV must be focused on the correct areas and used in the right way. In relation to CCTV and many of the other areas covered in the Bill, the state has gone too far and has too many intrusive powers. It is shameful that the UK is now regarded as the only endemic surveillance society in Europe, placing us alongside China, Russia and Malaysia.
Although there will often be a fine line between the need, on one hand, to protect the freedom and privacy of individuals and, on the other, to curtail those protections for the benefit of the wider public interest, I welcome the new safeguards on liberty in the Bill, rebalancing the law in favour of our freedoms. It creates standards for the use of CCTV through a code of practice and a surveillance camera commissioner, and that provides more transparency and accountability, which is to be welcomed. I look forward to reading the commissioner’s report in due course and seeing where local authorities, in particular, and other organisations are in breach of the code and, in effect, wasting taxpayers’ money by being far too over-zealous in their surveillance activities.
However, I also believe that CCTV has a very important role to play in the fight against crime, and these measures have the potential to strengthen its effectiveness. Can the Minister therefore give an assurance that the code will also recognise the benefits of some key and vital uses of CCTV? Perhaps that can be done under clause 29(3)(a), which relates to the provisions in the code about
“whether to use surveillance camera systems”.
In the commissioner’s report, perhaps the details on best practice could include how CCTV is being used effectively to detect and prevent crime.
I also say to the Minister that my constituents obviously do not want to move away from the use of CCTV to the point of being overly cautious and fearful of using the technology. We have heard examples from the constituencies of many right hon. and hon. Members. I trust that, in drawing up the code, the Minister will take these points into account. On Friday, when I meet Witham Industrial Watch, a group of businesses that has come together to introduce CCTV across Witham’s various industrial estates, it will want an assurance on this matter. In particular, it will want to hear that we will not create unnecessary burdens on businesses or small shopkeepers who use CCTV in the right way to protect their business interests, staff and property from theft, damage and attack.
Finally, I congratulate the Government on the provisions to restore common sense to the vetting and barring system. We have heard a great deal about that aspect of the Bill in this debate. I am interested in this matter in relation to volunteering, engagement and participation in our communities. We have heard endlessly, for years and years, about the additional cost and bureaucracy of the system, and about how it prevents people from participating in our communities. In my view, that is a bad thing. Change is long overdue to bring back some common sense. I have heard the various views this evening and although we should never water down safeguards and protections, I think that the previous system—Labour’s system—had more to do with treating everybody with a degree of suspicion and almost like criminals than with protecting children and vulnerable groups.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue, and I think there is another element to it. Too many employers seem to think that because CRB checks are made, they do not have to make checks themselves. We must be alert to that danger.
Priti Patel
I agree absolutely on that point. There is no doubt that this issue needs some rebalancing and some common sense. This system has had a devastating impact on people who have been wrongly referenced. There should be a more proportionate approach. Hopefully the mistakes will be reduced as well. I want to see measures that protect the vulnerable and our children. This Bill is a step in the right direction and it is a proportionate response in this area.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
We have heard from many people on the Government and Opposition Benches for whom I have the utmost respect, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). However, I do not share the enthusiasm of all Government Members for all aspects of the Bill. There are many parts with which I heartily agree, and we have heard a few examples of areas where the current legislation has gone wrong.
Years ago, I was involved in a case in the Welsh Assembly in which a bus driver who worked for a company that undertook school bus runs was told that he might lose his job because 20 years previously he had incurred a minor conviction for shoplifting or a drink-related offence at the age of 19. For 20 years, he had lived a perfectly good life and suddenly he was about to lose his job over that minor offence. Clearly, such examples are totally and utterly disproportionate and I hope that we will do something about them.
I am less keen when I hear people talking about a police state. I declare an interest as a serving special constable in the British Transport police. I assure Members that when I go out it does not look like a police state. I have conducted many section 44 stop and searches, and I do not recognise the descriptions that have been given. I would challenge the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is not currently in his place, to ask the gentleman who says that he was stopped and searched every time he stepped out on the streets of London to produce the written evidence. Written evidence there most definitely will be, because every stop and search of that nature required about 20 minutes of paperwork.
One problem with section 44 stop-and-searches was that they were carried out entirely at random and were never actually picking people up. The police officers themselves were not enthusiastic about doing them, because they knew that they would annoy a member of the public who was probably not doing anything at all, incur at least 20 minutes of paperwork and be most unlikely to get anyone for anything.
Section 44 is going, which is fine, but the Government ought to consider the fact that the other stop-and-search legislation is not adequate to catch people who are clearly breaking the law. For example, on many occasions— I assure Members that I mean many, many occasions—I have stopped people for committing offences that were never going to be arrestable. The first thing that a police officer does in that situation is to check whether the person in question is known to the police for anything and whether they have a previous record. Very often it turns out that they do, and that there are warning markers indicating that they regularly carry knives, guns, drugs or other illegal paraphernalia.
At that point, faced with somebody who has committed an offence that will not get them arrested—perhaps begging or abusive language—but who regularly carries guns, knives or drugs, one would think that the officer would have the power to search them, but they do not. Unless the police officer can actually see the knife or drugs sticking out of a pocket, there are no powers to search somebody. The officer cannot take account of a person’s previous record. If we are going to get rid of section 44 stop-and-search powers, which is absolutely fine, we should at the same time ensure that people who are likely to commit offences or carry illegal apparatus can be properly searched.
We need to let the police know that when they see people acting suspiciously, they will still the have the power to stop and search. A lot of police officers, myself included, having undergone courses such as the behaviour spotting one—it is called BASS, but I will not bore Members with the details of what that means. It is about spotting people behaving in a suspicious fashion. Many police officers I have spoken to still feel uneasy about simply going up to somebody to stop and search them, even if they have been displaying obvious signs of acting in a manner that is likely to mean they were about to commit an offence.
Members of the public might feel that the police are for ever stopping and searching them—every time they go out on the streets of London, according to one Member—but police officers actually feel very nervous about going up to people to stop and search them. They feel that they are likely to get complaints if they do so. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will think about that. I have tabled amendments in the past suggesting that officers should be able to take account of somebody’s previous criminal record in deciding whether to conduct a stop and search, but I have not succeeded thus far. I do not know whether I have any more chance under the current Government than under the previous one—I suspect possibly not.
Tom Brake
The hon. Gentleman has referred to me both since I came back into the Chamber and, I understand, while I was not here. I would be very happy to introduce him to the baroness in question at the other end of the building, who will explain to him precisely what her son-in-law experienced. Then he will be able to make his own judgment.
David T. C. Davies
I would be delighted. I believe the hon. Gentleman said that every time that baroness’s son-in-law set foot on the streets of London, he was stopped and searched. The first thing that I would ask him would be, “Did you ask for the copies of the pink slips that have to be lodged every time you are stopped and searched?” If he was stopped and searched there will be a record of it, and we should be able to prove whether that happened every time he set foot on the streets of London. I look forward to pursuing the matter.
The issue of previous criminal records brings me to that of DNA, on which I have some sympathy with Opposition Members. I do not think that there was anything fundamentally wrong in collecting people’s DNA. I have done it myself, and I will be quite honest in saying that I am not sure that the Government have got it right. I asked the Home Secretary earlier whether she accepted that, as a result of the change, people who had committed crimes would be able to get away with it. She said that that was not true. I have the utmost respect for her, but I am very direct and I must say that I do not believe that and cannot accept it.
We see in the Bill that the Government have decided that anyone who is arrested for specific types of offences—terrorism, drugs, violence, rape and that sort of thing—will have their DNA kept indefinitely if they have a previous recorded offence. The Government recognise that keeping people’s DNA is useful when they have been arrested for offences such as murder, rape, violence or terrorism even if they are not convicted, which I welcome. However, it surely follows, therefore, that DNA can also be useful in respect of less serious offences, such as burglary or taking a vehicle without consent. We should make it clear to members of the public that we are increasing their rights and liberties, but that there is a cost—that is obvious, and we should be honest about it. One cost is that some burglars and car thieves will not be caught.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill is about striking a balance between maintaining law and order and ensuring that crimes are properly investigated, and maintaining civil liberties and ensuring that we do not live in the sort of society in which people who are completely exonerated of the smallest misdemeanour find that their DNA is kept for ever or even for a considerable period? The previous Government got that balance wrong, and this one are putting it right.
David T. C. Davies
One’s DNA might be kept for a long time, but that would be irrelevant if one did not go out and commit another offence. If one did, one would be arrested.
I agree, however, with my hon. Friend’s general point on the balance. The previous Government may have got it wrong—they have accepted as much—but we should also look at the context in which they took some of their decisions. The terrible tube bombings in 2005 caused people to think long and hard about it, and perhaps it always changes. To be philosophical for a moment, would my hon. Friend rather live in a failed state where there is no police presence or law and order whatever, or in a rather unpleasant dictatorship of the sort that we currently see falling in north Africa? Although that is not an easy choice, most people would rather live under Mubarak in Egypt than under whatever passes for a Government in Somalia, because at the end of the day, security is one of the most important things that people have—without it, we have nothing.
The only general complaint that I have heard about CCTV and surveillance cameras is that there are not enough of them, but I accept that the police and some local authorities have recorded people inappropriately. The police have a great deal of paperwork to fill out before they can use surveillance cameras on people, but I am not sure about local authorities.
The stringent new rules will presumably stop the police targeting criminals and local authorities from targeting the ubiquitous karate instructor who claims disability benefits, but will they apply to newspaper editors? This is a serious point. As I said, men who have had consensual sexual relationships with other men will no longer have to declare that as an offence—and quite rightly; that is one of the many measures in the Bill with which I agree. However, what if a newspaper surreptitiously films people having consensual sex, and because they are in the public eye, publishes the details and puts the film on the internet? I suggest that if anyone else tried to do that in any capacity, they would quite rightly find that they had breached a law—yet newspapers get away with it. Will the Home Secretary assure us that, in future, newspapers will have to abide by the same codes and laws that are and will be applied to local authorities that are looking for benefit cheats or police officers who are looking for criminals? Benefits cheats and criminals should be targeted far more stringently than footballers who have slept with somebody to whom they are not married.
I have one final point on that. I notice that some sort of ombudsman or commissioner will be responsible for ensuring that the rules on surveillance cameras are applied, but they will have no powers. They will have the ability to say, “I think that that was wrong,” but they will not have the ability to do anything about it. However, they will have a salary of £250,000 a year. That is extraordinary, given that Members of Parliament have been told to change the law to ensure that we do not get any salary increase at all. We are being paid £65,000 a year, and if it is good enough for us, it should be good enough for whoever is put in charge of this rather toothless surveillance camera body. I would like an assurance from the Government that we are not putting through a Bill that will get rid of a lot of quangos only to create a job that will pay £250,000 a year. Mind you, there will be quite a few MPs looking for jobs in four years, so perhaps one of us will be the lucky one who gets the £250,000 salary.
Last but not least, a few people have got the wrong idea about the police. I know that you might think that I am a bit biased—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I forget the correct use of language or terminology. However, I am sure that most people will understand that the police have a very difficult job to do. One hon. Member went out with protesters during the G20 riots. I was out with the police the day before. I turned up for duty on the day, but spent most of my time sitting in a police station, drinking tea and watching the events unfold on Sky—such is the way when we sign up for these things. However, I went out the night before, and I was threatened by people. I knew that the police were outnumbered and felt very threatened. Police officers are human like everybody else. They get scared when confronted by people, when they are outnumbered 10 to one and when people are throwing iron bars and trying to attack them, and I think that we should show a little bit more understanding when we talk about a police state, and realise that the police are very often the victims of crime, yet also end up as the people about whom complaints are made. I hope that everybody in the House recognises the very difficult job that the vast majority of them do courageously and well.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I shall support the Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, although I hope that some of the reservations I am about to express will be taken note of in Committee. There are at least two unintended consequences in the Bill concerning not so much the protection of freedoms for the law-abiding, as making life so much better for two categories of antisocial people. The first are those who park illegally on other people’s property, and the second are those who cause undue misery with late-night parties and so on. I cannot believe that there is a single Member here who has not had casework from constituents complaining about late-night noise or antisocial noise on summer afternoons. If the Bill passes as proposed, with its subsections and so on, I regret to say that it will be an open invitation for the antisocial noise people to up their game in the confident knowledge that local authorities will have fewer powers at their disposal to deal with them.
I will, however, begin with the wheel-clamping provision, which has been added to the Bill because—I think—it was here to have things added to it. I am not here to defend the rogue firms of wheel-clampers. I do not think that anyone in the Chamber is prepared to speak up for those cowboys, although I always think that to describe them as that is an insult to cowboys. Nevertheless, there are companies and individuals who have abused the wheel clamp, which used correctly and in the right way is a tool that helps the law-abiding.
The Minister for Equalities started this debate on 17 August last year. I have raised the matter on the Floor of the House before and spoken to her, so I am not saying anything that will come as a surprise. She announced that the freedom Bill would provide for an outright ban on clamping on private land, where it is carried out by private companies. I can just about understand that if the private land is a commercial property, but I am not sure about the idea when applied to private land owned by individual householders. At the moment, the Bill proposes that if somebody parked in the Minister’s drive, he would be restricted in the action that he could take to deal with the problem.
I want to quote the case of the Balkerne Heights residential area, which is right next to a multi-storey car park on the edge of Colchester town centre. The communal parking for the area’s housing became a magnet for illegal parking by late-night revellers, weekend shoppers and so on. The notion that polite requests not to park in people’s private parking areas will be acceded to is a little optimistic. The people causing the problem generally responded with certain words, the second of which was “off”. The only way that those parking abuses were dealt with was through the introduction of the wheel clamp. I would say that the Minister’s front drive is exactly the same as the communal parking area of people living in flats or communal housing. It is their drive: it is where they park their cars.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Looking at the Bill, it is clear that people will be able to close their gates and stop somebody removing a car that way. There is implied consent to allowing a restriction under clause 54(3)(a), and if the case is broader than that, the people or the commercial organisation involved can apply to the council to come and do the clamping for them. I think the problem that my hon. Friend is worried about is covered.
Bob Russell
I hope that my hon. Friend is correct in his understanding, but that has to be spelt out in the Bill, because it is not my understanding. If he is right, no problem—but if I am right, there is a problem. That is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be fleshed out and firmly written down, because clause 54(3)(a) refers to cases where
“there is express or implied consent by the driver of the vehicle to restricting its movement by a fixed barrier”.
Whether the barrier is up or down is irrelevant. Currently, the local planning authority may well refuse an application to start erecting barriers in carefully designed new housing areas, with landscaped grounds and all the rest of it, but if the Bill goes ahead, they will have to erect barriers to meet the very point that has quite rightly been made. Those are the unintended consequences.
I would argue that if residents living on a private housing estate with their own private communal parking areas wish to put a wheel clamp on, why can they not do so? It is an extraordinary state of affairs when the coalition Government are putting forward a Bill with a clause that would give more rights to the illegal parker than the person who owns the land where the car is illegally parked. The notion that residents could run off to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency or whoever else to get fines paid, and all the rest of it, is fanciful. Therefore, with the greatest of respect, what I would say is that more work needs to be done on that one.
The House of Commons Library has produced some excellent research—as ever, by the way—on the Bill. If Members who have the briefing would care to look at pages 26 through to 28, they will realise that the authors of the Bill need to dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s in Committee, because—I repeat—what we have at the moment is an opportunity for those who want to park illegally in other people’s private, communal, residential parking areas to do so almost with impunity. Under a heading entitled “The Bill’s provisions”, the research paper tells us:
“The Government had not previously indicated that there would be any parking-related measures in the Bill, or in fact that it was planning to make any changes to parking regulation at all.”
Therefore, those provisions have been bolted on. People who live in town centres have the advantages of the town centre, but sometimes one of the disadvantages is people coming into town, not parking where they should and abusing other people’s private parking areas. I ask the Minister to address that issue in Committee. I understand the need to tackle rogue wheel-clamping firms, but, with the greatest respect, I think that private home owners should have the right to use wheel clamps on vehicles parked on their private property, whether it is a private drive or a communal parking area.
The second unintended consequence of the Bill relates to those people whom we all love and who delight in causing problems for their neighbours by, among other things, having all-night parties. Chapter 2 of the Bill covers safeguards for certain surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. I am grateful to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health for drawing my attention to the serious consequences of these provisions. There cannot be a Member here tonight who has not been contacted by constituents as a result of noisy antisocial neighbours.
As an aside, I would like to make an important observation as the former chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on noise reduction. I wish that the coalition Government would introduce regulations to require greater noise insulation in new house building. A lot of attention is paid to heat retention in such buildings, but nothing is done about noise elimination. Perhaps another Government Department could pick that one up.
It has been suggested that the Bill has been prompted by claims in the popular press of unjustified snooping by local authorities, because it contains provisions to restrict the surveillance activities of those authorities by inserting additional tests into the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. One such test would require authorisations given by senior local authority officers to be approved, in addition, by a magistrate. That would make the process of authorisation more time consuming, and it would make things harder for increasingly stretched authorities—not least at night, when most complaints of this nature are made. The likely outcome of the proposal is that many fewer noise complaints would be investigated.
Anna Soubry
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such matters are not the domain of local authorities? The last Government made a big mistake when they mixed up the role of the police with the civil functions of local authorities. I suggest that problems of noisy neighbours holding late-night parties are the domain of the police, not the local authority.
Bob Russell
I do not think that I can agree with the hon. Lady on that. We are talking about authority in its broadest sense, whether it involves the police, the local authority or whoever. The public are entitled to live in peace, and if their peace is disrupted, the matter could be dealt with by the police or by the local authority. The two working in concert would be the best way; that has always been the way in which I have approached these issues.
The Bill proposes a further test that the crime that is to be prevented or detected should carry a minimum prison sentence. Noise offences do not, however, carry custodial sentences, and the effect of the provision would be to remove that ground for authorising surveillance. This matter needs to be thrashed out in Committee, because RIPA was never intended to deal with problems such as these. At a time when local authorities are shedding significant numbers of officers, they will need to become more efficient in order to maintain services. I have no argument with that, but barriers to achieving it will need to be removed, rather than new ones being erected. When there is no evidence that noise investigations are being carried out inappropriately, additional controls are neither justified nor in the public interest. I suggest that we should take the opportunity in Committee to remove them from the ambit of RIPA altogether.
I am sure that many of us will have read the letter in The Times yesterday from Mr Howard Price, the principal policy officer of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health—[Interruption.] Well, Members are going to hear it now. It says:
“The Protection of Freedoms Bill is about to receive its second reading. It contains provisions to amend the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act…to limit the surveillance activity of local authorities by requiring authorisations made by senior officers to be approved in addition by magistrates. Hundreds of thousands of neighbour noise complaints are made to local authorities each year. Listening to such noise in the course of investigation amounts to ‘surveillance’ under the Act and arguably requires authorisation. The Bill will make that more time-consuming and harder for authorities to obtain, especially at night when most complaints are made. Complaints will go unanswered. RIPA was never intended to apply to this activity. It will be a further unintended consequence if this Bill protects the freedom of noise-makers over that of householders wanting only a peaceful night’s sleep. Noise investigations should be excluded”—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman may provide us with a quotation, but I do not think we need him to read out the entire letter. He can make his point quite succinctly now, as we still have a few more speakers wanting to contribute.
Bob Russell
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I accept what you have said and I shall now sit down as I had only 10 more words to go.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I fear that the “Protection of Freedoms Bill” is not really what it says on the tin. People might think that the Bill protects freedom, but I am afraid to say that it does many things that are not apparent in its provisions. In particular, one of the greatest freedoms we need to protect is the right to decide our own laws and, indeed, to ensure that the judiciary complies with the will of Parliament. Unfortunately, on close examination, I found that the Bill’s content is to do with the upholding of European Court rulings. That is where the problem lies, and I fear that some hon. Members may have missed the wood for the trees. This is entitled the Protection of Freedoms Bill, but it would be far better to describe it as the “Subjection to European Rulings Bill”, as one case after another simply endorses decisions taken by the European Court. By that, I mean the European Court of Human Rights in particular.
We recently debated the rights of prisoners to vote, and the result of the Division on the motion was 222 to 15. Unfortunately, I could not be here. I am sorry to have to admit this, but I was working as Chairman of my Select Committee in Budapest. However, I thoroughly endorse what was said in the course of that debate on prisoners’ votes, but there is no reference to prisoners’ votes in the Bill. The Bill has skipped that one; it is waiting for another occasion. The reason is quite simple: the coalition Government know that idea of including prisoners’ votes as one of the freedoms in this Bill would be catastrophic for them. That is not to say that we should endorse the Bill’s reference to other European Court rulings contained in the provisions, but not set out in the Bill. Unless hon. Members have read much of the background material and case law, it is impossible for them to know exactly how much this Bill offends the principle endorsed by this House by 222 votes to 15.
Let me provide some examples. Given that we have only recently come back after a recess, I doubt whether people have had a chance to read the Home Office memorandum on the Bill, and some may be more interested in its detail than others. I find that detail often throws up one or two of the unfortunate aspects of the manner in which Governments—and the coalition Government in particular—operate. The memorandum says:
“This is a human rights enhancing Bill.”
No, it is not; it is a European Court of Human Rights enhancing Bill. I refer to cases such as the S. and Marper case which related to the retention of fingerprints and biometric data. I would like to see such matters properly dealt with in legislation, and the same applies to the stop-and-search provisions, to which the Gillan and Quinton case relates. Why can we not legislate on our terms in this House? Why must we subject the House to legislating to implement the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, when we have no reason whatever for not legislating on our terms? Putting it in statute form means that the matter goes to our courts for an interpretation of that legislation. Then, in the interpretation of the legislation, our own courts, either at first instance or more likely in the Supreme Court, apply the European jurisprudence.
I remind the House of a point that I have tried to make in debates over a long period and of a speech by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, who said that we must beware of the manner in which our legislation is being subjugated to Strasbourg decisions. He warned the judges, “Brothers and sisters, beware of applying the decisions of the Strasbourg court.” [Laughter.] Brothers and sisters, comrades!
The manner in which the implementation will happen is a form of Trojan horse. I would want to see many of the problems that the Bill raises dealt with by legislation, to ensure that people were not unfairly stopped and searched or that children got the proper protection. However, it should not be done through this vehicle. By not eliminating the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act formula, we give ourselves over increasingly to the Europeanisation of our law-making and the judicial claims made in the Supreme Court at the expense of the House. Effectively, we are digging our own grave.
At the same time, I hear and read that the Government are becoming more “Eurosceptic”—I do not know what that word means; Eurorealist is much more to the point.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend not in danger slightly of over-egging the pudding? I share many of his concerns about European law, but does the Bill not attempt to address some domestic injustices, and should we not support such a step in the right direction?
Mr Cash
As I said, I am extremely glad that many of the provisions are being dealt with, as they needed to be dealt with—but not in this manner. Notwithstanding the Human Rights Act, if it was done as my Bill on terrorism will provide, for example, we could preserve habeas corpus and avoid all the difficulties that have arisen in relation to control orders and pre-charge detentions, on our terms. That is the way we should be going, but that is for another day.
The Bill takes us in the wrong direction. As I said in an intervention on the Home Secretary about powers of entry, the Library note states that
“around one third of these powers of entry derive from regulations made under the European Communities Act 1972.”
The Home Secretary said it was important for us to get rid of many of the 1,272 powers of entry, but, as I pointed out to her then, it is essential for us to get rid of the regulations made under the European Communities Act 1972 as well. I think she would have accepted that, had it not been for the existence of a rather considerable problem: we cannot get rid of the regulations made under the 1972 Act without expressly providing in the legislation that, notwithstanding the Act, we should act in that way. There is an element of what I would not describe as hypocrisy, but would certainly describe as contradiction, in the principle behind the Bill.
I could give many other instances of overlap with the European Court of Human Rights, but I shall merely observe that I think it extremely unfortunate that this is being sold as the Protection of Freedoms Bill when, for practical purposes, it is taking us further and deeper into European integration. I say that without really wanting to have to say it. It would be easy to step back and say, as my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) said just now, that it does some good. Indeed, I have heard many Members say that there is a great deal of good in it. However, as I said to the Home Secretary earlier, although there may be good intentions behind it, we must ask ourselves what kind of law we want in this country.
When the Supreme Court speaks of the rule of law, I ask yet again: which law, and who will enforce it? We already know that there are serious problems, but here is another one. In one of the cases in question, after the House of Lords had made its judgment the Supreme Court was brought in, and, because the European Court of Human Rights had made a decision in the meantime, decided to endorse that decision rather than the decision made by our own courts. Some very difficult questions arise. There seems to be an increasing tendency for the Supreme Court to assent to the manner in which the European Court of Human Rights makes its decisions, effectively moving into a new arena in which what Parliament may decide is overridden, and making decisions that are not necessarily what the electorate expected when they elected us as Members of Parliament.
Let me also mention, in parenthesis, the accession of the European Union to the European convention on human rights. As I discussed the issue during our debates on the European Union Bill, I shall not go over the territory again, save to say that it creates a great deal of uncertainty about which of the jurisdictions will prevail. I regret to say that I believe that what is happening in the Bill is not what was expected to happen. Some commentators may misunderstand it, but the truth is that if we do not get the principle right—the principle of who rules—we will find ourselves drawn increasingly into a web that is growing all the time, involving the sovereignty of the House and decision making.
I believe that this is entirely deliberate. I am absolutely certain that the Home Secretary has been properly briefed. I think that she knows exactly what is in her Bill. I think that she wants it, I think that she is determined to have it, and I think that the coalition is completely and utterly convinced of its merits. Indeed, the Home Secretary said the following in a statement on the judgment in the Gillan and Quinton case:
“The Government cannot appeal this judgment, although we would not have done so had we been able.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 540.]
This is therefore about an attitude of mind: it is about there being a determination to go down a certain route, irrespective of the consequences for how we in this House legislate. I therefore simply say that I think there are many good reasons for adapting some of the provisions that are currently on the statute book, but the key is how we do it. The crucial point is that if we do it the wrong way, all we will end up doing is reducing the right of this House to legislate for itself.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
We have had a very lively debate, and I hope Members will forgive me if I cannot respond to every point that was made. We heard from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the hon. Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), for Belfast East (Naomi Long), for Salisbury (John Glen), for Witham (Priti Patel), for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and for Colchester (Bob Russell) and, last but not least, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). The question I ask myself, however, is: where is the Deputy Prime Minister? We were told that sweeping away all these measures was going to be his big achievement in government. Having heard all the rhetoric, I was expecting to see the right hon. Gentleman burst the doors open and ride into the Chamber on a trusty white steed, with his shield of truth and his sword of virtue, telling us he was going to lead us all to some promised land of freedom.
Sadly however, that was not to be the case. All we have had is a handful of Liberals in the Chamber all evening, but we would have thought they would be piling in to support this Bill since it is their key platform—it is the major plank of their contribution to the coalition Government. [Interruption.] Well, that is the source of the Bill. We support some aspects of it, as some of them are sensible, yet there are others on which we will want to ask questions and some on which we will challenge the Government position.
Throughout the debate, we have heard Members say that this is about balance, yet first and foremost, it is about balancing the coalition and appeasing Liberal Democrat Members. It is also about the need to hold together the coalition, and I wonder what some of the Tory Members, who are shuffling uncomfortably in their seats, will do when they are asked to vote for measures that in normal circumstances they would not support.
Over the past few decades, this House has been called on to act to protect people in the face of threats of many kinds, and to legislate on matters such as those addressed in this Bill. Public opinion has been strong on many of them, including the threat from international terrorists who have carried out atrocities on an unprecedented scale, increased concerns about public protection and the protection of children and vulnerable adults, the proliferation of closed circuit television, and freedom of information. At the same time however, new technology and advances in science have challenged us to legislate on, and regulate, their uses. We have faced demands for new scientific and surveillance techniques to be made available to those charged with the task of keeping the public safe.
This debate, like those that have gone before it, is about the balance that should be struck in respect of the civil rights of ordinary citizens to live without fear of harm or interference or becoming a victim of crime, and the need to protect the civil liberties of those individuals and hold back the state from intruding in their private lives. Events have led us to legislate on the issues we are debating today. We will be judged on our actions in respect of these events, the balance to be struck and the issues addressed in the Bill.
We have heard from Members on both sides of the clamping argument. The hon. Member for Colchester spoke very forcefully. The residents of one estate in my constituency are concerned because they live close to a railway station where commuters want to park and they fear that their estate will be turned into a car park. By contrast, a private road in my local town centre is policed by a cage fighter in a van who sits at the bottom of the road like a trapdoor spider waiting for anybody to park illegally on that private land. So a balance needs to be struck on this issue.
The same is true on the use of biometric information in schools. Labour Members accept that it is sensible for parents to be consulted and we welcome the proposal. However, on protecting individuals’ rights in schools, these powers have been used to protect young people who receive free school meals from being identified and stigmatised. So as much as we may want to see this sensible change made, we will want to see how far it goes in protecting the rights of those individuals too.
On the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, CCTV and surveillance, councils have played a vital role in creating public areas that the public consider to be safe. Such measures have been used to tackle issues relating to speeding cars, town centres and antisocial behaviour. So our attempts to legislate to regulate the use of CCTV and surveillance must not limit the ability of local authorities to play their important role in ensuring community safety. I have never had anyone come to me asking for the removal of a CCTV camera, and many colleagues have said the same.
We all accept the principle that some individuals who are innocent will have their biometric details retained, and I hope that the Home Secretary accepts that. Tonight’s debate is not about all innocent people having their biometric details destroyed, as some have claimed; it is about where we set the balance. The Government have clearly come down on the side of reducing the amount of biometric information that we retain, but I suggest to Government Members that events will cause us to revisit this issue. Can any Government Member say that the changes to reduce the scope of biometric details that will be retained will not result in one of their constituents saying that had the changes not been made, their family member or friend would not have suffered a serious criminal assault? Nobody here tonight can say that so we must think carefully about what we are about to do. The media will make a great deal of the issue if those circumstances come about, and Government Members will have some serious questions to answer. How many children need to be attacked for it to be worth some people in our communities suffering the intrusion of having their biometric details retained on a DNA database?
I shall now discuss barring and vetting. The protection of children is one of the most important issues that can come before us on the Floor of the House. This is about setting the balance between the need for people to volunteer and for us to encourage people to play their part in their local communities, and the need to ensure that the right framework is in place to create a safe environment where parents can be sure that their children will come to no harm. This is not only about the risks from people who have unsupervised contact with children; it is also about the people who can come close to vulnerable children and groom them. Such people are among the most dangerous individuals in our communities and they go to great lengths to gain our trust in order to deceive the most vulnerable. So it is again important that we strike the right balance between the need to protect those individuals and the individual rights that the Home Secretary has said that she is seeking to protect.
We all want to protect children and vulnerable adults in our communities but it is important to get the balance right. The previous Government’s record was to leave crime down by 43% and satisfaction rates with the police at record levels. We now face cuts of 10,000 police officers and some will question why the Government have chosen to take away some of the most important tools the police have in their toolkit when they are also facing a reduction in resources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
This has been a good debate. The passion shown and the wide-ranging nature of the debate has underlined the fact that freedom of speech is very much alive and well in the House. I take heart from the broad support across the House for many, if not all, of the Bill’s provisions. There is a clear recognition from Members on the Government Benches—and, indeed, by a number of Opposition Members—that the previous Government’s approach during their 13 years in office eroded a number of freedoms and, importantly, failed to enhance our security. Freedom was not enhanced by the creation of a leviathan national identity register containing the personal details of every adult in the country. Civil liberties were not protected by creating a database holding the details of every child. The vulnerable were not safeguarded by requiring more than 9 million employees and volunteers to register with a Government agency. Justice was not served by including more than 1 million unconvicted individuals on the national DNA database, and community cohesion was not strengthened by the police stopping hundreds of thousands of people under anti-terrorism powers but making only a handful of arrests for terrorist offences.
I remind Opposition Members of the Leader of the Opposition’s words to the Labour party conference:
“But we must always remember that British liberties were hard fought and hard won over hundreds of years. We should always take the greatest care in protecting them. And too often we seemed casual about them.”
This Government will not be casual about liberty. That is why the Bill sets out a different approach that will protect our communities while defending personal freedoms.
This has been a good debate and I thank hon. Members on the Government side, including my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), whom I welcome as the successor to Evan Harris, although there have been some comments in support of the activities that Evan continues to do outside the House. I thank also my hon. Friends the Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), for Salisbury (John Glen), for Witham (Priti Patel), for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), for Colchester (Bob Russell) and for Stone (Mr Cash). In addition, I thank many Opposition Members for their contributions, including the light relief provided by the vision of his brush with Oddjob described by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who did not specify whether his fingerprints were taken by Goldfinger. I know that the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton) would have liked to take part in the debate on wheel-clamping, and we appreciate her support for those measures.
I am conscious of time and I will do my best to cover as many as possible of the points that have been raised, but I apologise if I am not able to get through them all. On CCTV, I welcome the support of many hon. Members for the introduction of a statutory code of practice and the appointment of an independent surveillance commissioner. Those measures will help to maintain and strengthen public confidence in the use of CCTV systems and will ensure that the millions of pounds invested in such systems deliver value for money. Some hon. Members have commented on whether this trust and confidence is required, and I highlight the comments of Sara Thornton, the chief constable of Thames Valley police, in her review of Project Champion concerning CCTV usage in Birmingham. She said:
“As a consequence, the trust and confidence that they”—
in other words, the local people—
“have in the police has been significantly undermined.
There is a real opportunity to learn from Project Champion about the damage that can be done to police legitimacy when the police are seen to be acting in a way which prizes expediency over legitimacy.”
That is the context in which we should consider the provisions in the Bill relating to CCTV.
My hon. Friends the Members for Carshalton and Wallington and for Oxford West and Abingdon highlighted the application of the CCTV code of practice. The code is intended to benefit all system users. The specific requirement to have regard to the code is initially limited to the police and local authorities as the principal operators of public space CCTV systems, but the use of privately operated cameras in private or semi-public spaces is more complex. We wish to achieve a consensus on key issues before considering whether to extend the duty to have regard to the code of practice to other operators—for example, in shopping centres. I take on board the comments that were made. I can offer my hon. Friend the Member for Witham an assurance that we recognise the important role played by CCTV in detecting and deterring crime.
An issue that was raised which is not in the Bill was section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. It is essential to consider in the round whether current laws strike the right balance on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to manifest one’s religion and the need to protect the public. In its report, “Adapting to Protest”, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary suggested that changing the law was not the answer. In many ways it was the constant changes to the Public Order Act that had led to operational confusion. The Government will continue to review the law throughout the course of this Parliament to ensure that it allows competing rights to be properly balanced.
Comments were made on the provisions for safeguarding vulnerable groups. Some Opposition Members expressed concern that reforms to the vetting and barring scheme would put children and vulnerable adults at greater risk. We do not consider that that will be the case. The remodelled scheme set out in the Bill will cover those who may have regular or close contact with children or vulnerable adults. It will provide for a more proportionate and efficient scheme in tandem with a refined criminal records disclosure service. The creation of a huge database to monitor millions of ordinary people created an artificial sense of security. We are moving back to a common-sense approach.
Yvette Cooper
Will the Minister confirm that if somebody applying for a post as a voluntary teaching assistant has been barred from work as a teacher owing to inappropriate contact or behaviour with children, the school will not be told that the independent experts at the ISA have barred that person?
James Brokenshire
As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made clear, the underlying information will be known. That is the key point. It is worth mentioning that the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) met the NSPCC and other bodies, which said that they were assured by the explanations that they were given.
On DNA, we reject the allegations that we are being soft on crime. That is not the case. We recognise the importance of DNA and how it combats crime. Our approach is based on putting the guilty on the database to make a difference there, not putting on the database those who are innocent.
The Bill strikes the right balance between individual freedom and collective protection. It guards against the unnecessary and unregulated intrusion by Government into the lives of the many. It protects the fundamental values of liberty and freedom that mark this country out. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
protection of freedoms bill (programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Protection of Freedoms Bill:
Committal
1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 10 May.
3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Bill Wiggin.)
Question agreed to.
protection of freedoms bill (money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Protection of Freedoms Bill, it is expedient to authorise—
(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
(a) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown by virtue of this Act; and
(b) any increase attributable to this Act in the sums payable by virtue of any other Act out of money so provided, and
(2) the making of payments into the Consolidated Fund.—(Bill Wiggin.)
Question agreed to.
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
Before calling Mr Laurence Robertson to speak on the Adjournment, I appeal to Members leaving the Chamber, who quite unaccountably do not wish to hear the speech about the Tote, to do so quickly and quietly so that we can listen attentively to Mr Laurence Robertson.
The Tote
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I, too, am surprised that so many Members do not want to hear this timely and important debate. I am pleased to have secured it and grateful to the Minister for staying behind to reply to it. I am also grateful for his genial and informed approach to all the horse racing issues that the Government have to deal with.
I wish to declare two non-declarable interests. I have the honour of being joint chair of the all-party group on racing and bloodstock industries, which is one of the most active, well-attended and important all-party groups in Parliament. I have the honour of being joint chair alongside the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr Meale), whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber this evening. I also have the honour of representing the great race course at Cheltenham, which by a quirk of the boundaries falls within my constituency of Tewkesbury. It is looking forward to one of the greatest national hunt racing festivals in the world in a couple of weeks’ time.
The debate is timely because the Government have announced their intention to finalise the status of the Tote. It was set up in 1928 to benefit horse racing, and benefit horse racing it has done. Last year, it provided almost £19 million to horse racing through the statutory levy and sponsorship. The Tote sponsors the Cheltenham gold cup, one of the greatest steeplechase races in the world, which will take place in a couple of weeks’ time. It also pays a lot of money in rent to around 60 race courses across Great Britain, and that money is absolutely crucial to racing. The Tote is more than that, however; it is an institution, and it provides the friendly face of bookmaking.
It is 10 years since the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), then Home Secretary, announced that the Government of the day would change the status of the Tote. At the time, it looked as though it would be transferred to a racing trust. Indeed, a shadow trust was set up with its own chairman, Lord Lipsey, but the transfer was never made. One of the big questions that we must ask before getting too far into the detail is this: who actually owns the Tote? That is not an easy question to answer. It was for that reason that in 2004 the then Government passed an Act of Parliament that nationalised the Tote, with a view to moving it on to the racing trust, but they never included that intention in the Bill, which was a problem. My submission is that, if the Government had to nationalise the Tote and obviously did not own it, they in some way had a responsibility to racing, so it would be wrong for them to do anything with the Tote that would deprive racing of its annual income from the Tote.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman will know that I have the privilege of representing Wigan, where the Tote has its headquarters, and the staff there have lived with uncertainty about their futures for a long time. Does he share my concerns about how their jobs and, in particular, their pensions will be protected, and would he welcome some clarity from the Minister on that?
Mr Robertson
I certainly do share the hon. Lady’s concerns. I shall come to that issue in a moment, but she makes a very important point.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if the Government are going to assess any bids for the Tote, they should use only two criteria: first, the retention of jobs in the north-west; and secondly, the contribution to racing? Does he not think that those are the two overriding decisions that should determine who gets the Tote?
Mr Robertson
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I have already mentioned the money going to racing, and the issue of jobs is important not just to the Tote. Many people are employed in racing, and, if it loses the Tote’s contribution, those jobs will be adversely affected, so he is absolutely right.
The Chancellor, in his Budget speech, mentioned the intention of moving the Tote on and changing its status, and more recently the Minister here tonight said that, when that happens, 50% of the proceeds of the sale will be returned to racing. That statement is generally welcome, and from a racing perspective it has to be good news, but it is not enough. There are various questions about that 50% figure. How much would it be worth after pension and debt liabilities have been taken into account? Who in racing would get the money? How much would it amount to? Would that 50% satisfy European Union state aid rules? Those questions need to be answered.
My central point—the most important point, which the hon. Gentleman touched on—is that the money that the Tote puts into racing each and every year is more important than 50% of the proceeds of any sale going to racing. As I have frequently said, that could turn out to be like selling one’s house and living off the proceeds: it is okay to do so for a while, perhaps five years, but at the end of that period the proceeds are all gone and then one is left without an asset. More important than that 50% is therefore the Tote’s year-on-year contribution to racing, and I cannot stress that enough.
Mr Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)
May I remind the hon. Gentleman of the contents of early-day motion 1516, which members of the all-party racing and bloodstock industries group tabled? It talks about who represents racing per se, and the answer is organisations such as the Jockey Club and the British Horseracing Board, the owners, trainers, jockeys, stable staff and their representative organisations. They all support the Tote’s foundation, as he has been describing. The Minister knows that the Government have never given a penny to the Tote, never even acted as guarantor to it, but have gleaned millions from it, so should he not at least listen to the people who have actually made a business out of it?
Mr Robertson
The hon. Gentleman, the joint chairman of the all-party group, makes an important point, which I was going to come on to but shall dwell on now for a moment. The people who run horse racing are well known for falling out over every issue that there is to fall out over. It is almost a standing joke in the racing industry that they cannot agree on anything, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, because on this issue racing speaks with one voice, and it is crucial that the Government listen to it.
I do not remember racing being as united on any issue as it is on this one. The central point that it is making is that whoever ends up running the Tote in a few months’ time should not only be able to pay this contribution to racing every year but guarantee to do so. In other words, the purpose of the existence of the Tote must be to contribute to horse racing, because that is what it was set up to do. If other bidders are considered—of course, the Government have to follow due process and consider other bidders—would the industry be able to ask for guarantees from those bidders that the Tote would continue to look after horse racing? That would provide some difficulty for those bidders because it would reduce the value of the Tote as a business—I understand that—but how on earth would they be able to give that guarantee? I do not think that they could.
When the Chancellor and the Minister further considered the status of the Tote, they said that they would look after racing’s interests and also look after the interests of the taxpayer. I return to what the hon. Member for Mansfield said. The taxpayer has never put a single penny into the Tote, and so, in my view, the taxpayer does not deserve a return from any sale of the Tote. This is very different from the millions upon millions that the taxpayer used to have to put into the old nationalised state industries. I want to see more fairness for taxpayers, and lower taxes. I am always on the side of the taxpayer; I come to this House to represent them. However, on this occasion they do not need any representing.
Mr Meale
While I commend the hon. Gentleman’s words about what contribution is made, I refer back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said about the taxpayers of Wigan and the north-west and the contribution that they have made. The fact is that there would be no business whatever were it not for the people who work for the Tote in Wigan, in Lancashire, and up and down the length and breadth of Britain’s high streets where Tote bookmakers operate. These women, in the main, work for the Tote, travel to race courses throughout the UK, and glean the many hundreds of millions of pounds that turn the profit that we are talking about.
Mr Robertson
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is the efforts of the staff, who have contributed so much towards the Tote as an organisation, that have allowed it to contribute so much money to horse racing.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that much of the value of the Tote lies in the loyal and mainly long-serving work force, who need to be protected? Their needs must be given proper weighting in the bidding process as a reward for their loyal and long service, which has helped the Tote to develop into what it is today.
Mr Robertson
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. I will touch on that in a moment.
As I said, the taxpayer has never put any money into the Tote and therefore does not deserve any money out of the Tote. Having said that, I fully understand the difficulty that the Minister and his Department may face, because over the years we have seen the Treasury grow in strength, and it wants some money out of this process. However, a bid from a Tote foundation may qualify to be one of the best bids that it could take up, for some of the reasons that have been given. A Tote foundation would of course continue to employ staff, and therefore continue to have a pension liability. It would continue to be responsible for any debts that the Tote may have. All that has to be put into the melting pot. An undiscounted cash payment could be made. If the Tote is to continue as a foundation, or as the Tote organisation, and continue, year on year, to pay money to horse racing, there is no need for the 50% sum to be given back to horse racing because it would be getting something far more valuable—the ongoing amount each and every year. That is extremely important.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this extremely important debate at this crucial time. As he well knows, in my constituency about 5,000 jobs in and around Newmarket are connected with the racing industry. Does he agree, especially given the history of this issue, that the crucial element is the contribution that is made to racing? I strongly agree with his view that an ongoing contribution to racing is vital in terms of the future of the Tote, and that whatever choice of bidders is made, an obligation for a contractual support of the future of racing is required.
Mr Robertson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that is the crucial element. If there is one message that I would like the Minister to receive tonight, it is that we have to be certain of the ongoing contribution. We cannot be certain of it if the highest bidder is simply accepted. Under certain circumstances, we would not even be sure that the Tote would continue to exist as an organisation, because bits of it could be sold off. It is only through this process that I have come to understand what is meant by embarrassment clauses. That is how the Government might ensure that once the Tote is sold or transferred to another organisation or company, it will not asset strip it, sell it the next day and make a massive profit, or cause it not to survive as an organisation.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that almost every country in the world that has a successful racing industry also has a state-owned pool betting system, and that in many cases that is the only form of legal betting?
Mr Robertson
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I do not want the Government to continue to own the Tote—not that they own it yet, but hon. Members know what I mean. I do not think that it is for Governments to own betting shops; that is not what they are there for. My hon. Friend is right that the model I am proposing, whereby racing gets all the benefit from the Tote, is not unusual, but exists in many parts of the world. Perhaps the system here differs because the Tote, if it continued as a foundation, would be competing with many other companies such as Ladbrokes, Coral and William Hill. However, his central point is absolutely right.
I am coming to the end of my speech, or certainly to the end of the time that I wanted to take, but I want to make one further point. In a debate two or three weeks ago initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), we discussed the future of the horserace betting levy. It was pretty well agreed that the present system is out of date and that it cannot carry on in its present form. It needs to be reformed or to be replaced completely. Racing will have to generate more commercial opportunities to get more money into horse racing, even if the levy continues as it is. If the Tote were transferred or sold to an organisation or foundation that was there purely to finance horse racing, it would be a move in that direction. Allowing the Tote foundation bid to succeed, for example, would be a step towards a solution with regard to the levy, and the two policies would go forward together.
I started by saying that the ownership of the Tote is uncertain, but one thing that is certain is that racing has a right to the money that comes from the Tote. I ask the Minister to ensure that that continues to be the case.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this important debate. A number of Members have made the point that this is a timely discussion and I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the excellent points and questions that my hon. Friend raised. I thank him for describing me as genial. I do not think I have been described as genial before. I shall tuck that away and tell my mum when this is all over. I also compliment him because, as he said, by a quirk of the boundaries his constituency includes the wonderful race course of Cheltenham. It is my hard lot in life to have to go to the Cheltenham festival for two days this year. That is a terribly tough part of my job, but I am rather looking forward to it.
I should point out that we are in the middle of an open market process in which a number of people are bidding for the Tote. I hope that my hon. Friend and the hon. Members who have intervened will understand that I am therefore limited in what I can say at this point. Some people who are bidding to take over the Tote have signed non-disclosure agreements with the Government and the Government have signed them in return. It would not be fair to individual bidders if I started disclosing details of one bid and not another. That would clearly not lead to a fair, safe and equitable disposal process, so I will have to watch my p’s and q’s. I am not trying to be deliberately obstructive or obscure, but I need to be careful
My hon. Friend began by asking a series of questions about the details of the 50% commitment. As he rightly pointed out, the Government have committed to ensuring that we honour the Labour Government’s original commitment that 50% of the proceeds of any disposal go to racing. I will come on to his points about whether that is a high enough proportion.
John Penrose
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because it leads me on to answering some of the points that he and his co-chairman of the all-party group on the racing and bloodstock industries, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury, asked. He is right: clearly, these will have to be net proceeds.
There is a series of questions to be answered about precisely how the transfer of the 50% of the proceeds will take place, and to whom it will be transferred. The answer to most of these questions is tightly bound by European law, because we have to ensure that we do not inadvertently trip over concerns about state aid, which have already derailed one or two earlier attempts to deal with the Tote under previous Administrations. There are things that we can and cannot do, and we are examining them and ensuring that everybody understands what they are. However, I would make the point that they apply equally to any of the potential bidders who are interested in taking over the Tote in due course, who will be bound by charity law and so on. It is most likely that the money will end up in some kind of trust that is governed by the requirements of European law, to ensure that it does not fall on the wrong side of the state aid rules. More details are being developed and worked out through the lawyers as we speak, and when the time comes we will obviously need to publish rather more detail.
John Penrose
I am happy to come on to the issue of Tote staff, but I actually meant to describe a slightly different type of trust, in that the money that is paid to racing will need to go into a carefully bounded trust that is constrained by EU state aid rules. That may or may not be helpful to the future of the staff, but it is a parallel and separate issue.
The principal point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury to which I wish to respond was that the value of the 50% share would almost certainly be less than the value of the ongoing income stream that there has been from the Tote to racing year on year. I completely understand the basic point that he was trying to make, which was that if someone is given a large lump of capital in year one and they fritter it away, or even spend it on terribly valuable and useful things, they will be left with nothing else unless they have a yearly income as well.
However, it is not necessarily true that the ongoing annual income is worth more than the value of the up-front capital. It rather depends on how much that ongoing annual income will be under the various potential future owners of the Tote. Without revealing details of all the different bidders—as I said earlier, I cannot do that—I can tell everybody that the various people who are bidding for the Tote are coming up with an interesting and rich variety of proposals for how to treat the level, structure and so on of that ongoing income stream. They are not all the same, and some are better for racing on an ongoing basis than others. However, we need to value the best and worst differentials alongside the value of the capital. It is not true that the value of the differential will always be bigger and more valuable than the up-front capital. In some cases, it could be that 50% of the proceeds properly invested could yield a very significant return. It is not a straightforward calculation, so I caution the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr Meale) on how he makes that comparison.
John Penrose
I am afraid that if I answer that question, I will fall the wrong side of the line that I described earlier. The people who are bidding are making a variety of pledges and proposals on that, which must all be valued, addressed and compared. Some are notably better than others, and that is one factor that we will take into account.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have said that 50% is not enough, and that 100% of the proceeds should go to racing. As Minister with responsibility for racing, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to sign up to that proposal, but that is not where this Government are, and nor was it where the previous Government were—they passed the legislation that allows us to dispose of the Tote by passing it into public ownership and eventually on to a bidder.
The Chancellor made a commitment in his Budget on 22 June, and used a phrase that is emblazoned on my heart—I suspect that it is well known to all hon. Members in the Chamber. He promised to
“resolve the future of the Tote in a way that secures value for the taxpayer while recognising the support the Tote currently provides the racing industry”.
Given the current state of the national finances, I am afraid that it will be extremely hard—or completely impossible, in my view—to argue that we should do more than a 50:50 split. I appreciate that there are deeply held views on both sides of that argument, but that is the situation that, to a large extent, we inherited. We have honoured the previous Government’s commitment to 50%, but I fear that it would be extremely difficult to go any further at this stage.
The Government are extremely pleased with the quality and quantity of the interest and bids that we have received for the future of the Tote. It is a matter of public record that the number of bids in the first round was in the high teens. We have whittled that down with an initial assessment and are now in phase 2, with a smaller selection of people, but we still have a pretty wide range.
John Penrose
I have a very short amount of time left. I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention because I have already taken one from the hon. Gentleman.
Lisa Nandy
Will the Minister at least tell us what relative weight he has given to the continuing employment of existing Tote staff?
John Penrose
I apologise. I did not mean to gloss over that and the hon. Lady is quite right to pick me up on it. I am afraid that I cannot quantify the relative weights, but the Government will apply three crucial criteria: return to the taxpayer; return to racing; and pledges on the future of staff, including those in Wigan. Those three factors will be crucial in our evaluation of the different bids. As I said, the structures of the bids are widely different, and we must calculate carefully if we are to make like-for-like comparisons.
To return to my point, we have a strong, wide and powerful range of people who are through to round 2. They are currently involved in due diligence, crawling through the books with a fine-toothed comb and ensuring that they understand all the issues. In due course, we will whittle the bidders down still further to a final smaller group, which we will endeavour to take through to completion.
The good news is that because we have such a strong field of runners and riders, we stand a very good chance—although one can never be sure of these things—of bringing this to a successful conclusion. All in our collection of bids are of high value in respect of all three of the main criteria that I just described. That is our best guarantee of a successful outcome. If we have a good choice between those three different values, we stand an excellent chance of success.
Ministerial Corrections
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Energy and Climate Change
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Neil Parish
I very much welcome the Minister’s comments on anaerobic digestion, because I think we can get a great deal more of it. Can he assure us that feed-in tariffs will be set at a fair rate? As we push up energy prices to the consumer, we push more people into fuel poverty. When he tapers the tariffs, will he ensure that hospitals and schools get a fair crack of the whip?
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend makes some excellent points. We will endeavour to ensure that we are very fair in the review, and we certainly want to sustain investment in renewables in schools, hospitals and other community projects that fall above the 40 kW review level. We also need to ensure that we get value for money for consumers and that we do not offer what Labour did—an open cheque book approach to the industry.
[Official Report, 10 February 2011, Vol. 523, c. 464.]
Letter of correction from Mr Gregory Barker:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given on 10 February 2011. The answer made reference to community projects that fall above the 40 kW review level. It should have said above the 50 kW level.
The correct answer should have been:
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend makes some excellent points. We will endeavour to ensure that we are very fair in the review, and we certainly want to sustain investment in renewables in schools, hospitals and other community projects that fall above the 50 kW review level. We also need to ensure that we get value for money for consumers and that we do not offer what Labour did—an open cheque book approach to the industry.
Communities and Local Government
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Matthew Hancock
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how much the Audit Commission spent on calls to (a) premium-rate telephone numbers, (b) directory enquiry services and (c) the speaking clock in the last 36 months for which figures are available.
[Official Report, 16 February 2011, Vol. 523, c. 831-32W.]
Letter of correction from Mr Robert Neill:
An error has been identified in the copy of the Audit Commission letter that was provided with the written answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) on 16 February 2011. In the table, the figures given for (b) directory inquiry services and (c) the speaking clock were transposed.
The full answer given was as follows:
Robert Neill
This is an operational matter for the Audit Commission and I have asked the chief executive of the Audit Commission to write to my hon. Friend direct.
Letter from Eugene Sullivan, dated 16 February 2011:
Your Parliamentary Question has been passed to me to reply.
The Commission routinely bars premium rate calls for fixed and mobile phones where technically possible. Some premium rate calls are required for targeted business purposes, the main one being for postal franking machines (£162 over the three years). The speaking clock is sometimes used to test lines externally where a guaranteed reply is needed.
For our main offices, all directory enquiry calls are routed to our main provider Cable & Wireless service as this provides the most effective rate. Mobile phone calls to directory enquiries and the speaking clock are barred.
The detail of the spending requested is provided in the table below. However, information for home workers and small office users is excluded, as the detail is not readily accessible from the service supplier for the total period.
£ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
12 months to 31 January | ||||
2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Total | |
(a) Premium rate | 55 | 69 | 46 | 170 |
(b) Directory inquiry services | 5 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
(c) Speaking clock | 75 | 44 | 21 | 140 |
Total | 135 | 114 | 68 | 317 |
The correct answer should have been:
Robert Neill
This is an operational matter for the Audit Commission and I have asked the chief executive of the Audit Commission to write to my hon. Friend direct.
Letter from Eugene Sullivan, dated 16 February 2011:
Your Parliamentary Question has been passed to me to reply.
The Commission routinely bars premium rate calls for fixed and mobile phones where technically possible. Some premium rate calls are required for targeted business purposes, the main one being for postal franking machines (£162 over the three years). The speaking clock is sometimes used to test lines externally where a guaranteed reply is needed.
For our main offices, all directory enquiry calls are routed to our main provider Cable & Wireless service as this provides the most effective rate. Mobile phone calls to directory enquiries and the speaking clock are barred.
The detail of the spending requested is provided in the table below. However, information for home workers and small office users is excluded, as the detail is not readily accessible from the service supplier for the total period.
£ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
12 months to 31 January | ||||
2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Total | |
(a) Premium rate | 55 | 69 | 46 | 170 |
(b) Directory inquiry services | 75 | 44 | 21 | 140 |
(c) Speaking clock | 5 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
Total | 135 | 114 | 68 | 317 |
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Forestry Commission
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I am very grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the future of the Forestry Commission. When I applied for the debate the Government were, of course, intent on selling off up to 100% of our public forest estate, which by any standards was an outrageous proposal, especially given Ministers’ repeated boasts of their intention to be the greenest Government ever. The U-turn made by the Secretary of State on 17 February, heralded by the Prime Minister’s disowning of the policy the day before, has to be one of the most humiliating ever. Just like the U-turns on green individual savings accounts, housing benefit, rape anonymity, dissolution of Parliament, knife offences, school sports, Bookstart, free nursery milk and debt advice, the forestry U-turn was the result of a rushed and ill-conceived set of proposals, put forward by an ideologically driven Government.
Where did the policy come from? It certainly did not come from the people who carried out the Labour Government’s review of the public forest estate. I suggest that once again we see a Secretary of State out of touch with the community of interests relating to her Department, and I only hope that the 500,000 people who rose up in protest against the forest proposals will do so again to defeat another Secretary of State and his plans to restructure the NHS.
As a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister, I had responsibility for the Forestry Commission for a short time, and was very impressed with how the custodians of our public forest estate were developing their mission. They had moved some considerable way from the overriding timber priorities of the past, to delivering multi-purpose sustainable forestry, embracing the need to combat climate change, to enhance both biodiversity and leisure pursuits, and to develop sources of renewable fuel. We, the Labour Government, wanted to build on that progress, alongside our Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the creation of two new national parks, and so in November 2008 we launched the review of the public forest estate, to which I referred earlier. That review was conducted by independent representatives from academia, the civil service, industry and nature conservation, and the research covered the economic, environmental and social costs and benefits of the public forest estate. It was accompanied by a public consultation, which received more than 4,000 responses. The review group’s final report was presented to the Forestry Commission in May 2010, and its findings offered a way forward that was very different from the wholesale sell-off proposed by the Minister.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
The right hon. Lady has made a number of comments about the Labour proposals, but she has not mentioned that the Forestry Commission is both a big commercial operator in the forestry market and a regulator of everyone else—all its competition. Was that part of the Labour party’s consideration, and did it feature at all in its report?
Joan Ruddock
The report, which was of course independent, was never responded to by the Labour Government, for the obvious reason that there was an election. The report went to the Forestry Commission and there was no opportunity for us to respond, but I recommend it to the hon. Gentleman. It took a considerable amount of time—more than a year—and came up with a huge range of suggestions, and the underlying research, which was reported on, was very important. The issues that the hon. Gentleman mentions are in the report, and I will come on to say what I think was very important about the review.
Has the Minister read that report? I wonder whether he has read this:
“Public consultation and social research showed passionate engagement with the public forest estate…and most people saw it as relevant to their lives”,
or this, among the major recommendations:
“The public forest estate should remain large scale, widely distributed throughout England, have a flexible and varied cross-section of all types of woodland, be able to provide a significant volume of products, services, skills and experience, and remain under public control and accountability.”
I have to assume that the Minister did not read the report; otherwise, how could he and his colleagues have embarked on such a reckless policy of selling off the lot?
That brings me to future sales. I say immediately that some sales can be justified when holdings are small or distant from the main estate, and when they are degraded or appropriate for restoration to open land. Over the 13 years of Labour Government our policies resulted in the sale of 9,000 hectares and a consequent purchase of 5,000 hectares—a net change of 4,000 hectares over 13 years. The comprehensive spending review announced the sale of 10 times that amount—40,000 hectares over a mere four years—quite separate from the new legislation that had now been abandoned. This Tory-led Government have sold 1,748 hectares to date, but we have been told that no further sales will take place—awaiting new advice. Can the Minister tell us how the Government—not necessarily his Department—expect to find the £745 million that their forestry sales were expected to realise, or what percentage of the public forest estate he still expects to sell off over the next four years, albeit with his new potential safeguards?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Joan Ruddock
If the Minister wishes to answer now rather than in his summation, of course I will give way.
Mr Paice
I can assure the right hon. Lady that I have a number of points to make when I wind up the debate, but I am slightly puzzled about where she got the figure of £745 million—the supposed gain from the sales—from, given that during the debate on this issue in the Chamber, the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby), said that there was nothing in it financially for the Government.
Joan Ruddock
I am simply citing the Government’s own ambitions, and there are substantial sums to be realised from sales. I cannot, off the top of my head, remember what the Government have raised from the 1,748 hectares sold off already, but it is certainly many millions. I would be delighted if the Minister answered my question in his response, and told us what was expected to be raised from the sales of the forestry lands—the 15%. Will he also indicate how the Government will make up that money if they do not go ahead with the sale of the 15%? They cannot have it both ways; either they plan to sell or they do not. If they plan to sell, I know—I have been a Minister myself—that the Minister will have a real estimate of the financial result of those sales.
I have another question for the Minister. In principle, does he rule in or rule out the sale of woodland in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, community forests and sites of special scientific interest? Will he confirm that DEFRA still requires the Forestry Commission to cut its budget by 25% this year, with a potential loss of 400 jobs? Surely job losses of such magnitude undermine any recommendations that his new panel might make for the future of the Forestry Commission.
In the drafting of the terms and conditions of the independent panel, is any account being taken of the findings of Labour’s review of the public forest estate? The Minister frowns, but it was an independent review carried out by experts over 12 months and was available to his Government the moment they took office, and it appears that he did not even bother to read it before coming up with these madcap proposals. Referring to the review would be significant.
Critically, will the panel be allowed to consider continuing public ownership? The Minister frowns again, but the consultation that has just been cancelled prohibited continuing public ownership. The new panel’s terms of reference will be significant. The public believe that they have won a great battle now that the consultation and plans have been cancelled pending the findings of the independent review, but the panel’s terms of reference are critical to determining the future.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Is the right hon. Lady aware that in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and in the area that I represent, public forests are retained for public use and are not to be sold? Does she feel that the decisions of other regions in the United Kingdom to retain public forests should be part of the panel’s review and its final decision making?
Joan Ruddock
Perhaps forests in the other part of the United Kingdom are safer left out of the Government’s review. I am not sure that I would trust this Government with any bit of the forest, whether in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. History to date suggests that we in England have been poorly served by this Government and their proposals; perhaps other regions are on safer ground. However, it will be for the Minister to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question.
I have a list of questions for the Minister. I shall not speak at huge length, as I want to hear his answers and do not want him to run out of time. Will he guarantee that there will be a place on the panel for representatives of the Forestry Commission work force? How will the voices of those who campaigned to defeat his proposals be represented? Will the panel’s deliberations be held in public?
The public have shown overwhelming support for our public forests; I pay tribute to the campaign 38 Degrees. The Government would be well advised to harness that support. The public forest estate in England must be maintained as the national asset that it is, under a single management structure. Rather than being sold off, it should be extended.
I pay tribute to my constituents and those of other MPs who took the time not only to express their outrage at the Government’s proposals but to tell us what the forests mean to them. Annette Lewis from Brockley wrote to me:
“As I have always lived in cities, I know how important it is for city dwellers to access the countryside. I believe in the preservation of woodland in public ownership for future generations. I want my children and their children to be able to find the joy and relaxation I have found from a walk in the woods.”
Hazel Montgomery from Lewisham Central wrote that
“there are many places around south-east London and Kent which are woodland. They are fantastic because London is so overcrowded and children love to roam freely in safety with parents; this is so for all our national woodlands.”
Simon Brammer of Telegraph Hill, who works on climate change, wrote:
“How can we ask other countries much poorer than our own not to chop down forests, critical in regulating our climate and storing carbon, when we are prepared to sell our own for a song”?
Glyn Davies
The right hon. Lady refers to the chopping down of forests. Is she aware that forests can be cut down only if a licence is granted, and that in almost every instance new forest must be planted in its place?
Joan Ruddock
I am more than aware of that. I am expressing the passionately held views of my constituents. If people are concerned enough to write to their MPs in unprecedented numbers, it is important that we understand their concerns. Concerns about climate change and the future of this planet are dear to the hearts of many of our constituents.
Joan Ruddock
If the hon. Gentleman will calm down for a moment, I will be more than pleased to give way. I am dealing with a point already raised. The issues are important, and it is greatly to the credit of the public in this country that they can and do associate our precious forests with tackling climate change and have linked that issue to the fact that we should not only do what we must in the developed world but seek to influence those in the underdeveloped world who have custodianship of the most important forests in the world. That is important, and I resent the fact that Conservative Members should attempt to rubbish my constituents on an issue about which they are passionately and properly concerned.
Damian Hinds
I did not hear anybody rubbish anybody, but for the avoidance of doubt, although important issues are being discussed about the future of the Forestry Commission’s estate, will the right hon. Lady acknowledge that the subject is not in the slightest related to deforestation or the chopping down of forests?
Joan Ruddock
No, absolutely not. The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. We have one of the smallest forest estates in Europe, so the extent of ours is important to people. I argue that if we keep the forest estate in public ownership, we are more likely to be able to deal with the diseases that are arising and manage it comprehensively and effectively, and less likely to encounter some of the problems that occur when forest estates are fragmented and people fear, maybe wrongly, that trees will be felled unnecessarily. He will know that over the years, the Forestry Commission has changed its culture and become very aware of the great issues of our time, such as the threat of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. People understand that. It is important that we as parliamentarians associate ourselves with those concerns and in no way criticise people when they want to bring them to our attention.
I was about to wind up, but gave way because there was such agitation opposite. I now come to my final point. I have read out only selected comments from the long e-mails that I received from three of the 392 constituents who contacted me, and they will now ask, as I do, what exactly is the future of the Forestry Commission?
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
One of the depressing things about this House is that, sometimes, hon. Members do not listen to what has been said. I am not sure whether the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), who introduced this debate, was present in the main Chamber when the Secretary of State made her original statement when launching the original consultation document. The right hon. Lady has sought to suggest that the Government intended to “sell off” the forests, but I heard the Secretary of State clearly say two things. On commercial forest, she said that the Government had no intention of selling freehold interests, but that they would grant leaseholds for the specific reason of enhancing protections for access and other rights—for walkers, cyclists and so on—within those commercial lettings.
On heritage woodland, I heard the Secretary of State make it very clear that, if community, voluntary or other groups did not come forward to run community and heritage woodland, it would remain within public ownership. I invite the right hon. Lady to re-read what the Secretary of State said in her statement to the House, because her comments bear absolutely no relationship to the Government’s policy. Part of the problem with this whole debate is that the perception of the Government’s policy bears no relationship to what Ministers actually proposed.
Joan Ruddock
The hon. Gentleman has to take into account the many remarks that have been made, not least by the Minister, about the so-called sell-off and disposal of up to 100% of the forest estate. The hon. Gentleman criticises the term “sell-off,” but the fact is that disposals of whatever kind mean that the estate is totally fragmented. That is the big difference and that is why it is so significant.
Tony Baldry
I do not wish to pursue this point, but the right hon. Lady was a Minister in the previous Government and understands the concept of collective government, so she well understands that comments by a Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box represent the collective view of the Government. The Secretary of State could not have been clearer when she spoke at the Dispatch Box about what the Government intended to do.
I was fortunate to grow up in Burnham Beeches, which is a substantial area of woodland between Maidenhead and Slough that is owned and very well managed by the City of London corporation. It makes the point that much of our woodland in this country is owned by a diverse group of owners. I am a Church Commissioner and the Church Commissioners own a fair amount of woodland, much of it in our agricultural estate, and we lease woodland to the Forestry Commission. Having had the opportunity as a child to enjoy the benefits of Burnham Beeches, I am conscious of the importance of woodland. Moreover, as a representative of the county of Oxfordshire, which has very little woodland cover, I am conscious of how important it is to encourage woodland cover as a whole.
When I was fortunate enough to be a Minister in the Department of the Environment, I was proud to be part of a ministerial team that advanced initiatives on both the national forest and the community forest. At that time, Mr Gray, you were a distinguished special adviser to Ministers in the Department.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. It is kind of the hon. Gentleman to remind me of that and to be so flattering, but for the sake of today’s debate, I cast aside all previous party political roles that I may have had. I am highly dispassionate about today’s debate.
Tony Baldry
I did not want you to think, Mr Gray, that I was trying to steal all the glory of those days under Lord Heseltine and others in the Department of the Environment, when we benefited from your advice. It is worth recalling that the Conservative party has a long tradition of seeking to enhance woodland cover in the UK. The national forest, which was an initiative by that Government, has been a great success story. Last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee reported:
“Fifteen years on from its inception, The National Forest is a success story. It is delivering tangible environmental, economic and social benefits out of a bold vision to transform a 200 square mile swathe of the Midlands—much of which was suffering economic and environmental decline—through planting trees to create new woods and forests. Its achievement is not so much in trebling the proportion of land with tree cover to 18%, but that, in so doing, it has helped to regenerate the local economy, open up the Forest to greater public use and improve the natural environment.”
On community forests, the Countryside Agency commissioned consultants a few years ago to assess their impact, and they concluded that, overall, the community forests programme
“has been successful in levering in high levels of private and voluntary sector support”,
and that
“over the period 1990-2003, the total amount levered”
into new woodland
“totalled £42.9 million.”
They also noted:
“Overall, the CFP is performing well in terms of increasing woodland cover and improving the environment.
The CFP is performing particularly well in terms of providing opportunities for informal recreation and opening up rights of way.”
I am proud to have been involved in initiatives such as the national forest that encourage the development of everything from community forests to local pocket parks, and which have enhanced community woodland.
It is sensible for the Secretary of State to establish an independent panel to consider forestry policy in England. It will report its findings to the Secretary of State in the autumn, and it will advise on the direction of forestry and woodland policy in England and on the role of the Forestry Commission and the public forest estate. I hope that the independent panel will be able to look at all the questions raised in the consultation paper—it was published by DEFRA, but subsequently withdrawn—on the future of the Forestry Commission. Part of the difficulty in this whole saga is that the clauses relating to the commission in the Public Bodies Bill had, by necessity, to be published before DEFRA was able to publish its consultation on the commission’s future. When their lordships considered a number of different issues in the Bill, they managed to get themselves confused and allow a considerable degree of speculation about what might have been happening when it was clearly not what was intended. I think that that was made clear by the Secretary of State’s statement to the House.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)
Could it not be that their lordships’ understanding of the proposals was based on what was said to them by the Minister? He said that
“we wish to proceed with…very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it.”
That sounds very clear and it is hardly surprising that their lordships took the Minister at his word.
Tony Baldry
That highlights a fundamental misunderstanding. The Forestry Commission has within its control two different types of woodland. It was brought into being at the time of the first world war to enable the country to have access to commercial forestry to provide timber for such things as pit props for the mines, and the vast majority of commercial forestry in this country—about 82%—is and has always been in private ownership. It would be very surprising if, at a time when we no longer expect the state to run airlines, own travel agencies, generate electricity or operate sewage treatment works, we thought that the state should be growing Christmas trees. Such a view is slightly bizarre.
The Forestry Commission also has heritage woodland within its ownership. I suspect that there has sometimes been a deliberate attempt by those wishing to create mischief to cause confusion between the Government’s policy on commercial forestry and on heritage woodland. The Secretary of State could not have been clearer about the matter when she spoke to the House when launching the consultation paper: the Government consider those matters to be two very different entities. The Secretary of State could not made it plainer to the House that if appropriate bodies do not come forward to manage heritage woodland properly, that woodland will remain within the public estate.
I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak. The other points I want to make are that we have heard a lot about the Forestry Commission during the past few weeks, but I hope that the independent panel will give regard to how we can increase woodland cover more generally in the UK, particularly in England. On commercial forestry, I hope that the panel will consider the effect and impact of the tax regime in England in comparison with regimes elsewhere in the world—for example, considerable tree planting is taking place in the United States. The trust funds of universities such as Harvard, Yale and others are investing considerable money in commercial forestry because, as they are charities, there are incentives for them to do so under US tax law.
On heritage woodland, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what will follow the environmental stewardship schemes that have formed part of the rural development programme for England for a considerable time. It is clear that the majority of agricultural land is almost entirely in private ownership and therefore planting for new broadleaf community woodlands will almost certainly take place on private land. What incentive or encouragement will there be for farmers, as landowners, to plant new community woodland?
When the independent panel concludes its work, I hope that there will be two coherent chapters on different policies. I hope that there is one chapter on the future of commercial forestry—how we can encourage more of it in the UK—and the Forestry Commission, and a second on how we enhance heritage woodland and encourage access and amenity in relation to community woodland, as we did with the national forest and community forests. It should be on the record that the Government have made it very clear that they wish to enhance and protect the rights of access. I suspect that the main concern of a large number of constituents who have understandably contacted us about the issue is that they should continue to have access to woodland. That is very important. The Government have made it clear throughout that they want to protect access to woodland. However, that needs to be stated and restated time and again.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) for securing the debate. There are people who think that the issue has been resolved, but it clearly has not. This morning’s discussions have shown that.
The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) started his speech by saying that we should listen. I have spent my life listening to what Conservative Ministers have said. I read what they say and, more importantly, I always read between the lines of what they say. I do not need faceless bureaucrats or Government Front Benchers, who perhaps want to extend their already big land ownings, to tell me about heritage. My heritage is the coal mine industry. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that when he talked about the shortage of pit props during the first world war. My grandfather was a miner during the first world war, as were some of my uncles. They were working in dangerous conditions that were made even more dangerous by the shortage of things such as pit props. People were basically failed by the private sector and the Forestry Commission was set to ensure that such a situation did not happen again.
The heritage of the forest is more than just the heritage of the nation; it is the heritage of individual areas. The area of the world that I am massively proud to represent includes a place called Chopwell. In that area is Chopwell wood, which is owned by the commission and has been classed as a heritage site. We did not need people to tell us that because we knew it was our heritage. We believed that that was our land and that we owned it as part and parcel of the work we put into it. Anyone—no matter what their background or wealth—should be entitled to enjoy that country.
People came together to defend their woods against these proposals, including the Friends of Chopwell Wood, the Chopwell Wood Horse Riding Association, the organisation representing Northumbria ramblers, of which I am proud to be the president, and the people who represent the Friends of Red Kites in the North East of England. I am a member of that organisation, which has been involved with the re-introduction of red kites in the north-east of England during the past six years within 3 miles of one of the biggest shopping centres in Europe. The fact that organisations worked together in relation to Chopwell wood and other such places meant that the re-introduction of red kites was so successful. The re-introduction of red kites has been one of the most positive of any such actions that have thankfully taken place in this country over the past two decades.
We should take stock and say, “Where exactly are we?” A lot of people think that this battle has been won and that the Government have seen sense and have agreed that the forest will stay in public hands, but that is not the position we are in today. Let us remind ourselves what the Secretary of State said. First, she said that she had ended the consultation. Secondly, she said that the Government are supporting the removal of the relevant clauses from the Public Bodies Bill. Thirdly, she said that she has set up the review. That is all she has done. She has not stopped the Forestry Commission from being looked at in respect of privatisation and she has not cut off the potential for the whole of the estate to end up in private hands. That might not happen immediately, but it could happen over time.
A great concern of many of the campaigners—I am talking about people who devote their lives to these woods—was that they may well have had to take control and ownership of certain areas of the woods. They were worried that they could not sustain that. They were also concerned that, when they had gone, their children might not have shown any interest in the woods or have been able to manage them. Ultimately, the woods would have gone into private hands. That is the real issue.
The truth is that people do not trust what the Government have said. That comes through time and again. I read the consultation thoroughly and listened very closely to what the Minister has said because people do not believe that the Government will stick to what they are saying. What people believe is based on the Conservative party’s history and the privatisation that people have seen under Tory Governments during the past two decades. Let us think about some of those things.
There was the deregulation of buses. If we had been in the House—some of us probably were—25 years ago, Ministers would have said, “Don’t worry; the public will have control. This will give a bus to every community in this country.” That has not been the case. Monopolies are running the buses and public service comes last. We could have had a discussion about the deregulation of the utilities. There was the “Tell Sid” campaign—tell Sid we are going to become a shareholding democracy. Now the big six utility companies are putting prices up by 9% when people have seen their pay frozen and their pensions held back.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is ranging rather wide of the debate today, which is the future of the Forestry Commission. Perhaps he could bring himself back to that topic.
Mr Anderson
I accept entirely what the Chair says, but I am talking about the reality of why people have not got on board with what the Minister, the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Banbury, for whom I have a lot of respect, have said. They have said that people are not listening. People are listening, but they are saying, “We don’t believe what we are hearing because we believe that what is happening is an attempt to dethrone us from where we were.” We have been here before. We were here in 1992, when the previous Tory Government set up a review when there was a rising up when Michael Heseltine, who was mentioned earlier, decided he was going to close 31 of the most technologically advanced coal mines in this country.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I am very sorry, but the hon. Gentleman really must confine himself to the future of the Forestry Commission, which is the topic under debate today—nothing else, just the future of the Forestry Commission.
Mr Anderson
Again, I take on board what the Chair says and I acknowledge that he may well not agree with where I am coming from, but the truth is—
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. It is not for the Chair to agree or disagree with where a particular hon. Member is “coming from,” as the hon. Gentleman puts it. It is my job to ensure that the debate is about the future of the Forestry Commission and nothing else. The hon. Gentleman will return to the subject of the debate; otherwise he will return to his seat.
Mr Anderson
I accept, again, what the Chair says and I hope that he will accept that we have a situation where people worry about what the future holds, because they do not trust what has happened in the past.
Another issue that people are unsure about is exactly where the Liberal Democrats are on this, because they will play a key part in deciding the debate about where this country is going. In the next period, what will they feed into the consultation? What is quite clear on the ground in Chopwell, is that the Liberal Democrats are nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that in part of that area Liberal Democrat councillors represent some of the people who live at the side of the woods. So people have the right to say, “Where are you?” We have been here before. In 1921, under a coalition Government of Tories and Liberals, there was an attempt to sell off Runnymede, of all places. That did not happen.
I come back to the statement made by the Secretary of State. She said:
“I am sorry, we got this one wrong”.
I think every one of us would admire the Secretary of State for saying that and accepting that, but she then said,
“we have listened to people’s concerns.” —[Official Report, 17 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 1155.]
Well, I am very pleased about that, but if she has listened to people’s concerns, and if she has listened to the responses to the consultations, and if she has listened to the 500,000 people who signed up on the website, she will know that those concerns are saying one thing and one thing only: the Forestry Commission, and the 18% of forest lands that are in public ownership and control, must remain. If we end up, at the end of the review procedure, with anything other than that, then clearly she has not listened and has not responded to what the people of this country have said.
The truth is that the people of this country will be watching the Secretary of State, her ministerial team and the Government like a hawk for the next few months. They will be very concerned, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford said, about the make-up of the independent panel. If there are no work force representatives, or representatives from green groups, on the panel, it will fail before it starts. If the terms of reference do not allow the latitude for the Forestry Commission to continue with full control and ownership, it will have failed before it starts.
To the people outside—wake up. Do not pretend that this is all done and dusted and that we had a great victory two weeks ago. We had some success two weeks ago, and it was people power that did it, but we have been here before: reviews have been used to put things on the back burner in the hope that we will forget about it and that it will be slipped through in six months’ time. Do not fall for that one.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on securing the debate.
The background to this situation is that the Forestry Commission has been running a deficit—a microcosm of the overall national position—for some years, with the gap being plugged by asset sales. There is a revenue funding gap, which is being plugged by capital sales. That is not a sustainable situation, because in time the asset base runs down. Sadly, those assets that have been sold off have, in many cases, gone with inadequate protections. The Government’s recent proposals clearly focused and magnified the great interest in our forests—in my own constituency, the much-loved Bushy Leaze, Chawton Park woods, Alice Holt forest and Queen Elizabeth country park. The correspondence that many of us received—we could all trade a considerable number of e-mails and letters—amplified how much, although we knew this already, people value the recreational benefits of those facilities, and want to protect biodiversity.
It is a little unhelpful to introduce things into the debate that are not directly relevant, such as climate change and the development of the countryside. As was pointed out, in this country, we cannot just fell large numbers of trees, raze them to the ground and build things. That is just not allowed, whoever owns the land, as I think the right hon. Lady knows. There are, however, a number of reasonable, legitimate and important questions, and people have some deep, understandable concerns about aspects of the proposals. One key point, with the distinction between heritage forests and other forests, is that the protections for the heritage forest are clear. However, people want additional comfort about forests that are not classified as heritage forests and, indeed, how they can appeal for a forest to be classed as a heritage forest. That is the case with some of the forests in my patch of East Hampshire.
I welcome the Government’s new independent panel. I hope that it will be an opportunity for us to improve forest cover, relative to the starting point. It is worth restating that the Forestry Commission is not the only owner of forest. I was at a forest planting last week as part of the Woodland Trust jubilee project, which is an excellent project. The next opportunity is not just to protect, but enhance access and amenity. This debate has helped to put into sharp focus some of the issues not just for walkers, but for cyclists and horse riders. I urge the Minister to say a little more on those matters, and what he hopes will come out of the independent panel, which I very much welcome.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Thank you, Mr Gray, for allowing me to speak in this debate. I will keep it short. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on securing the debate. I well remember her contribution as a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in previous Parliaments.
I would like to declare an interest. I am a member of a partnership that is in receipt of a farm woodland grant from the Forestry Commission to promote both the management of woodlands under our responsibility and the public good through, for example, access and biodiversity. I will return to that—not that I am an example of a good forester, although I am an enthusiastic one—because it is not just the public estate that is important for access and biodiversity, but private woodland and private forestry too.
I have another small interest to declare. Some members of my family, although not immediate members, are involved in the sawmill industry, which is a commercial aspect of forestry that has not been mentioned today. Many jobs in my constituency are dependent on sawmills and on a consistent throughput of material, both in quality and quantity, to go into those sawmills. Sadly, only 10% of all timber used in this country for construction or for furniture manufacture originates in this country, but that is still an important part of the rural community.
Sadly, the House has not shown much interest in forestry until the past couple of months. In fact, in almost 10 years as an MP, we have had no debates in Government time on forestry. We have had one debate in Opposition time on forestry, and that was the recent debate. We have had two Adjournment debates on the New Forest. We have had two Westminster Hall debates, one sponsored by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and, in 2005, one that I sponsored. Unfortunately, DEFRA did not manage to put up a Minister to reply to the debate, such was its interest in forestry, and the reply was made by a member of Her Majesty’s Treasury team—the former Whip, Nick Ainger, who is no longer a Member of the House. We had a good debate in this Chamber for 30 minutes.
That is the sum total of interest that the House has shown in forestry in the past 10 years, so I am pleased that we are now able to debate this issue more calmly than we did a fortnight ago—I am sure that the Minister is not very pleased that it has caused the interest that it has—because the future of forestry in this country is important. Some 20% of the forest cover in England is in the public estate, and 80% is privately held. Of that 80%, 40% is either undermanaged or not managed at all, and that is a real challenge for the Forestry Commission in the future. How can we better manage that woodland, not only in commercial terms but also in terms of access and biodiversity?
Jim Shannon
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the sporting potential of forests, and therefore their economic benefits as well? Does he agree that perhaps that has been overlooked when it comes to any potential sales or otherwise of forests?
Roger Williams
The sporting potential of forests should be taken into account. One of the points that I would make if I had more time is about the great demand on our forests for different kinds of access. In my area, there are not only walkers, cyclists and horse riders, but people who go scrambling and rally driving as well. Rally driving and horse riding do not go together very well, so we have to manage the diverse demands on our forests.
Yes, the Forestry Commission was set up in response to the lack of timber for pit props, but its reputation has not always been as holy as it is now. Indeed, the contraceptive conifers that march up and down our woodlands were all planted by the Forestry Commission. The planting of the Flow country in Scotland, where we had the last of our native conifer woodland, was not to its glory, but, yes, it has improved; it has altered its terms of reference and its priorities.
When the panel meets—I hope that it will be called the wood panel, because everyone would then be able to recognise it—I hope it will take into consideration not only the public estate, which is managed by the Forestry Commission, but private woodland as well, which can make a huge contribution in this country. As someone said, we probably have less woodland cover than almost any other European country, so it is important that we take private woodland into account. The Forestry Commission is already making planting grants to the private estate, so that would be within the panel’s terms—at least, I hope that it is—because, in making those grants, we can ask for public good to be demonstrated. We can ask for access and improvements in biodiversity.
We should remember that conifer woods are not completely aseptic, or without any life at all. In fact, the red squirrel and the dormouse have been shown to use such habitats, so they are important. The Forestry Commission also has a big part to play in ensuring that there is a supply of timber to go through our sawmills, so I would ask the Minister whether there is any way in which all of that can be taken into consideration. In the enthusiasm to protect our public estate, we have forgotten about the contribution that private woodland makes as well.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I have been inspired to speak by the previous contributions, particularly that of the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock). I congratulate her on providing this useful opportunity to have a considered discussion about an issue that is hugely important to me personally. I am enjoying the debate.
I agreed with much of what the right hon. Lady said about objectives. I love forests. As a farmer, I planted forests on my land, purely for my own pleasure—they are of limited commercial benefit. Like the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), I, too, should declare an interest, albeit a small one, in that I planted woodlands with the support of Forestry Commission grants, and my main farm is surrounded by Forestry Commission land.
Clearly, the objective has been to increase biodiversity. That is a stated objective of the Government as well as the Opposition. It is also hugely important that we increase and improve access. I must say that when I first saw reports on the coalition Government’s intention to change the ownership of woodland, I had personal concerns because of my huge interest.
When I was a young man, I spent much of my time on Forestry Commission land at Cwmystwyth in central Wales looking at red kites. I make this point because it is relevant to another contribution that we heard. There were probably no more than about a dozen red kites left in the whole of Britain. The only way we were able to reintroduce the red kite into central parts of England—people can now see them everywhere along the M40 as they drive into London—and the north-east is because many people in mid-Wales put in a lot of voluntary effort to retain the red kite when its very existence was threatened.
The one part of the right hon. Lady’s speech that caused me concern was the way in which she misinterpreted what the coalition Government intended to do. Like other Members, I have received letters and e-mails—I think there were 250, although the proposals did not even apply in Wales. Even before I heard the Secretary of State’s statement in the House, I thought that people had misunderstood what the Government were proposing. After the statement, I wrote to those 250 people and sent them a copy of what the Secretary of State actually said in the House. Much of the statement was drowned out—it was a noisy, highly emotional debate, and I do not think that people actually heard what was said. I have not had 250 e-mails back, but I have probably had 15, and people are saying, “We didn’t know that. We didn’t understand what the Government were actually planning to do.” They were much more supportive of the plans. However, I do not want to hark back too much to that, because we are now moving forward.
Joan Ruddock
Is it the hon. Gentleman’s understanding that the Government were proposing—and, therefore, could propose again in future—the disposal of anything up to the whole national forest estate? He has criticised use of the words “sell off”, but “disposal” would mean that the Forestry Commission and its comprehensive approach to the national forests would no longer exist. The situation would be very different.
Glyn Davies
No, that was not my understanding. Clearly, I had an interest, and I had concerns because of reports in the newspapers, but I must admit that I do not always believe everything I read in the newspapers. Sometimes interesting issues are raised, but that was not my understanding, which was why I said that I waited to hear exactly what the Government were proposing before making a judgment. I thought that the speech in the House during the last major debate was sensibly based.
However, I want to move on from that to an issue of concern that has not been addressed: the position of the Forestry Commission as both regulator and a major operator in the field. That is a real issue which, at some stage, the Government will have to address. It cannot be right that the body that is the main commercial operator in the field also regulates all its competitors. That matter will have to be dealt with. The one other aspect to which we must refer—this something which my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) raised—is dealing with commercial property. I cannot see the sense in Government dealing with commercial forestry. Changing the ownership or management of forestry through lease is crucial. We have to get back to a position of maintaining or increasing access, increasing biodiversity wherever possible, and contributing to fighting climate change if that is part of the wider debate, as it should be. That can be better done through lease than sale, which is why I hugely welcomed the original debate.
I want to refer to Wales. I live in Wales, and a lot of people say that the Government there are taking a completely different line on the issue. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire made that point. What is proposed in Wales is that the estate should be retained, but there will be improved and more dynamic management, and there will occasionally be sales. That policy really is not very different from what we might propose. One does not know where we go from here, but a report is coming, and things will not be the same as before. To say that we will simply retain forestry in aspic in the other nations is not accurate. In all areas, where a large part of land is owned, there has to be a degree of flexibility and of management responding to conditions as they come along, and that will be what we will do. That is all I wish to say.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)
I join other hon. Members in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on securing the debate. It is clear from the contributions that Members have made that, despite the Government’s somewhat change of approach, this is still a current issue for us. As she reminds us, the context of her request for the debate was the threat to England’s woodlands and forests seeming immediate and imminent. Although there has been some change since then, that threat has not gone away, as she and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) reminded us.
It is evident from the contributions to this debate and to the debate in the main Chamber on 2 February that our forests and woodlands are precious to us and to our constituents. The steward of those forests and woodlands—the body that has oversight of them on our behalf, which cares for, looks after and nurtures them—is the Forestry Commission. Its role in undertaking those tasks on our behalf is vital. It is vital for the land that it directly manages, for the oversight, regulation and advice that it provides to others, and, most particularly, for the example that it sets to others on how to manage the woodland under its control.
As the debate on England’s forests on 2 February highlighted, the Forestry Commission manages 258,000 hectares of land in England. As pointed out during the debate, that represents only 18% of all woodland in England. That 18% represents only 44% of the total woodland accessible for the public to enjoy and appreciate. Our debate today is not simply about the woodland in England, but about the Forestry Commission in general and its stewardship.
Roger Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the public estate being only 44% of publicly accessible land and about how much public access is provided by the woodlands and forests in private ownership.
Sir Peter Soulsby
That is indeed the case. As I acknowledged, we very much welcome the fact that the Forestry Commission, in the exemplary way it manages its land—promoting biodiversity, providing education, interpretation and access—offers an example to others, which some follow.
Woodland managed in England is only about one third of the total woodland and forest managed by the Forestry Commission across Great Britain. It is estimated that that is more than 1.4 billion trees—although I do not think that anyone has actually counted them all.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) spoke about how the Forestry Commission dramatically has changed its approach to management over the years and about how it has become an exemplary organisation. It is a major land manager that sets very high standards. It has one of the largest collections of sites of special scientific interest, with an excellent record of 99% being in favourable or recovering condition. It provides for a substantial number of visitors, and is estimated to have had more than 40 million visits last year. He put his finger on it when he mentioned previous debates—
Sir Peter Soulsby
Or the lack of debates on forestry in the House over recent years. That is interesting because I think that it points not to a lack of interest in forestry, but to a belief, up until now, that the forests were in safe hands and it was not a matter about which Members needed to concern themselves. That was why it was so distressing and surprising when we heard the Government’s proposals to sell 40,000 hectares immediately. The hon. Member for Daventry cannot get away from it and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) cannot suggest that we misinterpreted the Government’s intentions. As shown by the quotes earlier, the Government were clear about their intentions for the public forest estate. I quote the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
“We wish to proceed with very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it.”
That is clear. People were not making it up. People did not misunderstand it. Those words meant what they—
Sir Peter Soulsby
They could mean nothing other than that. There could be a wholesale sell-off. The outcry was totally predictable to everybody other than the Minister and his colleagues. They tried to dismiss that as scaremongering, and in the run-up to the 2 February debate, they said that they were doing it for the money. Perhaps the Minister will explain some of the figures behind the proposals and say what he now believes the net proceeds would have been. They tried to justify the sale in that way, and when that fell apart, they tried to justify it in terms of the big society. But that fell apart and, as we heard again from Government Members, they invented the spurious explanation that it was about trying to resolve a conflict of interest within the organisation of the Forestry Commission. It was somehow inappropriate for the Forestry Commission to be both the operator and the regulator, and it was incapable of doing something that it has done successfully for many decades.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I did not really support the plans the Government introduced, but I thought that it was right to have a consultation period, for which I voted. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should think more about what the independent review might say and about how we might funnel our views and the views of our constituents towards it?
Sir Peter Soulsby
I will come to questions to the Minister about how independent the review will be and what its terms of reference will be in one moment. Before doing that, I will return to the concerns about the continuing threats to the Forestry Commission’s work expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford when she introduced the debate and later by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon. They pointed out that although it appears that there has been some pause in the Government’s headlong rush to dismantle the public forest estate, they are pressing ahead with requiring the Forestry Commission to make substantial cuts in its staff. Some 400 jobs—about a quarter of the total—are at risk immediately. That will inevitably reduce its capacity to undertake the excellent stewardship achieved over recent years. Its ability to manage the deer and wildlife will be reduced, learning and educational programmes will be cut, and there will inevitably be extended charges for services or the shutting of facilities. Elements of what the Forestry Commission manages directly and excellently at the moment will have to be passed over to others.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. My right hon. and hon. Friends have already mentioned some of them, but I will list the points again and allow the Minister plenty of time to respond. When will the Government bring forward details of who will sit on the new panel, and how will they guarantee the independence of that panel? Will the panel include public and local campaign groups that have been involved in the campaign to save the forests, and will it include members of the work force? Will the panel meet in public? Will all existing planned sales be halted pending the panel’s report?
Will the panel be able to recommend maintaining the land in public hands? The Minister muttered “Rubbish” from a sedentary position when this point was raised earlier, so perhaps he will take the opportunity to tell us if it is untrue. How can the Government deliver better woodland access and biodiversity when the Forestry Commission is cutting staff by a quarter over the next three months? Finally, will any future receipts from sales of land stay within the Forestry Commission so that they can be used for the enhancement of our public forest estate? That is what the previous Government did and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford reminded us, it is something of which we are proud.
The public were appalled by what the Government proposed, and they understood clearly the full extent of what it might mean. Those who campaigned so effectively were aware of the threat to our precious woodlands and forests, but they must be reminded that the threat has not gone away, and we have had the opportunity to do that today. Conservative Members have been dismissive of those fears in the past, and we have heard such fears dismissed again today. Hon. Members from all sides must have heard the clear message during the run-up to the debate on 2 February, and it is still something that we need to hear. Our woods and forests are just that—they are our woods and our forests. They must be kept that way and properly managed by the Forestry Commission, an organisation that has an excellent record in the stewardship of those precious assets on our behalf.
Tony Baldry
On a point of order, Mr Gray, for the benefit of Hansard, I am the hon. Member for Banbury, not the hon. Member for Daventry.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I have attended many debates in Westminster Hall, which is normally a place for relatively non-controversial issues to be raised and discussed in a calm manner by hon. Members from all parties. I am afraid I cannot say that of today. The opening speech by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) repeated many of the myths and nonsenses that we have heard during previous discussions and questions about forestry. It was not the serious contribution to the future of the Forestry Commission that my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) referred to and urged upon us.
I will address some of the key issues and respond where I can to the questions raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) rightly pointed out that part of the public concern arose from the Public Bodies Bill. One can look back and say that the cart was put before the horse, but because we believed that changes to the Forestry Commission were necessary and we were conscious of the constraints of the legislation, we decided to put the provision into what appeared to be a suitable vehicle to permit us to make those changes. I am the first to recognise that, together with the remarks I made to which the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby) referred—I am not withdrawing those remarks, but they were back in October—that allowed people to become concerned. As it happened, that concern was unnecessary, but it allowed a number of myths to gain credence.
In the communication to which the hon. Gentleman referred, I used the word “disposal” carefully. I did not use the word “sale” because, as will be observed, the consultation document often implied disposal but not sale. Part of the absurd nonsense from the right hon. Lady included the figure of £745 million, which I suspect she took from the Forestry Commission’s annual report. That is actually the book value of all the public forestry estate, prior to any discounts for the preservation of access and other public interests. It includes the book value of the New Forest and the Forest of Dean, and we made it clear that for both of those the disposal was to be free—gratis—had it gone through. The right hon. Lady’s figures were absurd; the concept of disposal included a free handover to a charitable trust.
Joan Ruddock
I am more than happy to be corrected. Perhaps the Minister will let us know the estimate for the amount of money that would be raised by the disposals of which he speaks.
Mr Paice
As the right hon. Lady knows, the consultation document contained a lot of variability, particularly about what might be called the middle strata of woodlands and forests—not heritage but not the main commercial areas—where there was a range of options. The income from that is not easy to estimate, but we published an impact assessment as required, and the figures are in the public domain. I repeat: the primary objective of the proposition was not simply to raise cash. I will return in a moment to the issue of ongoing sales.
The right hon. Lady referred to the 0.5 million people who expressed concern about this matter. I cannot help but observe that she took a lot less notice of the 0.5 million people who opposed a ban on fox hunting and whom she treated with disdain.
Mr Paice
Quite. As we have said, and as the Secretary of State said in the House, we recognised that public concern was raised dramatically, and that it was a pointless exercise to continue with the consultation in that environment. Therefore, we have withdrawn it and I do not propose to waste more time discussing what was or was not in the consultation document. That would not be constructive.
The issue was raised of the ongoing sales, or the 15% of the Forestry Commission estate that is in the spending review for the next four years. It is estimated that we would have raised £100 million from the sale of up to 15% of the forestry estate in England. The hon. Member for Leicester South asked what is happening to that, and as the Secretary of State made clear, we have suspended that process. No parcels of land or forests will be offered for sale until the panel—to which I will refer later—has reported and made recommendations regarding the protection of public interests. At the moment, there is no direct financial consequence. The £100 million, although placed in our spending review, was not allocated to any heads of expenditure. Therefore, other than a short-term cash-flow issue, there are no direct consequences of deferring those sales. I hope that explanation has clarified the issue.
A point was made about sales by previous Governments. Again, that makes me doubt the right hon. Lady’s—the hon. Lady’s—
Mr Paice
My apologies. It makes me doubt the right hon. Lady’s commitment to the whole picture. On her website, she has been on about how much land the previous Conservative Government and the Forestry Commission sold. Of course, she omits to point out that most of that was in Scotland, because under that previous Government the Forestry Commission was one body, so in comparison with what happened under the Labour Government, who were selling only in England after devolution, the figures look dramatically different. She also omitted to mention, although one of my hon. Friends did mention it, that under the previous Government tree planting fell to an all-time low. The rate halved under the Government of whom she was so proud to be a member.
Much has been said about the fact that the public forest estate comprises just 18% of all woods and forests in England. We should not in any way ignore that statistic. It is clear that many people were confused about how much of the forestry in this country was owned or rented by the Forestry Commission. It is just 18%. Although the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford and other hon. Members have been, by implication, quite damning of the 69% that is held in private hands—the rest is in other forms of public or community ownership—we do not see with that 69% all the disasters that we were told would befall public land if it went into the private sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) rightly pointed out, people cannot fell trees in this country without a felling licence, and almost certainly they will have to replant. Indeed, since I have been the Minister responsible, I have had to intervene on a few occasions to enforce the replanting requirements to ensure that that happens. Therefore, suggestions of massive deforestation are completely absurd and take us away from the serious debate that others want to address.
Let me deal with some of the specific questions that I was asked. I will not disclose anything about the content of the panel, because the Secretary of State will announce in due course who will serve on the panel and what its terms of reference will be. I can emphasise, though, that the status quo—the hon. Member for Leicester South asked about this—is of course an option. If the panel recommends that, clearly it is entitled to do so. To rule it out would be nonsensical. If the panel recommends change, the issue of public consultation comes back into play, so there will be plenty of time. The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) said that if the panel concludes in favour of anything other than the status quo, we will not have listened to the public. I say to him that we will consult the public about any changes if the panel recommends them. I do not want to prejudge what the outcome of the panel will be.
The hon. Member for Leicester South asked how we would guarantee independence. The chairman will be appointed and will be completely independent; indeed, all the members will be. We are not filling the panel with civil servants or anything like that. It will be completely independent. It will be for the members to decide how they operate, but I cannot see why they should not have public meetings if that seems appropriate.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the 25% cut, and other hon. Members have raised that. All Opposition Members should be well aware that they managed to leave this country in desperate straits and we have had to take very tough decisions on public expenditure. All DEFRA’s arm’s length bodies have had to take a 25% cut, just as core DEFRA has had to. That is tough, and I feel for all the people who may find themselves losing jobs or not being able to get a job because the job has disappeared as a result. However, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, the deficit must come first—we must deal with it. I will not apologise—indeed, it should be for those on the Opposition Benches to apologise—for the fact that we have had to make those reductions. The details of how they will be made in this area are a matter for the Forestry Commission. It has made its proposals, which are out for consultation. It would be wrong of me to discuss them in public while that consultation is going on.
A number of other points were raised. I shall try to encapsulate some of them but, most importantly, I want to make the point that, contrary to the impression that the Opposition have tried to give, the Government feel very strongly about forestry. Perhaps I should have said, like other hon. Members, that I have the grand total of 1 hectare of woodland on my own little property. Like others, I planted it myself 20 years ago under a woodland grant scheme, although that has long since expired, and I am proud to spend a lot of time in it managing it. I passionately believe in the importance of forestry. What I do not believe is that the status quo is automatically always the best way forward. It is right that we should reconsider how the Forestry Commission operates, and the panel will advise us on whether there should be changes.
It is worth pointing out that the Forestry Commission’s commercial arm makes a margin of just £1 million on its commercial activities. That is substantially offset by the understandable costs of recreation, amenity, biodiversity and the other services that the commission provides, as a number of hon. Members rightly identified. That means that there is a massive overall cost to the taxpayer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, in the past the commission has made that up by selling off assets on an annual basis, and it has been selling those assets without the protection for public access, rights of way and all the other things that Opposition Members now preach to us about. Those things were not protected, so Opposition Members are not in a good position to criticise us.
We hope that the panel will consider all aspects of the public forest estate. As I said, the Secretary of State will publish details of the proposed membership and the terms of reference of the panel shortly. We look forward to the conclusions that it comes to. I can assure the House that the present Government’s genuine commitment to forestry in this country—public, private and community—is real and as strong as it has ever been.
The truth of what I have just said is underlined by the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, the National Forest was brought in by a Conservative Government, who did a tremendous amount of work in developing forestry in the former coal mining areas of the midlands. That is a great place for everyone to visit. The real point to make, though, is that virtually none of it is on state-owned land. Planting has been incentivised on private and community-owned land, not public land bought by the Forestry Commission. Therefore, we can have a vibrant, strong forest in this country, with access and with all the necessary protection for biodiversity. Whether the state needs to be involved not only in owning it but in managing and running it is now a matter for the panel, the details of which we will announce shortly.
Sir Peter Soulsby
I understand the Minister’s reluctance to give the names of those who might serve on the panel, but surely he will accept that it is important that those who have spoken out so strongly on behalf of woodlands and forests have their voice heard on that panel. Will he at this stage agree to ensure that on that panel are members of the public and local campaign groups who have been speaking so vehemently on behalf of our forests?
Mr Paice
I am sorry, but I will not be drawn on the membership of the panel because once I give way on one aspect of who might be on the panel, I will be drawn into discussing everything. The Secretary of State will make the announcement shortly. I hope that we can then go forward with the seriousness of approach that my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire mentioned so wisely in his contribution.
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this extremely important matter, which has exercised the House for some time. I have raised it on several occasions, and it is time that we looked in detail at what the future holds for the search and rescue service, on which we all depend.
The search and rescue service covers 1.25 million nautical miles of sea and 10,000 nautical miles of coastline, as well as the entire land area of the United Kingdom. It is a joint service, which is operated by the RAF, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and Her Majesty’s coastguard. It uses more than 40 helicopters from 12 bases around the UK.
HM coastguard uses Westland AW139s and Sikorsky S-92s, which are under contract to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The RAF and the Royal Navy use Sea Kings. The Sea King has four crew members—the pilot, the co-pilot, the winchman and the radar operator, who is also the winch operator. There are two versions of the Sea King: the Mk 3, which entered service in 1977, and the Mk 3A, which is slightly newer. The age of the aircraft has been causing significant technical problems, and they require constant maintenance to keep flying—a point to which I will return.
The RAF bases are RAF Boulmer, which is the headquarters of A flight and 202 Squadron; RAF Lossiemouth, on the Moray firth; RAF Valley in Anglesey, where Prince William is based; Leconfield, near Hull; Chivenor, in Devon; and Wattisham, in Suffolk. The Royal Navy bases are Culdrose in Cornwall and Prestwick in the west of Scotland. HM coastguard operates from Lee on Solent, Portland, Stornoway and Sumburgh in the Shetland islands.
The RAF has just celebrated 70 years of involvement in the search and rescue service. It has 16 Sea King Mk 3 and 3A helicopters in service, which are divided between 22 Squadron and 202 Squadron. Each squadron maintains a 15-minute readiness state during daylight hours and a 45-minute readiness state during the hours of darkness. 22 Squadron operates out of Chivenor, Wattisham and Valley, while 202 Squadron operates out of Boulmer, Lossiemouth and Leconfield. The training unit operates out of RAF Valley with three Griffin HT1 helicopters.
In Boulmer, which is in my constituency, the RAF search and rescue service is a source of enormous local pride and satisfaction. It is hugely respected and very involved in the local community, and the RAF helicopter is often to be seen not only engaged in operations or training, but supporting local community events. That, of course, is good public relations for the RAF and adds to its excellent reputation in my area. Indeed, such activities are such a prominent feature of the RAF’s work that they tend to distract attention from the fact that the vast majority of the work done at RAF Boulmer is in the very different field of monitoring and guarding our skies and training people. None the less, it is the familiar yellow helicopters going about their rescue and training work that enjoy the greatest and most immediate public awareness.
Under the previous Labour Government, a private finance initiative contract proposal was developed under the name of search and rescue harmonisation. Commonality of function between the MCA and Ministry of Defence helicopter forces, and similar time frames for the potential introduction of new aircraft fleets, led Ministers in the MOD and the Department for Transport in May 2006 to announce a cross-Government approach to the acquisition of a harmonised UK SAR helicopter service. A joint project team from the two Departments was tasked with running the project, which was essentially a Labour privatisation project. I say that not as a criticism, but simply to set out the context, because if this Government contemplate privatising anything, the Opposition tend to say that they would never consider such a thing. However, the previous Government did devise a privatisation project, and that was because they thought that such a project was essential to ensure that new helicopters could be provided relatively quickly to replace the Sea Kings. The total project contracts were worth £6 billion.
During discussions on the project, a number of concerns arose and were subject to quite a lot of public discussion. What aircraft would be used to replace the Sea King? How long would it take to get them into service? Which personnel would be required to operate the new service? Would they be drawn from the military, civilian life or a mixture of the two? If there were to be a mixture of military and civilian personnel, how would that work in practice, given that the civilians would be covered by the European working time directive, while the military personnel would not? That has already caused issues at the coastguard-operated bases in the Hebrides and the Shetlands. Consideration would also need to be given to the equalisation of pay and other conditions.
What training would air crew receive? At the moment, there is a fairly heavy dependence on experienced personnel with RAF training moving into other areas of search and rescue and other helicopter services. Of course, it is true that RAF training is heavily drawn on in aviation more widely. Furthermore, what arrangements would be provided for SAR cover in the Falkland islands under the SAR helicopter scheme? SAR in the south Atlantic is currently provided by the RAF, using the same crews who man our stations in the UK. That is done on a six to seven-week rolling rotation, with two crews of four personnel based in the Falklands at any one time. A normal feature of a career spent in a search and rescue aircrew will therefore be time spent in the Falklands.
Where do the prospects of a new helicopter with faster flying speeds and a longer range leave the existing basing pattern? What changes would be feasible under SAR? Linked to that, would 24-hour cover be provided by each base? An early answer to that question made it clear that there were proposals to reduce the cover at a number of bases to 12 hours, after which time the area for which the base was responsible would be covered by the base in the adjoining area. That raised great concern. In the Lake district, for example, rescue operations are often mounted by the RAF Boulmer helicopter, and there was particular concern that the area could not easily be served from other bases. Those bases would, like Boulmer, have extensive responsibilities for the North sea and the east coast, and their helicopters could easily be on a rescue operation and be unable to respond. Bases would be covering two huge areas—their own area and the neighbouring area—so there was a lot of concern about the idea of 12-hour operation. Following a number of meetings with Ministers and others, it was decided that RAF Boulmer would continue to provide 24-hour cover, at least until new helicopters with greater range and the ability to reach other areas at greater speed were introduced.
In the course of the project, bidders were identified, although some did not stay the course until the end. On 9 February 2010, the Soteria consortium was identified as the preferred bidder. The consortium was made up of CHC Helicopter, which is the largest global supplier of civilian helicopter services and the current provider of the MCA’s interim SAR service; the Royal Bank of Scotland, as a PFI equity investor; Thales UK, the well known defence contractor, which has been involved in a number of PFI and partnership projects; and Sikorsky, which has long experience in the design and manufacture of military and commercial helicopters.
The consortium proposed a fleet of 24 Sikorsky S-92 aircraft, with a top speed of 190 mph and a cruising speed of 167 mph. The S-92 would have been fitted with an internal fuel tank, increasing the aircraft’s flying radius to 310 statute miles. The aircraft would also have been fitted with the latest high-speed twin hoist, providing for the possibility of single-hoist failure. It would also have had a 300-foot hoist cable and a lift capacity of up to 600 lb at 350 feet per minute. It is hard to envisage being raised on a winch at 350 feet per minute, but such things are necessary in certain situations—for example, on the moving deck of a ship in rough seas. The aircraft cabin would be fitted out to allow paramedic medical care to be administered to a casualty. The ramp at the rear of the aircraft would provide access for loading and unloading stretchers, incubators and medical equipment and access for rescue teams and their equipment. The other major bidding consortium went under the name of AirKnight, but two further consortia pulled out at a relatively early stage in the process.
At some stage—I must confess I now forget when it was—responsibility for the future operation was transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Department for Transport, which is why the Minister with whom I deal with all sorts of other transport issues is replying to the debate. All that I have described of course preceded the dramatic events of the suspension of the SAR-H scheme and its subsequent abandonment. The first stage of that was just part of the process of the incoming Government reviewing the spending commitments left to them by the previous Government. In June the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced that the Government had identified several projects, some of which were dropped, while others were to be reviewed. SAR was one of the reviewed projects.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I understand that on average over the past five years there have been between 80 and 120 mountain rescues in the United Kingdom. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that such rescues could adequately be carried out using non-military personnel and equipment, in a way similar to what happens in France and the United States; or should they remain in the hands of the military?
Sir Alan Beith
Some of the rescues are done in that way even now. Not all SAR services are provided by military crew, but a high degree of training is required, and there must be consistent co-operation with local organisations such as mountain rescue teams. That depends on consistent good working relations. The military operators such as RAF Boulmer and 202 Squadron have done that particularly well. In general I think that most people feel more confidence about military crew, because they know the high standards of training that are involved. However, it is quite an expensive way to provide the service, and other options probably should be considered. Some of the training and experience that the military has, and some of its operational practices, would need to be transferred if there were any wider civilianisation of the service. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that as a matter of concern.
The review announced by the Chief Secretary was about cost-effectiveness, against the background of a huge deficiency in defence capital programme funding. It was not about the issues that finally brought down the contract. Indeed, Ministers were on the point of announcing the final decision on the contract. Various other things had been going on, however. There were rumours that as part of the comprehensive spending review the Government had proposed that the project should be rewritten, so that an entirely civilian work force would operate the service, rather than a mixture of civilian and military personnel. Of course, if the Government had done that, it would have created a big saving, because it would have taken about 66 higher-paid military personnel out of the project, and probably created up to an additional £100 million over the lifetime of the project in personnel costs for the contractor. It also sidestepped the problem of some personnel being subject to European working time directive rules, while others were not. That issue was rumbling in the background.
On 16 December a dramatic announcement was made—I think that it was the very day on which we were to have heard the final decision about the contractor. The Secretary of State for Defence announced that information had come to light about the preferred bid in the search and rescue competition, which required clarification. The preferred bidder had informed the Government of irregularities in the conduct of the bid team, which had only recently come to light. The irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopter, to commercially sensitive information about the joint Ministry of Defence and Department for Transport project team’s evaluations of industry bids, and evidence that a former member of that project team had assisted the consortium in its bid preparation, contrary to explicit assurances given to the project team at the time.
I believe that a considerable time previously a letter went to the Ministry of Defence warning it of potential irregularities of that nature. One of the matters that I hope is being investigated is why that warning was not heeded. Of course many other matters are being investigated as well, not just by the Ministry of Defence but by the police. A former member of the MOD team, subsequently employed in the industry, is, I believe, the subject of investigation. I do not know to what extent others are as well.
On that basis, we were told that
“the Government have sufficient information to enable them to conclude that the irregularities that have been identified were such that it would not be appropriate to proceed with either the preferred bid or with the current procurement process.”
The statement continued:
“The Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence will now consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer-term arrangements can be put in place.
We will make a further announcement once a way forward has been agreed.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 17WS.]
That brings me to the focus of today’s debate, which is what progress has been made in reaching those decisions and when we are likely to get a proper announcement about it. Other factors could be at work. There is the potential for legal action involving contractors. An unsuccessful contractor might want to pursue the successful one over bid costs incurred. There might be legal action between the Government and a contractor. The Minister may be inhibited in what he can say about that, but it could be going on at the same time.
What will happen next? The Sea Kings were due to be withdrawn by 2016 or 2017. They are ageing and they continue to need substantial levels of maintenance to keep them operating. Those of us who keep in close touch with the search and rescue service know that there are many occasions when the Sea Kings are not available to fly. I have seen that for myself. I was flying in a Sea King that returned to base because the radio system failed. The other aircraft was on land having returned from necessary maintenance work, and was not yet tested and available to take over. At that point therefore neither was available. There have been moments when no helicopter has been available at Leconfield, Lossiemouth or Boulmer at the same time. That clearly is a situation we cannot allow to continue.
Mr David Laws (Yeovil) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing an extremely important debate. I urge him to keep an open mind about whether a life extension to Sea King could be a short and medium-term option. Is he aware that in the United States, Germany and India the Sea King fleets, which are all older than ours, are having their lives extended, and that on the whole Sea King availability recently has been quite good?
Sir Alan Beith
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend who, from his constituency, knows well the work of Westland in that area. I have an open mind about whether a major refit of at least some of the Sea Kings could be carried out. It is one of the options to be considered. However, we cannot simply go on as we are with relatively short-term maintenance of the Sea Kings.
The personnel who work in search and rescue with the RAF and the Royal Navy are also in limbo. That is also true of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency personnel, although they already have a contract; but it expires within the year, I think, so they too are in a state of uncertainty. The Government need to get a grip on the situation and some people need to know pretty soon, for their careers, what will happen. Are they likely to have a future in search and rescue, whether on the military side or as contractors’ employees? What will happen?
We also need to bear in mind some of the warnings given during the contract process. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), to whom I am sure the Minister will want to listen, as he is now the Government Deputy Chief Whip, said in February 2010:
“It is essential that this contract…is better negotiated and has fewer loopholes than the interim contract we had for the last few years”—
the MCA contract. He said that the contract must protect against situations like the one that arose in 2008. The back-up helicopter based at Sumburgh was off-station for a whole week, but the Department for Transport and the MCA were powerless to do anything about it. He also wanted to see the new service rooted properly in the communities that it serves rather than being dependent on a stream of temporary pilots and support officers constantly being shipped in and out.
What are the options? What are the Government considering? First are the short-term immediate continuity arrangements. The RAF will carry on, as it always does. It has the resilience and determination to cope in situations, whether created by Governments or world events, that would challenge many other organisations, and I have every confidence in its ability to do so. However, we need answers on how long it will be before a new scheme replaces the present arrangements. Personnel have careers to plan, and MCA helicopters are contracted only until next year. As I said earlier, the Sea Kings are now extremely difficult to keep airworthy. How long will this situation continue? What level of refit of the Sea King is possible? Would a major upgrade of the Sea King be a short-term option, or would it be too expensive? Should it therefore be considered as a longer-term measure?
What is being considered in the longer term? There are obviously several options. One is to retender a version of the contract. The Government clearly ruled out retendering the contract in its present form when they made their announcement, so they have obviously given it some consideration. There are several reasons why retendering is not the answer. There were too many flaws in the original contract, some of which I referred to earlier; once it became impossible to continue it, the questions that had arisen while it was being considered then needed to be considered again. At that stage in the contract process, it may have been too late to resolve those questions, but when the matter was reopened they needed to be reconsidered.
Another reason why it would have been difficult to retender was that experience has shown that the procurement process is not up to the job. To go back to the same process and risk another failure was not something that the Government could properly have done. We have seen many other weaknesses in the defence procurement process, which has led many to lack confidence in it.
In some respects the previous contract was not cost-effective, which is why it was under review. The reason why the Government did not stop it as a result of the Chief Secretary’s review, but were about to announce that it would go ahead, was that the contract had gone too far to be stopped and the gap would be undesirably long if the process had to be started again. However, events have now forced us into that very gap. The Government concluded during the cost review that it would be unwise to have such a gap, but they now have one. That puts a particular responsibility on Ministers to tell us how they intend to deal with a situation that they felt obliged to avoid until dropping the contract became inevitable because of the irregularities that were found. Simply retendering does not seem to be a proper option.
Another alternative would be to lease helicopters for use by existing RAF, Royal Navy and MCA-based crews. There are various options, but even in the short term it may be necessary to have short leasing contracts. What else is the MCA to do when its existing contract expires? What can the RAF do if it is found that a major refit of the Sea Kings will be too expensive to be considered as a short-term measure? Will aircraft have to be leased? The option of leasing of helicopters is clearly on the table, but will there be a new form of contract, involving both leasing aircraft and crew, with some of the features of the previous contract but rather better developed?
There is significant private sector interest in providing helicopters to the oil industry, the police and other services where they are essential. The market is not devoid of other operators, but as we heard earlier, the service requires a particularly high level of skill and training and it has to serve a wide range of functions. Rescues take place at sea, in dangerous coastal areas, in mountains, in fog—conditions that would defy many traditional commercial operators. It would be a pretty demanding contract, and the public are entitled to know that it will be carried out by people with the skills and equipment to do so.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. The Government have inherited a difficult situation, and I agree with what he says about the importance of introducing some certainty.
Many people in my constituency work at RNAS Culdrose, which plays an important role in our community. We are proud of its role in search and rescue, as it works closely with Falmouth coastguard. The Sea King helicopters provide what I would call a more inshore rescue service, but does my right hon. Friend agree that we must not lose sight of the important role of the Nimrod, and the necessity to have some replacement for the much more distant sea rescues, which are also part of the search and rescue service?
Sir Alan Beith
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. She obviously has similar experiences to mine in working with the RAF locally and being very aware that its work is respected by the community.
My hon. Friend spoke also about the Nimrod. That is a big problem for the Ministry of Defence, and it illustrates similarities to the subject of our debate, not least because it has been dragging on for a long time and we still do not have a proper solution. However, it is probably beyond the scope of today’s debate—and, I believe, beyond the responsibilities of the Minister answering it—but my hon. Friend was right to flag it up.
Much has been said in public recently about the relationship between the RAF and the coastguard. I simply make this comment. If its relationship with the coastguard were dependent on where the major control centres were situated, we would have got into difficulties years ago, when our major control centre moved from Tynemouth to Humberside. What makes the relationship work well is not only that the control centres operate efficiently, as they should, but that the RAF develops good close personal relationships with the coastguards—mostly volunteers in coastal communities up and down our coastline—as it does also with the lifeboat service. The building of those relationships, and therefore the desirability of having crew in place for reasonable periods, is essential to the success of the service.
I emphasise a few more points that I believe the Minister needs to consider. What about 24-hour cover? It raised great concern when the idea that two or even three search and rescue areas—a single area is huge—could be treated as one for 12 hours of the 24 became part of the proposal, and even more concern when it was suggested that it could be done with existing aircraft before the new contract came into being.
That concern remains. People want to know that there is 24-hour cover on no larger a scale than the existing areas, because if a neighbouring area is already on operational duty and carrying out a rescue, there will be no search and rescue helicopter within a reasonably manageable distance for 24 hours of the day. We need an answer on that. We also need clarification on what is going to happen to the Falklands support operation if the RAF is no longer to be involved in SAR there. We need to know about the potential impact of legal action, and whether it is likely to cause delay to the key decisions that are now being taken. I hope not.
Overall, it is an awful business. We will know fully when the investigations are completed, but it approaches what we could call a scandal. Courageous and skilled aircrew have been let down by the inadequacy of the Ministry of Defence procurement process and the way in which it was carried out. The challenge for the Department for Transport is to carry out the task rather better than the MOD, which has conspicuously failed. The time scale now is short and demanding. Can the Department do it? How will it do it, and what assurances can the Minister give to those employed in, or dependent on, search and rescue that they will have satisfactory continuity arrangements over a reasonably short time and that a new system will be put in place in which the public can have confidence?
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. Let me remind hon. Members that if they want to speak in a debate, it is helpful if they write to the Speaker. That applies both here and in the main Chamber.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am extremely grateful for being called to speak, and I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) on securing this important debate. He will be delighted to hear that I will speak relatively briefly.
In Cumbria, we rely heavily on search and rescue teams, particularly those at RAF Boulmer, which is our local base. They provide essential back-up to our mountain rescue teams in Ambleside, Langdale and Kendal and, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, to our search and rescue teams at Flookburgh on Morecambe bay. The mountain rescue teams across Cumbria rely on RAF Boulmer, and they regard it as essential to their work, which is voluntary in nature but professional in standard.
On behalf of the mountain rescue teams and the search and rescue teams in Cumbria, and south Cumbria in particular, I want to say how much we value the professionalism of the staff at RAF Boulmer and indeed of all of those involved in search and rescue. We value their responsiveness, their 24-hour cover and the fact that they work so well with our mountain rescue teams.
When the new contract, which has recently been cancelled, was first suggested, many of us across the country objected. There were objections in Cumbria largely because it would have made Boulmer a half-time base. We would only have obtained 12-hour cover, which is extremely dangerous. My right hon. Friend rightly referred to that towards the end of his speech. It is dangerous not to have 24-hour cover. My mountain rescue volunteer friends say that a typical time for a person to go missing, or to be reported missing, on the fells, in the Lake District or on the Yorkshire dales is when it gets dark. That is the time at which a person is deemed missing—the time that they have not returned home—and the emergency is activated. It is very dangerous for that critical time to be the point at which the source of the rescue craft moves further away. Reducing cover would also mean a reduction in responsiveness; there will be longer times from the call-out to the scrambling of the craft and its arrival in the Lake district. We are also deeply concerned about the reduction in capacity that the contract would bring. My right hon. Friend rightly talked about the possibility of a craft being occupied in one region when it is supposed to be serving another.
About 14 months ago, we had some dreadful flooding in Cumbria, particularly in the west of the county. There is no doubt that had the contract been in place then, there would have been insufficient air cover to rescue people from dangerous situations. Therefore, the contract that has been cancelled could have been dangerous in a number of areas. None the less, the cancellation is a matter of deep concern for those whose careers depend on an outcome to this process, for all those who work with the search and rescue teams, and for all of us because of what it means for the probity and efficacy of the process. Moreover, we were all terribly concerned about the irregularities that were uncovered.
Having said that, those of us who had deep concerns about the contract cannot help but think that we now have an opportunity to re-examine the situation. The Government have the chance to think again, but, as my right hon. Friend said, they should not do so for too long. A whole range of options exist. The Government might want to consider whether it is entirely wise to go down the private finance initiative route again. They might also consider the wisdom of refitting the Sea Kings, which was suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws). That could be done with great operational effectiveness and would be relatively cost-effective, giving certainty and a medium-term future for all those involved.
Whatever the Government decide, they must do it relatively quickly to give us confidence and a sense of long-term stability, and ensure that it is in the interests of maximising safety across the country, particularly across Cumbria, the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales. The Lakes are England’s most mountainous region. It seemed barmy, therefore, to exercise a contract that would move the airborne rescue further away.
I urge the Minister to make a decision relatively quickly, maintain 24-hour cover from Boulmer and ensure that whatever decision is taken from this point on provides maximum support for mountain rescue teams and search and rescue teams on the ground and in the water and in the interests of all those people who may find themselves in peril on the fells.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Gray. I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) on securing this important and timely debate. Given that this whole policy began under the previous Administration, the right hon. Gentleman cautioned me about the scope of my remarks. I fully acknowledge that, so my remarks will be relatively brief.
Let me begin by adding my tribute, and a tribute from the Opposition, to the air sea rescue service and all those involved in search and rescue across the country. The Minister and I are former fire fighters, so we were part of that industry in a very big way, and we recognise the conspicuous role that these brave men and women play in all aspects of search and rescue across the country.
It would have been better if the Minister had opened this debate, because we could all have commented on what he said. The right hon. Gentleman could have stood up and just said, “What’s happening, Minister?” What we want to find out is where we go from here. There is a lot of interest and concern about that across the country, not least from the Palace. A few months ago, we heard in Prime Minister’s questions that there had been royal lobbying on the matter. I suspect that the Minister’s speech has been proofread not only by the lawyers but by officials at No.10 who will want to make sure that he is careful in his responses to us today.
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed outlined the history of this matter very effectively and explained why it is so important. The questions originally were about the split command structure and the fact that although this process is led by the Department for Transport, the Ministry of Defence has an important role to play. That is why there is duality and why the Minister, who is a Transport Minister, is in the driving seat. However, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force all make contributions. There are other issues: the life expectancy of helicopters; European regulations and terms of employment, and the PFI replacement programme for helicopters. All those factors have made it very complicated to try to unlock and disentangle the sector. With information emerging about irregularities in the tendering of the contract, the Government had no option but to stop the tendering process and review it. As the right hon. Gentleman logically said, we need answers as quickly as possible about where we go now.
The questions that I would have asked have already been asked. They included questions about the durability of the existing helicopter fleet—for example, how long that fleet will last and whether it will last until the new arrangements are put in place. The issue of 24-hour cover was raised by the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who both spoke before me. There have also been questions in recent months about the use of armed forces pilots as part of the pilot provision for the search and rescue service, given that we must ensure that we have enough pilots for front-line services in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) also asked about the life expectancy of the Sea Kings and the upgrades that might happen.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I apologise for not being here for the start of the debate. I was unavoidably detained in Committee.
My hon. Friend has made a point about pilots. It is absolutely essential that there is clarity about that issue, because what we are seeing now is that RAF pilots, who have completed three quarters of their training and nearly finished it, are being withdrawn from service. The search and rescue service really needs the continuity that RAF bases, such as RAF Valley in my own constituency, provide. Those bases have an intake of pilots, who go elsewhere before coming back. The search and rescue service needs to know that the pilots at those bases will graduate. Does my hon. Friend agree that clarity about that issue must be provided now?
Jim Fitzpatrick
I agree with my hon. Friend that the issue of military pilots being used as part of the air-sea rescue service has been raised in recent months and that the loss of such pilots might impact on the ability of the MOD to perform front-line duties.
It is to the great credit of the control and management arrangements of the air-sea rescue service that although there are so many organisations involved—the RAF, the Royal Navy and the MCA—the service has worked so well. Obviously what we all want to see is whatever arrangements are put in place in future working equally well. However, given that the Government have been stopped in their tracks because of the irregularities in the tendering arrangements, questions are being asked by right hon. and hon. Members about where we go from here. Those questions are about how the Government intend to proceed in providing the service, including the new tendering arrangements, the use of the existing fleet, the potential upgrades and how long it might take the Minister and his colleagues to resolve these issues. Those are very big questions, but I know that the Minister has all the answers, as he usually has, and we are all waiting with bated breath to hear what they are.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, for the first time as a Minister of the Crown.
First, I want to say that a leak has taken place. It must have taken place last night, because the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has read out my summary of events, with great clarity and great accuracy. I praise him for his knowledge of the issues that he has raised in Westminster Hall today.
Having secured this debate, the right hon. Gentleman might have thought that there would be a few more Members here for it. The amount of correspondence that I have had on this issue is not reflected in the number of Back Benchers who are in Westminster Hall today. I hope that those who are not here will read the report in Hansard later, so that we can get some better knowledge out there around the country about what is happening.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), was quite right to say that I am somewhat tied by “legal eagles”. There are some things that I can talk about today and clearly there are some things that I cannot talk about. I will be as open and honest as possible, as I always am. As Members can imagine, there are officials from the Ministry of Defence who are keeping a very close eye on me as I stand here, as well as my own officials.
We are discussing a really serious issue today. I am not particularly happy about the position that I am in. As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and other right hon. and hon. Members have said, we inherited the position that we are in and literally on the eve of our announcement information was brought forward that meant that the whole procurement process and the awarding of the contracts had to be halted. Indeed, they were not only halted but we had enough information at that time, as the police were brought in, to know that that procurement process and the awarding of the contracts would cease.
So, wherever I can be, I will be as open as I can, but I hope that Members will understand that I am speaking under legal constraints and I do not want to jeopardise any possible legal action or police inquiry by what I say during this debate.
Quite correctly, right hon. and hon. Members have paid tribute, and I join them in paying tribute, to the men and women who have served in the air-sea rescue service in the many roles that they have played in the many years—nearly 70 in total—that they have carried out this service on behalf of the British public.
What is interesting is that the public have a perception about who is flying those funny-coloured helicopters that have the word “Coastguard” written on their side. When I first became a Minister, I assumed that the crews involved were all military crews and I think that a lot of people make that assumption. They assume that when they are on the beach, or on the moorlands and lakelands of this country, or when they are waiting to be rescued from a cliff, that those pilots, navigators and loading guys in the back are military personnel. However, let us be perfectly honest. We know that many of them are not military personnel and that for some 27 years four of the bases—four of the air-sea rescue facilities—have been run under contract by the private sector. Have there been huge numbers of complaints about the ability, skill, dedication, commitment or professionalism of those private sector crews? To be truthful, no, there have not been—not at all. So, although I understand the concerns of areas where there are military bases, we must not undermine the work of the civilian crews who have done fantastic work for many years.
I acknowledge the concerns that exist about some of the contracts—not being responsible for them, I can say that. The contracts were there, we inherited them and we have moved forward with them.
There are obvious and understandable concerns about the future. However, the awarding of these contracts has been delayed for some time. I myself would probably have flown in some of these Sea King helicopters when I was in the armed forces and I joined as a boy soldier in 1974. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was in Sea Kings rather too often. I was also in Wessex helicopters. The Wessex is long gone, but Sea Kings are still fulfilling a fantastic role, here in the UK and on operations abroad. I have been lucky enough to be in Sea Kings on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on my visits to those countries. We must pay tribute to the work that is being done by our armed forces, particularly because as we speak today they are doing a lot of work in the middle east as well as in Afghanistan.
To be polite, the Sea King is a very old lady. As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said, there are two versions. However, the older version—the 1977 version—is not a modern aircraft. It has nowhere near the sort of lift, capacity or range that modern helicopters offer. I am aware that other countries have looked seriously at their Sea Kings and upgraded them. Very often, they have done so for cost reasons as well as for other reasons, because if the life of a Sea King can be extended the difficult decisions that we have been trying to make can be avoided.
So, as we look at what we have inherited, we must look at what will happen in the short term—that is, now—because of what has happened with these contracts. We must consider how we can continue to have the cover available and my Department is doing that jointly with the MOD and the MCA. However, we must also look forward to consider what will come in to replace the existing service.
Perhaps I can say now that there will be no demise in cover at all in the short term or in the long term. We will look very carefully at the existing contracts—both the civilian contracts and the MOD contracts—and there will be provision of service while we look for a long-term solution. So I hope that I can alleviate any concerns that exist among the constituents of right hon. or hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, or among the armed forces or in the MCA. We will ensure that we get this right. In the short term, we will ensure that there is cover and that the Sea Kings are available and operational.
I am really pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed was as honest as I was going to have to be about the Sea Kings’ current availability. They are very often off the run. I have been surprised by a couple of incidents that I have been involved in in my short time as Minister, when I have had to say, “Guarantee to me who is available.” Sometimes the Sea Kings are not there, but that is not because of a lack of will or because people are not professional in maintaining them, it is just because they are very old ladies. They need a lot of TLC, and sometimes we just cannot physically get them up there. Their range is restricted, compared with the civilian Bristows, especially the new ones we would like to bring in, and so there are big issues about who covers. Very often, as I am sure Members are aware, the civilian crews cover in areas where the military cannot, simply because they have the range. We will very consciously ensure our commitment to mountain rescue and sea rescue, and also cliff rescue, which has not been covered today. The skill involved in cliff rescue, with the down draughts, is unbelievable. In the short term, we will commit to those areas, and we are working very closely with the MOD.
In the long term—not too long a term, I hope, but we must get it right—we have a plain sheet of paper, and I hope that hon. Members appreciate that. We can say, “What do we need for air-sea rescue, to go forward in the 21st century?” The MOD will continue to be involved in the negotiations, deciding for itself to what extent; it is not for me as a Department for Transport Minister, even with my military background, to make decisions on behalf of the MOD. It is absolutely crucial that, because of the concerns that have been raised both today and in the press in the past few weeks, we come forward with proposals—although I am sure not everyone will be happy with them—for a service that is there to do the job and to provide the skills that we all want. There has, I think, been some misinformation in the press, which is understandable because not everyone realises how service air-sea rescue is already provided.
Jim Fitzpatrick
When the first review was under way and the consultation was taking place, it was difficult to deal with the different cultures in the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport. When the DFT and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency decided that we would consult on the local provision for the civilian stations, the culture was pretty much one of open politics but, with no disrespect or criticism, the MOD culture was much less open in its engagement with local MPs. If the Minister is looking to consult again, right hon. and hon. Members would obviously look for every assurance that the consultation or the exercise would be as open as possible, and as accessible as possible for Members, so that they could contribute to it.
Mike Penning
The shadow Minister is very knowledgeable in this area because he was around in the Department at the time, so I pay tribute to his knowledge of the problems that occurred during the consultation. It will always be difficult, because some of the stations are operational and so an operational capacity need has to be addressed as well as the secondary use, which is the air-sea rescue.
Mike Penning
If my right hon. Friend will bear with me, I want to answer on this point and will then gladly give way—we have plenty of time, to say the least.
The procurement will now be Department for Transport led, with MOD involvement. I say this in the presence of listening ears from the MOD: we certainly will be as open and honest as we can, and will provide as much access as possible both to colleagues throughout the House, and to local communities, because it is important that they feel part of what is going on. We are all about trying to do the right thing and developing a service that we can all be continually proud of—we are very proud of the current service, but we know that there are issues. I assure Members that we will do as much as possible as we lead on this in the new procurement programme, which is why I say that we have a plain piece of paper. We can learn from mistakes and from a lot of the issues that the shadow Minister has mentioned, but we will not necessarily take on everything. We have a blank piece of paper, and can ask, “What’s best for us?”
Sir Alan Beith
It would be helpful to know what machinery has been set up to make the decision, or to prepare the ground for Ministers ultimately making it. That cannot be a state secret. Is there a joint project board between the two Departments, or a working party? What stage is it at, and what mechanisms are in place for making this important proposal?
Mike Penning
As my right hon. Friend will realise, we are at a very early stage, not least because there are legal issues—he mentioned them in his speech—which are very difficult and technical. The police are fully involved and there is a full inquiry going on, so I am very restricted in how far I can go down that line. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that others may decide to take action in the civil courts, and it is entirely down to them to decide that. We have to ensure that the existing contract is not affected in any shape or form by the private finance initiative contract. It is completely separate, but it has been lumped in with the existing one, certainly in the media. That contract is close to its end time, and we have to negotiate best value for the taxpayer as well as ensuring that we have the service provision. At this stage, I am not in a position to say, “This is the mechanism that we’re going to go forward with,” but we will announce it as soon as possible. This will be led by the Department for Transport, and that decision has been made.
Mike Penning
The PFI contract went way beyond the existing spending review period, and so we do not know how quickly we can get this going. It is crucial that we get it right, so that we do not get anywhere near this position ever again. The PFI was signed off for this spending review period, but it went way beyond it, as I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware. The key is that the interim measures, which must be in place, are what it says on the tin—“interim”—and that we then have a proper contract. We have not just gone to another re-bid, we have said, “Whoa, let’s look at this another way.” That will take longer than if we just said, “Okay, there’s a few mistakes here. Someone’s been naughty, and we’ll do it this way.” That would be the quick option, but it is right to say, “Let’s put this completely on hold and look fundamentally at the contract.”
[Mr Joe Benton in the Chair]
Sir Alan Beith
I would like to press the Minister a little further. It would be helpful to know whether there is one process, or two separate processes, with a team of people from the two Departments assessing the viability of the existing arrangements and what has to be done to keep them going for the time being, and a separate team considering the future options.
Mike Penning
There are two separate processes, which is why, when I began my speech, I stated that there is what we need to do now and what we need to do in the future. I have just been passed a note with some information that I did not know, which is that the Secretary of State for Defence has already been in contact with AgustaWestland—last month—to see if we could engage with the company to consider how to extend the life of the Sea Kings beyond 2016. That is because of the interim short-term situation, and how we go forward. It was mentioned earlier that perhaps the most cost-effective way of doing that would be a major refit, taking us a long way forward, or we could do a shorter-term refit. Two separate projects have to take place, although I am not saying that the same people will or will not be on the working groups. The key is to get on with this now, so that we have the provision in place and can then go forward.
As to when the announcement was made and the reason why it was not made to the House first, it was, obviously a significant market announcement, which is why it had to be made to the stock exchange at 7 am. I am always passionate in the belief that things should be announced to the House, and I have done so myself on many occasions, but an announcement involving such a large private finance initiative had market significance, which is why it needed to be made, and was made, at 7 am.
I know the Falklands rather well. Sadly, several of my friends are there in war graves. Luckily or unluckily, when the Falklands war began, I was with the Grenadiers on spearhead, who were not deployed, but my friends in the Welsh and Scots Guards were. As my right hon. Friend knows, one of my closest friends is Simon Weston, who was disfigured and scarred while he was there and has done much work for charity since he came back. The Falklands is not affected by the PFI. The MOD will continue to provide air-sea rescue in the Falklands and will decide its future. It was never part of existing search and rescue helicopter procurement. There are still a lot of MOD and service personnel in the Falklands. I have flown in a Sea King down there in recent years, although not during my time in the armed forces.
We have mentioned the effects of service personnel and knowing what they are doing. Service personnel work on tours of duty. The original time scales involved in the PFI meant that they would have been beyond their tour of duty—the Prince would have been away from Wales, serving in whatever other duties Her Majesty had in mind for him—long before the changes took place. The MOD will, obviously, continue with its own tour of duty process. That is a matter for the MOD, not for me as a Transport Minister. As we enter the interim period with cover, I am sure that tours of duty will be addressed in many ways.
The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who has left the Chamber, mentioned the interim contract for the coastguard. The existing MCA contract is not interim; civilians have been doing that work for many years. We need to find out what the interim contract is now, but the existing contracts are not interim. We can also learn a lot from the concerns about the MCA contract as we go forward. There are concerns involving the working time directive; I assure hon. Members that it is one of the pains of my life as a Minister. In the past couple of days, I signed off on a document exempting the military from certain things such as driving time, tachographs and so on. At the same time, the MOD manages brilliantly to provide cover within existing restraints. All of that will be part of the documents as we go forward with the concerns.
I do not want to pontificate for another half-hour, as there is not much more that I can say. We are conscious that there are concerns, and we as a Government are concerned. In a perfect world, this would never have happened. But we do not live in a perfect world and, sadly, an anomaly has occurred with the procurement programme that has created real concerns and legal ramifications. A huge amount of taxpayers’ money has been expended on the procurement programme, and we will be looking to recoup it, as it is not the fault of taxpayers or the Department for Transport. To be fair, the MOD, which was criticised earlier, could not have predicted that the persons involved would do what they did. I know that there are concerns about the MOD’s procurement programme—that is for the MOD to address—but the criticism that the MOD is to blame for what happen might not be right. Individuals are responsible, rather than the MOD.
Albert Owen
The Minister was right to pay tribute to those who maintain Sea Kings. Maintenance crews must be considered as well. They are concerned that under the PFI contract, many of them will not be retrained for any new helicopters procured. Will the Minister assure me, on his blank piece of paper, that that will be considered and that, in the interim, those highly skilled people working on air bases, including RAF Valley in my constituency, will have the opportunity to retrain for any new craft?
Mike Penning
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman those assurances, as I am not an MOD Minister, but the MOD will have heard those concerns, and I will ask someone there to write to him about them. It is clearly not in my portfolio to deal with armed forces staff. I, too, pay tribute to maintenance crews, which I have always found to be unsung heroes when I have visited the military around the world. When I visited Helmand last year, I saw that they worked astonishing hours to keep Chinooks, in particular, in the air. We should all realise that it is not just the helicopter pilots—the gung-ho guys—who do all the work; often, it is the ground crew that get them up in the skies to start with.
Sharing knowledge and working together with other emergency services, particularly in the voluntary sector, is crucial—whatever will happen in the future—as is happening now on the four civilianised bases. I must admit that many of the crew members whom I have met are ex-military; I do not think that I have met a single search and rescue helicopter pilot who is not. We have a wonderful training programme for them, but it is crucial that training and working-together exercises continue in the short and long term.
I am conscious of what hon. Members, especially the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), said about distance. It will always be an issue. We go out to sea some distances now to incidents, as in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), but interestingly, civilian aircraft—the ones that we have now, let alone the ones that we were considering procuring—can go much further and cover greater distances.
Of course, they can do only one job at a time. The shadow Minister and I are both ex-firemen. I did operations with air-sea rescue on the Thames estuary when I was in the fire service. When we were tied up there, we were tied up. When something is tied up, I am concerned to know whether we will have cover from the other bases, especially if the Sea Kings are vulnerable, as we know they are at times.
I do not want to drag out this debate for the sake of it. I am disappointed, as I am sure is my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, that more Members are not here for this 1.5 hour debate. As soon as we know more, we will say more, and we will be as open as we can throughout the procedure. However, at the end of the day, we are where we are. We will sort this mess out and ensure that the public are safe and that air-sea rescue is protected, as we all expect it to be, and cover is provided.
Sir Alan Beith
I thank the hon. Members who have taken part in this debate. There are, obviously, other hon. Members whom it would have been useful to have present to represent other areas. I am particularly grateful for the support shown by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for the work of RAF Boulmer in his constituency, of which air-sea rescue is a significant part. We have also heard interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), in whose constituency is located basic training for all RAF search and rescue pilots, a fact of which people might not have been widely aware until a royal prince became one of the aircrew there. Their interventions have been helpful.
In concluding, I will focus on what the Minister could and could not do today. Clearly, Ministers cannot comment on what has happened in any detail while investigations are taking place, and legal action—not just legal action arising directly from the investigations but civil legal action—is a possibility. He said that he had a blank piece of paper, but I remind him that it cannot stay blank for long, particularly in respect of the continuity arrangements, and that he does not have a blank chequebook with which to make extremely expensive temporary arrangements that might prejudice what is done in the long term. That is why I am so concerned to establish that there is a clear process at work. I am not sure whether we are entirely clear about that yet. The long-term alternatives have to be looked at in some detail, and I assume that a joint working party is doing that at the moment.
On the continuity arrangements, the centre of gravity has shifted back to the Ministry of Defence, which must affect the way this is being done. The Minister has a more direct responsibility for what is happening in relation to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—it has a contract that will expire shortly—but the dependence on the continuing RAF and naval provision shifts the centre of gravity of the immediate decision-making process back towards the MOD.
It has never been clear whether the Department for Transport has become a purchasing Department with the relationship of a purchaser with the MOD that says, “This is what we want, even in the short term. How can you provide it for us?” or whether this is a traditional joint departmental process with a degree of fuzziness about who is really in charge. We cannot afford that in situations such as this, so I will continue to press Ministers in both the DFT and MOD to be clearer about how decisions will be taken in both the short and long term, and how the relationship between the two Departments can be operated in a way that ensures that decisions are made quickly on the things that have to be decided quickly. It is bad enough trying to get decisions out of the MOD alone, but when two Departments are involved, unless there is some sort of purchaser-provider split between the two, there is too much uncertainty about how decisions are taken. I am not even sure how confident the Minister is that we have a real grip on the issue and an effective process in operation.
The situation inherited by the Government is difficult, but difficult situations call for resolute action and I want to be sure that there is a process that can do that. Will the Minister, when he reflects upon this debate, write to me, in a letter that can be published, an explanation of the process? It would be helpful.
Mike Penning
I think that I have already said that. I am sure that there will be other debates on this subject—although I cannot predict what Mr Speaker will or will not select for debate—but we will do that in writing as things develop. I am conscious of two things. First, we have to make sure that we get it right. Secondly, at the end of the day, this was not the fault of the taxpayer so it is crucial that, wherever possible, the taxpayer will not pay for it. As we progress, I will be open and we will write, correspond and give as much information as possible. The MOD has a procurement skill that the DFT does not in this area, so we need to work closely together and we will continue to do so. It will be led by the Department for Transport.
Sir Alan Beith
That is a helpful intervention and I am grateful to the Minister for a number of points. Indeed, he said a number of things during that short intervention that had not been fully clear previously in the debate.
Jim Fitzpatrick
Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to ask the Minister indirectly to deposit the correspondence to him in the Library, or to issue a written ministerial statement, so that all hon. and right hon. Members can share the updated information?
Sir Alan Beith
I am sure that the Minister will do that. It was implicit in my request, and it is desirable and necessary. In conclusion, I say to the Minister that he should not—quite clearly, he is not now going to—wait until the two Departments come up with their final plan before he keeps us informed. We need to know soon about the processes and the decisions being made about continuity arrangements—in a way that is as helpful as possible to those who have to operate the system—as well as about the processes in relation to devising an effective longer-term solution.
To revert to a point I made earlier, I believe that when the Government decided to announce that they were going ahead with the contract, they must have concluded that a period of delay, even with a contract that was not entirely to their satisfaction, was too much of a price to pay. That price now has to be paid, because it is clear that the contract cannot go ahead due to some of the things that went on during the procurement process. We are, therefore, paying a price in terms of certainty and decisions that ought not to be further delayed. I want to make sure that we have a process capable of dealing with that.
Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)
Before I call the debate to a close, may I take this opportunity to say that it is not normal in a debate such as this for people to respond after a Minister has spoken to conclude it? As there was time, I made due allowance for that, but I do not want a precedent to be set. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members will remember that.
UK Military Basing Review
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
A happy St David’s day to you, Mr Benton. It may be worth noting at the start of the debate that Sky Television is reporting the details of military job losses. No written statement is in the Library, so Members of Parliament are only able to learn of those circumstances by watching the media. No doubt the Ministry of Defence and its officials will try to rectify that as a priority.
Like other Departments, the MOD is going through significant spending cuts and, with an outline of the main structural changes to the armed forces and their equipment in the strategic defence and security review, consideration is now being given to what that means for military basing. One major change in future years will see the return of UK service personnel from Germany. With a head count reduction in the Royal Air Force, as well as in its equipment, there will be fewer RAF operating stations. Changes are also in the pipeline for the Royal Navy, which will have a considerable impact on the three services and on the communities where they have been based, often for many decades.
With the most defence-dependent constituency in the UK, I have more reason than most MPs to watch developments closely, and the experience has not been a happy one. The MOD has already announced the closure of RAF Kinloss, with devastating local consequences in Moray, and the sword of Damocles is hanging over neighbouring RAF Lossiemouth. On the day of the SDSR in October, the Defence Secretary told me personally that the decision on RAF Lossiemouth would be taken before Christmas—Christmas 2010. Then, in November, he told me—again, personally—that the military recommendations would be made by the end of February, with a political decision within weeks. As we now know, that has not happened, and a decision and announcement have been delayed until the summer. Frankly, that is no way to run a military basing review, and no way to treat service families and the communities in which they live. The consequences of that dithering and delay has been economic stagnation and uncertainty. It is costing jobs and livelihoods, as well as causing unnecessary economic damage and undermining business confidence.
When the announcement to close RAF Kinloss was made in October, it came as a bolt out of the blue. The MOD decided at a stroke to cancel the new generation of Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft, and with it, its home base at RAF Kinloss. Nearly £4 billion of taxpayer investment was binned and the planes have been cut up for landfill. Now, both the Republic of Ireland and Norway have a greater dedicated fixed-wing maritime patrol capability than the UK, and the UK is without a dedicated ISTAR combat platform to perform vital intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance tasks. Imagine if there were suddenly geostrategic developments, let us say, in northern Africa. Imagine if it was vital to operate long-range flights, to sit off the coast for 8 hours and to monitor all nature of electromagnetic spectrum, while having the ability to image the coast. I guess we will never know how many lives that could have saved, or which operations we could have supported in, for example, Libya, because the UK decided to scrap Nimrod while spending up to £100 billion keeping Trident—a weapon system that can never be used.
Meanwhile, back in the most defence-dependent part of the country, local authorities and agencies have had to deal with the consequences of closing RAF Kinloss without any material support whatever from the UK Government. The impact on service families, the local economy and local public services has been devastating. Of course, the UK Government knew that this was going to happen. They knew that this was going to happen because information was provided to them in a detailed report by Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Despite that, support has still not been provided.
Moray is unique in the UK as it is the only part of the country that is facing the prospect of a double RAF base closure. In the first instance, that makes no defence or security sense whatever. RAF Lossiemouth was recently judged by the RAF to be the best base for the next generation of fast jets. Given the wish for better military co-operation by both the UK and Norway, it is worth reminding ourselves that RAF Lossiemouth is the closest base to Norway. Norway wants to maintain and operate the next generation of fast jets in co-operation with the UK, and RAF Lossiemouth is the designated UK base for the same aircraft. RAF Lossiemouth is adjacent to the best training areas, which is a significant consideration, given the cost of flying from bases further away. Given the double runway and facilities, it is also easily able to host different types of aircraft.
The defence case to retain the facility is unsurpassed, which is why it is supported by all political parties and political leaders in Scotland, as well by as the Scottish Government. Few will have missed the public reaction in support of the base. In a unique show of support in the UK, thousands of people marched through Lossiemouth last November. That support continues. Only a few days ago, thousands of people took to the streets of Elgin to welcome home personnel from operations, and I would like to thank all local campaigners, the Moray Task Force and The Northern Scot for their hard work and support.
Reports from within the MOD suggest that the Royal Air Force has already recommended that RAF Lossiemouth should remain. Ministers must listen to that recommendation. Ministers have to understand that closing RAF Lossiemouth is like losing 40,000 jobs in Glasgow, or 400,000 jobs in Greater London. The MOD needs to understand that a double RAF base closure in Moray would be the biggest single economic shock in the north of Scotland since the Highland clearances. RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth together support 5,710 full-time equivalent jobs in the local economy, which equates to 16% of all full-time employment in Moray. The two bases also generate £158 million a year for the local economy, while RAF households account for 7% of the total population of the region and 8% of its working age population. At least 15% of local NHS staff have partners connected to Moray RAF activity, while in areas such as midwifery, district nursing and cardiology, that figure increases to 25%. Some 30% of hotel business in Moray is RAF-related. Inactivity at RAF Kinloss amounts to the loss of £500,000 a week. Imagine the compounded impact of a double base closure.
Other parts of Scotland also have cause for concern, with a threat to RAF Leuchars in Fife, to 2nd Division Headquarters at Craigiehall and to Fort George near Inverness. Should Scotland see a reduction from three air force bases to only one, that would constitute a 70% cut in RAF personnel numbers and would leave 40 fewer aircraft. That stands in contrast to the Royal Norwegian air force, which operates more than 110 aircraft from seven air bases; the Royal Danish air force, which operates more than 111 aircraft from three air bases; and the Royal Swedish air force, which operates more than 187 aircraft from seven air bases.
It is widely expected that the MOD will close the operational Army headquarters outside Edinburgh and there are fears of a further reduction in historic battalions. In total, that would leave fewer service personnel in Scotland than there are in the armed forces of the Irish Republic. Unlike many other parts of the UK, Scotland has recently seen a significant defence contraction, with a multi-billion pound defence underspend, base closures and an amalgamation of historic military units.
At the time of the strategic defence review in 1997, there were 15,000 service personnel in Scotland. Under the previous Government, that was cut to 12,000 while, at the same time, manning rose in other parts of the UK. When adding civilian defence job losses to the equation, Scotland lost 10,500 jobs between the 1997 SDR and the 2010 SDSR. MOD statistics show that the defence underspend in Scotland totalled at least £5.6 billion in the same period. That underspend constitutes a 36% budget shortfall. At the same time, there has been an unprecedented concentration of defence spending, manpower and basing in the south of Britain. There are no prizes for guessing where the main training establishments, super-garrisons, command headquarters and largest operational bases are located. They are almost all in the southern half of England. Amazingly, no defence or security logic has ever been outlined by this or any previous Government as to why that should be the case.
This is not what happens in allied countries. To find out what the norm is elsewhere, I travelled to the United States in December to learn how it deals with the same challenges. There, the Department of Defence has clear responsibilities to maintain a defence footprint across the US, and a commitment to defence-dependent communities. The US has an independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission which makes final recommendations on basing that then go for congressional approval. There is also an Office of Economic Adjustment which supports local communities with technical and financial support.
Just in case the Minister wants to say in his reply that there are issues of national security, I would like to draw his attention to the full documentation published by the BRAC Commission and the OEA. In the US, the process seems to be managed well. In the UK, in contrast, military basing reviews are entirely opaque. I should point out that the main policy objective of the Department of Defence when dealing with base closures is to act expeditiously—that has not happened in the UK basing review. The statutory criteria of the commission’s work require it to conduct an assessment of the economic impact on existing communities in the vicinity of military installations, and an environmental impact assessment. The commissioners also have to assess whether the results of the closure or realignment process might leave insufficient strategic presence in some parts of the US.
Having gone through a non-partisan, transparent, fully costed analysis, the commission’s recommendations are approved or rejected in their entirety on Capitol Hill. There is full democratic oversight and approval. Where bases are to close, the OEA provides comprehensive support for communities, as its website highlights:
“In today’s economic climate, OEA and federal government support is essential to communities nationwide as they cope with Defense program changes.”
What a contrast with the UK, where the Ministry of Defence seems to take no responsibility whatsoever, where the basing review is an internal MOD exercise which is totally opaque, and where base reviews appear to be ad hoc, financially driven and, frankly, unstrategic.
The Minister now has 15 minutes to enlighten Parliament, the defence world, military families and defence-dependent communities about the UK military basing review. I hope that he will confirm that the MOD will publish all supporting documentation and the full balance of investment appraisals from the UK basing review. If the USA can publish full documentation without compromising security, so can the UK.
I want to leave the Minister and his colleagues with this quote from a recent editorial in Scotland’s biggest selling national daily newspaper:
“In election after election, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories have warned that the SNP would leave Scotland defenceless. But shutting RAF Lossiemouth will destroy that argument for good, leaving us with far weaker defences than other small European nations. Scotland has no tanks, no heavy artillery, no armoured vehicles, no self-propelled artillery, no armoured personnel carriers, only five helicopters and 12 Snatch Landrovers. If RAF Lossiemouth goes, we would have just one RAF base left.”
Given those circumstances, it is unsurprising that an ever-growing number of people in Scotland are now asking why Scotland does not make its own defence decisions like other normal countries. It is clear to most people that if we were to spend the tax revenue we currently contribute to the MOD, there would be more bases, more equipment, more service personnel and more jobs in Scotland. We would also be able to support conventional defence properly rather than waste money on nuclear weapons. The MOD needs to prove that it is worthy of support from Scottish taxpayers, voters and service personnel. Frankly, at present, it is not fit for purpose.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Gerald Howarth)
I commend the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on securing this important debate. He and I have been on trips together, we are both officers of the all-party Royal Air Force group—I have very much enjoyed his support in that group—and we have conferred many times in the past on these matters. I know that he takes a genuine interest in this subject, not least because, as he said, he has a defence-intense constituency. Of course, I am entirely in sympathy with him, because my constituency of Aldershot is also heavily defence-oriented. He will, of course, point out that it is in the south of England. We cannot move Aldershot—it is in the south of England.
There can be no doubt that this debate is important to those who take an interest in the future of Her Majesty’s armed forces, and to the constituencies of a number of Members in the House. I see that my hon. Friends the Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) are here. The hon. Member for Moray has therefore rightly set out several concerns which are, understandably, felt by many Members.
In today’s and previous debates, several RAF bases have been mentioned. I would like to put on record the Government’s gratitude for the exceptional work of all those who serve in the RAF. I was commissioned in the RAF volunteer reserve and would have joined the service—I nearly did—had I not had political aspirations. Our gratitude extends to the local communities which have, over the years, given such strong support to the bases from which the RAF operates—a point that the hon. Gentleman made forcefully.
However, given the context of this debate, I would like to focus for the moment on RAF Kinloss and its proud association with the Nimrod. The Nimrod force played a vital role in helping to keep this country secure during the cold war. More recently, it played a key role in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some RAF Nimrods continue to do so. Kinloss has been the home of Nimrod and those who flew and supported them for nearly 40 years. I am an aviator, and I am acutely aware of the bond between RAF personnel and the aircraft that they service and fly. I understand the shock that was felt when the decision was announced. I know that there is a real sense of loss in the tightly-knit service community, and that seeing pictures of the Nimrods being broken up will have been extremely painful to all of them, as it was to me.
I did not come into government to take such decisions, nor did the Defence Secretary or the Prime Minister. Nor did I come into government to make communities fear for their future as we take difficult decisions on the fate of their bases. The decision to scrap the Nimrod MRA4 programme was one of the hardest we had to take. So how did we come to this situation? That decision must be viewed in the context of the previous Government’s dire economic mismanagement of the public finances. Under the stewardship of the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), Labour doubled the national debt and left us with the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history. Today, we are spending £120 million every single day just to pay the interest charge on Labour’s debt. That is Labour’s legacy.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene in this important debate. I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Moray about bases in his constituency. My concern, given our deficit, is that costs should be taken into account in the basing review. Given that in January the Minister for the Armed Forces said that it would be prohibitive to move engineering facilities away from RAF Marham, could I ask what is being considered in respect of the joint strike fighter maintenance facilities? We need a long-term decision that will reflect the costs and the expertise that has built up in RAF Marham, which employs more people than Kinloss and Lossiemouth put together.
Mr Howarth
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I had the benefit of visiting Kinloss and Marham, so I am acutely aware of the assets of both bases. All I can say to her is that final decisions have not yet been made. I will come back to that point later on. Ministers will make the decisions based on military advice as well as detailed investment appraisals. I am afraid that that is as far as I can go to reassure her today.
I shall continue on the economic legacy we inherited. In defence, the consequences of 13 years of the catastrophic mismanagement I mentioned a moment ago are more severe than in any other area. Labour allowed a black hole of £38 billion to build up in the forward defence programme, over half of which was made up of equipment and support, with no plans in place to fund it. Restoring the nation’s finances is not only critical for the health of our economy and for the future funding of public services, but essential for national security, because a weak economy creates a national security risk.
Every Department has had to make its own contribution to reduce the staggering budget deficit we inherited, and the Ministry of Defence is required to shoulder its share of the burden. However, due to the priority we place on security, the defence budget is making a more modest contribution to deficit reduction than many other Departments. Even so, we are not immune from tough decisions. Some of the toughest decisions were about the Royal Air Force’s structure, not least the future of Nimrod.
There is no doubt that the Nimrod MRA4 would have performed an important role. It would have contributed to a wide range of military tasks. We have sought to mitigate the gap in capability through the use of other military assets such as frigates, helicopters, and C-130 Hercules aircraft. We will also request, where appropriate, assistance from allies and partners. However, it is important to remember that the country has been without Nimrod since March 2010. That was when the previous Government withdrew the Nimrod MR2 from service, so this was not a decision of this Government alone.
Why was that necessary? As the hon. Member for Moray knows only too well, the original plan conceived in 1996 was for 21 aircraft to be delivered in 2003—eight years ago. By the time the new Government took office in 2010, the programme had already been reduced to nine aircraft, was almost £800 million over budget and had seen the unit cost of each aircraft rise by 200% from £133 million to £455 million. At the time of the review, a number of design faults had been identified on the first MRA4 aircraft, which would have taken additional time and money to resolve. The headquarters of the contractor, BAE Systems, is in my constituency yet, as the hon. Member for Moray knows perfectly well, that has not stopped me being a vocal critic of its performance on this programme.
As we all know, the decision to scrap Nimrod was not the only difficult decision facing the RAF: the fast-jet fleet of Harrier and Tornado air defence was also affected. The RAF now plans to make a transition to a fast-jet force comprising the Typhoon and the joint strike fighter by 2021. Those were decisions about military capability and priorities. An inevitable consequence was that the RAF no longer requires RAF Kinloss and two other bases. I need to emphasise that—no longer required by the RAF. That does not mean that they are no longer required by defence. I will take the opportunity now to say again that we have not yet taken a decision about the long-term future of RAF Kinloss or any other air base as a result of the strategic defence and security review.
As Members will be aware, another major decision of the SDSR was to return to the UK 20,000 service personnel from Germany, with the intention of returning half by 2015 and the remaining personnel by 2020. Like all other parts of the public sector, defence is looking hard at its land holdings to ensure that we are using them as efficiently as possible. We have the cancellation of Nimrod, a rationalised fast-jet fleet, the return of large numbers of personnel from Germany, and a requirement to realise better value for money and efficiencies through broader estate rationalisation.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I have tabled parliamentary questions on the issue of the returning personnel from Germany. I discovered from the Minister for the Armed Forces that there have been absolutely no discussions with Scottish Ministers or the Department of Education in England about the capacity of any of the RAF bases to take the 7,000 children coming back from Germany. Does the Minister not accept that it looks like this is a political decision, not a fact-based decision?
Mr Howarth
The hon. Gentleman makes a point that I am about to make, which is that all I have said adds up to an extremely complex piece of work. He is right. Where the children are to be educated and which base may be best suited to a land army operation are not decisions that can be made on the back of a fag packet. They clearly require considerable thought. I will come on to that again in a moment.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Minister does not need reminding by me that RAF Lyneham and the neighbouring towns of Wootton Bassett and Lyneham provide all the schools, infrastructure and transport that could possibly be needed for returning troops from Germany, and it will be available to them later this year.
Mr Howarth
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that on the record. It looks as though I could organise a competitive tender here, but I am not sure whether his parliamentary allowance could be used to bid to see who would offer the best value to the Ministry of Defence. Having visited Lyneham, I understand the facilities it offers. I reiterate my tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett in his constituency. I have been privileged to see the repatriations with him, and see how the town has been a credit to the whole kingdom for its dignity and the tributes it has paid to the fallen from Afghanistan. As we work our way through these issues, I assure hon. Members that we are well aware of the human dimension—the effect on our own people as they wait to hear how these decisions will affect them and their families.
Mr Howarth
I will give way, but the hon. Gentleman is taking time out of my winding-up speech.
Angus Robertson
I will be very quick. In the last three minutes, could the Minister, for the first time on behalf of the UK Government, explain the strategic logic behind the over-concentration of UK armed forces in the south of England?
Mr Howarth
I would like to answer the hon. Gentleman in my own way, because I want to come on to that issue in a moment.
Decisions will take into account the implications for Tornado personnel operating in Afghanistan and their families. The Army rebasing I mentioned will take account of all deployments to Afghanistan. We know what this means for local communities. Officials from the Scottish Office, the MOD and the Treasury have met the Moray Task Force and representatives from Fife council, so the idea that the local community has not had input is untrue. However, it is imperative that the defence footprint in the UK is determined by national, not regional, requirements.
It is worth stressing that the defence budget is used to buy the best equipment for the armed forces at the best value for money for the taxpayer. Where the companies are located is not the responsibility of the MOD. Defence is not an exercise in quotas for the regions and nations of the UK. Using the logic of the hon. Member for Moray, we could say that Dorset, Kent or Cornwall have not had their fair share among the English counties. He mentioned southern England, but what about northern England? Once we go down that line, we are on a hiding to nothing. The MOD has an interest in the defence footprint principally in so far as it enables our military functions to be better performed and the UK better defended.
We are the Conservative and Unionist party, so we recognise that all regions have a part to play in the defence of the UK. The hon. Gentleman did a good job in playing down the defence footprint in Scotland, but he is wrong to do so. The MOD has—and will continue to have—a considerable footprint in Scotland. It has a presence in nearly 400 locations and employs nearly 20,000 people. Even if his worst-case scenario came about, Scotland would still have one of three fast-jet main operating bases; one of three Royal Navy bases, which is the largest single-site employer in Scotland; a significant army presence; and a shipbuilding industry with thousands of jobs sustained by contracts for aircraft carriers and destroyers.
We must not forget that Scotland’s extraordinary contribution to the defence of the UK manifests itself today in the presence of the ultimate representation of Britain’s military prowess—her independent strategic nuclear deterrent, which the hon. Gentleman wishes to get rid of. He cannot claim to be a champion of defence jobs in Scotland while advocating that the UK abandon its nuclear deterrent. He claims to be acting in the interests of Scotland, but he knows as well as I do that his party’s policy would leave Scotland bereft of jobs in the defence industry, and vulnerable to nuclear blackmail or, even worse, attack.
Rail Services (South-East London)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise once again my concerns, and those of my constituents, about rail services in south-east London. The problems experienced by all rail users, whether daily commuters, pensioners, families or holidaymakers, remain frustrating and annoying for local people.
I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Minister is present and I know that she will listen carefully to the points raised and respond sympathetically. I put on record my thanks for her responses to my letters and questions. She is always constructive on such matters and her letter to me of 31 January was particularly helpful. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) is present, as is my neighbour the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce). It shows that not only my constituents, but those in Erith and Thamesmead, Bromley and Orpington have had a tough time recently due to poor rail services in the area.
There are four stations in my constituency—Barnehurst, Bexleyheath, Crayford and Slade Green—and they are used to make nearly 5.5 million journeys every year. Some of my constituents also use Abbey Wood, Erith or Welling stations. Because there are no London underground or docklands light railway stations in Bexley, my constituents are more reliant on overground services than people in most other London boroughs. Therefore, when there is a problem with the trains, the only real alternative is to take a bus to a neighbouring borough to catch the tube or DLR.
I would like to make a short positive comment about the buses. Under the leadership of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, bus services in our area have improved considerably and buses are more frequent, reliable and cleaner than in the past. With the introduction of safer transport teams, which I know the Mayor is keen on, there have also been considerable improvements in safety on the buses. Obviously, there are things that could be improved. I contacted the Mayor and Transport for London about diverting the route of the 96 bus to serve Darent Valley hospital directly. My constituents use that hospital more and more, and it would be helpful for patients and visitors if the buses could be slightly re-routed.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
I add my voice to my hon. Friend’s words of support for the Mayor’s bus policy generally and for the improvements to transport within London. There are small areas of criticism: the route of the 320 bus, the extension from Bromley North to Catford, has not worked. I urge TfL to revert to the old route of Biggin Hill to Bromley North, which was very successful.
Mr Evennett
I am sure that that will be noted and taken on board by the relevant authorities.
Rail services in south-east London are part of the integrated Kent franchise, and are currently operated by Southeastern railway. The present franchise agreement started on 1 April 2006 and initially runs until 2012. If Southeastern meets certain targets set out in the contract, the franchise may be extended for a further two years until 2014. At the time it was agreed that Southeastern would receive a huge public subsidy of £585 million over the lifetime of the franchise, and promises were definitely made about investment in facilities and improvements.
A written ministerial statement announced the franchise in November 2005. The then Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), claimed:
“I am satisfied that the competition for the franchise has resulted in a contract that represents very good value for taxpayer. It is a tough contract on which Govia will be expected to deliver.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2005; Vol. 440, c. 34WS.]
That has proven to be wrong. Commuters are paying significantly higher fares, performance is not up to the level passengers rightly expect, and communication is very poor, especially when something goes wrong.
Trains are busier. Since Connex lost the franchise, there are 800,000 more journeys from stations in my constituency every year. As a commuter on Southeastern, I understand the anger that my constituents feel about the service that they pay for. They expect—and deserve—better. The Govia website makes many promises about the improvements that it will bring to the franchise, claiming that trains will be less crowded, more punctual and cleaner, and that there will even be wi-fi access on some stations. However, some of those things have not been delivered, and the improvements that I have requested for local stations have often been difficult to obtain.
In September I held an Adjournment debate about the campaign I started in May 2009 for step-free access at Crayford station. Currently, only the London-bound platform 1 is fully accessible. Platform 2 can be accessed only by a footbridge, and is therefore difficult for those with mobility problems or those who have young children and have problems with the steps. During that debate, I highlighted the numerous problems that I experienced in getting Southeastern to open an existing gate on platform 2 to a pathway that already runs along the side to Station road. The cost of the scheme was minimal, and the only issues concerned the ownership of the land that the path goes through, and making the area safer. All I asked was for Southeastern to open the gate and install an Oyster card point, but initially it decided that it would not proceed with that scheme for financial reasons. After the Adjournment debate, however, and the helpful intervention of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), Southeastern agreed to install the Oyster machine and open the gate.
That was welcome progress and I would like to put that on the record. At this stage, we are waiting for the transfer of land from the owners, Sainsbury’s, to Bexley council to be completed. That has taken some time because issues such as resurfacing and lighting need to be resolved. Bexley Councillor Linda Bailey is responsible for ensuring that the scheme goes ahead, and I understand that she and the leader of the council will be looking to see what they can do in that area. I have every faith and hope that the matter will be brought to a successful conclusion. I had similar problems with Southeastern when campaigning for step-free access to Barnehurst station. That was easier to achieve, however, and it was much needed and welcomed by local commuters and residents.
Sometimes, issues with Southeastern are not easily resolved because the company does not take on board the seriousness of the problem. For example, at Barnehurst station—the station I use—the waiting room is open only for a couple of hours late in the afternoon. A similar situation exists at other stations. That is ridiculous because the majority of people do not travel at tea time, between 4.30 pm and 6.30 pm, and constituents have complained.
Southeastern needs to be more proactive in understanding what constituents and commuters want. It is also failing in other important areas and people are becoming increasingly vocal about their displeasure. One needs only to search for comments about Southeastern on Twitter to see what people really think about the services provided. Comments include:
“First train out of Victoria this morning....is filthy”
and there are complaints that the toilets are not clean, and that the service was late or cancelled. All aspects of the service are not up to the standard they should be.
Joseph Johnson
My hon. Friend is generous to let me intervene again. I support his point. There is an urgent need for Southeastern to show more responsiveness to the concerns of constituents. The lift at Orpington, which is so necessary for people with limited mobility, was out of action for eight weeks at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It took the threat of a wheelchair demonstration by disabled people to get the lift back to working order.
Mr Evennett
It is disappointing that Southeastern is not more proactive when dealing with the problems faced by constituents, the fare-paying public, so as to help to improve facilities and services.
Of course, the main issue that we are discussing today—an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington and the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead are well aware of and have raised concerns about—is the period of bad weather that we had at the end of last year. Despite the snow being forecast, it seemed that Southeastern was not in any way prepared for it. Trains were cancelled at very short notice, and a reduced service operated. Some stations had no trains stopping at all for long periods. If trains did run, they were very congested and were running with fewer carriages. As a result, many people simply gave up on the trains and tried to find alternative routes to work.
There were also real problems with the information provided to customers. On some days, stations such as Crayford were not manned at all. If station staff were able to make it through the snow to the stations, they were not properly briefed by their managers on the services that were running and where the trains would be stopping. I commend the staff at my own station of Barnehurst. They do a fantastic job; they are friendly, efficient and really nice people. But during that period, when they were asked when there would be a train, they had not been told—they had no information coming through—and they were the first point of contact for people who came to the station to see what was going on.
The Southeastern website was also useless and at times misleading.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman both for giving way and for obtaining the debate. On the point about the website, constituents came to me saying that the website said that their service was running when it was not and they had unsympathetic employers who said, “I don’t believe you couldn’t get to work because the website says there’s a service running.” Did the hon. Gentleman have the same experience with his constituents?
Mr Evennett
I agree; I had exactly the same experience with my constituents. The website was useless, giving wrong information, which of course fed through to other people, who said, “Well, the service seemed to be running because it said so on the website.” That is a fair point and I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s comment.
All that increased the pressure on station staff, and tempers flared in some circumstances. The communication was absolutely appalling. I cannot understand why that was allowed to happen and why someone from Southeastern was not briefing the local radio stations. I happen to listen to LBC and Magic in the mornings, and they are very good stations, but they had no information at all. Any good organisation would have passed the information to the media, so that they could update people who were getting ready to go to work. On one occasion, I had to drive up to Westminster because I could not guarantee that there would be a train to take me up and bring me back.
Recently, I was privileged to be at a meeting of Kent MPs with Southeastern, which was organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). I was underwhelmed by the excuses offered by its managing director, Charles Horton, and his team. Although some of the blame of course lies with Network Rail, I do not believe that Southeastern has learned the lessons and I am worried about the consequences for passengers. I wrote to the Minister to ask questions about that and am grateful for her response.
However, the poor performance cannot be blamed only on the snow. I believe that the service has got worse since September. I receive regular e-mails and am regularly contacted by constituents on the matter—sometimes when I am travelling with them on our daily commute up to Westminster. The comments are universal. One person said:
“The service/performance is failing…The passengers’ charter is a list of meaningless words.”
I am told that the service is not any better; it is worse. Those are the words of constituents. I, too, have concerns and I share their views.
Some constituents say that the journey is taking longer and that the problem is affecting their job. Punctuality is a real issue. Despite the poor performance, Southeastern has been trying to avoid paying compensation and reducing the cost of season tickets. Regrettably, that is because of the low targets agreed with the previous Government. If punctuality falls below 82% during a 12-month period, Southeastern is supposed to cut season ticket prices by 5%. That means that nearly one in five trains can run late without incurring a penalty. That is poor service and it was a poor agreement at the time. Also, by running an emergency timetable during the period of bad weather, Southeastern was able to distort the statistics by not counting the trains that it should have run. Southeastern is therefore claiming that its punctuality was 82.04%—marginally above the season ticket discount threshold. That is a betrayal of commuters and it is unacceptable.
To support its case, Southeastern recently commissioned the university of Sheffield to audit the statistics. Predictably, it found the following:
“As judged against the present validation criteria, the source data, processing and public information for the Passenger’s Charter are satisfactorily accurate.”
I am sceptical about that and I understand from correspondence with the Minister that the rail industry’s national taskforce will be looking into the operation and performance of both Southeastern and Network Rail. I hope that the Minister will look closely into the validity of Southeastern’s figures and perhaps consider an independent audit, taking into account all the matters that I have raised.
Fares have gone up again dramatically because of the agreement that they could be increased by retail prices index inflation plus 3%. That has meant that many people in our area have been clobbered by high fare rises. Again, that seems unfair to me and to my constituents.
So what of the future? There are some welcome developments under way that should help to increase rail capacity and reduce overcrowding. I know that the Minister is working hard to improve the opportunities for travel in and around London and throughout the country. I am a big supporter of Crossrail and hope that it will be delivered on time. I believe that, when the time is right, it should be extended beyond Abbey Wood. We are very keen for that to be done. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead has been an advocate for that as well. We are looking forward to having Crossrail at Abbey Wood. There will be more capacity then.
There is the redevelopment of London Bridge station, which should help to relieve some of the congestion problems caused by the bottlenecks. Again, we have to be patient and wait, but I do not want the improvements to be made in the long term—I would like improvements to be made now for our constituents and residents of Bexley and Bromley, so that they can get to work in a more satisfactory fashion.
Information is vital, but that has been the greatest failure of all. However, I am very happy with the approach that the Minister has taken. I hope that she will help me even more this afternoon in her response to the debate, because there is real concern in my area and that of my colleagues about the current operator, the current franchise agreement and the future bidding process. She is reasonable, understanding and usually pretty positive in her approach. I hope that she will look at the transport in south-east London and say that it is not acceptable at the moment and it must improve.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) on securing the debate and on his passionate defence of his constituents, particularly his commuting constituents. He is a steadfast campaigner for his constituents. I am very much aware of the significant concern expressed about the quality of rail services in south-east London and Kent by my hon. Friend and a number of other MPs, stakeholders and passengers. It is good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) and the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) here to take part in the debate as well.
I fully appreciate how important rail service provision is in the suburban constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford, where so many people commute into London every day and which I have enjoyed visiting on a number of occasions during the past 10 years or so. As he set out, recent months have seen an overall decline in the reliability of services under the Southeastern franchise, culminating in the huge disruption that occurred during the cold weather episodes at the end of last year. He outlined some of the most troubling examples.
Ministers and officials were in constant contact with train operators and Network Rail throughout the severe weather. I think that we all accept that, unfortunately, some disruption is unavoidable when extreme weather conditions occur, but it is imperative to ensure that lessons are learned from the severe problems that passengers experienced in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere during the severe weather at the end of last year. That is why we asked David Quarmby to conduct an urgent audit of how our transport networks performed. We now expect the rail industry to act on the findings of that audit.
I have already had many discussions on the cold weather episode with senior representatives of the rail industry and will be meeting them again soon for an update on extending the trial of heated conductor rails, which could make a significant difference to resilience on the third rail networks; strengthening de-icing arrangements; dealing with stranded trains; and, crucially, improving passenger information generally and during times of disruption.
My hon. Friend rightly said that that was exposed as a severe problem during the recent poor weather. Like him, David Quarmby emphasised that electronic information on its own simply is not enough; train operators need to ensure that staff are properly briefed so that they can give passengers as much information as possible about which services are running and what they can expect despite the disruption.
It is imperative that reliability on the Southeastern network improves. It is imperative that the train operator becomes more responsive to its customers, as my hon. Friends the Members for Bexleyheath and Crayford and for Orpington emphasised. I will ensure that their comments on step-free access at Crayford, the waiting rooms at Barnehurst, toilet cleanliness and the lifts at Orpington are passed on to the train operator. The rail reforms that we are considering are designed to give train operators more opportunities to invest in improvements to such facilities, to make them more responsive to passengers and to give them the right incentives to perform reliably and well.
I have asked the rail industry’s national taskforce specifically to consider the performance of Southeastern and Network Rail in Kent. We need improved performance from the operator and Network Rail, as the infrastructure provider, if we are to make the progress that the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford want. I say that because Network Rail is responsible for about 60% of delays and cancellations on the Southeastern network.
My officials monitor Southeastern’s performance on a four-weekly basis. I met Charles Horton, managing director of Southeastern, on 14 February and I asked him a series of searching questions based on the concerns raised with me by MPs and their constituents, many of which my hon. Friend has echoed. In the coming weeks, I will follow that up with a further meeting with Mr Horton and the Network Rail route director for Kent, and I will expect them to set out how they plan to improve their performance and to respond to the concerns that have been rightly raised in the debate. I will interrogate them on their response to the Quarmby audit and on the lessons to be learned from the cold weather disruption, although I should emphasise that there was already a significant problem before the snow arrived, as my hon. Friend said. I will urgently seek assurances from Network Rail and Southeastern on how they propose to improve overall performance.
Joseph Johnson
In those discussions with the management of Southeastern, will my right hon. Friend please ask when fast trains will stop at Orpington during peak hours? Orpington is a major commuter town, but we do not have fast trains during peak hours. My constituents are on their knees begging for such a service.
Mrs Villiers
I appreciate the importance of that issue. Although my discussions will focus on the reliability of the current service, I am happy to take on board my hon. Friend’s representations, and we will obviously take them very seriously as and when preparations are under way for timetabling changes.
It is important to mention some major capacity improvements, which will be delivered in the years to come. Despite the crisis in the public finances, the Chancellor has prioritised rail, and £18 billion will be invested in rail capital projects during the spending review period. Our ambitious programme will deliver real benefits for rail users across the country, including in south-east London and Kent.
Thameslink is going ahead in line with its original scope, albeit over a slightly longer time frame than originally envisaged. That will virtually double the number of north-south trains and deliver up to 1,200 new carriages. It is too early to say exactly how the programme’s benefits will be shared between different areas, because timetabling decisions are still some way off. However, even those communities that do not benefit directly from the new upgraded services could receive cascaded rolling stock to relieve overcrowding.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford recognised, the coalition has secured the funding to ensure that Crossrail is delivered in its entirety, including the Abbey Wood branch, which was the subject of so many scare stories from our political opponents. The project will deliver a 10% uplift in rail capacity across London and much improved access to jobs for many people across the capital, including south-east London, and in the south-east. It will open up new journey opportunities to docklands, the City, central London and our major airports. Furthermore, the Secretary of State recently announced that negotiations had been successfully concluded to allow a station box to be constructed at Woolwich. The coalition’s plans for rail therefore offer real potential benefits for people in south-east London.
I very much recognise the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituents have expressed about rail fares. The retail prices index plus 3% formula was included in the franchise when Labour let it in 2005. That was to reflect the more than £600 million spent on 618 new rolling stock vehicles and the £93 million of investment in power supply, stations, depots and related infrastructure. Much as I would like to see the RPI plus 3% formula abandoned, that is unfortunately not possible in the current fiscal climate. The deficit we inherited from the previous Government means that we face some difficult choices, including asking passengers to pay a little more to support the massive investment in rail that I have just outlined, although we expect significant elements of that programme to benefit people across south-east London. None the less, it is imperative that the cost of running the railways comes down, because it is too high. Sir Roy McNulty is running an in-depth review into why the cost is so high. For the sake of taxpayers and fare payers in my hon. Friend’s constituency and across the country, we are determined to find the right solutions to deliver a more sustainable financial future for the railways.
My hon. Friend talked about his long-running campaign to extend Crossrail to Ebbsfleet. The route to Ebbsfleet was safeguarded in 2009, and we expect that to remain the case. Safeguarding preserves that option for the future. Of course, our current priority is to press ahead with construction and to deliver the Crossrail project within budget and according to the new timetable. However, we do not rule out the option of extension in the future.
My hon. Friend also raised concerns about the compensation regime that applies to Southeastern. I have not seen evidence that the figures have been dealt with inappropriately, but if any were drawn to my attention, I would of course take action. I recognise the concerns raised by his constituents about the way the compensation regime operates, and we are certainly happy to consider a more robust regime for future franchises that perhaps gives passengers more effective protection.
Mr Evennett
I am grateful for that helpful answer, but Southeastern is so marginally over the figure that one can understand constituents being sceptical.
Mrs Villiers
I am aware that there is a lot of concern and scepticism about the figures, but, as I said, I can reach a judgment only on the basis of the facts that are presented to me. My hon. Friend will appreciate that Southeastern is legally required under the franchise to have its figures independently audited, so we have that safeguard of an independent check on the figures.
In conclusion, it is vital that Southeastern and Network Rail significantly improve their performance on the lines serving my hon. Friend’s constituency and the whole of south-east London, as well as on its routes in Kent. I will continue to press both on the issue, and I very much welcome the opportunity to debate it today.
Trident
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Benton, and to secure the debate. Its focus is on the cost issues associated with Trident, and on issues of parliamentary scrutiny. Many other issues are associated with Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons, but I hope that in the short time we have today we shall focus on the aspects I have mentioned.
The background to the matter is of course that in March 2007 the House voted to support the decision taken by the then Government as set out in the White Paper “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent” to take the steps necessary to maintain Britain’s nuclear weapons capacity after the Vanguard class submarines leave service in the mid-2020s. The motion that was passed also said that we should take steps towards meeting the UK’s disarmament responsibilities under the non-proliferation treaty. I voted against replacing Trident, but I believe the concerns I am raising today are shared by many hon. Members, and probably by Members on both sides of that debate.
After the vote in March 2007, the Ministry of Defence began the first stage of the process known as the concept stage, which was due to end with the initial gate decision point. That was one of the points of scrutiny of the project. The initial gate report was expected in September 2009, but it has still to be published. The decision whether to authorise the construction of the submarines is to be taken at the later main gate scrutiny stage, which was originally scheduled for 2012-14, but following the conclusion of the strategic defence and security review, that has been delayed until 2016, beyond the next general election.
The White Paper published at the end of 2006, which was voted on in 2007, estimated that the cost of the replacement of the system would be between £15 billion and £20 billion at 2006 prices. No updated estimate in current figures has been provided, and today I shall ask the Minister to ensure that one is provided to the House, particularly given that we know from the information that is in the public domain that spending so far is over-budget. Specifically, I understand that the current submarine programme for the Astute class is running 57 months late and £1.35 billion or 53% over budget. Expenditure on the concept phase has also significantly exceeded its budget—£309 million was originally set aside, but spending up to June 2010 exceeded that, with a figure of £570 million. That is an overspend of 84%. The House is right to be concerned, given that the information provided to this place and to the general public seems to show that spending to date has been far greater than originally projected.
The year 2010-11 has £330 million allocated for the Trident replacement programme. An estimated 15% of the submarine cost is due to be spent during the assessment phase prior to the main gate, based on the 2006 figures. That would amount to about £2 billion, using the MOD’s 2006 figure of a requirement of £11 billion to £14 billion for the submarine replacement plans. It is apparent from the concept phase that the cost of the programme is already increasing. The MOD has refused to provide annual budget figures for the assessment phase period up to 2016 until after the publication of the initial gate.
There also seems to be no intention to provide Parliament with regular reports of the progress of the programme until after the initial gate. Recent statements by the Secretary of State for Defence have confirmed that orders for major items required in the construction of submarines will be placed prior to main gate, and indeed a response to a recent freedom of information request revealed a plan to place more than £1 billion before the main gate approval in 2016, in relation to the various orders for submarines and matters associated with that work. That information was confirmed in answers to questions tabled by hon. Members. The answers to freedom of information requests, and recent answers to parliamentary questions, seem to show that a large proportion of the first boat will be ordered ahead of main gate, as well as the reactors for the second and third boat.
The 2010-11 budget for Trident replacement exceeds that of the planned budget for the whole of the concept phase from years 2006-08 to 2009-10, although we have yet to reach initial gate. I therefore think that the House is right to be concerned about the costs incurred to date, which seem to be well in excess of the projections and information provided to the House in 2007, when the decision was taken, but also about the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of the programme.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does she agree that in any decisions that are taken we do not want to add further to the cost of the programme, and that it would therefore be helpful for the Ministry of Defence to set out the change in the cost profile that has already been conferred by the delay in the main gate decision, and the totality of increased costs that could flow from that?
Katy Clark
I agree, and my contention is that it would be helpful if as much information as possible could be put before the House, so that this place takes the right decisions, and so that whatever decisions are taken in years to come will be based on the fullest information, made available not just to Members of the House but to the general public.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Is it not about time that the Government published the value-for-money review that was undertaken in 2010? Throughout the defence budget we have cuts that seem to be completely driven by putting the cost down as low as possible; yet here we have a massive overspend. People want to know what value for money we are getting from this atrocious weapons of mass destruction programme.
Katy Clark
I agree with my hon. Friend’s points, and will ask the Minister to publish the value-for-money review that was undertaken in 2010. My hon. Friend has made powerful points: when we see other decisions made by the Ministry of Defence, including cancelled contracts and cuts, it seems that a different approach is taken to the project in question.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this excellent debate, which is generating a lot of interest. Does she agree that a key issue is that the main gate decision in 2016 should be a proper decision? There is real concern that if too much money is spent before then, the next Parliament may not have a proper decision to make. It may be trapped, as the present Parliament has been over aircraft carriers.
Katy Clark
The hon. Gentleman is correct, and I am delighted that he is here today, and, indeed, about the cross-party support that has been raised. An early-day motion has been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), which highlights some of the issues and the concern that contracts are being made, perhaps, in a way that goes against the spirit of undertakings made in the 2007 debate. That may mean that the decision that Parliament will take later will be tied by the amount of money already spent on the project. That is one reason for some requests that I will make of the Minister today. The first is that we should, as has been mentioned, publish the value-for-money review undertaken in 2010. Equally importantly, we need to ensure that the House has a full debate on the initial gate report and that decisions are taken with its consent.
I urge the Minister to explain some of the figures that I have cited today, particularly why the 2010-11 budget for the Trident replacement has exceeded the planned budget for the whole of the concept phase, which ran from 2006 to 2010. I urge the Government to publish an up-to-date budget for work done during the assessment phase before the main gate decision, and to say how much they plan to spend on orders for construction before the scrutiny of main gate, in view of recent statements and information provided by the Ministry of Defence. Given the clear increase in costs, it is only fair that the Government should publish the estimated full project costs in current prices, as it is clear that the information provided to the House in 2007 will no longer be accurate. Finally, I ask for a full strategic review of the UK’s possession of nuclear weapons before the main gate decision is made and orders for construction begin, and to give MPs the opportunity to debate and vote on the continuation of the programme, based on up-to-date information.
I have consented to the vice-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), making a short contribution to the debate, and I understand that the Minister, too, has consented. I hope, Mr Benton, that you have no objection to my hon. Friend making a short contribution.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I shall be brief, as it is a short debate and we wish to hear the Minister’s reply. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) on securing this debate and on her work for peace in general. I declare an interest. I am chair of the all-party CND group, and the national vice-chair of CND.
As my hon. Friend pointed out, I tabled early-day motion 1477, about the Government’s plans to order steel for the first new Trident replacement. It is important that the Minister has the opportunity to answer this point. We were told during an important parliamentary debate in 2007—it attracted a substantial dissident vote by Labour Members against the early replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system—that the initial gate decision would not be taken until this Parliament and that we therefore had nothing to worry about. With the assistance of the excellent CND national office, I recently tabled a large number of parliamentary questions. I shall not refer to them all, but they were answered on 16 February.
I asked the Secretary of State whether steel for the substantial construction of the hull structure of the first boat would be made as a long-lead purchase prior to main gate. The Minister answered:
“Yes. The specialist high strength steel needed for the hull structure for the first boat is included as a long-lead item in the Initial Gate Business Case for the programme.”
I also asked the Secretary of State how much his Department had allocated to the Trident replacement programme in each year between 2010-11 and 2015-16. Those are crucial dates, as that is when initial gate is supposed to happen. The Minister answered:
“Approximately £330 million was allocated to the programme to replace the Vanguard submarine.”—[Official Report, 16 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 805-06W.]
It seems to me that the Ministry of Defence is running ahead of itself, and well ahead of authorisation by Parliament for spending such sums on preparation for the development of a new submarine and missile system before Parliament has had the opportunity to vote on it. In addition, it was discovered during the previous Parliament that large sums had been spent on upgrading the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in preparation for the development of the missile systems to go into those submarines.
Personally, I am completely opposed to nuclear weapons. I believe that they are immoral; they are weapons of mass destruction. The world would be a lot better off without them—and this country would be extremely well off without them. However, that is not the point of today’s debate. This debate is about the costs and the decision-making process, and about Parliament’s involvement in those matters.
Every three months, the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence commendably report to the House on progress or otherwise in Afghanistan, and we have the opportunity to question them. If the Ministry of Defence is so determined to spend such large sums, there should at the very least be an open debate in Parliament on the subject before those decisions are made. We signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty many years ago that commits us to making long-term efforts on nuclear disarmament. As well as seeking to prevent other non-nuclear declared states from possessing nuclear weapons, I believe that we should fulfil our obligations under that treaty. I hope that the Minister will explain under what authority that money was spent, why it was spent ahead of a parliamentary decision, and when and if he will make a statement to the House on that expenditure and the purposes behind it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) on securing this debate.
In recent weeks, there has been quite a lot of commentary on the replacement submarine programme for Britain's independent nuclear deterrent system, often referred to as the Trident programme. Much of it was incorrect, so I welcome the opportunity to discuss the matter. I doubt whether I shall reassure the hon. Lady on every question, as there is disagreement between us on the principles involved, but I have some good news and some clarification.
Before dealing with the scrutiny of the successor systems to our current nuclear deterrent, and for the avoidance of any doubt—I answer also the points raised by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—let me be clear about the Government’s policy on the nuclear deterrent. The first duty of any Government is to ensure the security of the people. The nuclear deterrent provides the ultimate guarantee of our national security, and has done so for more than 50 years.
The argument is often made that, because there is no immediate threat to the UK, there is no need to replace the current deterrent system; however, if history has taught us anything it is that predicting future events is difficult. We do not know how the international environment will change over the next 50 years. For example, how many people predicted the current speed and the scale of change in north Africa?
Peter Luff
I shall not give way. I have some important points to answer, and I do not have time to take interventions—except, of course, from the hon. Lady.
We cannot be certain that no existential threat to the UK will ever emerge. As a result, we cannot unilaterally do away with this ultimate insurance policy. That is not to say that, when the time is right, we will not move away from nuclear weapons. Our long-term goal is to have a world without them, and we will do all that we can to counter proliferation, to make progress on multilateral disarmament, and to build trust and confidence across the globe.
In our strategic defence and security review, we went further than any previous Government in giving assurances to non-nuclear members of the non-proliferation treaty that we would not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against them. As part of that confidence-building initiative, we announced that our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling will reduce from not more than 225 to fewer than 180 by the mid 2020s. In addition, we announced that over the next few years we will cut the maximum number of nuclear warheads on board each deployed submarine from 48 to 40, that we will reduce our requirement for operationally available warheads from fewer than 160 to no more than 120, and that we will reduce the number of operational missiles carried to no more than eight. None the less, on 9 February, the Prime Minister said:
“I profoundly believe that we should maintain our independent nuclear deterrent. I have looked at all the alternatives over the years, and I am completely convinced that we need a submarine based alternative—a full replacement for Trident—in order to guarantee the ultimate insurance policy for this country. I am in favour of a full replacement for Trident, a continuous at-sea deterrent and making sure that we keep our guard up”—[Official Report, 9 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 296.]
I take this opportunity on behalf of the House to pay tribute to the professionalism of all those Royal Navy and civilian personnel who answer this country’s call to operate and support this vital national capability on behalf of us all—seven days a week, 365 days a year. Last year, I visited HMS Vanguard and met some of our dedicated service personnel; I was truly impressed by their commitment. It is important that hon. Members should remember that, as we speak, those men are out there somewhere in the oceans at this very moment providing Britain’s and NATO’s ultimate security guarantee. They and their predecessors have so far provided a 42-year unbroken chain of continuous at-sea deterrence, keeping all of us and our allies safe. It is a fact of life that the current class of Vanguard submarines is ageing, yet while the nuclear threat remains we will maintain a nuclear deterrent. That is why we are continuing with a programme to replace the current deterrent.
One theme that has emerged—it emerged in the hon. Lady’s speech today—from those who do not see merit in this policy is that the Government are embarking on a programme of replacing the Trident system by stealth and that Parliament has not had the opportunity to consider the issue. That is simply not true. In 2006, the previous Administration published the White Paper “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent,” which clearly set out why the UK needed to renew its deterrent system, what options were available and how much they were likely to cost. The conclusions of the White Paper remain as valid today as they were when they were first published. That paper was scrutinised by the House of Commons Defence Committee and was debated in full in July 2007. The House voted by a significant majority to
“take the steps necessary to maintain the UK's minimum strategic nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the existing system.”—[Official Report, 14 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 298.]
That is exactly what we are doing.
Given the serious economic conditions that we inherited, we decided to commit ourselves to reviewing the Trident replacement programme to ensure that we were spending only the minimum necessary. That is why, in addition to the disarmament measures I have already mentioned, following the value for money review conducted last year, we announced a number of changes to the Trident replacement programme. For the submarine, this included deferring the delivery of the first boat to around 2028 and consequently deferring the main investment decision—or main gate—until 2016. I note the hon. Lady’s call for the publication of the value for money study, but I have to disappoint her. It contains a number of highly classified documents that are not suitable for release. However, all the important conclusions were published in full on page 38, paragraph 3.10 of the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
We were also able to announce our intention to work more closely with industry to improve efficiency in the programme. Since that announcement, we have taken huge steps with our three key suppliers—BAE Systems, Babcock and Rolls-Royce—to develop what we now call the submarine enterprise performance programme, which has three key aims: to retain and develop our world-class design, build and support skills, which are essential for delivering the nuclear programme; to realise significant savings by improving our approach to designing, building and supporting these submarines and, by way of example, through the rationalisation of facilities and sharing of resources; and, with industry, to improve our delivery performance. I saw that for myself a few weeks ago when I visited Barrow and Furness with the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), whom I am pleased to see in his place. I was hugely impressed with what I saw and with the dedication of the work force.
The Ministry of Defence, industry and the work force have risen to this challenge, and I have seen a step change in the way in which we are working with industry to ensure that our nuclear programme is delivered successfully. All in all, the decisions we took during the SDSR allowed us to save £1.2 billion and defer a further £2 billion of expenditure over the next 10 years. I can confirm to the hon. Lady that the figures for the total cost of the programme are as quoted in paragraph 3.10 in the SDSR.
“The review has concluded that the overall cost of the submarine and warhead replacement programmes and associated infrastructure”—
the three separate parts of the programme—
“ remains within the £20 billion cost estimate foreseen in 2006 at 2006 prices.”
Therefore, the cost estimate remains valid. However, we did not say that we would do nothing until 2016. As for the reference to the delay of the Astute programme, I have to say that we have learned our lesson the hard way—if one stops doing something it costs a lot to start doing it again. That is the root of the problem and a mistake that we must not make again with its successor.
Let me stress again that we did not say that we would do nothing until 2016. We must be clear about the scale and challenge of this project. A submarine designed to carry the nuclear deterrent ranks with the space shuttle as one of the most complex engineering feats in the world. The submarine has a nuclear reactor; nuclear weapons; steam systems; hydraulic systems; electrical and electronic systems; and computing systems, as well as tactical weapons and sensors. It needs to sustain its crew while remaining submerged and undetected for months on end. It is a tremendous challenge to bring those complex components together, and we have an enormous programme of work to complete if we are successfully to see the delivery of the first boat in around 2028. The first significant milestone in this process is the so called “initial gate” investment point.
At initial gate, we will agree the broad outline design of the submarine and some of the component designs, including the propulsion system, and set out the programme of work we need to complete so that we are ready to start building the first submarine in 2016. We will also agree the amount of material and parts—and for which boats—we will need to buy in advance of the main investment decision, and yes, that will include steel. However, we are not planning to procure any such items for the fourth boat at this point.
The precise value of the steel and the other long-lead items will depend on the final initial gate approval, but it is likely to amount to around £500 million, some way short of the £1 billion that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has cited in the past. There is nothing unusual in that; it is normal practice for most large procurement programmes.
Jeremy Corbyn
The figure I cited was the one that the Minister gave himself, which is £330 million. I asked where the parliamentary authority came from for that expenditure.
Peter Luff
I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman’s figures have been misunderstood by the Department. I was told that he said a figure around £1 billion. The authority comes from the vote in the House of Commons in the previous Parliament, established custom and practice and all complex programmes. If he wants a historical precedent, I am told that we bought the oak for HMS Victory 15 years in advance of building it. This is par for the course in major procurement programmes; there is nothing unusual about it at all.
It is quite simply not true to say that large parts of the build programme will have been completed by main gate, nor is it true to say that we will be locked into contracts and that we will have spent so much that we will have to build the boats when we get to main gate. There is nothing in the current programme that will prevent us from making choices in 2016 about what deterrent capability we want or how many boats we might order. It is self-evident from the decisions that we took during the SDSR to refine the replacement deterrent programme, which allowed us to save and defer £3.2 billion over the next 10 years, that our intent is to pursue value for money rigorously and only commit to expenditure as and when it is required. As agreed in the coalition programme for Government, the Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives to a like-for-like replacement. Yes, it is true that the concept phase was extended in January 2010, which involved some extra cost, but some costs will be transferred from the assessment phase to the concept phase as a result.
What of the calls for scrutiny of the initial gate business case? Parliament does not routinely review internal Ministry of Defence business cases and I have not yet heard a convincing argument that suggests that this programme should be any different. The initial gate business case is not a grand strategic assessment; that happened in 2006 with the White Paper and the vote in the House of Commons in 2007. The initial gate business case is a technical assessment that presents design choices and programme analysis that is reviewed and agreed by technical, financial and procurement experts in MOD, Treasury and Cabinet Office. What we have committed to do once the initial gate business case has been approved is publish a report setting out the key decisions that we have taken, update Parliament on the latest assessment of cost, and explain the steps that we will be taking in the run-up to the main procurement decision in 2016. I hope that that reassures the hon. Lady.
As this is one of the largest programmes in Government, it will be reviewed closely as we move towards main gate, both in the Ministry of Defence and more widely across Whitehall. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced last week, the Government are doing more to tighten up the Ministry of Defence’s internal processes. The Secretary of State for Defence will chair the major projects review board, which by definition will include the replacement submarine programme, and will receive a quarterly report on our major projects to ensure that they are on time and within budget. Where projects are falling behind schedule or budget we will take immediate remedial measures. Those responsible will be brought to account in front of the project board. In addition, we will publish a list every quarter of the major project review board’s “projects of concern”. That way, Parliament, the public and the market can judge how well we and industry are doing in supporting our armed forces while offering value for money to the taxpayers.
Progress on the decisions we have taken during the SDSR, including those on the nuclear deterrent, will be reviewed by the National Security Council. The Government have also established a major projects authority within the Cabinet Office with a specific remit to oversee our portfolio of major projects and assess the health of programmes in it through a combination of quarterly reporting and more focused reviews. The major projects authority will produce an annual report through which Parliament and the public will be able to review our performance. On top of that scrutiny, the National Audit Office has published a report on the deterrent programme and, while it is not for me to task the NAO, I would not be surprised if it were to look again at this programme in the run-up to main gate, giving the Public Accounts Committee a chance to do the same thing.
It will be for the next Government to make decisions about scrutinising the main gate decision. For now, I am confident that we are striking the right balance between delivering the programme and ensuring that we are open about how we are performing. As this debate shows, if hon. Members wish to scrutinise the process, there are many avenues open to do that in our parliamentary democracy—many have already been explored by the Select Committee and many other options exist. Our democracy is more secure because of the Trident programme and our commitment to its successor.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Unpublished Research Reports: Immigration, the Economy and Regeneration
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
Today the Government are publishing a further group of reports presenting the findings from research projects commissioned by the previous Administration. There is a significant backlog of unpublished reports that were produced by the previous Government and over the next few months we will be publishing further reports in groups themed on particular topics.
The reports and findings are of general policy interest, but do not relate to forthcoming policy announcements. We are publishing these documents in the interests of transparency and as part of our freedom of information commitment to publish the results of all commissioned research. For transparency, all concluded research work is being published, though some reports may not be as complete or in the format that DCLG would normally require.
The 10 reports published below represent the findings from research projects at a total cost to taxpayers of £219,597. These findings cover the topics of immigration, the economy and regeneration.
(i) Impact of economic downturn on migration.
This discussion paper by A.E. Green reviews the evidence on the likely impact of an economic downturn on both international migration and migration in different parts of the UK, with particular focus on migrants from the A8 countries (of the 2004 accession to the EU). It observes that for 83% of A8 migrants, the main motivation for coming to Britain was to work and earn money. This report was commissioned in 2008 at a cost of £3,400.
(ii) Immigration and rural economies.
This report by Heather Wells and Paula Lucci considers the impacts and contributions of international migration to rural economies in the UK. The paper finds that there was a substantial increase in the size of the migrant population in rural areas in the four years before the recession, which was driven by a strong demand for migrant labour from particular industries. Immigration has had a significant but small negative impact on the wages of UK workers at the bottom of the occupational distribution. Challenges from immigration include pressure on existing local services and integration within local communities. This report was commissioned in 2009 at a cost of £24,275.
(iii) Measuring international and internal migration from the National Pupil Database.
This report by Ludi Simpson, et al. considers the dispersion of migrant pupils in the UK. The paper finds the number of immigrant pupils in UK schools has increased significantly in the four-year period to 2007-08 and that pupils of African origin tend to be concentrated in inner London and other major metropolitan areas while eastern European and other European pupils arrived since 2003 tend to be found in the more remote rural areas. A table in annex 2 gives a breakdown by local authority. This report was commissioned in 2010 by the last Administration at a cost of £78,500.
(iv) Economic Rationale for Spatial Policies or Why Place Matters.
This paper by Patricia Rice outlines why there are differences between places, and advocates policy that takes this into account. It considers that variations in outcomes for different areas are a result of regional trade and factor mobility, but seeks to explain the underlying differences between areas. This report was commissioned in 2007 at a cost of £2,034.
(v) Addressing the problem of worklessness: The role of regeneration.
This paper by Anne Green, with its focus on worklessness and regeneration considers the complex and challenging real-world roles of mainstream policies and area-based programmes, including the roles of local government, the community and employers. It notes that the neighbourhood level is an appropriate level for outreach to disadvantaged residents, and the voluntary sector can play an important role in facilitating community participation. Partnerships have been costly to develop and support, and have not generated the critical mass of support for the neighbourhoods that it was envisaged. This report was commissioned in 2009 as part of a series of four papers which together cost £11,622.
(vi) Regeneration—What are the problems and what can we achieve in addressing them? Neighbourhood level perspectives from the new deal for communities programme.
This paper by Paul Lawless, with its focus on neighbourhood renewal, draws on evidence from the evaluation of the new deal for communities programme to review the problems faced in the partnership areas and consider both process and change outcomes that regeneration programmes should seek to achieve. This report was commissioned in 2009 as part of a series of four papers which together cost £11,622.
(vii) Regeneration—What are the problems and what can we achieve in addressing them?
This paper by Pete Tyler, with its focus on local economic activity and regeneration, reviews what lies behind the problems faced by deprived places and notes that although rooted in a general failure of supply and demand mechanisms, problems tend to be multi-dimension and persistent and likely to require substantial policy intervention to make an impact. It anticipated that constraints on public expenditure would inevitably mean that regeneration initiatives would be operating in a more difficult environment. This report was commissioned in 2009 as part of a series of four papers which together cost £11,622.
(viii) Regeneration—How should the problem be addressed?
This paper by Stephen Syrett, reviews the weaknesses of past approaches to regeneration, pointing out the over-dominance of centralised structures, the neglect of education and training in deprived areas, the need for greater clarity over the role and relevance of area-based initiatives. Local capacity will only develop if greater scope and freedom is given to local actors to make their own priorities. This report was commissioned in 2009 as part of a series of four papers which together cost £11,622.
(ix) Modelling and forecasting county court claims and orders for mortgage repossessions.
This report by Professor John Muellbauer and Janine Aron was commissioned jointly by the former National Housing and Planning Advice Unit and the UK Spatial Economic Centre. The study explores the determinants of mortgage possession court orders as well as forecasting court orders on a regional basis for England and Wales from 2011 to 2015. It observed that the recent house price and credit boom of 2006-08 had increased the proportion of households with overstretched budgets and over-extended debt relative to their assets. The most important determinant of court claims and orders was found to be the debt to income ratio. This report was commissioned in 2009 at a cost of £30,366.[Official Report, 4 April 2011, Vol. 526, c. 11MC.]
(x) Housing supply revisited: Evidence from international, national, regional, local and company data.
This report by Michael Ball, et al. considers the responsiveness of housing supply to changes in prices and the degree to which planning restrictions and other factors limit this responsiveness. If found that factors other than planning supply influence the responsiveness of housing supply. It suggests that different planning targets are required for each local authority, to reflect local decision making processes. This report was commissioned in 2009 at a cost of £69,400.
At a time when public budgets must be reduced, the new Government want to ensure their research delivers best possible value for money for the taxpayer and that sums expended are reasonable in relation to the public policy benefits obtained. My Department has rigorous scrutiny and challenge processes for commissioned research.
New projects will continue to be scrutinised to ensure the methodology is sound and that all options for funding are explored at an early stage. This includes using existing work from other organisations, joint funding projects with other Departments or organisations and taking work forward in-house.
These reports and findings are of general policy interest, but do not relate to forthcoming policy announcements and are not a reflection of the current Government’s policies and priorities. DCLG is publishing these reports in the interests of transparency.
Copies of these reports are available on the Department for Communities and Local Government website. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House.
Armed Forces Redundancy Process
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
The strategic defence and security review (SDSR) set out in October 2010 long-term plans for our armed forces, based on a detailed analysis of the future risk and threats to our national security, but also recognising the dire fiscal situation inherited by this Government. That new 2020 force structure will be more agile and flexible, better able to respond to new threats such as cyber-warfare, terrorism and managing the consequences of failed or failing states. As the SDSR made clear, however, that force structure will require fewer people: the combined size of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force will fall by some 17,000 by 2015. These changes are about delivering the future force we need, not about today’s operational capabilities.
Some of this reduction will be achieved by slowing down recruitment—but the long-term health of the services requires that we maintain a steady influx of new recruits. And so we estimate that up to around 11,000 personnel will need to be made redundant. In formal terms, redundancy schemes for the armed forces are compulsory. But there will be scope for individuals to volunteer to be considered for redundancy and where possible we will meet our manpower target through volunteers. But some difficult choices are sadly inevitable.
The SDSR set out some changes to our long-term requirements for fast jets, multi-engine aircraft and helicopters. As a result, our future requirement for pilots has reduced. Some 514 individuals currently being trained are potentially affected by these changes. Starting today and over the next 10 days, those trainee pilots will be informed of their future in the RAF. Some 344 will continue with their pilot training. But I very much regret to inform the House that up to 170 will not. Some of those individuals will be offered alternative appointments. But sadly many will have to be made redundant.
Today, the RAF will also publish in some detail the specialist trades in which reductions in numbers need to be achieved, and in which it will be seeking volunteers for redundancy. Detailed information on the terms on offer, including the compensation package, will be made available online. Similar information will be published for the Army and Navy on 4 April 2011.
Once the deadline for response has passed, selection boards will sit for each of the three services to determine whether those who have volunteered should be released and which other individuals should also regrettably be made redundant to enable the manning targets to be achieved. We aim to inform all those individuals selected for redundancy of that decision in September 2011—on 1 September for the Army and RAF, and 30 September for the Navy. Those voluntarily leaving the armed forces will do so within six months, non-volunteers will do so within a year.
The Department will need to balance extremely carefully the needs of the individual with the needs of our armed forces. And I am determined that this very difficult process will be handled with the utmost sensitivity and professionalism. No one who is deployed on operations, recently returned from operations or is preparing to deploy on operations will be made redundant unless they have volunteered. Nor will those undergoing rehabilitation from injury be considered. But inevitably some incredibly difficult decisions will have to be made to ensure the long-term health and balance of our armed forces.
In Afghanistan, and as has been seen in recent days in Libya, our armed forces constantly perform great acts of heroism, selflessness and valour to keep us safe. As a country, we have an absolute responsibility to ensure that those who risk their lives in that way are properly looked after while they serve our country but equally importantly when they return to civilian life. For all those leaving the armed forces as a result of these changes, every effort will be made to assist in what can often be a difficult transition. A comprehensive package of support and advice on housing, finance and finding a job will be made available. Over the coming months. Ministers will scrutinise those plans in detail, working closely with domestic Departments, to ensure they are as good as can be achieved. Our people deserve nothing less.
Armed Forces Pay Review Body (Public Appointments)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Mr Paul Kernaghan CBE QPM, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Ibbotson KBE CB DSC and Professor Peter Dolton as members of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, each for a three-year term of office commencing on 1 March 2011. The appointments have been made in accordance with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments code of practice.
Written Parliamentary Question (Correction)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
I regret to inform the House that there was an inaccuracy in my written answer (31219) given on 20 December 2010, Official Report, columns 987-88W.
The response said that that there were 265 civilian staff employed in London by the MOD currently not paid at a rate equivalent to or above the London living wage. I can confirm that excluding trading funds, there were no civilian staff employed in London by the MOD currently not paid at a rate equivalent to or above the London living wage.
British Citizenship (War Crimes Screening)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I have made the Equality (War Crimes etc.) Arrangements 2011 and the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) (War Crimes etc.) Arrangements 2011 to enable the Secretary of State to subject applications from certain nationalities for British citizenship to more rigorous scrutiny than others for the purposes of determining whether the applicant has committed, been complicit in the commission of, or otherwise been associated with, the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
The Equality (War Crimes etc.) Arrangements 2011 are made under paragraph (l)(l)(d) of schedule 23 to the Equality Act 2010, and replace the Race Relations (Nationality) (War Crimes etc.) Arrangements 2007, made under section 41 of the Race Relations Act 1976. The corresponding Race Relations (Northern Ireland) (War Crimes etc.) Arrangements 2011 are made under article 40 paragraph 2(c) Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.
The condition for subjecting these applications to more rigorous scrutiny is that the applicant is a national of a state specified on a list approved personally by the Minister for the purpose of the arrangements.
I have now reviewed and approved this list. I am satisfied that the conditions set out in the arrangements are met in respect of the countries on the list.
The arrangements will remain in force until revoked. I will review the arrangements and the list on an annual basis.
I am placing copies of the arrangements in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.
Grand Committee
Pensions Bill [HL]
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley)
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.
Clause 1 : Equalisation of and increase in pensionable age for men and women
Amendment 1
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the Minister and his team, who have been very helpful and accommodating as we have gone through our amendments. There have been some government amendments, and I am grateful for their explanations.
The purpose of this group of amendments should be very clear. Collectively they seek to review the Bill’s acceleration of the equalisation of the state pension age for men and women. They preserve the existing timetable set out in the Pensions Act 1995, which means that women will reach pensionable age at 65 if born after 5 April 1955. For women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1955, state pension age will gradually increase over a decade, rising one year in every two.
The state pension age needs to rise in order to pay for a more generous basic state pension linked to earnings. This was a principle established by the Labour Government in 2007 and one that we continue to support. By retaining the table contained in the Pensions Act 1995, the increase in state pension age to 66 for both men and women is negated. However, our Amendment 4 brings forward the increase for men and women to 66, accelerating this by four years to between 2020 and 2022.
The amendments make no specific proposals for changing the current timetable for increasing SPA to 67 between 2034 and 2036 and then to 68 between 2044 and 2046, legislated for in the Pensions Act 2007, although we accept—as do the Government, I believe—that increasing longevity will eventually cause that to be revisited. We do not challenge the life expectancy projections that the Government have used to underpin their policy changes. We do, of course, accept that life has literally moved on since 2004, and the data which underpin the Turner settlement have moved on. Average life expectancy for those who reach 65 in 2026 has increased by 1.5 years for men and 1.6 years for women. Our challenge to the Government and their response to these changes is to the speed and equity of the adjustments that the Bill seeks to make, particularly for women.
When the Conservative Government legislated to equalise the state pension age for men and women at 65 in 1995, they gave 15 years’ notice from the beginning of the change and indeed 25 years’ notice of the end of that change. When the last Labour Government legislated to increase the state pension age to 66 in 2007, they gave 17 years’ notice to the start of the process. In this Bill, the coalition Government give just six years.
In setting out their policy objectives, the Government instance the need to take account of the increase in life expectancy, the need for spending on the state pension to be sustainable, the need for intergenerational fairness, and the need for fairness in the balance of support given by the working age population. We do not disagree with these aspirations, but consider that there is another policy objective that has been overlooked: fairness for those going through the transition, with sufficient notice for them to have the chance to adjust to changed expectations of receiving the state pension age at a later date. We know from the impact assessment that the timetable proposed in the Bill will affect some 5 million people; 500,000 will have to wait more than a year extra to receive their state pension, all of them women. Of these, 300,000 women will have to wait for more than 18 months and 33,000 will have to wait for two years. Contrast this with our proposal in this amendment, which affects 1.2 million fewer people. It will affect about the same number of men and women, and no one will have to have an increase in state pension age of more than a year. In terms of intergenerational equity, measured as a proportion of adult life spent in receipt of a state pension, the timetable we propose has a smoother transition to the long-term trend of 32.5 per cent for men and 34.8 per cent for women.
It is accepted that the Government’s proposal will save more in resources, although the savings do not begin to accrue until 2016-17. As the impact assessment makes clear, there is a judgment to be made. Indeed, we thought that it was a judgment that the coalition Government had made when declaring that the date when the state pension age started to rise to 66 would not be sooner than 2020 for women. Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to say why the Government have changed their mind on that issue. Just look at some of the unfairness. A woman born in April 1953 will be able to get her pension at 62 years and 11 months. A woman born in April 1954 will have to wait until she is 66. Many women and men affected by these changes would already have plans under way for hitting what they thought was their state pension age. We have heard from many who have reduced hours or given up work and taken on caring responsibilities for parents or grandchildren. The position for women is compounded because of the disadvantage that this generation of women has experienced in terms of lower earnings, interrupted careers and restricted access to private pension schemes. They have less flexibility to respond to the changes that see their state pension age rise by six years between 2010 and 2020, compared to just one for men.
I take this opportunity to particularise some of this unfairness. I am sure that other noble Lords have received, as we have, a host of representations from people and I would like to quote from two. One is as follows:
“Yes, I’m now 55, with only a small additional work pension on top of the State pension to come, because I wasn’t able to contribute anything extra to my employers scheme when I was younger—my husband & I separated and I was a single parent of 2 children and there just wasn’t the spare cash. I used to be a part-time worker—part-time women used to be discriminated against in not being able to participate in pension schemes (look up ‘Beswick Cases’ and the ‘Barber judgements’). So like many women the same age I’ve grown up in one era ‘Your husband will take care of you financially’, then things changed. I would have been able to retire with a full pension (such as it is) at 60; then, the Equalities legislation was moving it slowly towards 65 but at least I had due warning”.
Another person makes a point that I highlight:
“The law when I was younger prevented me from paying into a private scheme when I was not working or was working part time which happened because due to rearing children and the ill health of one of them, which he will have on and off throughout his lifetime. I feel it was a waste of money buying the extra NI contributions because since I bought them the government is now proposing to give me no pension at all for 2 of the years for which I thought I was buying a full pension”.
I pick up on that point in particular. The noble Lord will be aware of the buy-back opportunities—six years’ buy-back with class 3 contributions. He may also be aware of the further buy-back opportunities that were argued for and recommended to the House by my noble friend Lady Hollis. I imagine that more than a few people found themselves buying back extra class 3 contributions to secure a full state pension, on the assumption that they would give up working at a known date, given that the state pension age was set down in the 1995 Act. Now, like this person, they may find themselves waiting an extra two years for their state pension, continuing to work to be able to survive. By working, they would pay their national insurance contributions, and the buy-back that they had already made would be a complete waste of money. It seems to me a point to pick up and pursue further. I was alerted to it particularly by this representation. We need to reflect on what notice and information were given to people that caused them to go through these buy-back arrangements and to waste a not insignificant amount of money.
I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, that his amendments look on the face of it to be somewhere between the Government’s position and ours, but doubtless he will expand on that when he introduces them. It would be helpful if he could give us an analysis, in terms of the increase in the state pension age, of those affected who will have to wait less than a year for their state pension in comparison to the current arrangement, those waiting more than a year, those waiting a year and a half, and whether there are any up to the two-year mark.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I should point out that, if this amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 1A, for reasons of pre-emption.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, perhaps I may respond to the very helpful introduction by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and apologise to the Committee pre-emptively, as this is my first occasion in Committee, at least at this end of the Palace. I thank him for raising matters of substantial public concern in a moderate way, and shall try to talk around them and to explain matters connected with my own amendment. It will be obvious to the more perceptive Members of the Committee that, despite the heroic efforts of the Clerks with occasional interventions from myself, in this case it probably was the printer who was responsible for certain infelicities, one of which appears in Amendment 3A, which refers to 2010. This should of course be 2020. In Amendment 4A, there are two references to 2010 which should be 2020. Though I may take the Conservative Whip, not even I would claim to wish to legislate for the past. Those will be self-evident as slips of the pen.
If we unpack the principle of this, we always begin with a troubling element to do with disturbing the contributory principle, or disturbing people’s settled expectations. In a pure world, which ours is not, we would probably wish not to disturb anything from the moment when somebody entered the scheme as a young person and was paying on a certain assumption, in the hope that 40 years later they would receive their due pension. That was perhaps the philosophy of 1948. I do not think it is the practice of 2011. It is clear that, for a whole variety of reasons, successive Governments have changed that, particularly in relation to the inexorable march of longevity and the pressures on the public finances.
I was very grateful to hear the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, making that point specifically, and of course we all make it. As he rightly intuited, my effort is in a field which is certainly somewhat exploratory, and I am exploring it in parallel with a number of Parliamentary Questions. We do not quite know the distribution, but we do know, on the Government’s proposals, that half a million women—of course it is only women—are affected by phase 1 of this change, and then men and women are affected by the move in the overall pension entitlement thereafter. There is an inhibition because it is felt, perhaps for reasons of concern about European sensitivities, that we are dealing with all the women in one go, and then moving forward together. The Minister may wish to comment further on that in a moment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord McKenzie with regard to this section of the Bill. I have received many letters from various organisations about the Bill—like most people, I expect—and one thing that they all have in common is that they are all very concerned about what they regard as the acceleration of the timetable for women. I have had correspondence from Saga, which tells me that it believes that 2.6 million women will be adversely affected. It points out that the women concerned had not expected such an accelerated timetable. The TUC has also said that it is concerned about the acceleration and its effect upon women. Age UK is taking a similar posture, and so is Which?.
A number of noble Lords who contributed to our Second Reading debate concentrated on what they saw as the unfairness to women in the accelerated timetable. The amendments proposed by my noble friend are an attempt to deal with that, for which I thank him. I hope that the Government will be prepared to take on board that this is a real concern about a Bill that basically many people accept. Practically everyone who has written to me says that they accept the whole idea of auto-involvement—of people being in the pension industry, so to speak, and being pension savers for very often the first time in their lives. It therefore seems a shame that we might get some difficulty and some opposition to a Bill that I basically accept. I accept that we have to have a different age of retirement and so on because of longevity and the various other arguments that have been advanced in favour of the Bill, but on the other hand there is a lot of concern about the accelerated timetable. I hope that the Government can do something to help us in that regard.
Baroness Murphy
My Lords, I very much support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, but I have to say I am very attracted to the halfway position, as it were, of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. The difficulty is, as Machiavelli said, that you should not have a second line of defence—that you should just go straight through—so I am nervous in saying that I like the compromise idea but there is a basic serious unfairness to a very small group of women. We are talking about a one-off event over a period of three to four years, I think it is, and it would be a good idea to address this. If the halfway house makes more sense in overall financial terms, though, I would support that.
Lord German
There is a general sense that there is a group of people who are being treated unfairly because of the rate of acceleration, although maybe I will explain later that they shall actually be decelerating towards their pension. The general aspect here is that something needs to be done to ameliorate that unfairness. One of the key ways where that could take place, and I hope that the Government are minded to tell us about this, is to seek an upward revision and a much enhanced state pension as a right for all. That is an issue that would affect people in a much more radical way if it were the case. I have read many of the newspaper articles about the uprating of the state pension, but this seems to be almost a hand-in-glove issue. If you use the financing that comes from this measure and put it into a pot, you will be doing something to ameliorate the situation.
I am keen to examine the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Boswell about trying to make sure that we do not overly deal badly and unfairly with a particular cohort of people. The issue primarily relates to a singular group of women. This is a one-off group, because there will not normally be a similar group of people who are so badly affected by the one-year to two-year increase in such a rapid space of time. After all, there is an acceleration of something like three months in age and four months in pension age. You could not get much faster than that, unless you went to three months and 29 days, or whatever; you would be talking shades. It is a very fast rate of acceleration for a particular cohort of women, who will disappear when the system has worked its way through. That acceleration will not be apparent.
There must therefore be some measure which the Government can take to either improve the post-retirement abilities of women in this cohort or lengthen the timetable somewhat to accommodate the interests of a particularly badly-done-by group. When two people whose ages differ by as little as three, four or eight months, or whatever, stand shoulder to shoulder within a year, they will find that the differential in the rate of change in their retirement age is magnified. I hope that the Minister will reflect upon the amendments before us and try to see whether measures can be taken to ameliorate the situation of this group of women.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, like everyone else who has spoken, I support the amendment of my noble friend. We all agree—and I am sure that we will come back to this issue, following the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German—that what we also need is a decent state pension: the £140 pension espoused by his honourable friend Steve Webb in the other place, which would be transforming for both men and women in retirement. However, that does not address the issue here, which is about not just equalisation—no one disputes that—but the speeding up of that equalisation, including the very speedy additional year.
First, I suggest that that makes some easy assumptions that are false. Secondly, it has some unintended consequences that have perhaps not been considered. The first easy assumption is that because we are all living longer, we must work longer to support our old age. One understands the stats about the number of workers relative to the number of pensioners and the additional costs in the future of long-term care. However, increased longevity is not actually accompanied by increased years of full and healthy living, whereby one enjoys leisure, holidays and time with grandchildren. All the research shows that those extra years of longevity come with extra infirmity, particularly for those who are worse off. It is very much a class, as well as a gender, issue. Since the Black report, the health inequalities of those in the bottom E and D classes have widened, not narrowed, relatively—not absolutely, as obviously they have improved for us all.
Those extra years come with extra infirmity—fortunately not bed-bound infirmity necessarily requiring residential care but second-order infirmity, including the need for help with, for example, cleaning, transport, aids, appliances and care to allow you to stay in your own home. The implication is that the healthy years of retirement will be squeezed and reduced as retirement age increases, because you will not enjoy extra years of healthy living at the other end as a result of increased longevity. The first thing to address is the fact that we are squeezing the number of years people, particularly poorer people, can hope to expect to enjoy in retirement. The second assumption or myth is that women, as a result, will stay in the labour market longer and until they retire. That retirement age will increase first to 65 and then to 66. I do not know why we think that this will happen because it has not just been connected to the state retirement pension or even to the fact that employers have traditionally got rid of people at the age of 65. It has never been true for men. The majority of men leave the labour market at around 62 or 63 years old. It is even lower in Europe. In other words, half of all men have been on benefit for at least a year, sometimes two years or more, before they draw their state pension. Men compared to women have more secure and better paid employment. Therefore, they have more incentive to stay on until the age of 65. But they cannot and they do not.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I support Amendment 1 and others in the group in the name of my noble friend Lord McKenzie. As so many speakers have already said, the amendment is not an argument in principle about whether the state pension age needs to rise to keep fiscal sustainability in the state pension system. It is not an argument in principle about whether or not the timetable for the move to age 66, 67 or 68 should be revisited. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, I do not even argue that one cannot disturb settled expectations; in the face of the longevity trends, it is not sustainable to make that assumption. This is not even an argument about whether or not women’s state pension costs or poor people’s pension credit costs should make a contribution to reducing the fiscal deficit in this Parliament, because the Government’s proposals mean that the savings would flow from 1916—sorry, not 1916; oh that that were true. I mean 2016.
The amendment, however, is an argument about an important principle that is valid not only in this instance but whenever one revisits accelerating the state pension age, which might be the case on the subsequent increases—that is, that the manner and the timing of any state pension age increase has to give people fair and sufficient notice to adjust and minimise any disproportionate impact on particular groups of people. The acceleration of the equalisation timetable does not meet that principle.
I asked myself three questions. Who is impacted by the accelerated timetable? Are particular groups disproportionately impacted? Can those impacted reasonably adjust to their loss in the time given? I invite the Committee to look at those questions as well. In terms of those impacted, I do not want to rehearse all the figures that we have shared about the position of a particular group of women in their late 50s, but it is worth confirming that it is not a small number—500,000 will have their state pension age deferred for at least 12 months, and 300,000 for 18 months to two years.
With regard to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, it is important to see the distributional impact. I would not want the situation to be like the water in a balloon, where you think you have dealt with it moving one way but you have just created a consequence in another. If progress can be made, though, progress is valuable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, the purpose of the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, is to delay any change to the age of 66 until women’s state pension age is increased to 65 on the current schedule. The amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Boswell aim for, if I may use the expression, a third way, by proposing a timetable that increases the state pension age to 66—one year later than the Government propose, but one year earlier than proposed by the noble Lord.
I begin, however, by welcoming the fact that, in each case, the amendments propose to bring forward the increase to 66, in the first case by four years and in the second case by five. This reflects widespread recognition that the current timetable for raising the state pension age to 66, which was approved by this House and in another place less than four years ago, has already been overtaken by events. I will not, therefore, detain proceedings by repeating the case for a faster rise in the state pension age, which I am pleased to note that my noble friend supports. I will just go to the point made by the noble Lord about the coalition agreement, and I say upfront that my honourable friend the Minister for Pensions has said in another place that women’s state pension age does not start rising to 66 until 2020.
I will endeavour to explain why, notwithstanding the impact which we recognise our proposals will have on a small minority of women, we believe that we should not delay until 2020 before we start on the path to 66. We estimate that our proposals will save £30 billion, in constant price terms, in state pensions expenditure, after taking account of all of the increased spending on working-age benefits—a point which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was concerned about. The difference between what we have proposed and what is proposed under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, is about £10 billion, which is a very significant sum. It is equivalent to one-third of the total savings to the public purse from our proposals. In proposing to forego this £10 billion, the noble Lord is perhaps losing sight of what such a sum represents. To help put this in context, in order to save even half of that today, which is broadly the annual savings from raising the state pension age by a year, we would, for example, have to cut the education budget by 10 per cent over the spending review savings. The estimated benefits from additional tax and national insurance receipts would also be cut by nearly a third, from £8.1 billion to £5.6 billion. The alternative proposition put forward by my noble friend would also significantly reduce the savings from our proposals, in this case by more than £7 billion.
The question is: who picks up the tab if we delay until 2022 or 2021? I suggest that the answer is: our children and our grandchildren. The point has been made that our proposals will make no contribution to reducing the budget deficit in this Parliament. This line of argument implies that, once the immediate fiscal crisis is out of the way, we can afford to relax. Although we expect public debt to be on a declining path by 2015-16, it will still be well above the pre-crisis levels. The OBR forecasts that public debt will be 67 per cent of GDP in that year, compared to less than 40 per cent five years ago. We need to do all that we can to keep debt down, and hold it down over the medium term, to ensure that we have the capacity to respond to future fiscal shocks. The cost of increasing longevity will not, unfortunately, stop increasing in 2015.
I turn to the impact on women, which is at the core of these amendments. The argument is that the adjustment we propose is unfair to women in their late 50s. I do not dispute the fact that a gender gap still exists in pension provision—a point made by several noble Lords. However, the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, do not suggest that we should delay increasing the state pension age to 66 until the gap is closed. Nor do I dispute that, because of our proposals, some women will need to work for longer than they may have otherwise planned to. I am prepared to say that I do not think that that is a bad thing. We need people to work longer because they are living longer. We need them to contribute more and, by working longer, they can save more for their retirement. Working longer has not just financial benefits for the individual; people of working age are generally healthier when they are employed than when they are not. Some of these women will indeed increase their pension saving as a result. Only a small proportion, some 4 per cent, of women currently aged between 55 and 57 say they are already retired; while around 70 per cent are still in employment.
Let me deal with two of the issues raised by noble Lords. On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on the cliff edge for men as well, I do not see a cliff edge in our proposals. The whole point is that there is a gradual increase. Anyone, man or woman, who is on pension credit, must already be above women’s state pension age, and by definition they will not lose out or have to move off pension credit as the state pension age increases.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
That means that a man who is currently on pension credit, who qualifies for it shortly after his 60th birthday, will hold on to that for the next five years, while women’s pension age increases. Therefore, a woman of a similar age could have half his income.
Lord Freud
The point is that once you are on the system there is a gradual move up, so you do not bounce on and off it. You are on that system. Clearly, we are looking at two systems—a pensions system and a working-age support system. Nothing changes while we have that gradual increase for the individuals concerned. People will join the system at different points, depending on their age. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the Government’s position on either of the amendments.
Let me deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on buying back class 3 voluntary national insurance contributions. There has been a lot of debate about this matter during proceedings on various Bills, as he will be more aware than me. I believe that it took two Bills to allow people, mainly women, to buy additional years, going back to 1975. However, the noble Lord will also recall that this particular easement applied only to people who reached state pension age before 2015. People must weigh up their options when deciding to buy additional national insurance contributions, and we do not have any plans at this moment to provide refunds.
Let me turn to the facts about women’s life expectancy. Women will on average still draw their state pension for longer than men after the pension ages are equal—a fact that was rather put to one side during our debate before the Recess. It is important to record that, at the time that the decisions were made about when to raise the pension age to 66, a woman born in 1954 would be expecting to draw her state pension at 64 for an average of 24 years. Thanks to increasing life expectancy she will still on average draw her state pension for 24 years, even with the rise to 66 proposed in the Bill.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I should like to push the noble Lord again about the timescale. I think that there has been unanimity, pretty much, that the state pension age for women and men should be equalised. The debate has been about the increased speed of it and, therefore, the degree to which women can reasonably have been expected to make provision for it, and to take into account whether they are in waged or unwaged work. As we know, many women will be in heavy but unwaged work at that point in their lives.
Is the noble Lord aware of a similar instance some time back? In the 1982 social security legislation—I am not sure whether it was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, but it might have been—the Government proposed, with some intellectual justification, to remove the right of widows to claim 100 per cent of SERPs entitlement, rather than the conventional 50 per cent as per the status of a widow. That was due to come into effect 20 years on, in 2002. The Government were going to give 20 years’ notice, except that they did not. They forgot about it entirely. Suddenly, in about 1997 or 1998, that issue landed four square on my desk. It was clear that women did not have sufficient notice and that three or even five years’ notice, as it would have been in 1997 for 2002, was regarded by the noble Lord’s party as unacceptable, even though it had been an omission of publicity.
We all agreed that five years’ notice of something which would happen only to a group who could not foresee their future, because it was about widowhood, and that they would inherit only 50 per cent rather than 100 per cent of SERPs as a result, was far too truncated and should be extended. Therefore, we brought back to your Lordships’ House, with all-party agreement, provision that that change should start from 2010 and that for each two years a 10 per cent SERPs reduction should take place. So, if you became a widow in 2012, you would get 90 per cent; in 2014, I think I am right in saying, you would get 80 per cent; and so on. Finally, you would get to 50 per cent by 2020.
In other words, we gave a further 15 years’ notice over and beyond what the Government of the day had originally intended because they had failed to publicise it. We were told that this was unfair and unreasonable, and might even be subject to judicial review, because people were not aware of what was going to happen. Five years’ notice at the point at which we could have escalated the publicity would not have been deemed to have been enough. Will the noble Lord care to comment on this story?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for that. I have to confess that I was not aware of those events in 1982. I was aware of some events—I think that I was writing a Lex column in 1982 so I was not completely out of the picture. The noble Baroness makes the point that there were five years of notice. Clearly, the smallest amount of notice that we have in this instance is 6.5 years for those who are affected at the tightest level. We believe that that period, which admittedly is shorter than other periods that we have seen, will still allow women to plan for their retirement.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank every noble Lord who has spoken in what has been a well informed debate. When I hear my noble friends in full flight, it almost makes me glad that I am not the Minister any more. Pretty much everyone who spoke, apart from the Minister, recognised the unfairness embedded in these proposals and was supportive of one way or another—either a timetable or mitigation factors—to address that unfairness. The Minister focused principally on the differential costs between our proposals in this amendment, the Government’s position and the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Of course there is a cost, but judgments have to be made, and the Government will have made a judgment on this. Why did they not do things even faster than they proposed, which would have saved even more money? Presumably the answer is that they made a judgment about what they thought was fair and where the balance lay in all this. We are saying that see the balance lying in a somewhat different position. Let us put this in context. We are looking at about £10 billion not as an annual hit, but over a period of years and when we get to 2016-17, GDP will be of the order of £2 trillion a year. Of course, there needs to be fiscal responsibility, but we think that the Government have got the balance wrong in this.
The noble Lord said that he thinks that it is a good thing that one ramification is that women will be working longer, which will make them healthier and potentially better off. The issue is whether people have the time to adjust. Many of the case studies that we have are of people who have already made their dispositions on an assumption about when they can access the state pension. That upheaval is creating problems. I was interested in what the noble Lord said in response to my noble friend about the cliff edge and continuing entitlement to pension credit. That was particularly illuminating and I am grateful for it. I note that we are going to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, about the EU aspects of that later; I look forward to that.
Like the noble Lord and my noble friends Lady Turner and Lady Drake, I think that the people who are contacting us about this are not blind to the changes in longevity. People accept that the issue has to be addressed, but we come back to the speed and manner with which it is being done. That is the bone of contention. That is why we will continue to press the matter.
A number of the points raised in the debate—the pension credit point in particular—will feature in subsequent amendments, so I shall not go into detail on them. The noble Lord, Lord German, made a point that my noble friend Lady Hollis picked up on when he said that part of the mitigation would be to have a decent state pension of £140 a week. That would be good if it were achievable, but it is down the track on any basis. How far down the track, we may elicit a bit further during the course of our proceedings; or perhaps not. However, it does not mitigate what is happening to women now and over the next few years, with people not being able to access the state pension that they thought they were going to get, and which it had been legislated that they would get.
We are bound to return to this issue on Report. On one basis or another, I hope that we can find common cause, whether the middle route preferred by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, or our proposal. I hope that we can stick with this consensus and get some real change, because it will make a real difference. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
“Revision of increase in pensionable age for men and women
(1) The increase in pensionable age for men and women may be revised in the case of illness or infirmity, or of particularly arduous or dangerous employment.
(2) This revision shall not involve loss of state pension rights.”
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I am attempting to follow on from what I said at Second Reading, when we discussed the Bill in its entirety. I said at that time that there were many people, mostly men, who wanted to work on and who enjoyed the jobs they were doing, and did not object at all to working on. I made the point, however, that not all jobs or all people were the same. There were instances where I thought that there should be provision for some flexibility, and that is what my wording seeks. It may not be particularly marvellous wording and I am not committed to it, but I have some concern about the issues raised by it.
There are numerous people—mostly those who have manual skills but both men and women—who perform work that, if it is not done, we would notice and we would no doubt complain about it. We complain if our hospitals and schools are not properly cleaned and if we cannot get work done on the maintenance of our homes, if we want somebody to do it. These are the sort of people who, generally speaking, do not have a great deal of educational attainment, and whose skills are manual. They often, at the end of their working lives, look forward very much to being able to retire at what was the standard retirement age, but they now find that they are expected to work for longer, and in many cases they do not want to do so. In many cases they feel that enough is enough. They have had enough working time doing the sort of arduous, not particularly interesting and perhaps even back-breaking job that they have been doing, and they want the opportunity to retire. We want to make provision for people like that to be able to retire earlier. Often they have health problems of one sort or another. That is made clear in my amendment, where I say,
“case of illness or infirmity”.
My noble friend Lady Hollis has already drawn attention to the fact that there are many instances of, and much information available about, the ways in which some poorer people at the end of their lives are subject to ill health of one sort or another, and who should therefore not be expected to continue to work in order to acquire entitlement to their state pension, and certainly not when more years are required. That applies equally to women. Again, as I have said, if you have been doing a job cleaning, you may not want to go on and on until you are 66 or whatever. Certainly, although lighter work might be available, they might not be able to do it. I remember talking to a cleaner who said, “I have not got much education. I am not very good at reading or writing. I could not do another sort of job; I can only do this sort of work”. These people are valuable to us. We notice it very much, and do not like it, if they are not there to do the work that we expect in order to keep our lives reasonably comfortable. I therefore think that arrangements should be made for some flexibility in relation to people doing arduous and sometimes dangerous work. We do not want elderly people clambering up ladders in order to do construction work. That is not a good idea, and it might not even be safe for them to do it. We ought to have a degree of flexibility. I am not wedded to this wording, but that is what I am after, and it is worth considering.
Baroness Drake
I express my sympathy with the sentiments that concern my noble friend Lady Turner in her amendment. As we can see from the previous debate, the acceleration of the equalisation timetable is disproportionate in its impact on the poorest and on those with disabilities, many of whom will have worked in manually demanding professions. I look to speak to that issue in my Amendment 7. Although I have great sympathy with her concerns, I am not sure whether the state pension age is the right mechanism for recognising the disparity in life experience that people have, and it may take some time to reduce that disparity of experience or outcomes as a result of working life experiences. Certainly, initiatives aimed at improving health generally and reducing the disparities between socioeconomic groups and geographies—because that can be quite distinctive as well—are important, because I have a great deal of sympathy with the point made by my noble friend Lady Hollis, who said that when you look closely at the figures, certainly for lower socioeconomic groups, the healthy life expectancy rate of improvement is not as great. One does not absolutely know how that will evolve over time, which is why it is important that the Government retain initiatives aimed at reducing existing health disparities.
Flexibility in working arrangements is also extremely important because, regarding scrapping the default retirement age—of which I approve—and other stated policies to improve the working position of older people, it is one thing to have a policy but it is quite another challenge to deliver the changes and cultures in working practices at the work face to deliver the flexibility in working arrangements that you need for older people. Certainly, changing employers’ practices and attitudes is important. Those may be more effective mechanisms in reducing that disparity over the long term.
Having said that, if ill health disparity persists between socioeconomic groups, and one does not know how that will evolve—in terms of ill health the early signs are that those disparities could persist—a Government may well want to look at the qualifying age for pension credit to deal with those issues, where it is not possible for someone with ill health to address the disadvantaged-income position that they will be in. The Government should certainly remain open to that, depending on how the figures evolve.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
I wish briefly to comment on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. She is on to a substantive issue of concern: that there are clear occupational differences which, in a sense, mirror some of the concerns that many of us across the parties would have in relation to differential health outcomes between people with different occupations. In a sense, that supports some of the points that have been made about relative gender disadvantage. We understand why the Bill is conceived as it is, but those are issues that are entirely proper to raise in Committee.
I am not enthused by the text of the amendment, not least because I am not a Treasury official, and I notice that it provides a power to revise but does not explicitly state that there should be a power to revise downwards. Knowing one or two Treasury officials, they might have a go at the opposite. More seriously, there are concerns about whether we should differentiate the pensions and benefits system by different occupational groups, in the way that some of our continental neighbours have done. I may be old fashioned, but I would be reluctant to do that. Whether we could define the categories in any coherent way that did not give rise to further anomalies or whether this is the right approach, I am sure there is a problem which the noble Baroness is right to draw to the Committee’s attention. For example, I am sure that there are lots of issues in the construction industry or agriculture, which I know well, whereby we can try to mitigate and improve occupational health. We should do that, but I am not sure that a vehicle that is about the state pension age is the appropriate one to do it.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
If I may, I want to use the amendment to raise an issue that has been touched on before but which needs to be re-emphasised, although I am sure that noble Lords are well aware of it. That is the differing work patterns, whether waged or unwaged, of women and of men through their working-aged lives.
We all recognise as appropriate that women, even those with children once the children are old enough, should be encouraged to enter the labour market. I have no problems with that at all; I think that it brings independence, increased income, sociability and all sorts of other life chances. Also, it encourages other members of the family to realise that work is indeed an option and appropriate for them in years to come. I have no problem with that, but that is the position of only about 60 to 70 per cent of women. When we talk about them being in work, we are including part-time work as well as full-time work. The number of women in full-time work is relatively very low—mostly among lone parents rather than married women, because married women tend to work fewer hours although more of them do some part-time work.
A group has been hinted at who are doing some of the most heavy-ended work of the lot without anything other than a most trivial benefit income attached to it. That is what I call heavy-end caring. I attach this to my noble friend's amendment. I do not have an easy answer for what should be done about it, except to say that I would like to see an age-related premium attached. Taking a woman who is perhaps in her early 60s at the moment, she is likely, if she is a carer—and several million of them will be—to be caring for someone in their upper 80s. We know that one person in three over the age of 85 is likely to suffer from dementia, which will become increasingly severe although their physical health may remain. We also know that another one of those three aged over 85 is likely to be experiencing severe physical health problems, although their longevity may expand. So she—and it will almost always be a she—will be involved in that heavy-end caring.
I am delighted that the previous Government have allowed for those doing what I call lighter-end caring of 20 hours a week to come into the NI system without payment—although, probably rightly, without paying a carer's allowance. Think about those women who currently receive a carer's allowance of about £57 a week, together with the right to earn up to £100 if they can manage it. The effect of what I call heavy-end caring—by that I am talking about 50 or 60 hours a week—is that, first, it almost certainly breaks the health of the carer. All the experience of caring is that the help of the carer suffers seriously.
Secondly, the carer’s savings run down. She is usually caring for another family member, probably her parents or possibly the parents of her husband. In order to make their life tolerable, she is using her money. What savings she may have will help to keep them afloat as well as herself. Thirdly, she will suffer, as a result of heavy-end caring, increasing isolation, so that when she comes to need care in turn there will be few people able or willing to care for her.
Finally, as a result of all that, given her caring record, she has become in the eyes of an employer someone who is tired, has been out of the waged labour market for perhaps 15 years, has poor physical health and has perhaps suffered, as a result of bereavement, from depression. She is then expected to go into the labour market, but she is effectively unemployable. Even if she were willing, able, fit, healthy and financially buoyant to re-enter the world of work, it will be very difficult for her to do so.
The women who are being asked to stay in the labour market between 60 and 65 are precisely that group who are doing what I call heavy-end caring. It is caring that gets heavier as they get older, because the person cared for is getting older and is more likely to have Alzheimer's and severe problems of longevity. I do not have an easy answer, except to say that if we cannot—as we obviously should not—keep women's pension age at 60, I would like some age-related premium or some version of what my noble friend mentioned: some recognition of carers’ responsibilities.
We are too easily assuming that women are in the waged labour market and will stay there for up to an extra six years. That is true for men; it is not true and never will be true for women who expect and embrace with grace the heavy-end job of caring which, as I said, will make them poorer, possibly break their health, may leave them isolated and almost invariably unable to re-enter the world of work at 63 or 64, when the person for whom they have cared has finally died.
I hope that, between now and Report, my noble friend can in conjunction with us think of ways to address that, because I think that those women will find themselves in a very bad situation.
Baroness Murphy
My Lords, one cannot help but sympathise with the case put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. I think it is what we would call the plumber’s knees problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is addressing another issue entirely. However, I am concerned about the procedures that would have to be put in place to give effect to the provision. We already have a vast machinery of state tribunals assessing when people do this and when they are entitled to that. If we were to vary the state pension age, through whatever reasonable means, you can bet your bottom dollar that a bureaucracy of tribunals would grow up to implement it, just as we have had now for other areas. Therefore, this needs addressing; certainly what has been called heavy-end caring needs addressing. In the case of the terrible differential between people who work in very physical environments and those who do not, where there is clearly often an age-related difficulty, this does not seem to be the mechanism.
If I may, I put in my epidemiologist’s tuppenceworth on the prediction of whether people who live longer have age-related disabilities—or disabilities of long duration, which is worse. The evidence is extremely difficult to predict because it changes from cohort to cohort and has changed during the course of my research life. It is true that disease-free life expectancy is growing dramatically, and so is the number of disability-burdened years, although the rate of disability-burdened years may not be growing very fast. It is extraordinarily difficult to predict, because of the lifestyles now of people aged 40 to 60, what the rate of disease-free life will be in 20 to 30 years. We all want to live longer, and die faster, do we not?
What the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said was correct, but the Minister’s response was equally correct. It is extremely difficult to predict. However, on this amdendment, I worry about the bureaucracy that might be put in place to respond to such flexibility, but I recognise that we ought through some mechanism to address the early disability of people to respond to their own employment and that they should have the flexibility to stop and not be impoverished by stopping.
Lord Flight
I echo the comments of the noble Baroness. One of our failings as a people is that, because people are decent, we try to provide for everything and clutter it up to the extent that the system becomes difficult and expensive to operate. I was interested to note, in seeking to check my state pension entitlements, that the office that you approach got them wrong; we had a pleasant correspondence. I hate to think, even as we stand, that in people’s combination of straightforward state pension, SERPS and whatever else they may have, the records are all over the place. We may sit here and think that it is lovely, but actually it is a shambles.
I can well imagine that, if you start adding all sorts of groups and special things out of decency, you will get, as the noble Baroness described, a huge increase in bureaucracy. It strikes me that pensions is one area that has suffered in this country from too much complexity. My view is that the issues raised need addressing, but that they will have to be addressed in a separate box through welfare arrangements.
Finally, I still take the view that when the arrangements came in after the war, the age of 65 then was something like 78 today in terms of equivalent fitness and health. I desperately want to see a decent state pension for everyone at the age of 70 that will lift them right away from dependency, pension credits and everything else. I should like to see things tidied up, slimmed down and done as cheaply as possible to achieve that as soon as possible. It strikes me that for the overwhelming majority, that is the need. Although there are cases of people who have done heavy work with physical demands and whose bodies have worn out, the great majority of people will be pretty fit until they are 70.
Lord Freud
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, for tabling this amendment and for giving us the opportunity to debate a key concern about increasing the state pension age and longevity. I use the soft “g”, whereas I notice that the noble Lord uses the hard “g”. We probably differ on other things as well. The noble Baroness raised the question of what older people want and whether they want to work longer. Research has found that people want to return to work, whether for financial, personal or practical reasons, and will find ways to do so if they are motivated, have recent work experience and if illhealth does not act as a barrier.
In essence, the amendment is about whether it is fair for the state pension age to be the same for everyone irrespective of their circumstances or whether we should have a variable state pension age for certain groups. To echo what my noble friend Lord Flight said, one of our aims—which is in common with previous Governments—is to simplify an extremely complicated pensions system. The Bill contains various measures to simplify, from the abolition of the fiendishly complicated and fascinating PUCODIs, to which we will come shortly, the flexibility to consolidate additional pension—
Lord Freud
There are only two experts in the room on PUCODIs.
On the serious point, simplicity is really important in this system. Clearly, we have tipped over the edge in complexity in the pensions system, as we have in the welfare system. Our state pension system has always been based on a common state pension age—albeit differentiated by gender, at least for the time being. Each exception that we add would increase the complexity. Including health conditions, occupations—and even, as has been suggested, where someone lives if we add that into the mix—would rapidly pile confusion on confusion. Introducing different state pension ages at a time when we are working to simplify benefits and pensions would make the system very complex and difficult to administer, and would take us further away from our objective.
The amendment raises questions about parity of treatment between those who could get their state pension from an earlier date and those who could not. Of course, the kind of illness or infirmity envisaged would need to be defined, as would the types of employment that it suggests be covered. There are, of course, some countries where people are allowed to retire earlier than the standard state pension age from occupations which may be classed as particularly arduous or dangerous employment, but who is to say what is arduous or dangerous? The other point we must note here is that in many of those cases, retiring early results in a person’s state pension being reduced, as might be expected for any pension scheme. Through her amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, shares our view that having poorer pensioners is not a desirable outcome, but to allow early retirement without reducing benefits could be very expensive.
Noble Lords will share the great sympathy that we all have for people who are in ill health, whether they have the misfortune to become seriously ill or are infirm. We also have sympathy and respect for the carers referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis— particularly for what she calls the heavy-end carers. I do not have an answer to that, certainly not today, but I will reflect on her comments. As Michael Marmot has shown, there are long-term differences in disability-free life expectancy between socioeconomic groups, and they need to be addressed. Noble Lords will be aware, however, that there have been improvements in both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy across all sectors of our society.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Given that the Minister referred to last year’s Marmot report on health, can he confirm that it found a 17-year difference in healthy life expectancy between the richest and the poorest?
Lord Freud
I regret that I do not have that figure to hand, but I can provide it later. I am sure that the noble Baroness has it to hand and that that is the point of her question, but I will confirm the exact figure.
The other point is on life expectancy across the regions. There are differentials, but it is important that life expectancy has risen in all regions and looks set to continue to do so. In England, in the 29 years from 1981 to 2010, it increased from 79 to 86 for men and from 83 to 89 for women. In Scotland, it increased from 78 to 85 for men and from 81 to 87 for women; and in Wales, it increased from 79 to 86 for men—the same as in England—and from 82 to 88 for women. There are differentials, but they are all moving in the same direction at roughly the same pace.
Likewise in terms of occupations, male manual workers have seen an increase of almost two years in their life expectancy at 65 between 1992-96 and 2002-05. Women manual workers have seen a one-year increase in the same period. Reverting to the point that we discussed under the previous group of amendments, there is no doubt that on average we are living longer and healthier lives than in the past. I shall not go through the figures that we discussed then.
When we come to what kind of support we can offer to people as they get toward the end of their working lives, I need to emphasise that we have developed a support network in this country, and we are going to transform it. Many people in this Room will be part of the consideration of the new universal credit. There clearly is support for people of working age with health problems.
With the universal credit, we have the opportunity to sweep away the patchwork of benefits and credits and to bring in a much more coherent and simpler system. That system can take the weight of the concerns of the noble Baroness. That is a better place to address the concerns underlying her amendment. For that reason, I do not accept that varying pension ages is the right way to support people who have ill health towards the end of their working lives, and I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. It has been very useful because, while they did not care very much for my wording or what I was trying to do, they nevertheless acknowledge that there is a problem here and that there are categories of people who need special care regarding retirement in relation to their health and the type of work that they have done all their lives. I am grateful to the people who have raised points. I thank my noble friend Lady Hollis particularly for drawing our attention once again to carers. They are part of the group who has a lot of heavy and demanding work to do, and they need our support.
I also thank the Minister for what he said. He acknowledges that there is a problem but says that there is a different way of handling it. I shall read what he has said with some interest when I get the opportunity. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Drake
“Qualifying age for pension credit
(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations setting out the qualifying age for pension credit.
(2) The qualifying age for pension credit from 6th March 2011 until 6th March 2020 shall be set so that the timetable in Schedule (Graduated timetable: qualifying age for pension credit) has effect.
(3) After 6th March 2020, the qualifying age for attaining pension credit shall be set at an age that does not exceed the age that a person qualifies for the state pension.”
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 11. I return to the principle that the manner and timing of any increase in the age of state pension payments must give people fair and proper notice and should not be disproportionate in its impact on particular groups. The Government’s proposals for accelerating the timetable for state pension age equalisation and commencing the move to 66 for men and women from 2018 provides a five-year or seven-year notice period, depending on whether you are a man or a woman. Under the Government’s proposals, however, the age of eligibility for the receipt of pension credit, which is targeted on the poorest pensioners, follows the women’s state pension age. Both the short and shorter notice for the acceleration of the equalisation timetable impacts the poorest men and women, who will have to wait longer to receive their pension credit income but with little time to prepare.
Pension credit in 2011 will be £137.35 per week for a single person, so a further increase in the state pension age of two years, for example, results in a corresponding increase in the age for eligibility for pension credit and will result in a loss closer to £15,000 for those affected. To get some sense of scale, in 2010 there were approximately 954,000 claimants for pension guarantee credit, of whom over 540,000 were women.
The amendment is intended to reduce the disproportionate loss that would be experienced by those who are the poorest and on the lowest incomes, and are the least able to adjust to the short notice from the accelerated timetable. The amendment would provide for a way of mitigating that disproportionate impact by allowing the age for eligibility for pension credit to track the original equalisation timetable set out in the Pensions Act 1995—that is, for it to rise more slowly. Those eligible to receive pension credit would do so on the same date between 2011 and 2020 as they would have done under the original timetable for state pension age equalisation. In this way, the beneficiaries of pension credit—men and women currently in their late 50s—would not experience the markedly higher loss of pension credit income that would otherwise occur. Amendment 11 reinstates that timetable for wholly pension credit purposes.
I repeat, because it is important, that the Government’s current proposal that the age for receipt of pension credit should track women’s state pension age, in line with their accelerated timetable, does not make a contribution to reducing the fiscal deficit in this Parliament, because of the flow of savings from 2016. Again, this amendment does not undermine fiscal stability in the long term. The state pension age will still rise in response to increasing life expectancy, although my noble friend Lord McKenzie and I would argue that the increase from 65 to 66 should commence in 2020, which would still maintain the course for the long-term fiscal sustainability of the state pension system. This amendment is about fairer treatment for the poorest and least well off who are in their late 50s and nearer to pension credit age.
I turn now to the justification for the amendment. The Government, in their impact assessment, identified key criteria against which they assess the timetable options for accelerating the increase of the state pension age for women and men, and consequently the impact on the eligible age for pension credit. One criterion was the effect on the fiscal sustainability of the state pension system and another was inter- and intra-generational fairness. This amendment does not undermine long-term fiscal sustainability or prevent progress on inter-generational fairness. However, it seeks to inject some intra-generational fairness in that it seeks to mitigate for the concentrated impact on the poorest group of people who had the misfortunate to be born in particular months in the 1950s.
Perhaps I may pause here to anticipate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, in response to Amendment 1, which I am sure will be influencing his thinking on this amendment too; namely, that once one has reduced the level of debt in this Parliament, one cannot afford to relax because there is still the long-term sustainability challenge. I agree that one cannot relax over that, but there are more changes in the pension system to come. The timing of the phases of other increases—to 66, 67 and 68—I am sure will be a debate of some substance. The adjustments that will be made to increasing longevity in private pensions are happening and will continue to happen because of the impact that will be felt in annuity rates. We know that, even where there are DB schemes, normal retirement ages are rising and we await the report of the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, on longevity and the Government’s exposure to fiscal liability over the long term.
These are the big battalion contributions to fiscal sustainability over the long term. It is not the treatment of women in their late 50s, or of the very poor who happen to have a birth date in some period in 1954, that is going to deal with that major challenge, which I completely accept, of long-term sustainability. We can banter about which political party or group had the better timetable—I still hold to my principle on any timetable—but I pay credit to the noble Lord, Lord Turner, because he relayed the narrative to the country that the state pension age had to rise. He took the flak and he drew the sting, which allowed politicians to debate it and to produce the policy changes that were required in that situation.
So there is an important argument about long-term fiscal sustainability. I continue to struggle with the fact that with those big battalions, which are important—we have some big debates to come—somehow a group of women born in a particular period in the 1950s has to be treated in a deeply unfair way for this country to be in a sustainable position.
The Government's figures confirm that the pension income loss for those men and women who face a more aggressively accelerated increase in eligibility age for pension credit is even more marked for those for whom receipt of pension credit is deferred for more than a year than would be the case under existing plans. If allowance is made for their lower life expectancy, because they are more likely to be in the lower socioeconomic groups, that loss rises even further to as high as 10 per cent of state pension income. I accept that the evidence shows that those in lower socioeconomic groups have also benefited from improvements in their life expectancy—although, as we have just discussed and as my noble friend Lady Hollis was sharp correctly to point out, not necessarily so greatly in their healthy life expectancy. That improvement is an argument in support of the general proposition that the state pension age needs to rise. It is not an argument to deploy to defend giving those on the lowest incomes so little time to adjust.
The men and women who will be impacted by the accelerated rise in the qualifying age for pension credit will have little opportunity to adjust to their loss in the time available. For men and women without private savings and dependent on pension credit, working may not result in any improvement in post-retirement income, because any resulting gain in state pension accruals could be offset by reduced pension credit entitlement. For women who will be dependent on pension credit, we have only to look at the difference in median pension savings between those of a 56 year-old woman of £9,100, which translates to £11 per week on a level basis, and those of a man, at £52,800, which translates to more than £60 a week, to confirm on those median figures how little prospect low-income women have of saving sufficient to cover their loss from the delayed receipt of pension credit. That is particularly so given all that we know about their labour market participation level, earnings, membership of pension schemes and caring responsibilities. We partly debated this under the previous amendment, but men who are dependent on pension credit face similar challenges.
Lower-income groups are likely to be less healthy and, if working, to have lower incomes and to be less able to adjust to the short notice by working longer and saving more. The Government's impact assessment shows that men and women born between 1953 and 1955 on lower earnings, with interrupted careers and dependent on pension credit throughout retirement, will suffer the greatest percentage loss in lifetime pension income as a result of the accelerated timetable.
The Government’s modelling shows that people who rely mainly on pension credit in retirement will lose proportionately more than higher earners, who can also carry on contributing to their private pension saving. A lot of those figures are taken from the impact assessment. If we relate them to different ethnic groups, people of black and black British origin have the lowest level of private pension and investment income: £46 per week compared to £155 for white people.
Lord Freud
I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for tabling this amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for introducing it. It allows us to consider the role that pension credit plays in providing income-related support for those over a certain age. These amendments seek to keep the pension credit qualifying age at the existing timetable for women’s state pension age by proposing a new and separate age schedule that would apply to pension credit between March 2011 and March 2020. The effect of these amendments would be to break the link between pension credit qualifying age and women’s state pension age.
Lord Freud
Yes, but it is being pulled together for men. That is the point of the 1995 proposition and, now, the acceleration.
The effect of these amendments would be to break the link, as I said. As the schedule proposed by the amendment would effectively follow the existing timetable, it would therefore see a divergence from the increase to women’s state pension age from 2016 as proposed by the Bill. The amendment also seeks to ensure that the pension credit qualifying age cannot be set higher than state pension age in the future.
As life expectancy is increasing for people at all income levels, it is right that we raise the starting point for pension credit in line with changes to women’s state pension age and, beyond that, state pension age. A key part of the Welfare Reform Bill that is currently going through Parliament and of the introduction of universal credit is to ensure that people of working age have the opportunity to do just that—work whenever possible. To ensure that we provide the appropriate work focus and work-related support for all those of working age, we will be setting the upper age limit for universal credit at pension credit qualifying age. Setting the pension credit qualifying age at an artificial point below women’s state pension age will therefore undermine this fundamental aspect of welfare reform.
The amendment also suggests that the means-tested help available through universal credit will not be adequate for those approaching state pension age, and this is not the case. Universal credit is intended to provide appropriate levels of support, including for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to work or have limited capacity for work. Universal credit will also provide for a more generous treatment of earnings, and it is not right to withdraw this support for people who wish to continue working.
To pick up the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, when she referred to the impact assessment, I should make clear that the stylised cases in the impact assessment are designed to show the maximum possible loss. Most of those affected will not experience such losses. The noble Baroness addressed the issue around minorities and disabled people. I accept that there will be differences, but we are determined, and we have various programmes now to do this, to tackle the labour market disadvantage that those groups have.
Given the proposed upper age limit for universal credit, the amendment is not particularly well targeted. The extent to which people may see any benefit will depend on their own circumstances and on those of their partner. I should also point out that as this change would require a concurrent but different rise in state pension age and the pension credit qualifying age, it would add complexity to the system which, as we discussed on the previous amendment, goes the opposite way from our intentions. It has the potential to create a very confusing message to give customers about qualifying ages and what benefits are available to them.
Pension credit is primarily a safety net benefit for those over state pension age. It has been set at women’s state pension age to avoid discrimination until men and women’s state pension age are equalised. There has never been an intention to raise the qualifying age above state pension age. It is clear that this amendment is intended to help those people who might be described as “vulnerable”—people who might be in ill health or who have been in manual jobs and are unable to continue working as state pension age increases.
I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I take the opportunity to answer the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, regarding the Marmot review. I have now been able to put my hands on those figures. She dropped a nought in the differences in life expectancy where the highest life expectancy, in Kensington and Chelsea, was not 17 years but 10.7 years above the worst, which was Blackpool, for men—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to quote from the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-2010—the Marmot report, which states:
“In England, people living in the poorest neighbourhoods, will, on average, die seven years earlier than people living in the richest neighbourhoods”.
The report then refers to the graph in Figure 1, and continues:
“Even more disturbing, the average difference in disability-free life expectancy is 17 years … So, people in poorer areas not only die sooner, but they will also spend more of their shorter lives with a disability”.
The report goes on to state that even excluding the top 5 per cent and the bottom 5 per cent, the difference in years of disability-free life expectancy is 13 years.
Lord Freud
I thank the noble Baroness for saving my team from having to write a letter, given that she has isolated the issue. We are playing with different numbers—10.7, 17 and 7. I think that we have sorted out what each means. However, the point remains that for all groups there is a movement in the right direction towards longer lives and for longer healthy lives for all groups—albeit that there is a difference within groups.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Except that the point established by my noble friend Lady Drake and others is that the cuts, if you like, in spending on pensions and pension credit are falling heaviest on the poorest women who will have the least disability-free life expectancy along with their male counterparts.
Lord Freud
I need to come back to the point that working-age support systems are much better systems of supporting people, particularly by universal credit, than artificial manipulation of when pension age and pension credits click in. There is very little difference between the position of people who are just below state pension age and those just above it. We just happen to use this age as a useful justification of where we can draw the line. Just as there is little difference between the line at state pension age, so there is little difference between those who are 63 and 62 or 62 and 61. In benefit terms, the only difference is what help people might receive to get into or stay in employment. We are quite certain that we want people below state pension age to work if they possibly can. We cannot give up on these people. That has been going on too long. The right place for people below state pension age is on a working-age benefit, and universal credit, which will be available in 2016—although it is starting in 2013—will be the most suitable benefit.
It is important that we target means-tested help in the most appropriate way. State pension age is a fair way of separating out support for those of working age and of pension age. Ensuring that people get the appropriate work-related support and making work pay are essential to enable people to move out of poverty and build up sufficient resources for their retirement. For these reasons, I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Drake
I shall try to pick up some of the points put by the noble Lord, Lord Freud. This amendment breaks the link between the state pension age and the pension credit qualifying age only until 2020 because the associated amendment puts a time limit on that. It seeks to replicate the 1995 timetable for equalisation because it is trying to address a problem created by the acceleration of the original timetable. It is not seeking to bind the Government’s hand once that problem has been dealt with. The amendment would allow the Government to restore the link between the state pension age and the pension qualifying age. In another place, in another debate, I might want to argue the merits of not doing that, but that is not what this amendment seeks to do. We have sought to avoid the complication of that debate. It is merely for a defined period to address this disproportionate income impact point from this accelerated timetable.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Skelmersdale)
My Lords, I have received a request for a rapid break for nefarious purposes. Therefore the Committee stands adjourned for five minutes.
Lord German
“Additional financial support for certain women
The Secretary of State shall by regulations provide additional financial support for women born between the months of July 1953 and September 1955 to include one or a combination of the following— (a) pension credit adjustment;(b) providing for women with serious illness;(c) by slowing the rate of acceleration for a particular group of women.”
Lord German
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of a pension fund for the National Assembly for Wales. I am not clear as to whether I should declare this at this particular point in the agenda, or whether I should do so at every occasion, but for the avoidance of doubt I will do so. There are five parliamentary procedures in this United Kingdom, and the one that I am used to would require me to declare an interest, and I hope that is the case and that it is the wish of this House that I do so as well.
This amendment is wide in its ability for interpretation, but very narrow in the group of people whom it affects. It is done that way on purpose. Whatever way you look at it, there is a particular group of women, in a particular age bracket, born between particular years, who are going to be adversely affected in a way that those who are outside that age bracket are not. It is that particular interest group to whom I want to address my remarks in respect of this amendment. The fact that this is the group who are accelerated more than anyone else is the reason for the amendment. I accept that, no matter what timetable you have for any acceleration, there is bound to be a group that will be more or less affected, and that there are bound to be some winners and some losers in that acceleration. However, as I described earlier, you could really not see a faster acceleration process in play than this, where a three-month increase in your age means a four-month horizon for your pension arrival date.
Already we have debated quite considerably the use of timetabling as a device by which to assist that particular cohort of people, but this amendment looks to provide support for particular groups. It does not specify which groups, clearly because there may be more groups that may be divisible in different ways, and there may be more groups than the Government can think of. Already this afternoon the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has described a characteristic that we could apply to the list, when she talked about her age-related premium in addition to JSA or ESA. It is not intended to do more than to provide a way for the Government to look at this particular group of women, who are finding themselves more disadvantaged than advantaged in the acceleration process that is going ahead.
It is rather like walking along a road with your colleagues and seeing the horizon in the distance, and, as you walk along, the horizon moves further from you, but the people who are walking along the pathway with you, who may be slightly older or slightly younger, see the horizon moving away at a different rate. It is the group that is seeing it move away furthest and fastest to whom this amendment is addressed. The impact assessment from the DWP quite clearly specifies that that group of people who are most disadvantaged will have the biggest financial hit. The summary of impacts says:
“A rise in State Pension age of one year is projected to decrease the lifetime pension income … by between 3 per cent and 5 per cent … based on DWP modelling … However, if they work to the new pension age”—
I shall come back to the mitigations that are already in place in the changes that the Government are proposing in the universal credit and the work programme—
“and save into a private pension, they would recover about half of this loss of lifetime pension income. For those individuals who will experience the maximum increase in State Pension age of two years, the potential loss is between 7 per cent and 9 per cent”.
Again, if you mitigate that by saving in a private pension scheme and working for those extra two years, you suffer a loss of about half of that. A one-year and two-year acceleration is quite different. If you follow my metaphor of moving along the pathway towards the horizon, those who are seeing the horizon moving away the fastest would suffer financially disproportionately to the others. It is that experience that I shall dwell upon in this amendment.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I endorse the amendment and the thinking of my noble friend Lord German. As we begin to move towards the end of the deliberations on Clause 1, he has capped an interesting piece of architecture that has developed during the afternoon. The first pillar was set jointly, and possibly independently of each other, by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and me. We are clearly the Stakhanovites of this game and we have set out to proceed by formula and on principle in redesigning the architecture of the table for the withdrawal of benefit or the increase in the state retirement pension. That is clearly one approach, which also has the consequence that my noble friend Lord Freud has already pointed out to the Committee, of substantial expense.
It will be interesting to see how further consideration of the Bill unfolds, not only this afternoon, but one way to mitigate that might be some conjunction of large figures in terms of income, some other benefits being reshaped or males being asked to pay earlier, if that were possible, to try to balance those large aggregates. I understand that that is at least one approach.
Then, if I may put it this way, there was the approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, of looking at pension credit, because it is the keystone in the middle. That is also using a piece of architecture which is already in being. Because it is income-related, or means-tested, if you want to put it the other way round, that is a way to deal with it for a lot of people who, as we have all acknowledged in this Committee, are most seriously affected. We now come to the other side of the pillar in the suggestion of my noble friend Lord German of what might be termed a targeted scheme which, as he said, might cost three and seven pence, or thereabouts, if that is all that the Treasury could provide, but would be designed to look at the specific problem for an age group that we have all identified as being particularly heavily affected, although that is mitigable in certain cases to see what could be done.
It may be that, on reflection, that is the most sensible approach for the Minister. Certainly, his most sensible short-term strategy would be to say that we will reflect on these things, that there are problems and that we need to think further about how best we might deal with them. If I implied, in having bound myself and the Opposition spokesperson together as Stakhanovites, that my noble friend Lord German was in any way a slacker, the way that he set out the different options was appealing and, I thought, covered most of the field.
I throw one specific point into the pot for the Minister's consideration. I do so tentatively, not least because it breaks some of my precepts about differential arrangements, but I have always felt strongly that one of the impacts that is underdescribed and underconsidered in relation to state retirement, almost irrespective of age, is the substantial hurt that it represents not merely in the receipt of a benefit that is taxable, but in relation to the withdrawal of an obligation to pay an employee national insurance contribution, because that can have a substantial effect.
I remember looking at my payslip and saying that the withdrawal of the NIC is worth nearly as much to me as is my state retirement pension. In my case, that is on a 40 per cent rate of tax, but it is underdescribed as a factor. I leave this for the Minister's consideration in due course, but it might be that one way of doing that would be to say, not least because we are interested in maintaining employment wherever possible, given that this is a particularly hard-hit group of individuals that is relatively easily definable and quite small, that we might be prepared to waive the NIC contribution for the employee while they continue in employment until they reach the state retirement age, as if they had already retired.
I put that only as a consideration, but the Committee is wrestling with some dilemmas. We know where the problem lies, in a relatively small group. Other groups are affected—I am not trying to say that they are not—but we know that there is a particular problem for a small number of people. One can either adopt a large architectural solution that redesigns the system and may claw back all or part of the cost of doing so, or one can adopt a much more targeted scheme directed towards their particular problems along one or other of the lines that my noble friend so helpfully suggested.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I support the thrust of the amendments in much the same way as has the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Whether this is the right way forward I do not know, but we have all identified that there is a problem. There will be a group, particularly of women—although there may be some men who currently would come under pension credit—who are among the poorest, because they are eligible for pension credit, and who have very reduced employment prospects and very poor life expectancy. That goes together. They are poor, their health is not good and they would normally have been eligible for pension credit.
Baroness Drake
I would like to comment on Amendment 8, tabled in the name of the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Stoneham, which has my sympathy. I concur with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord German, that we are clearly all concerned with the consequences of the accelerated timetable. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, referred to us all looking for different architectures with which we can address this matter, and one should never close one’s mind to architectures if one can get the outcome that one desires, or at least progress towards it.
With regard to the legs to the amendment—(a), (b) and (c)—on the basis of what I said on my Amendment 7, I wholeheartedly agree with making some pension credit adjustment but it would need to be made for both men and women, otherwise you would simply address the issue of poor women, not poor men.
On the question of providing for women with serious illness, those who are seriously ill clearly believe or feel that they have a payment that they have built up and are entitled to under the state pension system that has been withdrawn with little notice. They will have absolutely no prospects of adjusting to their loss, and are unlikely to benefit from the argument that they will live longer. I imagine that there would be some complexities in trying to administer a provision that focused on those with a serious illness, and I take my noble friend Lady Hollis’s point about who, and how much, should be paid.
It may be that the easiest solution is still to look at decelerating the timetable. As my noble friend Lord McKenzie said in responding to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, we are all keen to make progress and should stay open to looking at timetables. My noble friend and others have revealed how the timetable has an accelerating effect. There are those who lose for a year, those who lose for up to 18 months and those who lose for up to two years, so there is an accelerating impact in terms of numbers of people affected. Still, I would not want to fall out over architecture if there was a way of moving forward to get the kind of outcome that we all seem desirous of achieving—those of us moving amendments, anyway.
Lord Freud
I thank my noble friend Lord German for tabling the amendment. We have covered a lot of the ground in relation to it already, so I shall try not to be repetitious. We are talking about what has been variously described as an acceleration bubble, a moving horizon or a squidgy balloon—as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said. We are effectively looking at concessions for women born between July 1953 and September 1955.
I am not in a position at this stage to provide any additional information about discussions on a single tier, which I referred to at Second Reading, but one of the issues here is clearly that when one looks at the complexity of the architecture, one has to have an eye to whatever might or might not emerge from those discussions. We have already talked about freezing or delaying the increase in the pension credit qualifying age for people affected by the changes in state pension age. We are not going to make a song and dance about technical drafting here, although the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, made the point about the application of the amendment to women, when it would actually have to apply to men. However, let us put that to one side.
The issue that I aimed to emphasise in the previous discussion was that pitching the pension credit qualifying age at a point below the state pension age for a specific group would undermine fundamental welfare reforms. However, it is not about just the structure—and I accept that this is about a temporary change—or purely the money; it is complex for customers and complex to administer. That is one of the reasons why that solution is difficult, if not undesirable.
In response to the request of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for me to write to her on the costs of paying people in between the old and the new pension ages, I am happy to look at those costs and to write to interested noble Lords. I imagine that that includes most of us in the Room.
I move on to the issue of serious illness and emphasise that we have great sympathy for those with ill health, including those in this particular cohort of women. However, I must point out that help and benefits are already available for people with health problems and I do not therefore accept that we need to provide additional financial support, whether that is in the form of a payment above what we already pay out or some bespoke pension age arrangement.
The final option suggested by the amendment is slowing the acceleration of the pension age increase for these women.
I can assure noble Lords that, when we were considering how to bring forward the increase to 66, we looked at whether we could start that change for men slightly earlier than for women, to avoid altering women’s state pension age before 2020. The reason that we have not done this is because it would be unfair to increase the difference in treatment between men and women. It would also be unfair to prolong the difference in treatment beyond the period already agreed. I will take this opportunity to explain why, and I am picking up the question raised by my noble friend Lord Boswell earlier in the afternoon. The equal treatment directive allows the setting of the state pension age to be a limited exception to the overarching rule that men and women must be treated equally in social security matters. This exemption, or exception, is only temporary to give member states time to adjust their state pension ages so as to bring women’s state pension age into line with men’s. As we know, the legislation in 1995 set out a timetable for equalising the state pension ages between 2010 and 2020, so anything we do now will be measured against that timeline. That is why we decided that we must increase the state pension age to 66 only after women’s state pension age has reached 65. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord German
My Lords, when I started writing this amendment, I was trying to answer what seemed to me a fairly straightforward and simple question. There is a group of women, born between these years, who will suffer financially more than those who are roughly the same age on either side of them. The question I was seeking to answer was whether the Government will find a way of helping them. It is as simple as that. I was seeking to give the Government as much of an open hand as they wished, in order to say that they recognised that some of the people in this cohort will be suffering financially more than others, simply because of the date of their birth, which was the factor I wanted to take into account. I was not wanting to dwell on the method of operation, but I was seeking to find a way in which the Government might come forward with some opportunity for making sure that they redressed that financial imbalance in a way which they thought was reasonable, effective, and did not cost as much as the £7 billion or £10 billion which the Minister has already adhered to. I hope that, during the course of the future weeks before we reach Report, the Minister will reflect on that matter. There has been a widespread agreement around this Committee, from all sides, that there needs to be some form of redress for a particular group of women in a particular way which needs to be defined, and perhaps the department can look at that. I hope that the Minister will think of coming back to that matter by Report, with a view on how that might be addressed.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Lord McKenzie of Luton
For noble Lords who were anticipating a debate around PUCODIs, I advise them not to blink. This is just a gentle probe about the effects of getting rid of PUCODIs; hopefully, we communicated the nature of the inquiry to the Bill team to make it a bit easier on the Minister’s time. Clause 2 removes the right to receive payable uprated contracted-out deduction increments from 6 April 2012. It does not, as I understand it, affect awards already in payment, so the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, can relax, although I understand that he will be CPIed on it in the future. I imagine that at the moment it will buy him a thimbleful of petrol, if that.
Let me be clear: we support this measure and consider it to be a sensible tidying-up. My probe is about what we understand to be the range of PUCODIs that would have been payable but for this abolition. The notes accompanying the impact assessments point out that the overall saving is less than £1 million—pretty small beer. For those currently in receipt, we are told that 80 per cent receive less than £1 per week, and for inherited rights the mean is about 60p per week. However, we are also told that the maximum payment is £14 per week, and £6.30 per week for inherited rights. Removing a few pence as a top-up is one thing, but taking away £700 per year is potentially something else. Perhaps amounts build to these levels only after a period of time, so maybe it is not an issue. Nevertheless, I should be grateful for the Minister’s comments about the spread of what would otherwise have arisen, to see whether there are any issues there or whether it really is de minimis.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has been kind enough both to mention my name and to tempt me. I shall disappoint the Committee, I am sure, by indicating that I have no intention whatever of explaining how PUCODIs work or how important they are to one’s lifestyle. All I can say is that I indicated at Second Reading, and a further reading of my recent annual pension statement appears to confirm this, that I think that I have one. However, rather in the manner of one of my masters at school who conducted a survey among the masters’ common room into the wearing of long johns in the winter and found that a significant number of people did not know, I am not absolutely sure that I have one. For the avoidance of doubt, it certainly is not in the range of £14 a week; it is much lower than that, although it is more than £1.
I simply make the point that this is an example of complexity and I am sure that we need to remove it. I am pleased to see the noble Lord who moved the amendment nodding to that. It is an example of how even people who know a modest amount about the system do not know everything that is applied. It creates problems that are almost in geometric progression: the more complex the system is, the less easy it is for people to understand it and the greater the chance of making mistakes. As one building block of the programme of simplification and consolidation, this is a modest but essential measure. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation—if he understands PUCODIs too.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I really am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me this incredible opportunity to talk about PUCODIs. I have to quote the noble Lord himself from 2007, when he said:
“This is a technical area and, despite the hour, I hope that the Committee will bear with me as I explain”.—[Official Report, 4/6/07; col. 875.]
He then gave an explanation, but I am convinced that, to his disgrace, he has forgotten every single word that he said to the Committee.
The essential point regarding the payable uprated contracted-out deduction increment is that these payments are very small. As the noble Lord pointed out, 77 per cent of recipients get less than £1 per week. Where it is in payment, it represents 0.6 per cent, on average, of an individual state pension income. Most of the people in receipt are women—93,000 out of 118,000 people are women—and the average received by women is slightly higher than by men. Bluntly, though, both are around 20p per week.
Around 6,000 of the 9,000 in receipt of inherited awards are women. The average received by women is again similar to men: around 30p per week. The original policy intention of the PUCODI was to ensure parity between those who were contracted out, and those who were not. However, as noble Lords will be aware, contracting-out on a defined contribution basis is being abolished from April 2012. The proposed abolition of new awards of PUCODIs for members of such schemes is linked to the abolition of defined contribution contracting-out. I shall not go into the detail of the timings, except to assure the noble Lord that it has never been the Government’s intention to bring the proposed legislation into force before 6 April 2012.
I am not sure that I have a reliable spread, although I am very happy to write making clear what the spread of payments is. However, given the averages we are talking about, there are going to be fairly few outliers. The point is that, as the name suggests, there is an element of choice for people when they take them. They are delaying payment of their contracted-out pension, and there is therefore an element of choice. If the loss is too much, they can start to take it, so there is an element of market balance for the outliers. I will write about that very specific point beyond the averages.
As the noble Lord said in his introduction, it is not his intention to do anything more than find out some of this detail, and I am sure that he will be pleased to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for participating and will be delighted to withdraw the amendment. I will be very happy to receive a letter in due course. I remember reading out a script in 2008 or 2007 when I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who was leading on the opposition Benches. He assumed I did not understand it because I read the script very quickly. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Right to apply for amalgamation of earnings from multiple sources of employment for Basic State Pension accrual
A jobholder who in any week in a tax year—(a) is employed in more than one employment,(b) whose earnings do not exceed the lower earnings limit in any individual employment or self-employment in that week, and(c) whose earnings in aggregate reach or exceed the lower earnings limit in any week,shall be deemed to have earnings equivalent to or exceeding the lower earnings limit for the purposes of accruing entitlement to the Basic State Pension in that week.”
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I hope the wording of this amendment is reasonably clear and self-explanatory, although I am absolutely sure that it is technically deficient, but I do not think that matters for the purposes of Committee stage. I think we all agree that it is essential to bring as many men and women as possible into the state pension system. That has been aided by past changes, which we mentioned earlier—for example, the Labour Government’s changes, which were carried with all-party support. The number of qualifying national insurance contribution years was reduced to 30 from 39 for women and 44 for men. Other groups, including carers not doing heavy-end caring but caring for 20 hours or more, were brought in. We allowed the amalgamation of hours of caring to bring people, including grandparents, within the basic state pension system. In all ways, we have sought to bring more people within the basic state pension system.
However, there is leftover business, which this amendment seeks to address. I am very grateful to the Minister, who has taken a very constructive attitude towards this issue, and I am hoping that he may have found a way through for us which has been unavailable to us in the past. As a result of all the changes to the national insurance system, we expect that about 90 per cent of men and about 90 per cent of women will have full coverage of the basic state pension certainly by 2020 and maybe earlier than that. However, there is still a key group of people, among other small groups, who remain outside the basic state pension through no fault of their own, who are in the waged labour market, especially women with a portfolio of mini-jobs. Individually the jobs may be six hours or eight hours and the women may hold three or four such jobs together, but at present you are not allowed—and we do not have the technology—to add those hours and those wages together to bring somebody into the NI system. Oddly enough, if you are a lone parent and are entitled to tax credits at 16 hours, you are allowed to add those hours together for tax credit purposes but not for NI purposes, except that the tax credit itself would then give you a right into the national insurance system. So there was a rather complicated loop through for some women in the past, but we were not able to do it directly.
The stats are flaky, and we raised this issue at Second Reading. My latest information—which may have been superseded by the Minister’s information—is that there are some 50,000 people, mostly women, with more than one part-time job. For upwards of 15,000 women, the summation of those jobs might take them into the national insurance system and therefore into the state pension if they were able to add those jobs together. At Second Reading, the Minister helpfully reminded us that some 250,000 women might be coming into the mini-job scenario in the future under universal credit who might find themselves in a similar situation. The problem is likely to increase rather than decrease.
Why do we need this change? I suggest three reasons. First, it seems to me entirely fair that women—and they are nearly all women—should qualify for the full state pension by the fact that they are in the labour market, whether waged or unwaged, especially given their precarious financial situation. It seems unreasonable, if you are working 16, 18 or 20 hours, however that is split up, that you should be denied access, which you have earned, to the national insurance system and therefore, above all, to the state pension system, particularly given women’s precarious financial situation which remains, even though we have made it much easier for women, along with men, to enter the NIC system.
Secondly, particularly in rural areas, it is quite difficult for women to find a full-time job of over 16 hours a week if they wish to do so. I come from Norfolk, and the women I know in the more rural areas of the county mix and match according to season. For example, their jobs may include picking mushrooms, cleaning boats, caravans or private houses, being a lollipop lady, making sandwiches during the summer season or doing bar work. It is a mix-and-match situation. Even if women wish to build a mini-job into a job of over 16 hours a week in a clean, simple way, they are not available to very many women, particularly in rural areas, where decent jobs are in very short supply. All they can do is add another mini-job to their existing mini-job, and their portfolio may eventually take them over the 16 hours.
Those mini-jobs are extremely valuable to employers in giving them a resource of very flexible labour. It may be a couple of evenings of bar work when there is the most customer demand, it may be part-time work at a newsagent’s or launderette when there is the most demand, or it may be work in a shop or a supermarket where there is the most demand. To my knowledge, a number of employers keep an employee’s hours under 16 hours in order to avoid paying the NICs that would become due when she goes over. Receptionists have told me time and again that their hours are capped quite deliberately by their employer.
Perhaps I may reiterate. The first reason is that, if you work the hours, it is only fair you should be able to come into the national insurance system; the second is that, for many women, a mix of mini-jobs may be the only way that they are going to be able to put together an adequate or appropriate income for themselves, and it is a useful form of flexibility for the employer.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I shall respond briefly to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who has performed a service to the Committee in raising this issue. My immediate reaction, not least as a former small employer in the agricultural business employing casual labour and the kinds of people who she rightly described from her Norfolk experience, is that we need to think about how this burden should fall on employers if we are to do it. I shall come in a moment to the other side of the argument, but the Minister will have to tell us how this can be done. He will also need to reassure us that, even if perhaps it should not, it will not in practice act as a disincentive to employers employing these people. That is partly on the administrative side, as well as being the effect with regard to cost uplift. I am not for a moment suggesting that the right thing is for people to go into the irregular economy or that in some way we should find some kind of special deal for them because that is not what the noble Baroness is saying. However, we need to have at least some assurance that it is not going to create problems for employers, that it is manageable and that it will not have malign economic effects.
On the other hand, the noble Baroness is very much on to a point of substance. We have mentioned the word “problem”; I appreciate that that was not the context of what she said, but we should not regard part-time employment as a problem. It is a problem only if, when people would choose to be working for longer hours, it does not escalate into being able to do so, or they have not got the right bag of skills or their remuneration package is too low. We should welcome part-time employment with open arms, along with the flexibility that it brings. That is important and positive, which is why I hope that the Minister can come up with a solution.
I have one more thing to say, which is not meant to be threatening to him or anyone else. My knowledge of employment law has somewhat faded over the years and I am not too good on the equal treatment directive, but, looking at this from the perspective of human rights law, which I know a little more about from recent experience, and equality, if we do not come up with a system that provides the same functional opportunity for people who are working the same number of hours but for a number of employers as compared with those who are working for one employer, we are at some risk of being accused of discrimination. The Minister has to find a workable answer to this.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
I support the amendment. It is related to the amendment that we will discuss in a moment about including part-time earnings to qualify for NEST. This is an important issue, and we need the Minister to look at it with a view to recognising the fact that part-time work is growing and is going to grow. There is a lot more out there in the unseen economy than we probably realise, which should be revealed as we move towards the universal credit system. We must therefore address it. As an employer myself, I have seen discrimination happen over the years. People deliberately keep employment below a certain limit so that they can avoid national insurance, and in future they will be doing this on pension contributions as well. This needs to be addressed.
I accept that there is an administration problem, but systems are improving. We should be trying to address this problem in the light of that. Because it is linked to the problem that we will be discussing on a later amendment, I am very sympathetic to this one.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Drake and I have put our name to this amendment because we support its thrust. Having heard my noble friend, I gather that, perhaps unsurprisingly, she is even more ambitious for this amendment than I took it to be on first reading. It is entirely consistent with the progress that has been made in crediting people into the pension system, in any event, over many years. It is highly relevant—we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and my noble friend Lady Hollis about the growing importance of part-time work in our economy.
When I first read the amendment, I thought that its thrust was to say that when you aggregate employment earnings, if you are above the lower earnings limit, you get credited in. That in itself would not require any payments from the individual or any payments on behalf of any employer. That, at least, would be progress from where we are. There are arrangements that you have to aggregate if you are within associated companies, but that is a separate case.
If it is possible, as my noble friend suggested, perhaps in discussion with the noble Lord, to go further and say that we could aggregate and then work out what the employee and employer contributions would be and how we divvied that up across employers, then that would be a significant improvement and an advance. That is not only because of the state pension arrangements, with credited and contributory benefits in any event, but for the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, made about auto-enrolment. If we can aggregate and reach qualifying earnings, particularly if qualifying earnings are going to be pitched at the primary threshold, or at the secondary threshold, which I think is the same thing at the moment, then we can also seek to ensure that people on part-time earnings who would not otherwise qualify in respect of a single employment could, on some basis or another, by aggregation and then divvying up across employers, be entitled to auto-enrolment. At its most basic, lowest level, the ability to aggregate and credit in, for the purposes of the state pension, would be a valuable gain. To be able to go further, as is the ambition of my noble friend, would be a very considerable advance, and if the Minister’s command of technology enables him to deliver on that, we would all be delighted.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for raising this matter. Clearly this debate has been conducted before, although I was not present, but there is a potentially a new context for it. The fundamental issue of the aggregation of low earnings from multiple part-time jobs and how they could be made to qualify for basic state pension has been a matter of concern to her for some time. It was considered by the Pensions Commission and during the passage of the Pensions Act 2007.
Like her, I am keen to encourage mini-jobs, which I think are not just good in themselves for people in supplementing income, but are an invaluable stepping stone which we have made difficult for people to use in the current welfare system. A system that encourages that process and takes it out of the informal or grey economy and into the proper economy, will be immensely valuable for many people. What I am going to say at this stage and in this debate will be rather correct, in the sense that, in the present situation and in the context of our present systems, it is not be possible to go ahead with something like this. Until we have a new system defined, laid out, and understand its technology, we will not be able to look seriously at what we can do here, and it is an immensely complicated issue in practice. The structure of this answer may be negative as I go through it.
Lord Freud
Thank you, cautious is a much better word. It will be somewhat cautious, but I will make a commitment at the end of it, based on what might be achievable later.
I start saying that many of the changes that have been made have already reduced the problem, and I know that the noble Baroness would have been involved in making those changes. I am thinking in particular of the reduction to a 30-year contribution making up a pension. The estimate now is that in only a few years’ time 90 per cent of women and men—both genders for different reasons—reaching state pension age will be entitled to the full basic state pension.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, that was probably superfluous to requirements, but I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short but interesting debate. The issues were fully aired and it suggested to the Minister that there is an understanding of the issue and the concerns and difficulties—I admit that there are difficulties—attached to it, as well as the need as far as humanly and technologically possible to address them. I am very grateful to everyone who took part.
I am intrigued that the figures have gone from 50,000 before the Recess to 65,000 after it, which shows how quickly the problem is growing, but I am grateful for the later information. I recognise that many of the women who could otherwise be covered by a proposal like this, were it to be implemented, are already partly covered by other arrangements that have occurred over the past 10 years or so. I remind the noble Lord that one of the changes that I accepted—I was in no position not to—was that we reduced what used to be called HRP to when the youngest child was 12. At 12, it stopped. In the past, it had been 16.
One of the things we have not, perhaps, brought into this debate—I was trying to get my head around it and I cannot usefully put any stats to it so I did not run it earlier—is that many women with a youngest child of 12 to 16 and so on have to manage work with continued responsibilities to their children which in the past HRP would have stopped. There is also the question of elder care. Many women who want to do part-time jobs will do unsocial hours because their partner will be keeping an eye on their children, who they do not wish to leave at home, who it would possibly be illegal to leave at home, but who are none the less not at school. Those unsocial hour jobs tend to be short jobs or mini-jobs. They are an evening in the bar, in the cinema as an usherette or very early or very late hours cleaning. I am surprised that we have not had legal challenges of the Government’s assumption that lone parents of children not just of five but even of 12 onwards are not liable for their care and attention. It suggests to me that this group will find mini-jobs one way out of the dilemma that we have given them, as well as all the rather better things that have happened with reducing the number of years you need to come into the NI system. There is a potential area there that we have not yet been able to track very far that may grow, particularly if there are JR problems associated with leaving children of 12, 13 or 14 unattended at home. We have already had babysitting issues in the court. Mothers have been strongly criticised by the judicial system for leaving their children at home at that age. If we can go further along this line in being able to find small slices of jobs that better fit around the need for childcare where HRP no longer applies, it would be valuable.
I accept the Minister’s assurance about universal credit and understand that it is not technically possible for employers or the department without the technology underpin that universal credit will provide. If universal credit is to work, virtually all the information the Minister will need to be able to make this call will be in the hands of the department, whether under a revised NIRS2 system or whatever, I do not know. I would like to see such women come within the BSP pension because they have earned a way to do so. As the noble Lord said, it is not just out of fairness to them, because they have the earnings; it is a way of producing a stepping stone—a ladder if you like—into further opportunities. The longer women stay away from the labour market, the harder it is for them to re-enter. The more we can make it easy, attractive, available and accessible to them, the more they will come in. They want to do it, but they want to make it commensurate with their family responsibilities and childcare. I think this is one way to do it, and I am trusting, as I am sure I can, to the Minister’s commitment to the values of this and his determination to make the technology work. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we are back on a couple of probing amendments. In reverse order, Amendment 15 is merely probing whether the specified date would always be at the commencement of a tax year. I can see that it could be organised this way, but is it inevitable? If not, then something along the lines of this amendment would be appropriate. Amendment 14 is a more substantial probe, though I see that the date has come out as 2005, rather than as 2025, which was originally intended. It is not particularly significant, because it was just a peg on which to hang a question.
Clause 3 introduces Schedule 3, which changed some of the provisions in the Pensions Act 2008 concerning the consolidation of the additional pension. The idea is, at some point in time, to effectively bundle together the various contracted-out rights, and to apply actuarial factors to smooth the disparities in entitlement. We obviously support this approach, but as the notes to the Bill set out, a consequence of smoothing in cash-flow terms is that the Government are likely to pay more earlier and less later than under the current system. I understand that that is the thrust of it. Rather than lock in to the flat-rate introduction year for the start of this process, the Government now seek flexibility by way of an order. I would be grateful if the Minister could say how much flexibility they consider it necessary to have. By how many years is it estimated that the consolidation will have to be delayed or indeed advanced, if that is the thrust of it? Could he give us some indication of what this change means in terms of the likely process of consolidation? What does this mean for the wider aspiration, touched on earlier in our debates, of consolidating the basic state pension with the state second pension? I understand what the Minister said earlier about being unable to advance much on that, so I will not press him on that point, but there is a point about the interrelation of this with that process. Presumably, consolidation of the additional pension is a necessary prerequisite, and perhaps he will confirm that.
On one other practical point, I have a recollection that we were chided during the passage of the 2008 Act by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who is not with us today, on our adherence to advice from actuaries. We had some discussion on whether the actuarial smoothing had to be effectively determined by the actuaries, or by Ministers on the basis of advice. Perhaps the Minister could remind me where we ended up on that issue. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the opportunities to speak to Amendments 14 and 15, which seek to define the latest possible group for whom the additional pension consolidation would be introduced. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, seek to fix the affected group in relation to a somewhat arbitrary date of 2025. It might be helpful if I provide some context as to why we have taken steps to replace the previous certainty as to the start date and the affected group with a power to define both by way of regulations. Clause 3 and Schedule 3 of the Bill provide flexibility around the implementation of consolidation, which, as provided for in the Pensions Act 2008, simplifies past earnings-related pension rights.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the Minister for that response. I will read the record with interest, but I will certainly withdraw the amendment.
I just want to be clear on a couple of points. I think the Minister said that something like £200 million per year would be involved in the smoothing exercise. Did I understand that correctly?
Lord Freud
Yes. At the early stages there are some years where the figure peaks at around £210 million and then comes back later, so it is a net early annual cost to the state with that maximum, coming down later to a net present cost that is neutral. From memory, the peak year was coming out at—was it 1925? Sorry, 2025. I will get the right century soon. The peak would be early in the 2020s until 2025.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am grateful for that response. I rather took from reading the literature that the cash flow issue was the real driver in all this, but from what the Minister has said there are obviously broader ramifications. I will read the record.
Might the Minister deal with the point about the other minor amendment about defining a tax year? At the moment the Bill says,
“the tax year beginning with the specified date or a subsequent tax year”.
That presupposes that the specified date would be at the start of a tax year. My question was: does that inevitably follow?
Lord Freud
The noble Lord, as ever, is spot on in his assumption. Yes, it is at the start of the tax year.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am grateful for that. I can see that it is meant to be at the start of the tax year. I suppose that I have a question about what makes it the start of the tax year, but perhaps we will leave that for another occasion. I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I think this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until Thursday at 2pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Ullswater)
The Committee stands adjourned until Thursday.
House of Lords
Taxation: Low-value Consignment Relief
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have assessed the cost to the Exchequer of Low Value Consignment Relief.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, the latest estimate of the annual cost to the Exchequer of low-value consignment relief is £130 million for calendar year 2010, a reduction from the previous estimate of £140 million for fiscal year 2009-10.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer, which I find mildly unbelievable since the turnover of the largest company involved in this scam is around £500 million—and that is just one of them—on which we lose around £100 million a year. Does my noble friend agree that what started out as a quite reasonable relief for Channel Islands flower growers has now been abused to the point where it has destroyed whole industries in the UK? You can no longer on the internet retail records, computer memory, contact lenses or gifts. It is ever expanding and costing us thousands of jobs and, as the Minister says, hundreds of millions of pounds. Has not the time come to put a stop to it?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, there is a very wide range of estimates of the effect of LVCR but I believe that the HMRC data are as reliable as—more reliable than—any. I am grateful to my noble friend for drawing attention to this issue because the Government are committed to tackling tax avoidance. In that context, we are actively reviewing the operation of this relief. Ministers hope to be in a position to announce any possible changes to the operation of LVCR flowing from the review in the Budget on 23 March.
Baroness Trumpington
I am sure that I have missed out on something, but could the noble Lord possibly tell me what it means?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I have to say that, until a few days ago, I was equally in the dark. I shall try to keep it within the seven minutes.
There is a scheme in European law to make sure that small-value goods imported from outside the European Union can be exempted from value added tax, because it would be disproportionate and a huge cost to consumers and businesses if every small parcel bought from outside the EU had to be scrutinised by the Royal Mail and VAT collected. So there is an exemption under European law for individual consignments up to the value of €22 or £20. At the moment the UK has a limit of £18, below which VAT on imports is not collected. I hope that that explains it.
Lord Newby
My Lords, will the Minister accept that while at one level it sounds a rather frivolous subject, we are talking about more than 90 per cent of all CD sales in the UK? It has had a damaging impact on retailers and is another example of the Channel Islands being able to benefit from a tax scam. Will he take back to his colleagues in the Treasury the view of many Members of your Lordships’ House that this is a classic area where a small change in practice by HMRC can yield very many benefits which not only are good in principle but can also be beneficial to the Treasury?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I fully accept my noble friend’s statement that this is an important area, which is why the Treasury is looking at it. It flows not from any scam but from the fact that the Channel Islands are treated as outside the European Union for these purposes. That goes back to the accession treaty. The previous Government took steps with the Channel Islands authorities to encourage them to introduce a voluntary restraint and caps on the activities of individual firms in this area. The issue relates not only to CDs and DVDs but to a whole range of goods. It is precisely because this is an important area and we want to make sure that the Exchequer is protected that Ministers are looking at what else we might do.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, the Minister’s response to his noble friend’s original Question seemed somewhat complacent in respect of the charge sheet of problems associated with this issue. He implied that things are improving, but the noble Lord, Lord Newby, expressed doubt about whether things are improving. I think that the whole House should be doubtful. With online sales increasing at their current levels and with this trade being very much a matter of online sales, it would be very surprising indeed if it was significantly decreasing. Would it not therefore behove the Minister to indicate that the Government intend to act in this area? If it is not an abuse of taxation—if it is not a scam—then it is certainly very close to being an avoidance of tax which we ought to put an end to.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I did not want to turn this into a political question; indeed, I attempted to give credit to the previous Government for the actions that they took in conjunction with the Channel Islands authorities. However, the fact is that the VAT loss is estimated to have increased very considerably—by approximately 50 per cent in the past five years—under the previous Government. Members of that Government are now saying that the situation is terrible and we need to take action, but what did they do in the five years in which the amount of revenue lost to the Exchequer increased by 50 per cent? They only talked to the Channel Islands authorities. We have immediately gripped the situation. Ministerial colleagues and HMRC officials are now examining what—in a very difficult and technical area—can be done. If there are things that we believe should be done, they will be announced in the forthcoming Budget.
Telephone Hacking
Lord Fowler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will set up an inquiry into telephone hacking in the United Kingdom and how it can be combated.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, individuals and businesses are responsible for protecting their own data and communications. Mobile phone operators already offer ways of protecting access to voicemail. In addition, the police will investigate unlawful activity and work with the CPS to bring prosecutions where appropriate. The Metropolitan Police are conducting a new investigation of evidence relating to the News of the World and the CPS is conducting a comprehensive assessment of all material in the possession of the MPS. A number of inquiries are, therefore, under way.
Lord Fowler
Obviously, my Lords, any criminal charges must be disposed of first, but is it not the case that we now know that the victims of phone hacking include members of the Royal Family, a former Prime Minister, a former Deputy Prime Minister, several serving Members of Parliament and many others? Is not this kind of organised intrusion entirely indefensible? While it may be true that, for some unaccountable reason, parts of the press do not seem to be very keen on an inquiry, there is in reality no other way of discovering the extent of the abuse or what can be done to prevent it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers announced on 9 February that she recognises that she faces,
“clearly a major task with a considerable amount of work to be done which will take a significant amount of time and resources”.
I understand that she has met a number of those whose names have appeared in the investigation, including Members of this House, and that she will continue to work on that. Perhaps I should also mention that the Press Complaints Commission has set up its own phone-hacking inquiry.
Lord Prescott
Does the noble Lord recognise that this phone hacking—a criminal act—has undermined the public’s trust not only in the Murdoch press but in the Metropolitan Police? Senior officers and the commissioner attended private social functions given by Murdoch at the time of the investigation. Is that not unacceptable? Is he aware that the Murdoch defence of a rogue reporter was exposed by the production of e-mails by the Murdoch press that were not made available to the original inquiry, causing further inquiries by the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service and, my God, now even the Press Complaints Commission? God knows what will happen to that one. Therefore, can the Minister assure this House that no consideration will be given to the BSkyB application by the Murdoch press until the results of these inquiries are known?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am answering this Question for the Home Office; that question strays rather a long way towards the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I stress simply that the specialist crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police, which is conducting the new inquiry, is a different unit from the previous one. I understand that Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers has met the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. This is intended to be a very thorough inquiry, which will also include relations between the Metropolitan Police and the press.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
My Lords, my first question for the Minister is more of a riddle than a question, so I do not expect him to answer: which came first, the scoop or the journalist? Speaking as someone who has been a journalist, trained by the BBC, I know that the means are as important as the ends. Is my noble friend not very concerned that it has taken five years for this fact to be properly recognised by both proprietors and the police? I hope that I am not being too clever by half, but I end by citing Evelyn Waugh. Has there not been too much of:
“Up to a point, Lord Copper”?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this is one of a number of questionable practices used by members of the press in obtaining information. When I spoke to the Information Office yesterday, the information officer told me that blagging is as important a problem as hacking. “Blagging” means receiving information through deception but not necessarily by hacking phones. I will read the relevant clause 10 of the Press Complaints Commission’s Editors’ Code of Practice:
“The press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using hidden cameras or clandestine listening devices; or by intercepting private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails; or by the unauthorised removal of documents”.
That is very much what the current Press Complaints Commission inquiry, which has a majority of lay members, intends to look at.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the Minister accept it from me that, when I occupied the Benches on which he now sits, what I dreaded most were Starred Questions? That is because one is answerable for the whole Government, not merely the brief on which the Question rests. Will he give me an assurance that in future all Members on the government Front Bench will abide by that convention?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I stand corrected. I had a member of the DCMS brief me on this Question yesterday. However, moving over to the BSkyB issue is a little wide, even for this Question.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, with one honourable exception, there is no prospect of our national newspapers investigating the issue of phone hacking. The growing evidence of their own considerable involvement in the practice means that their interest lies not in exposing it but in covering it up. Do the Government believe that the hidden and murky world of private investigators and their techniques—and that of those who employ them and why—now needs further investigation? Would the proposal, which we support, of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on phone hacking not be a useful contribution, in addition to what should be current thorough and comprehensive police investigations?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I must remind the noble Lord that the murky relationship between government and the media and between the police and the media is not a new issue that has arisen with this new Government; it has been with us for some years. We all need to look at this. A large number of inquiries and a number of civil actions are under way with regard to the responsibility of the press. This issue will not go away.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, does not this whole episode demonstrate the need to replace the PCC with a statutory body with effective powers of enforcement against the press?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this morning I read the report issued in February of last year by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of another place on exactly this point, in which it makes a number of criticisms of the current situation. However, as I understood the report, it did not go so far as to propose a statutory replacement.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, have the Government got any further with the investigation of deep packet inspection of all our nation’s e-mails by private firms, which read those e-mails and pull out key words for advertising? The previous Government were investigating this. Have the present Government got any further with that because it is very worrying that all these e-mails are being exposed to that sort of scrutiny?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have not been briefed on that matter, which takes us into some very large issues about the whole question of privacy of e-mails. However, I asked a number of questions about privacy settings on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The technology is taking us further forward in a whole range of areas where questions of privacy and unauthorised access to information continue to move forward. In time we may well need to adjust the law to cope with what technology is providing.
Homelessness: Tuberculosis
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Sharples
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for detecting tuberculosis amongst rough sleepers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, from 1 April, the National Health Service in London will fund continued provision of the Find and Treat outreach service to detect TB among the homeless, including rough sleepers, and to help to ensure treatment completion. There are also initiatives for TB testing among the homeless in cities such as Liverpool and Leicester. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is developing guidance on tuberculosis among hard-to-reach groups, including rough sleepers.
Baroness Sharples
I thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply, but is he aware that the chaotic lifestyle of homeless people with very poor immune systems means that they are extremely difficult to diagnose and to treat for the six-month period for which they need antibiotics? Are Her Majesty’s Government working with other organisations to help these homeless people?
Earl Howe
My noble friend is absolutely right: this is a particularly difficult group of people in that they are hard to reach. There is a high incidence of TB among the homeless in London and a service of the kind to which I have referred appears to be cost-effective in reaching those people. On my noble friend’s second question, we are engaging with the Mayor of London’s office to see how it can become involved in helping to deliver cost-effective services to this group of people.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, will the Minister invite Westminster City Council to think again about the proposed by-law, on which it is consulting, which will make it illegal not only for rough sleepers to live on the streets around Westminster Cathedral but for charities such as Housing Justice to distribute food and soup to them? It describes the Westminster City Council proposal as an over-the-top response. Is it not right to say that? Does he agree that the problems of tuberculosis, which are the subject of this Question, will be much more difficult to identify if rough sleepers are driven off the streets and forced to live elsewhere?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I very much see the force of the noble Lord’s point. We are very much committed to preventing homelessness and to protecting the most vulnerable. We have maintained the funding for the homelessness grant at the levels of the current year— £400 million over the spending review period, which is £100 million over each of the next four years. We are specifically providing £18.5 million a year to support the voluntary sector. This is a priority, but I will take away the point that he has made about Westminster City Council.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, is it possible for a person who has no fixed address to have a doctor or to get immediate medical attention?
Earl Howe
My noble friend puts her finger on a key difficulty with this group of people, who are often very difficult to keep track of. I heard of one case where a patient required 800 interventions, sometimes with the police involved. Clearly a lot of effort has to go into this group. However, it is possible, if the patient is willing, to register that person with a GP. The challenge is whether they actually return to complete their treatment, which of course extends over many months.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
My Lords, I ought to declare an interest in that I chair the Cyrenians in the north-east. We have been working on a programme that has been identifying and keeping contact with these most vulnerable and disaffected people and we have reduced the number who have become, as they are called, “frequent flyers”. However, does the noble Lord acknowledge that there simply is not a straightforward system in the National Health Service to deal with people who do not have a fixed address and do not have regular contact with a particular locality or GP? Is it not about time that we looked at this much more holistically? There are some good individual examples around the country, but there is no guarantee that we will intervene sufficiently early to stop what is now known, which is that most people who sleep rough will be dead long before they are 50.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I was very interested to hear about the noble Baroness’s experiences in the north-east and I would like to hear more. The points that she raises lie behind our intention in the Health and Social Care Bill to make GP consortia responsible not just for the patients on the GP lists but for all the population in the local area. The health and well-being boards, which we propose should be set up at local authority level, will bring together all the relevant stakeholders to look at how the health needs of an area can best be met and prioritised.
Lord Laming
My Lords, this is a group of our fellow citizens who are particularly vulnerable and can so easily be lost in the system. At a time when there is considerable pressure on budgets, will the noble Lord use whatever good offices he can to ensure that this remains a priority in all the public services and is not seen as a soft option?
Baroness Thornton
Following on from that very helpful question, may I ask specifically about the mobile X-ray units in London, which we have discussed before in your Lordships’ House? These were funded through pooling relatively small amounts of funding from the PCTs across London, organised by the strategic health authority. Those bodies are about to disappear, so what will happen in the transition period to those mobile units and how will the new arrangements work with the consortia that are being planned?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the position for 2011-12 is that the NHS in London will fund Find and Treat. During the next year, the NHS will consider future funding, taking into account the final evaluation of the service by the Health Protection Agency and the emerging guidance from NICE. As regards the more medium-term agenda, the Government’s strategy is for a much more joined-up service. We will have the public health service working both locally and nationally. We will also have the GP consortia commissioning treatment at a local level. I hope that, as the system evolves, the noble Baroness will see that there is no loss of momentum in this very important area.
Health: Alcohol Minimum Pricing
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of minimum pricing policy on the level of alcohol-related conditions and admissions to hospital.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Home Office review of pricing policy found that increases in alcohol prices are linked to decreases in alcohol-related harms. The review also highlighted that this is a complex issue. The Government intend to ban sales of alcohol below the rate of duty plus VAT. This is a pragmatic first step towards setting the lowest level at which different strengths of alcohol can be sold. We estimate that it would mean about 1,500 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions per year.
Baroness Wheeler
I thank the Minister for his response. However, two leading advisers from the Department of Health’s own network of experts recently wrote in the Lancet that the Government,
“lacks clear aspiration to reduce the impact of cheap, readily available, and heavily marketed alcohol on individuals and on society”.
They estimate that failure to tackle drink-related problems could cost 250,000 lives over the next 20 years. How will the Minister ensure that in future the health, well-being and recovery of people with drink-related problems take precedence over the lobbying of the drinks industry?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I make it clear that we neither have nor intend to have any sort of cosy arrangement with the drinks industry. The view that we have taken is that the food, drink and fitness industries, together with charities and public health experts, all have a huge role to play in improving our health. The industry has enormous influence in its own right. However, more than that, we believe that we have a collective responsibility to do something about this problem. That is why the industry has joined the Government in a partnership to promote and empower us all to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Through the public health responsibility deal, we are challenging industry to take action that will help consumers to live healthier lives in some areas where it is not possible or effective to regulate.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, is the Minister aware that experts on liver disease such as Professor Sir Ian Gilmore in Liverpool and Professor Chris Day and Dr Chris Record in Newcastle have identified an alarming increase in the incidence of liver disease in young people? No doubt he has read the letter in the Times this morning from representatives of the drinks industry, who say that the total consumption of alcohol in this country has fallen by 11 per cent during the past two years. However, consumption by young people is steadily increasing. Can he think of any solution by which he can overcome the problem of proxy purchasing, whereby people above the minimum age buy alcohol in bulk and pass it on to young people, who are being damaged by this process?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as ever, the noble Lord is absolutely right. Overall consumption of alcohol is going down, but we are seeing very alarming rates of consumption among certain groups of young people. As Sir Ian Gilmore has pointed out, liver disease is appearing among the young, which is extremely worrying. The Government are determined to grasp this issue. Public health policy generally is co-ordinated by a public health Cabinet sub-committee. It will work on an alcohol strategy, which we will publish in the summer in the wake of our White Paper on public health. There is no single solution to this problem. The issue of proxy purchases, which for alcohol, I believe, is already an offence, is difficult to police and enforce. However, the noble Lord is right that we need to focus on it in our strategy.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, the original questioner mentioned public health in general, but is the Minister aware that alcohol is a cause of great disturbance in accident and emergency departments in all hospitals, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, when ordinary people who go in with injuries are subjected to very unpleasant treatment by those who are brought in following an alcohol-related incident?
Earl Howe
My noble friend makes an extremely important point. We estimate that alcohol harm costs the NHS around £2.7 billion a year. Forty per cent of all accident and emergency admissions are in some way connected with alcohol—I think a higher percentage on Friday and Saturday nights—and 7 per cent of all hospital admissions are accounted for in some way by alcohol. This is a very serious problem: 8,500 people die from alcohol in the UK every year and there are over 1 million hospital admissions relating to alcohol.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, now that the Minister and the Government have accepted that raising the price of alcohol is one of the ways in which we can minimise harm to those who are abusing alcohol, why have the Government’s recent proposals been so minimal? The cost of a can of lager will be increased, or minimised, to 38p under the new arrangements. This is hardly going to make any change whatsoever. We have to wait for the White Paper in the summer, but in the mean time why could a more positive approach to raising the cost of alcohol not have been taken and more fundamental changes made to the ever increasing easy access to alcohol, which is another problem that needs addressing?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we view the decision to ban below-cost sales of alcohol as very much a first step. We have announced a number of other measures, as the noble Lord may know, particularly a rise in the rate of alcohol duty by 2 per cent above inflation over each of the next four years, additional duty on high-strength beers and greater powers for local authorities over local licensing decisions. As I mentioned, there is no single solution to this problem, but we are looking at a number of additional measures.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the draft orders and regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.
Energy Bill [HL]
Lord Marland
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 68, Schedule 1, Clauses 69 to 85, Schedule 2, Clauses 86 to 102, Schedule 3, Clauses 103 to 105.
Pensions Bill [HL]
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Freud
That it be an instruction to the Grand Committee to which the Pensions Bill [HL] has been committed that they consider the bill in the following order:
Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clause 2, Schedule 2, Clause 3, Schedule 3, Clauses 4 to 17, Schedule 4, Clauses 18 to 24, Schedule 5, Clauses 25 to 29.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, has consented to place her prerogative, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of this Bill. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill delivers a key strand of the ambitious political and constitutional reform agenda which this Government have pledged to deliver. The importance of these issues of political reform was reflected in the prominence given to them in the campaigning of all the major political parties at last year’s general election. There is now a consensus across the country—dare I say brought to a head by the expenses scandal but which had been forming for some time—that the political system in this country needs to be reinvigorated.
It has been my experience over many years in active politics that the overwhelming majority of people who come into politics—of all parties, and indeed in this House of the Cross Benches—do so out of motivation for public service. Nevertheless, sadly, politics has increasingly come to be perceived to have become more about protecting vested interests than about political representation of the electorate.
Let us not forget the backdrop to many previous general elections under the current arrangements when it was often widely anticipated that the election would be held at some stage during the third or fourth year of Parliament and the country was left on tenterhooks. On those occasions, the question was when the most advantageous date to call an election would be. From our own memories, I am sure we can think of Conservative or Labour Prime Ministers who made that calculation. Regrettably for my part, no Liberal Prime Minister in living memory has been in a position to make that calculation. However, the question is: advantageous to whom?
The question that the Prime Minister of the day considers then is not necessarily whether that date would be most advantageous to the country or the electorate; it is, more often than not, whether that date would be most advantageous to the incumbent party of government seeking re-election. This is an example of what people have grown tired of: a political system geared in favour of the Executive and used for partisan advantage. Fixed-term Parliaments will provide stability as it will be known from the beginning of the Parliament how long it can be expected to last. We already have fixed-terms for the devolved institutions, local government and the European Parliament.
We are not saying in the Bill that all Parliaments must last for five years no matter what happens, but there must be a significant and pressing reason for early Dissolution, and it is right that the other place, whose support is essential for the continuation of any Government, should be able decide when that should occur. This should not be a decision for the Government to take for themselves. That is why the Bill provides that Parliament should ordinarily last five years. It transfers from the Prime Minister to the House of Commons the power to bring about an early general election.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and members of the Constitution Committee of this House for the careful scrutiny that they have given the Bill. As a former member of that committee, I know the important role that it plays and I believe that its report will aid our debates during the Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House.
I acknowledge that most of those on the committee decided that the case had not been conclusively established for fixed-terms. However, let us not forget that this debate has been going on for some considerable time. As I noted, fixed-terms already exist for our devolved institutions, local authorities and the European Parliament. Moreover, there were commitments in the 2010 manifestos of the Labour Party and my own party, the Liberal Democrats, to establish fixed-terms for the UK.
I was pleased to note the committee’s endorsement of significant elements of the Government’s proposals, particularly the two mechanisms in Clause 2 that provide for an early general election to be held. It seems to me that the committee has said that, if the principle of fixed-terms were accepted—I have acknowledged that that is not what it said—this Bill sets out very much the way in which one would seek to achieve that principle. The Government have responded to the committee’s report in a Command Paper, copies of which are available in the Printed Paper Office.
The Bill is modest in size. It has only five clauses and one schedule, but we can be in no doubt that its effect would be significant. Clause 1 relates to polling days for parliamentary general elections. It sets out that the polling day for the next parliamentary general election will be 7 May 2015. Each subsequent parliamentary general election will be expected to occur on the first Thursday in May every five years.
As I said earlier, we of course recognise that there may be exceptional circumstances in which it would not be appropriate for Parliament to continue to run for its full fixed-term—I will come to the arrangements for those shortly. When such an early election is called, however, Clause 1(4) clarifies that Parliament will run for five years from the preceding first Thursday in May. This provision has been endorsed by the Constitution Committee and will provide that a Government elected at an early general election will have a full term, allowing them to deliver a full legislative programme.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Is the Minister now able to answer a question that he was not able to answer at the informal meeting yesterday? Why was the month of May chosen when more general elections have taken place in October in the past? Local elections are normally in May and general elections in October.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I think the last October general election was in 1974, which was some 36 years ago. I have no doubt that the noble Lord remembers it well. However, it is difficult to say that they have generally been held in October when the last one held in October was over a third of a century ago. In more recent times, elections have been held in May. In 2001, it would have been held in May but for the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. It was held in June. This present Parliament was elected in May, and the natural course would be to go through to May 2015 if it was to have its full five years. That is why May was proposed in this Bill.
Clause 1 includes a power for the Prime Minister, by affirmative order, to vary the date of the polling day by up to two months either before or after the scheduled polling day. This power is intended to accommodate short-term crises or other conditions that might make it inappropriate to hold the election on the scheduled date: for example, a repeat of the foot and mouth crisis, which led to the postponement of the local elections in 2001. Although the general election was within the five years and nothing was needed to change the date, that is the kind of circumstance that is anticipated.
This is where your Lordships’ House will have an important role to play in the procedures set out in the Bill. Any instrument made under the Bill to vary the date of a scheduled election by up to two months will require the agreement of your Lordships’ House, thus affirming this House’s role as guardian of that particular principle of the constitution. It reflects an existing provision of the Parliament Acts: that your Lordships’ consent is required for any Bill that extends the maximum life of a Parliament beyond five years.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and the members of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its report on this Bill. I was glad to see that the committee felt that the delegated power taken in Clause 1 of the Bill was justified. I can assure the noble Baroness, her committee and indeed the House that we will give careful consideration to the report and its recommendations and I will respond very shortly.
There has been much debate over whether the length of Parliaments should be four years or five. It is not an exact science; it is a question of judgment. However, all arguments considered, the Government remain of the strong view that five years—the current maximum set out by the Parliament Act 1911 and more recently the norm—is the right length for a Parliament. Three of the last five Parliaments have lasted almost five years, and 44 countries out of 77 in the Inter-Parliamentary Union have five-year terms for their lower house, with only 26 having four-year terms. Indeed, there are five-year fixed parliamentary terms in Italy, South Africa, France and Luxembourg, and there is a five-year non-fixed term in Ireland and India.
My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has spoken about the need for Governments to work for the long-term advantage of the country rather than simply to pursue policies for the short term. Not only will the five-year fixed-term help facilitate better planning within government, but it can help facilitate better scrutiny of the Government by Parliament. With a fixed term, Parliament will be able to plan better their scrutiny of the Government’s legislative programme, and Select Committees will have more certainty when planning their inquiries. Indeed, this point was recognised by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place.
Noble Lords might well argue that the recent experience of five-year Parliaments is that the Government are unpopular and have had limited ability to make use of the extra fifth year. However, I contend that that occurs in the current political framework and would not be a foretaste of what would happen under this Bill. The five-year Parliaments of recent years have been a somewhat self-selecting sample; they existed only because the Government in question did not believe they could win an election at the end of four years and were possibly waiting for something to turn up. Of course, in these circumstances, the Government tend to be tired and lacking in ideas. However, under this Bill, it will be possible for a Government to plan properly for a full five-year term.
There will be more certainty with fixed terms, and, with our proposed change to begin the Sessions of Parliament in May, the last Session would be a full one. As long as the Government retained the confidence of the other place, they would be able to deliver a full programme in their fifth Session. We would not have a situation in which the fifth Session began perhaps in the last week in November and by the last week in March we were engaged in a wash-up process. The Government can plan for the longer term, knowing that they will have time not only to introduce measures but to see them to fruition and begin to produce results.
I anticipate, too, that it might be argued that this Bill is part of some plot to reduce Parliament’s power over the Executive by extending the period between elections. However, we are not extending the potential period between elections. That remains, as it is now, five years. However, the certainty of five years means that not only the Government but Parliament can plan properly. It can plan its scrutiny programme and Select Committees can plan their inquiries. It will lead to more and better scrutiny, not less.
I turn to the interaction of the proposals in the Bill and the timetable for elections to the devolved institutions: an issue that has led to some considerable discussion and debate, not to say controversy. Under the proposals in this Bill and the respective devolution Acts, elections to the House of Commons and the devolved institutions will coincide every 20 years. Concern has been expressed about that. I ask your Lordships to recognise that this Bill has not brought about the possibility that the elections to the House of Commons and the devolved institutions coincide. It was inevitable at some point under the existing variable arrangements for Parliament that that could happen. The Bill has merely given us prior notification and an opportunity to consider the issue.
Lord Wigley
On the interplay and the coinciding every twentieth year, which might be at the end of the first cycle in this instance, is it not desirable that there should not be such clashing, that the elections to the Scottish Parliament and to the National Assembly for Wales should be in their own right, thereby ensuring that the electorate are aware of what they are addressing, particularly where manifestos of parties in relation to the devolved Assemblies might be different from their manifestos in relation to Parliament? Is there any mechanism whereby we can ensure that whatever the cycle—whether it is a five-year cycle as the Government propose, or a four-year cycle as many might wish—there is the same cycle for the devolved institutions to avoid any clash at all?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I readily understand the point made by the noble Lord. He is right to point out that, although it would happen once every 20 years, the first time would be in May 2015. It has been recognised that there are issues. That is why, as I shall come to explain, efforts have been made to address the issue with the devolved Scottish Parliament and the devolved National Assembly for Wales.
The Government are committed, as I have indicated, to working co-operatively with all three of the devolved Administrations. We have been consulting the respective party leaders and the Presiding Officers in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I can confirm that my colleague and honourable friend Mr Mark Harper wrote to the Presiding Officers of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly on 17 February proposing that if the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly passed a resolution, with the support of at least two-thirds of all Members, agreeing that the 2015 Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly general elections should be moved to another date no earlier than the first Thursday in May 2014 and no later than the first Thursday in May 2016, the Government would then be willing to table an amendment to this Bill that would, if accepted, make this change. Copies of these letters to the respective Presiding Officers have been placed in the Library.
A resolution with the support of at least two-thirds of all MSPs or Assembly Members would be a clear indication of cross-party support for such a move and would be consistent with the existing requirement in the Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act for a two-thirds majority in a vote for early Dissolution. In any event, we will carry out—I think this also addresses the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley—a detailed assessment of the implications of the two sets of elections coinciding at a later date. In the light of that, we would consider whether to conduct a public consultation in Scotland and Wales on whether the devolved institutions there should be permanently extended to five years.
The situation in Northern Ireland is different. Northern Ireland Office Ministers are conducting separate discussions with the parties in Northern Ireland on this issue and have concluded that it would be better to await the outcome of the combined polls scheduled for May this year before deciding whether special provision would be needed for Northern Ireland.
On Clause 2, it has been recognised that if we are to establish fixed-term Parliaments there must be a mechanism to deal with the situation in which a Government have lost the confidence of the House of Commons or where otherwise there is a consensus that there should be an early general election. Clause 2 therefore provides for the circumstances in which an early parliamentary general election can be held. There are two ways in which this can occur: through a traditional vote of no confidence in the Government, passed in the other place by a simple majority of those voting; or by a Motion, passed by a majority of two-thirds of the total number of seats in the other place, which states that there should be an early general election. As such, the Bill will provide the House of Commons with a new power to vote for Dissolution, which is not currently within its gift.
As many noble Lords will be aware, these votes have been the subject of some discussion and controversy. I wish, therefore, to explain to your Lordships exactly what the two votes are about, what they mean and why it is necessary to have two separate mechanisms for two separate circumstances where Dissolution might be required.
First, the defining principle of the Bill is that no Government should be able to dissolve Parliament for their own political advantage. That is why the threshold for passing a Dissolution Motion, as set out in Clause 2(1), that would trigger an early general election should be set at a majority of two-thirds of the number of seats in the other House. This is a majority that no post-war Government would have been able to achieve. In short, this means that we are the first Government to surrender to Parliament the power to call an early general election.
Some have questioned the rationale for giving the other place the power to vote for Dissolution. However, if there is a clear consensus that there should be an early general election, it would be nonsensical to force the other place to engineer a vote of no confidence. That is why Clause 2(1) provides the House of Commons with a new power to vote for Dissolution following a process that we believe is robust and transparent. The absence of such a power in other countries has meant that no-confidence Motions have sometimes had to be engineered to trigger an early general election in circumstances in which there is widespread consensus that there should be one.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Will the Minister confirm that, if the 1997 general election had been held under AV, the Labour Government majority would have been far higher—more than the threshold set in this Bill?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am not in a position to confirm that because it is highly speculative as to whether that would have happened or not. One does not know what kind of campaign there would have been if there had been an election on AV.
Clause 2(2) recognises the traditional right of the House of Commons to pass a Motion of no confidence in the Government on a simple majority of those voting. No-confidence votes have, until now, been a matter of convention—although it has been widely accepted that a no-confidence vote in the other place would require a Prime Minister to resign or call an early election. However, there has been nothing to date to enforce this. For the first time the Bill gives legal effect to a Motion of no confidence passed by the House of Commons. Such Motions will continue to require a simple majority.
Clause 2(2) provides that, following the passing of a no-confidence Motion in the other place, there will be a period of 14 days during which the Government may seek to gain the confidence of the other place. If, during the 14-day period, a Government emerge who can command the confidence of the House of Commons, it will be free to govern for the remainder of the five-year term since the previous general election, and the country would not have a general election. However, if no such Government emerge at the conclusion of the 14-day period, Parliament will be dissolved. As the Constitution Committee concluded, a period of 14 days strikes the right balance between allowing enough time for an alternative Government to be formed while ensuring that there is no prolonged period without an effective Government. We must bear in mind that a Government who are known to have lost the confidence of the House of Commons will continue to be the Government during the campaign period.
A Motion for an early election will be confirmed by issuing a certificate by the Speaker of the House of Commons. A similar provision is set out in the Parliament Act 1911, which provides for the Speaker of the House of Commons to issue a certificate confirming that a Bill has been certified as a money Bill. In the case of a no-confidence Motion, the Speaker’s certificate will confirm that the Motion has been passed, and that the 14-day period has ended without the House of Commons passing any Motion expressing confidence in any Government. Such a certificate will mean that there is no ambiguity about whether the other House has voted for Dissolution in the requisite majority or whether a vote of no confidence in the Government should trigger Dissolution.
Clause 2 sets out that the Speaker’s certificate, in these cases, shall be conclusive for all purposes and that the Speaker must, as far as is practicable, consult the Deputy Speakers before issuing the certificate. While it has been argued that the requirement for a two-thirds majority should not be set out in statute, I was pleased to note that the Constitution Committee shares the Government’s assessment of the Bill’s interaction with parliamentary privilege. It provides the House of Commons with a new power—one that is to be transferred from the Prime Minister to the House of Commons. We believe that such a fundamental constitutional change should be laid down in statute.
However, in doing so, the Government do not believe that the provisions in this Bill will undermine the other House’s exclusive cognisance. I have made available in the Library a copy of a memorandum that the Government placed in the House of Commons Library on 13 September setting out their view that the Bill does not affect the relationship between Parliament and the courts.
Lord Richard
This is the point in the Bill with which I have the most difficulty. Why on earth should a Government who have lost the confidence of the House of Commons be given, in effect, a second chance to cobble together another coalition that might have the confidence of the House of the Commons? The present situation is terribly simple and very clear, and is the way in which Governments have operated almost exclusively in the past. If you lose a Motion of confidence, there has to be an election. That is simple. Why on earth can we not stick with it?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the opportunity will be there for Parliament—to those elected to the other place—to see whether another Government can be formed. That may well be possible, but it would require the Government to have the confidence of the other place. If they have the confidence of the other place, there is no reason why they should not see out the term of the Parliament for which they were elected, subject to the provision that we are discussing. The provision places the power in the hands of Members elected to the other place and not to the Government of the day.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
We will no doubt come back to this, but I would be grateful if noble Lords would allow me to make some progress.
Lord Richard
My Lords, if there is a period of 14 days in which discussions are taking place, you may end up at the end of those 14 days with a Government who are not the same Government as at the start of the 14 days. You may have a different Prime Minister and different Ministers; you may have different policies—all sorts of things may happen. I come back to the central point. Why on earth should we give a Government that period of additional opportunity to try to preserve a position that the House of Commons has rejected?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, that Government will require a confidence vote of Members of the House of Commons. It is the House of Commons that will determine the matter. That is an important point. If you have a fixed term but there is a clear consensus for a dissolution, there is a provision to trigger that. But if the House of Commons wishes to place its confidence in a Government, that is a matter for the House of Commons.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am trying to make some progress, because I have been speaking for a while. I am sure that we will have plenty of opportunity to come back to this.
Lord Morris of Aberavon
I am grateful to the Minister. This is an intrinsically important point. In all our experiences, a vote of confidence in the House of Commons is a rare event of crucial importance. We all know what it means: we are summoned back from the end of the earth to take part in it. As has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, why should a Government, having lost a vote of confidence, have a second chance at all?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the House of Commons would determine this. As the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, the Government might then be of a different composition, but they would come from those who have been elected to the House of Commons for a term of five years. If they cannot form a Government and no Government can command the consent to a majority in the House of Commons, there would be an election. If that could not be done within 14 years—I mean, within 14 days. [Laughter.] That is probably wishful thinking on some people’s part. If that could not be done within 14 days, there would be an election.
Clause 3 makes the key necessary changes to electoral law and the law concerning the meeting of Parliament in light of fixed days for elections. It provides that Parliament dissolves automatically 17 working days before the polling day, which has been fixed for the general election under the Bill. It means that Her Majesty the Queen will no longer be able to dissolve Parliament in exercise of the prerogative. This is a safeguard against a Prime Minister deciding that he wishes to ignore the requirements of the Bill and advising Her Majesty to exercise her power to dissolve Parliament.
Clause 4 deals with certain supplementary and consequential matters. It preserves the Queen’s power to prorogue Parliament. Subsection (2) preserves the traditional way in which the sealing of a proclamation summoning a new Parliament under the great seal of the realm is authorised, which is by Order in Council rather than by warrant under the royal sign manual.
Clause 5 sets out the short title of the Bill and the schedule contains consequential amendments to a number of Acts of Parliament. I do not intend to go through them all, but included among them is the Septennial Act 1715, which, after amendment by the Parliament Act 1911, set the current five-year term for Parliament.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill will be seen as a stabilising measure. It will reduce opportunities for partisan game playing. In a situation where we are so often told that the Executive are trying to gather power to themselves, under the Bill they will give power to Parliament, and it is right that they do so. I look forward to the debates that we will have in your Lordships' House. The points raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, will undoubtedly be ones to which we can return in Committee. I look forward in the course of this debate to hearing a maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Cormack, with whom I was privileged to serve for many years in the other place.
It was quite obvious from reading the record that the Bill was the subject of some lively debates in the other place, where—I should put on record—extra time was provided for consideration in Committee.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It is absolutely true, the Bill was given extra time at Committee—a Committee of the Whole House. I am certain we will not all see eye to eye with the noble Lords opposite, although I recall that they supported the idea of fixed-term Parliaments in their manifesto. There is therefore some broad consensus on what this Bill seeks to do.
This Bill demonstrates the commitment of this Government in bringing forward much needed political and constitutional reform. It will go a long way to restoring trust in our political institutions and I therefore commend this Bill to the House.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, as the lead Minister on this important constitutional Bill. The noble and learned Lord gained your Lordships’ trust and respect—in the end almost alone—in his handling of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I very much look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who I am sure will be an important contributor to the proceedings of this House in years to come. I genuinely congratulate the Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington, which has produced a penetrating and extremely helpful report on the Bill that has helped to resolve a number of issues which would not have otherwise been resolved.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have agreed that they wish to govern together until 15 May 2015. That is an agreement which, in practice and under our existing constitutional framework, is open to them to make. In the context of the healthy majority they enjoy in the Commons, it requires only one thing—that they abide by the promises that they have made to each other. It requires nothing more. In particular, it does not require a binding resolution of the other place and it does not require this Bill. There is very much to be said for fixed-term Parliaments; and there is very little to be said for this Bill, which dresses up as a piece of high-minded constitutional reform the chronic mistrust which the two parties in the coalition have—in my view correctly—for each other.
The legislation, practically everybody except them agrees, damages the constitution merely to give effect to an agreement that does not require the Bill. Our aim in your Lordships’ House should be to demonstrate the damage done by this Bill, to try to improve it as much as possible by amendment, and then to consider the overall effect of the amended Bill in the context of a Bill not caught by the Parliament Act 1911. The noble and learned Lord was right when he said that we are the guardians of the sanctity of the term of Parliament.
As regards the damage done by this Bill, first, it gets the period of the fixed term wrong; it should be four years, not five. The consequence of this is that the voters will find themselves even less able to hold their Executive and legislators to account. Secondly, this Bill probably allows the Prime Minister, as long as he retains a majority in the House of Commons, to have a general election whenever he wants by relying on one or other of the exceptions to the fixed-term provisions. It constitutes very little, if any, inhibition on the executive power of the Prime Minister. Thirdly, the drafting of the Bill is such that it might well prevent there being a general election when a Government genuinely lose the confidence of the House of Commons, either because the lack of confidence is not demonstrated by something which is described as a “motion of no confidence”, or because of the 14-day provision referred to in interventions on the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness.
The damage done by this Bill will be less accountable Parliaments, because they will last longer, a Prime Minister unchecked in his ability to have an election whenever he wants and a legislature with a more limited ability to evict a Government who have lost the confidence of the Commons.
This important constitutional Bill has—inevitably with this Government, I say with a heavy heart—not been the subject of a Green or a White Paper, of public consultation or of pre-legislative scrutiny. Its roots are in the coalition agreement. The terms of that agreement provided for the introduction of a binding resolution in the Commons to hold the next general election on 15 May 2015 and, after the passage of that resolution, to introduce a fixed-term Parliaments Bill with a provision which would allow there to be a general election if 55 per cent of MPs voted for such an election —the picture being: lock people in with a binding resolution, then lock them in further with the Bill.
On 25 May 2010 in the other place, its Deputy Leader said:
“Unlike what happened under the previous Administration [the Bill] will not be guillotined”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/10; col. 146.]
He also said:
“There is a strong case for pre-legislative scrutiny, but I do not want to extend the consideration of this legislation into the following Session, because that would not be appropriate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/10; col. 152.]
No binding resolution was ever put to the Commons; the 55 per cent was changed to two-thirds without consultation—unsurprisingly, when one learns that the coalition has 56 per cent of the MPs; a guillotine was applied on the second Committee day in the Commons; and, despite the fact that the parliamentary Session was extended until May 2012, after the Deputy Leader of the Commons had indicated that he was in favour of pre-legislative scrutiny as long as it did not extend the consideration of the Bill into the next Session, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny.
The unanimous view of your Lordships’ Select Committee, in its report on the Bill, is that the Bill’s origins and content,
“owe more to short-term considerations than to a mature assessment of enduring constitutional principles or sustained public demand”.
The short-term considerations driving this Bill are obvious; namely, to cement this particular Government into power for five years by making the holding of a general election earlier than five years as difficult as possible. To suggest that the purpose of the Bill is to introduce constitutional change beneficial to the nation is not credible when its provisions are examined for their effect and the evidence of what is generally perceived to be the right changes to introduce on fixed-term Parliaments. Perhaps I might make those assertions good.
First, on four years not five, the aim and likely effect of the legislation is to change our system from one where the maximum term of a Government has been five years, although the normal length has been much closer to four years, to one where the norm is five years with exceptions. That change will be damaging to our constitutional arrangements. By extending the period between elections by around one year, it will distance the people from the politicians. It will make the politicians less accountable to the public and intensify the feelings of alienation between those who govern and those they govern. Herbert Asquith, the then Prime Minister, when introducing the current arrangements with the five-year maximum, as opposed to the seven-year maximum, accurately predicted that they would produce an actual legislative working term, in practice, of four years. When he was introducing these provisions, he said that four years,
“will secure that your House of Commons for the time being, is always either fresh from the polls which gave it authority, or—and this is an equally effective check upon acting in defiance of the popular will—it is looking forward to the polls at which it will have to render an account of its stewardship”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/2/1911; col. 1749.]
That was in the context of Asquith saying that four years would be the norm.
Until the coalition agreement, no party and, as far as I can find, precious few academics were urging that the fixed term—that is, the norm—should be five years. The Conservatives, far from supporting a fixed term, argued through their leader in the general election campaign that there should be a mandatory requirement for a general election within six months of any change of PM. The Liberal Democrats’ position was that indeed there should be a fixed term. They did not say how long in their manifesto. Until the coalition agreement, they had always previously said that it should be four years. In 2007, their conference adopted a paper which said:
“Liberal Democrats have long argued that parliaments should last for a fixed term of four years”.
Since 1994, three Private Members’ Bills have been introduced in the Commons for fixed terms by three admired, independent-minded Members of Parliament: the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who I am happy to see in his place today, Mr Tony Wright and Mr David Howarth. Each one of those Private Members’ Bills specified four years. The Plant Commission—I am happy to see my noble friend Lord Plant in his place—which reported in 1993, said four years. All three of the devolved Assemblies or Parliaments in the United Kingdom set up in the past 13 years adopted four years. The academic position has been summed up by Professor Blackburn, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of London, as follows:
“In the UK, there can be little doubt that the period between general elections should be four years. The proposal for fixed-term Parliament as a whole should fit as closely as possible into existing constitutional expectations, and the idea that four years is about the right length of time between elections is very prevalent”.
There have been four five-year Governments since the Second World War. I include anything over four years and eight months. Those fifth years of five-year Governments, 1963-64, 1991-92, 1996-97, 2009-10, have tended to be demoralised years; very different from the fourth years of the Governments where the expectation is an election at the end of the fourth year; 1950-51, 1954-55, 1958-59, 1982-83, 2006-07, 2000-01, 2004-05. That is partly because the country may be waiting for change in those fifth years, but significantly because the democratic mandate is so obviously exhausted in those fifth years and legitimacy for the Government lacking.
This issue is of central importance to this Bill. It is the big change that this Bill will bring. There will be more fifth years; more paralysis waiting for change. Most of the evidence that dispassionate observers have brought to this issue supports the view that making five the norm—lengthening the period of our Parliaments —will damage our constitutional arrangements.
Perhaps I may give just two examples. Professor Dawn Oliver, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at UCL, thought that the cumulative effect of successive five-year terms would be to produce a democratic deficit. Democratic Audit expressed alarm that a five-year term would present,
“a reversal of a long struggle for more accountable government”.
The justification given for five years by Mr Clegg is that it is a length of time with which people are familiar and which will reduce the politicking because the politicking starts, he alleges, at the beginning of the fourth year. In fact, as a nation we are more familiar with a term of around four years, and in a shorter cycle, with four years fixed, the electioneering tends to be shorter and the period of paralysis shorter. My noble friend Lady Jay’s committee stated:
“Of all the issues arising from the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, the proposal for a five year fixed term has created the most unease”.
Your Lordships’ House has the power to stop the five years and we should certainly use it.
However, there is much wrong with this Bill apart from its cynical adoption of a five-year term. It is hardly a fixed-term parliaments Bill at all. It specifies two circumstances, other than the expiry of five years, in which a general election must take place: where two-thirds or more of Members of Parliament vote for one or where the Commons passes a vote of no confidence and another Government do not obtain the confidence of the House of Commons within 14 days of the passage of a vote of no confidence. With those two exceptions, it is likely that any Prime Minister who wants an early election can get one whenever he wants. Would, I ask rhetorically, the main opposition party have objected if either Gordon Brown in 2007 or John Major in 1990 had said that they wished to go to the country in the aftermath of their selection as PM by their parties in those years? I doubt it, so the two-thirds exception could have been relied on. Would the main opposition parties have objected in January or February 1974, when Mr Heath went to the country early, or in October 1974, when the Wilson Government did, assuming that this Bill had been law? I doubt it.
However, let us suppose that in January or February 1974 the main opposition party had objected to Mr Heath going to the country. Under the wording of this Bill, I can see no objection to Mr Heath having proposed a vote of no confidence in the Government, not on the basis that he did not believe that they were the right Government but on the basis that, without a democratic endorsement of the Government’s position, it was wrong for the Government to continue, as I conceive Mr Heath’s view to have been at the time. The way to have achieved that under this Bill would have been to propose a vote of no confidence in the Government as long as there was no election. Alternatively, let us take October 1974, when a minority Government needed to do things to put the economy straight. Again, would there have been any difficulty in proposing that it was necessary at that stage to have an early election? I conceive not. Or let us suppose that in 2000 or 2005 the Labour Government of Mr Tony Blair had said, “We think the right course now is to allow for driven public service reform, which can be achieved only by a new mandate from the country”. On the basis of the Bill, would it have been improper in those circumstances to seek a vote of no confidence with a view to having a general election? I do not think that there would have been any problem.
In each case, the question to be asked under the Bill is: does the Motion which has been passed satisfy the Clause 2(2) test; namely, on a specified day did the House pass a Motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government? Under the terms of the Bill, the question of whether it did or did not would fall to the Speaker to decide after consulting the Deputy Speakers. Any conclusion that the Speaker reaches is described in Clause 2(3) as being “conclusive for all purposes”. In my view, his conclusion would not be challengeable in the courts, although I am aware that the Clerk of the House of Commons, Mr Malcolm Jack, for whom I have the greatest respect, has expressed anxiety that the courts might consider that they had jurisdiction to consider on judicial review whether the Speaker had come to the correct view. I have very little doubt that the courts, having regard to the subject matter of the Bill, to the fact that the decision was to be made by the Speaker and that there was a conclusiveness clause, would consider that this matter had nothing whatever to do with them, and they would conclude that parliamentary privilege preventing any interference by the court meant that they could make no orders. Therefore, I agree with the Government in that respect.
Therefore, it would be for the Speaker to decide, and I do not see anything in the Bill which either allows or requires him to inquire into why the no confidence vote was passed. If it was passed, that is sufficient. The Bill says “passed”, not “lost by the Government”. It must be envisaged by the Bill that the Motion that leads to no confidence is not necessarily one that is proposed by the Opposition. Let us take, for example, the Queen’s Speech being defeated by the House of Commons or the Finance Bill being defeated at Third Reading. Would there be any doubt that those constitute votes of no confidence in the Government? Both would be votes proposed by the Government, not by the Opposition.
In practice, on the wording of the Bill, the Prime Minister, as long as he retains a majority in the House of Commons, can satisfy the first part of the vote of no confidence requirement. Inevitably, in those circumstances he could also satisfy the second—preventing any new Government emerging in the 14-day period after the vote of no confidence has passed. If that analysis is correct, which I believe it is, this Bill in effect provides no real inhibition on a Prime Minister with a majority from having an election whenever he wants. The vast majority of witnesses who gave evidence on this point before the Lords Constitution Select Committee said that it would be open on the current terms of the Bill for a Government to manipulate the position to have a vote of confidence and then lose it in order to have a general election. I am sure that that is right, although for the reasons I outlined I do not think that any real manipulation would be needed.
Mr Clegg gave evidence to the Lords Select Committee that he could not exclude the theoretical possibility but he went on:
“Can you exclude it in practical political terms?”
He answered his own question by saying:
“I think you pretty well nigh can”.
He went on to say that,
“if a Government sought to do that it would be so transparent and so evidently grubby and self-serving that it would not do that Government any good at all. The final court of opinion, of course, is what the electorate would do, and I think they would be very unforgiving”.
I do not think that the electorate would think that. If Mr Heath in 1974 had said, “Assume this Bill was passed so I am not entitled to an early Dissolution but I will do it by getting a vote of no confidence”, that does not feel grubby at all to me. Equally, if John Major or Gordon Brown—in 1990 or 2007—had said that they should be endorsed by the public, I do not think that people would remotely regard that as grubby. In any event, it does not appear right. Canada introduced a Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2006 which specified, as this Bill does, that the election should take place every five years on a specific day. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Harper, said in support of fixed terms at the time he was introducing the Bill:
“Fixed dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties”.
That was said by Stephen Harper on 26 May 2006.
Like our Bill, his Bill had a safety valve in the sense that it did not affect the powers of the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament at the Governor-General’s discretion. Two years after the Canadian Parliament introduced that Act, the Prime Minister, Mr Stephen Harper, who swore blind that he was giving up his power to call the date of the general election, ignored the Act and asked the Governor-General for a general election, which was duly granted, correctly in my view because the Governor-General was obliged to accept the advice of her Prime Minister. I am not sure whether Mr Harper got a majority but he did better in that general election than in the previous one.
On that material, the Lords Select Committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay concluded:
“We conclude that, if the Bill is passed, it would not be possible to prevent a government using a vote of no confidence to bring about an early election. To do so would be seen by many as an abuse of the Act’s provisions and would undermine the fixed-term principle”.
The last part of the Select Committee’s view might be right—namely, that it would be seen by many as an abuse of the Act’s provisions—but I would not advise your Lordships to invest trust in this Government sticking to anything they have said about how they will treat Parliament. I draw the attention of noble Lords to the series of broken detailed assurances given to Parliament in relation to the Bill. If the two members of the coalition do not trust each other, without a binding resolution and this Bill, to stick to their commitment to govern until 15 May, why should this Parliament? The crucial point is that the Bill deprives the Prime Minister of the right to call a general election on the date of his choice only where he loses his majority in Parliament. Only then does he lose control over whether a no confidence vote passes, but then, of course, he would be vulnerable to being thrown out in any event by a no confidence vote.
Ironically, moving from the ease with which the Prime Minister who does want a general election can circumvent the fixed term where he thinks he can win an election, the Bill, at the same time, appears to provide a legal basis to prevent there being an election when the Government have, in reality, lost the confidence of the Commons in the traditional sense. The Bill allows for an early Dissolution only where there is a vote for one for which two-thirds of MPs have voted or where the House,
“passes a Motion of no confidence”.
What happens when the Government lose a vote on the passage of the Queen’s Speech or the Finance Bill? Does there have to be a subsequent Motion of no confidence in order for the Speaker to be satisfied that there has been a Motion of no confidence? If there does—which it would be in the interests of a governing party that wishes to stay in power to say that there would need to be—then the party’s MPs would, having, perhaps, rebelled in some numbers on the Queen’s Speech or the Finance Bill, rally to the party on the vote of no confidence, and the Government, unlike today, would get a second shot.
There have, since 1895, been four successful votes of no confidence in the Commons. In 1895 the vote of no confidence took the form of docking a proportion of the Secretary of War’s salary. In 1924 it took the form of an amendment to the terms of the resolution on the Queen’s Speech. There was another one in 1924, which took the form of an amendment to a vote of censure of the then Labour Government. A fourth one was the only one that was in the form of a vote of no confidence. I can see nothing wrong with the leader of the governing party, the Prime Minister of the day, saying, “This is not a vote of confidence, whatever it may be”, thereby, in effect, tying the hands of the Speaker and requiring the Motion of no confidence to be brought forward.
It is critical to tighten up the definition of the phrase,
“passes a vote of no confidence”,
to cover a number of situations over and above those that I have already raised. These situations include those cases where the Government lose a vote of confidence, as opposed to one of no confidence, and those cases where there would be no doubt that the vote was one in which confidence in the Government was at issue, albeit not expressly a Motion of no confidence—for example, the Queen’s Speech, the Finance Bill or an issue where the Prime Minister had expressly designated the vote as one of confidence.
The Bill should also deal with the position where the Government have never obtained the confidence of the House of Commons; for example, where, after a general election, in a minority government situation, the Government lose the vote on the Queen’s Speech. Is the position then that there needs to be a new Government? Do the new Government have to be found from the House of Commons then and there, or do they get only 14 days? Is that what is really envisaged by the Bill? Putting aside the situation where you have no Government after a general election who have obtained the confidence of the House of Commons after it has met, should there really be a norm that the House of Commons has 14 days to try to find a new Government? Should we not stick to the current norm, which is that, where there is a vote of no confidence, there should be a general election?
All of these issues are important, as is Prorogation and the extent to which it may be used to circumvent losing a vote of confidence, as it was recently in Canada. There are also issues about the timing of Westminster elections clashing with the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament elections, which we will wish to probe when the Government’s consultation with those two bodies is reported to us. If the report comes too late, we may have to proceed without it.
What do we have in this Bill? We have a Bill that gets the wrong number of years; provides no real inhibition to the Prime Minister of the day having a general election whenever he wants one; and restricts, by making hard, the circumstances in which a Government who have lost the confidence of the Commons can be removed. The Bill is an utter disaster. It has been put in simply to provide glue to hold the coalition together because its parties do not trust each other. I respectfully suggest that the Government think of ways to find that glue other than by messing up the British constitution. We will do our best in this House to amend the Bill to make it work and to make it do as little damage as possible to our constitution. It is a Bill to which the Parliament Act does not apply and, as the noble and learned Lord said, we are the guardians of the right length of parliamentary terms.
Lord Howe of Aberavon
My Lords, this is the first time for many years that I rise to my feet recalling that I am formally to be described as “noble and learned”. I find myself following two gentlemen who are equally qualified for the second epithet but infinitely more competent in demonstrating their ability to cherish it. I find that the issues so ably presented by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and so ably destroyed or eroded by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, make me even more worried about where we are going next.
I am now so antique myself that I have become more sceptical about fundamental changes to our constitutional structure. I have been taught that lesson by changes already made in the past 10 or 12 years. For example, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, was the last man to hold the office of Lord Chancellor in anything like the significant way in which it was long held and should have gone on being held. It is not simply a piece of tearful legal reminiscence that makes me say that. The fact that my former Parliamentary Private Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, is now Lord Chancellor but also Secretary of State, which office no longer assimilates, emulates or coincides with the office of Lord Chancellor as one used to know it, disturbs me. We are now living in a period in which, increasingly often, politicians and judges denounce each other. We find ourselves facing the terrible burden of “non-elected judges”, as though they have no qualifications because they are not elected. There is an upsurge of affection for democratic structures.
The fact that such conflict is developing is a consequence of the disappearance of the office of Lord Chancellor—an office that, if I remember correctly, was criticised by a select committee of the Council of Europe many years ago. It said that we had such an odd officer defying the laws of separation of powers because Britain had not experienced the reforms implemented throughout the rest of the continent by Napoleon Bonaparte. What sort of judgment is that? It is not just a fashionable thing to bewail dispensing with the Lord Chancellor or—this may seem more controversial—the transplantation of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary from these premises to the supremely superb, manifestly impressive and expensive buildings on the other side of Parliament Square. I am more worried than pleased by that change, which may have had a theoretical academic justification but has not been beneficial. I point to a feature that makes that point. We now have the senior judge—the presiding judge—in the Supreme Court having to protest personally and complain about the inadequacy of the financial resources available to the Supreme Court. For the first time the Supreme Court has to go cap in hand to the Treasury. Chancellors—I say this as a former Chancellor —are benign men, but it is very unattractive that the Supreme Court should have to go cap in hand to the Treasury. In the old days one could say that the Supreme Court existed under the benevolent blessing of Parliament through the Judicial Committee of this House. This is a serious change. Those two factors make me apprehensive, and certainly not persuaded by the case being made for this Bill as it stands.
Both the preceding noble and learned Lords have presented cases with skill, expertise and clarity, as one would expect. However, I confess that I felt rather like the person who some years ago attended a conference on local government reform in that I was confused when I arrived in the premises and I am more confused now that we have heard these two competing speeches. I recall—I do not think that he is in the Chamber at present—the Joint Committee presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, which discussed the wisdom or otherwise of respecting conventions rather than formality. Conventions have shaped the framework within which we have lived for many years. People understand whether the Prime Minister does or does not have the power to do something and whether or not he has the wisdom to do the right thing. To be now transplanted from that situation and confronted with a bundle of difficult to understand subsections in the Bill, giving scope for analyses of the kind the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has already presented, does not give me greater confidence in the proposed future system than in the continuation of our present system. I say that with nostalgic respect for the way in which the system treated me in my university days long before I sought to be a candidate for Parliament. We had the 1950-51 sequence of elections. We saw the erosion and disappearance of the Attlee Government and the restoration of a Churchill Government. I stood twice as a candidate in the constituency of Aberavon. Lord Morris of Aberavon and Lord Howe of Aberavon would make a very good partnership. I should not say that, should I? I was not being serious when I fought against the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, because he was bound to win.
In 1964, I was delighted to be elected to the constituency of Bebington. I inherited a majority of 9,861 and saw it reduced to 2,200, which was a bit of a let-down. The Government lost office, but only by a small margin did the Wilson Government arrive in office. In 1966, I had to go through the struggle all again to find that the Labour Party had a majority of 2,200. The point I am making is that in each of those cases—1950-51 and 1964-66—by a gradual process of application of the conventions that then existed and still do, the nation made a change, first rather nervously and then more decisively, and a change of government was achieved as a result of the votes cast by the electorate in the light of the decisions taken in the Houses of Parliament. However, I am wary about the wisdom of taking away the structure that we have come to know and which has served us not too badly.
There is one other piece that I would like to say, which causes me some concern. That is the huge volume of legislation we are having to grapple with since the arrival in office of the coalition. Of course, for all sorts of reasons, I have the most enormous respect for the coalition—it has a Conservative Prime Minister of great distinction, and one is bound to be cheerful about that, not to mention distinguished Front Bench spokesmen such as the noble and learned Lord who has presented this case. However, it is a coalition that is running this torrent of legislative change through this House and through Parliament. I am not going to make a speech about the Public Bodies Bill now save to mention it, but when the Minister was first in charge of it I said that it struck me as something like a self-inflicted tsunami of constitutional destruction and it still has that flavour. It was an enormous number of different identities being bundled together in a semi-destructive fashion.
I plead guilty to the fact actually—I only rediscovered this the other day—that when I first arrived as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1979 I also called for a bonfire of the quangos and some casualties there ought not to have taken place. That is by the way. I think the coalition—more than the Government of which I was a member under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—is constructed rather like the way I put wood on the fire before I light it. Bits of little wood lean on other little bits of little wood and big logs can go on them and gradually it is all assembled in such a way that I can apply the firelighter to it. The coalition had to do all that. One can imagine the negotiations in which the two party leaders said, “If you do this, then I can do that”, and then, “Perhaps we can both do this together”. So we have this assorted menu of constitutional change touching almost every institution in sight. That is what worries me and why I speak with such disloyalty to the Government, which I of course support. I think that it is important to draw attention to these anxieties.
I have one last thought. One of the topics on which the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, and I agreed from the outset in the course of our long-standing relationship was one when I made a speech—I think to the Society of Conservative Lawyers—saying that above all,
“we must make fewer laws and make the laws fewer”.
In a short time the noble Baroness echoed that triumphantly. We were both absolutely agreed upon it. As a matter of fact, we did not do too well in the end. It was quite remarkable. The Labour Government between 1975 and 1978 enacted an average of 1,177 pages of primary legislation a year. The Conservative Government that followed between 1980 and 1989 enacted an average of 1,788 pages. We managed 2,170 pages in 1988 and no less than 2,581 in 1989. It was at that point that we surpassed the record hitherto held by the Attlee Government of 2,288 pages. That shows how difficult it is to achieve. Lo and behold the present Administration, this marvellous coalition, have already enacted 687 pages of statute and 2,084 pages of Bills are on their way through the system. One can give the prize to them, with 2,771 pages of legislation.
That is a firm foundation on which to base my anxiety. I am not persuaded that we should be making this change. I am not persuaded that it is necessary to make the change. I am not persuaded by the experience of Canada. I respect the Canadians who have been able to function on the same basis as ourselves and without the firmness of four-year fixed terms of the kind south of the 49th parallel. I would rather we stayed as we always have been and rather we stayed as the Canadians had been until quite recently. I make those points as I am anxious but do not wish to tear down this marvellous coalition, on whose success we all depend.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, we had quite a substantial discussion on fixed-term Parliaments in the debate on the gracious Speech in May of last year. That discussion, I recall, was particularly difficult in the aftermath of the election, as perceptions of the coalition agreement clouded the debate on the principles of fixed-term Parliaments. It is already clear from the tenor of today’s debate that some of those difficulties remain.
Fixed-term Parliaments are not a short-term political fix but a long-term and overdue democratic reform. The idea that Parliaments should last for a fixed term is one to which the Liberal Democrats have subscribed for a very long time. It is also one which Labour supported in its general election manifesto only last year and which the Conservative Party accepted in the coalition agreement.
The Government have improved their proposal since last year, not least by dispensing with their original plan to set a threshold of only 55 per cent for the Dissolution of Parliament, which would have worked perhaps for this Parliament but not for most Parliaments. The Bill now provides for greater clarity to distinguish between votes of confidence and votes for Dissolution.
In order to have a fixed-term Parliament, there must be some form of mechanism to hold it in place. A substantial threshold for early Dissolution is clearly required. Without it, the legislation would be simply a statement of aspiration and a reiteration of the status quo whereby a Parliament lasts for five years unless a Prime Minister decides otherwise. The proposed threshold for Dissolution of the Westminster Parliament, a two-thirds majority, now closely reflects the arrangements set up by the Scotland Act 1998, introduced by the last Labour Government. Those arrangements have been shown to work very well since their introduction. Sadly, it was not a reform that the Labour Government extended to Westminster in their 13 recent years in office. However, Labour sought to rectify that in its last manifesto, in which it promised to legislate to “ensure” that there would be fixed-term Parliaments, although it did not say of what duration. I look forward to hearing from noble Lords opposite exactly how they intended to legislate to ensure that there were fixed-term Parliaments.
Labour’s pledge to legislate for fixed-term Parliaments was first made in 1992 by the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, whom I am very pleased to see in his place today. In its manifesto of that year, the Labour Party criticised,
“months of on-again, off-again dithering which damaged our economy and weakened our democracy”,
after John Major delayed a much anticipated 1991 election. The Labour Party said then:
“No government with a majority should be allowed to put the interests of party above country, as the Conservatives have done”.
Labour promised fixed-term Parliaments in 1992 and again in 2010.
A fixed-term Parliament is accepted without controversy in most developed democracies—indeed, I believe that it exists in about two-thirds of democracies. It also exists for every single local authority and devolved Government here in Britain. It was introduced for all those devolved Governments during the 13 years of the Labour Government and each of them now operates a fixed-term Parliament principle. It is now the right time for the House of Commons to catch up with that principle.
I turn to the question of whether a fixed term should be of four or five years. The Government acknowledged that there is a genuine dilemma on this issue in their response to the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place. They recognised that there is no monopoly of merit in the cases for four or for five years; it is a question of judgment. However, on balance, I am persuaded that setting the term at five years is right, because a four-year fixed term would mean Governments having a non-election-fighting life—a period of governing without immediate electoral pressures—of three years at most, which would not be sufficient.
There are other practical reasons for considering why five years is the right period. The previous Labour Government legislated in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 for a period covering party-political expenditure that works only in a five-year Parliament. Under the Act, the pre-election campaign period for regulating party-political expenditure starts 55 months into a Parliament—in other words after, and only after, four years and seven months—and it runs for up to 60 months after the previous general election, but for no longer. A few noble Lords may recall that I opposed those provisions at the time because they would work in practice only if there was a five-year fixed-term Parliament. That is now what is proposed and it would make those regulations on party-political controlled expenditure, introduced by the last Labour Government, actually work. The campaign expenses legislation that we approved only two years ago will now work in future.
I do not wish to repeat the debate that we had recently during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill—to do so would of course take a very long time—but I remind your Lordships that we approved legislation to review the constituency boundaries every five years. The first review of the constituency boundaries under the legislation that we so recently approved will be conducted by October 2013 and each subsequent review will be concluded on a five-year cycle from five years thereafter. To hold a general election in 2014, only four years after the previous one, would mean that the next general election would be fought only six months after the new constituency boundaries became known. If we have system of individual constituency representation, then that, I think, would be madness. Parties need time to find, select and promote candidates. Voters need to be able to assess them and their relative merits and to make informed choices. Even a period of 18 months between knowing the new boundaries and the general election may be too short to do this effectively, but anything less than a five-year Parliament will mean less than an 18-month period from knowing what the constituency boundaries will be to the Dissolution of Parliament and the commencement of the next general election.
Lord Rooker
I am interested in what the noble Lord has just said. He has made a specific and direct link between the five years in this Bill and the legislation that the House has just passed. He has done it in such a way as to suggest that basically you could outlaw any amendments for four years on the basis that the House has passed previous legislation for five years. The fact that he has made a direct connection between the two almost amounts to blackmail. If he had not said that towards the end of his remarks, I would tend to agree with most of what he said, but that direct link will be used to attack anybody who wants to move from five years to four years or four and a half years, if that is the desire. It cannot be a fair argument to use the kind of legislative trick that he has just played on us. My question to the noble Lord is this: during our Committee stage, will he be prepared to accept the good faith of those who want to promote four years or four and a half years and not suggest that they are seeking to go back and debate the previous Bill? If he will not spend time accusing people of that, I will withdraw the imputations that I have just made about his speech.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, early in my remarks I said that there is merit in the case for four years or for five years. The noble Lord should accept that and withdraw his remark that my suggestion that there are strong reasons why we should have five years rather than four years amounts to blackmail. Also, comments from a sedentary position that this sounds like blackmail are rather offensive and over the top in the circumstances of a genuine debate on this issue.
Lord Rennard
I want to address a couple of issues if I may. I note that the noble Baroness is due to make her remarks later on in the debate.
I want to draw the Minister’s attention to an area of the Bill where I think that work is still required. The Bill rightly sets out to remove the starting pistol for an election race being held by one of its principal competitors and to implement the coalition agreement, which states:
“We will establish five-year fixed-term Parliaments”.
There is a real danger that the Bill could fail in that objective under Clause 1(5), as it effectively provides for a Prime Minister with a majority in Parliament to be able to alter the date of the general election by two months either side of the five-year norm. The coalition agreement commits to establishing five-year fixed-term Parliaments, not nearly fixed-term Parliaments of between 58 months and 62 months.
Countries such as Norway, Sweden, South Africa and the United States, along with all our local government and the devolved Assemblies established in recent years, manage to exist on a fixed-term basis without such a provision. I accept that some elections may need to be delayed in exceptional circumstances, such as the foot and mouth epidemic in 2001, but that could be dealt with in legislation relatively easily, just as the fixed-term council elections during May 2001 were postponed until June of that year. I cannot see any merit in the special power for the Prime Minister to bring forward an election. If unforeseen circumstances may conceivably delay an election by two months, how can unforeseen circumstances require an election to be brought forward by two months?
There is, however, a strong case to say that the Bill could be amended to allow a few days’ flexibility over polling day, sufficient so as not to preclude the possibility of voting taking place over a weekend. Perhaps polling day in the next general election should not be on the first Thursday in May but on the Saturday and/or Sunday following that day. There is a good case for proper consideration to be given to voting over a weekend rather than on a weekday. It would be a mistake for the Bill to preclude that possibility.
The Bill is long overdue. It was never right that one of the runners in a race also held the starting pistol and was able to fix the start of the race depending on his or her party’s convenience. The Bill sets out healthy, democratic reform to our political system. As the first Prime Minister to accept this principle, David Cameron deserves considerable credit. I also think that the Labour Party should adhere to the principle that it set out to the country in its manifesto last year. This House should support the Bill.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I rise in a state of some trepidation. It is almost 41 years since I last made a maiden speech and almost a year since I made my valedictory in the other place. I am delighted that the custom here is to begin on a totally non-controversial topic and to thank all those noble Lords in all parts of the House who welcomed the new Member. I genuinely do that. I also couple with that all those officials and members of staff who have been so unfailingly courteous, helpful and kind.
I feel this particularly because I have been welcomed twice. I took my seat on 21 December and then had the misfortune to go into hospital. I did not get back here until 8 February, when I was welcomed again. I assure noble Lords in all parts of the House that I did not retreat to hospital in order to escape those late-night sittings, which were so reminiscent of my early days in another place.
When the Prime Minister told me that he would like me to come here, I accepted his invitation with great gratitude, enthusiasm and alacrity. I did so for one very simple reason: I believe passionately in this place—in its functions, in its composition and in its powers. That belief is founded, after 40 years in the other place, on the conviction that there is a more unambiguous democratic mandate if it is held by one elected Chamber rather than divided between two. I have always seen this House as an assembly of the experienced, which has a duty to give advice but no power to impose its will. It is because of my admiration for the delicate system of checks and balances that sustains our constitutional monarchy, in which the ultimate power rests with those who elect Members of the other place, that I approach any constitutional measure, produced by any Government, with a degree of caution and trepidation.
I am of course aware of the convention that a maiden speech should be non-controversial. However, I do not take that as an instruction to be anodyne or as an excuse to be irrelevant. I have advocated the merits of fixed-term Parliaments in the past and I believe that it is entirely proper and right that the Bill before us should have an unopposed Second Reading tonight. However, as always, the devil is in the detail and it is incumbent on this House to subject this short Bill to proper scrutiny.
The logical case for fixed-term Parliaments has often been rehearsed and, indeed, has been referred to in this afternoon’s debate. By fixing the term, we remove the manipulative power of the Prime Minister of the day, we create a symmetry with other parliamentary, assembly and local government elections and we become similar to many other democracies, although by no means all. Yet it is essential that we should not deprive the elected House of the power to turf out a Government who have lost its confidence. The Bill before us recognises this, but only up to a point. No one who was in the other place at the time of the last vote of confidence when a Government fell will ever forget that March night in 1979 when the late Michael Foot made that wonderful speech as he looked at the serried ranks of the nationalists and said, “These are turkeys going to vote for an early Christmas”. It was a memorable evening. The vote was carried because Frank Maguire came from Northern Ireland to abstain in person. The Government of the day fell because immediately after the vote was announced the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, for whom I still have the greatest affectionate memories—he was one of the greatest gentlemen ever to occupy that office—came to the Dispatch Box and immediately said that he would be going to see the Queen.
Under the terms of this Bill as it stands, that vote in itself would not have triggered an immediate general election. It might instead have led to 14 days of horse-trading, perhaps resulting in a lame-duck Administration, or perhaps in another vote, in which two-thirds of the Members of the other place would have had to vote for an early election. Perhaps by then some of the turkeys would have changed their minds and thought that the prospect of having their necks wrung in December was better than having them wrung in March.
Two other provisions in this Bill need especially careful examination. Is it right to replace a royal prerogative with a Speaker’s edict? I suggest that we should reflect on what the Clerk of the House said about that and about the possible role of the courts in any subsequent dispute. It has been referred to this afternoon and is a matter that must be addressed at least by probing amendments in this place. Also, is the prescribed length of the term better fixed at five years or four? We should consider what the Constitution Committee of this House has said on that issue and, in doing so, we should bear in mind what has already been referred to several times as the proliferation of elections that are fixed at the moment for the late spring of 2015. Is that proliferation of elections, in the words of 1066 and All That, a “Good Thing”? It is for us to decide.
I am sympathetic to a move to fixed-term Parliaments. I strongly support and admire the coalition Government and I am proud to support them from these Benches. However, I cannot but ask whether everything in this Bill, which received no pre-legislative scrutiny and which was subject to a strict timetable in another place, is not capable of improvement. In recent years, there has been a tendency—no, a habit—for Governments of all persuasions to rush into constitutional reform. It might have been no bad thing if successive Governments had remembered that old Latin tag, festina lente.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his superb maiden speech. It demonstrated the noble Lord’s special feel for Parliament, its practices and its history, for the magic and mystery of the British constitution and for its constitutional legislation. So subtle and insightful is his understanding of the constitution that I have long believed that the noble Lord is actually part of its warp and woof. He served as a hugely distinguished chairman of the History of Parliament Trust and his distinction has been very much in evidence this afternoon.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has been a much valued friend and mentor of mine for several years. He has sustained the gifts of the history teacher he once was; he has followed Albert Einstein's words:
“Never lose a holy curiosity”.
He is a natural transmitter of that curiosity to others. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, gave the other place long, distinguished and devoted service as a dedicated and natural parliamentarian. I am confident that he will do the same as an enormously welcome addition to your Lordships' House.
The Bill before us today is a collector's item for a combination of reasons. First, if passed, it will be a rare example of a Prime Minister relinquishing a power which his predecessors possessed: the power to request the sovereign to dissolve Parliament, thereby triggering a general election. In the unusual circumstances of the coupon election in 1918, after the sudden armistice that brought the Great War to an end, David Lloyd George took that power unto himself as coalition leader. Previously, such requests had been a decision for the Cabinet.
Secondly, as other noble Lords have pointed out, the Bill proposes that Her Majesty the Queen be stripped of a sizeable chunk of one of her two remaining personal prerogative powers: that of dissolving Parliament, although summoning Parliament or proroguing it will remain a matter for the sovereign. Her other personal prerogative, that of appointing a Prime Minister, will remain entirely untouched.
Thirdly, this is a very rare example of a government Bill originating in the other place that, as currently drafted, is entirely beyond the reach of the Parliament Acts, creating an unusual stretch of legislative turf on which your Lordships can frisk. The Clerk of the Parliaments has attested that:
“It is ... clear that the … Bill does contain provision to extend the maximum duration of a Parliament beyond five years, and that it cannot, therefore, be passed under the Parliament Acts procedure unless, before it leaves the Commons, the … provisions ... are amended”.
Not since November 1944, when your Lordships’ House agreed to extend the Prolongation of Parliament Act 1940 until the Second World War had ended, has this been true of a government measure sent to your Lordships’ House from the other place.
Fourthly, and of the greatest concern for your Lordships, the Bill seeks to change the biorhythm of our national politics by creating a statutory norm for the timing of our general elections. The question—several other noble Lords have raised it already—is whether five years captures our natural biorhythm. There is a strong case for arguing that it does not. The fine report by your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill published last December calculates that the average duration of the 17 Parliaments between the general election of July 1945 and that of May 2010 has been three years and 10 months.
As well as the biorhythmic arithmetic, we need to consider the quality of government and political life in the fifth year of Parliaments that have gone to the wire. They have rarely been shining patches in the life of Administrations. Ministers are often tired and accident prone. The palette of the electorate becomes progressively more jaded. A kind of pre-electoral blight sets in. Of course it could be argued that the final year of a fixed-term four-year Parliament would be similarly blighted. Certainly, the press would succumb to its customary pre-election frenzy as the last year deepened. However, the blight is likely to be less pronounced towards the end of a four-year span than a five-year one, and accountability is more likely to be enhanced by a four-year cycle.
On balance, your Lordships’ Select Committee, and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform in the other place, came down for four-year Parliaments. I plump for the tariff that they recommend. Four years not only fits with the UK-wide biorhythm but, as other noble Lords have pointed out, with the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies. The second question to which your Lordships’ Constitution Committee has drawn attention is the pair of safety valves for use if, for emergency or other reasons, the other place decides that an election is necessary before the fixed term is expended. For the valves to operate, either 66 per cent of the membership of the other place has to vote for Dissolution, or the Government have to lose a confidence vote and, over the subsequent 14 days, fail to conjure up an alternative Administration or be replaced by another one that can demonstrate command of the other place.
It would be highly undesirable if these provisions became the political equivalents of “get out of jail free” cards in the game of Monopoly. The British constitution is not a Stradivarius to be played—or indeed fiddled—for reasons of narrow electoral advantage by the party or parties in government. A number of safeguards, therefore, are desirable. First, the Bill needs to contain as precise a definition as possible of what constitutes a confidence Motion. Secondly, the ticking clock must be so arranged that a general election following Dissolution sooner than the expiry of the fixed term does not restart the clock from scratch. Instead, the refreshed Parliament should sit for the remainder of the original fixed term and no longer—as is, so far, the untested arrangement for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
Finally, I share the regret of your Lordships’ Select Committee, and the one in the other place, that we have before us yet another substantial constitutional Bill that is without the benefit of a Green or a White Paper, or pre-legislative hearings. For, to pinch a line from PG Wodehouse, it is always easy to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and the coalition bearing a statute prepared in haste.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, not for the first time in this Parliament do I find myself urging the Government to take care of our constitution, which I regard as a precious mixture of documents and conventions that need looking after. I think I know something about the basis on which this Bill was put together. It has very much the fingerprints of the Deputy Prime Minister on it. I know the base from which he operates, because he has told us frequently enough; it is to describe our parliamentary system as involving “broken politics” and to say that we have a “broken constitution”. I am paraphrasing what he has said, but the word “broken” frequently appears in his speeches.
I simply do not accept that our political system is broken; nor is our constitution. If you want to look at broken politics, where the word “broken” really applies, there are plenty of parts of the world where you can find it—not least in the Middle East. Politicians, and particularly Deputy Prime Ministers, need to be careful about the language that they use. We, on the contrary, in my view, have a constitution and democratic system of which we can be proud. I cannot be the only Member of this House who has travelled to various countries in the world, including those recently emerged from dictatorships, where they tell us that they admire our political system. They want to know more about it and about how we reconcile the differences between the two Houses, when they occur, as well as how our elections take place and how our electoral law operates. A whole range of things that we have developed over many years, often with great difficulty, are not viewed by countries overseas as being part of a broken political system—absolutely on the contrary. So I simply do not start from the same premise as the Deputy Prime Minister.
This is the only party political point that I shall make, but I think that the Prime Minister needs to be careful about dressing up in grand constitutional argument a political arrangement that guarantees that he will be Prime Minister for five years and about putting a Bill before Parliament to ensure that it lasts for five years. That comes not very convincingly from a Prime Minister who in arithmetic terms has a weaker parliamentary base of his own party than any Prime Minister since the Second World War. If he stays there for five years, he will be one of the longer-serving Prime Ministers, as I think the average for the 20th century was five years. It will not be a bad stint for someone without a parliamentary majority of his own party.
I have two sets of questions. The first is surely the most important, and I do not think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, addressed it. What are the faults that this Bill tries to rectify? The strongest argument—and I can see it—is that it stops the Prime Minister from starting the race, and that it gives undue power to Prime Ministers over Parliament—and, if you like, over the country—to decide when a general election should be. Rather than look at the books on political theory, let us look at the facts. Of the 18 general elections held since the Second World War—and I shall assume that determining the date of the general election is a huge political advantage and that, if the Prime Minister wins the election, he or she has made a good judgment and that, if the Prime Minister loses, he or she has made a bad judgment—10 general elections were won and eight lost by the Prime Minister who called them. Of the 10 where the victories occurred, four of them were either by Mrs Thatcher or my great friend, who also seemed to keep winning elections. Mrs Thatcher is the best example; Tony Blair and Mrs Thatcher between them account for four of those 10 elections—and you get the feeling that whenever they called an election they would probably have won it. It therefore does not seem to me that as a matter of historical fact it is a colossal advantage to be able to determine the date of a general election.
The second fault it is alleged this Bill will put right is that flexibility in determining elections is wrong in principle. I cannot accept that. I could give any number of examples, as could other Members of this House. When an early general election was called in 1951 by Clem Attlee, would it have been better if he had been forced to have a fixed term that saw that Government continue for the full five years, or was it not entirely proper—although sad from my perspective as a lifelong member of the Labour party—that, because he felt his Government was tired and that some of the great characters had died or were unwell, it was right to ask for a further mandate from the public, which actually he won but was then beaten by the electoral system?
Would it have been right to have prevented Mr Heath from calling his election in the middle of the miners’ strike when he judged that that was the right time to call for an election to renew his mandate in a most difficult set of circumstances? I do not think that that was a failure of our constitutional system; it was a strength of it.
I am not at all convinced that flexibility in the way in which we hold general elections is a bad thing. The system whereby a general election is immediately held once a Prime Minister loses a vote of confidence is nothing other than a splendid part of our constitution. That is the most telling point of all and one mentioned in the splendid speech by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is far from broken.
For reasons of nostalgia I read what Jim Callaghan said—and those of us who were there will never forget it—after he lost a vote of confidence by one. He said, in the simplest and shortest of speeches:
“Mr. Speaker, now that the House of Commons has declared itself, we shall take our case to the country. Tomorrow I shall propose to Her Majesty that Parliament be dissolved … and I shall then announce … the date of Dissolution, the date of the election and the date of the meeting of the new Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/3/1979; col. 589.]
Those are splendid words. They almost bring tears to my eyes because shortly after that I was unemployed. I would go as far as to say there was majesty in the simplicity of those words. I dread to think what he would have had to say if this Bill had been an Act of Parliament at that time. He would have said, “The House of Commons has now spoken. I therefore invoke Section (2)(1) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act”—or whatever Act it would have been. I suggest that the kind of detail involved in this Bill diminishes our constitution.
The Minister’s speeches are splendid and very persuasive most of the time, but it took him quite a long time to explain Clause 2 and the circumstances in which Dissolution on a vote of no confidence would take place. Why change it? What is wrong with the system? It has not only worked well, it has worked absolutely perfectly and majestically, so for heaven’s sake leave it alone. I do not think there are any serious problems to which this Bill provides a solution.
I want to make a couple of specific points about what is bad about this Bill. A couple have been mentioned before but it will do no harm to rehearse them briefly. Many of us here have either been in Parliament during four or five-year Parliaments or, in my case, have watched from outside when the electorate made their decision. There is no doubt that the fifth year of a Parliament, in our constitutional history and experience if not in theory, is nearly always a completely unsatisfactory year. It is one in which everything is winding down, and it is ludicrous to suggest that a Government in their fifth year of a five-year Parliament would be doing anything other than providing for the general election, the date of which they knew, both in their legislative programme and in the decisions that they made. Importantly, it extends the whole period of electioneering. I do not want to overstate the case, but again do we really want a system like the one the United States has in which the preparation for an election takes at least a year? That is what would happen if everyone knew in advance.
I have already demonstrated that this does not give a Prime Minister a huge advantage. Do we really want a 12-month period in which expenditure presumably had to be controlled and in which everyone knew that we were simply waiting for the date to come? I remember, as many others here do, that we have only once had a six or a seven-week election—I think that was the 1997 one. There was pretty universal agreement that that was too long for an election period. The public get bored rigid if it goes on for too long. The present period is pretty good: four or five weeks between the calling of an election and the public making their decision.
Lord Empey
I sit on an institution that has a four-year cycle, and I assure the noble Lord and the House that in the past months as we are now approaching our four-year deadline, the pre-election process creeps into that four-year cycle. However, in trying to find a balance and to know the right thing to do we also have the example of the European Parliament, which is on a five-year cycle. It is very hard to discern or divine what the right time is, because I assure the noble Lord that, even in the devolved regions, the four-year cycle produces a period when people are obviously preparing. I suspect that that is inevitable in any democracy. Let us hope we do not have a Bill that proposes a two-year cycle, like the House of Representatives in Washington.
Lord Grocott
I would certainly prefer a four-year cycle to a five-year cycle, but my strong view is that there is no need to change the present arrangements, which provide for a short sharp election in which the public are focused and where colossal sums of money will not need to be spent to extend it over 12 months, or however long the preparation period for the election would be.
My final point on what I dislike about the Bill is that it inevitably weakens Parliament. Part of the drama of Parliament and the Commons is knowing that almost any Division on any Bill—certainly, if the numbers in the Commons make it possible—could precipitate a drama that could result in a general election. Parliament needs to be dramatic and it is important that it is. It is not nine to five, for however many months per year, within fixed terms or within fixed Sessions of Parliament within those fixed terms. That makes for boring tedious politics, and we all know how difficult it is, even under the present system, to make it of interest on a wider basis.
To conclude, this Bill weakens Parliament. It weakens the House of Commons and makes it more predictable. It does not solve any problems that have been identified in any satisfactory way. I hope that my party, when it comes to draw up its manifesto for the next general election will, assuming that this Bill becomes an Act, at the very least say that we should revert to four-year Parliaments, but I would like it to abide by the oldest maxim in the book; if something is working, there is absolutely no need to fix it.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, as we set out today on proceedings on this important Bill, those on the Pensions Bill set out in parallel in Grand Committee in the Moses Room. At Second Reading on that Bill, I averred that I was batting much too high in the batting order, but that misgiving was as nothing compared to my similar concern about overpromotion today, given the wealth of batting still to come. However, it gives me the unwarranted opportunity to be the first from these Benches to welcome the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Cormack and to congratulate him on it. The debate might have been made for him on this occasion.
It is also the greatest of pleasures, with one caveat, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. He always speaks with such uncommon good sense on these matters that my one caveat must necessarily be that if I find myself disagreeing with him, I shall spend the rest of the debate asking myself how I could have got it so wrong. Fortunately, I shall give so few hostages to fortune in what will be a brief speech that I shall enjoy the rest of the debate even more. My first observation is based on the symmetry arising from the repeal of the Septennial Act 1715. That Act was preceded in the reign of Queen Anne by paving legislation in 1706; that in the event of the Hanoverian succession, Ministers should cease to sit in the House of Commons. That Act was then repealed in 1708. I had always wondered why the repeal occurred. My only likely conjecture has been that the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707 had overtaken the need for the 1706 legislation. I was greatly reassured when I found that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern agreed with me. Interestingly, the great historian GM Trevelyan, in his magisterial four-volume history of the reign of Queen Anne, draws attention in a footnote to the fact that Montesquieu, writing in 1739, had alluded to the passage of the 1706 Act without apparently realising it had been repealed. After paying a warm tribute to the great understanding of this nation in these affairs, he prayed the 1706 paving legislation in aid of his own argument for a separation of powers, which Trevelyan believed had affected American and French thinking on their own constitution building at the end of that century.
If I fast-forward three-quarters of a century to the last two decades of that century, and concentrate for a moment on the Americans and ourselves—the French Revolution not being exactly conducive to a Speaker’s Conference—it is interesting that while the Americans were soberly, if a little informally, going about their own constitution building, Charles James Fox, who beats me into fourth place in terms of longevity as MP for Westminster, was embarking on his dedicated campaign, born of his own brief experience in Cabinet, to remove the royal prerogative in the calling of elections; the story which is in the very context of this Bill still gripping us today two centuries later.
The reference to the Bill encourages me—and perhaps your Lordships’ House—to cover the next two centuries in a single sentence and to bring me straight to today’s proceedings. We are much in the debt of the Constitution Select Committee in your Lordships’ House for providing us in its eighth report with an energetic canter over the issues. It was admirably and reassuringly assisted by the UCL Constitution Unit—even if one piece of briefing sought to translate that acronym into the disguise of a “University of Central London”. I must remark that, although the Mediterranean littoral is currently seized of a massive political upheaval, in the western democracies less is happening than two centuries ago in terms of constitutional reform—although the recent inability of the Belgians to form a Government runs counter to that universality of peace and quiet. There is, therefore, a general absence of external infectiousness towards reform here.
Of the three major parties, the essence of this Bill contained in its title “Fixed-term Parliaments” uniquely did not appear in the Conservative Party’s manifesto last year. This is clearly a coalition measure and very much in the care of the Deputy Prime Minister. I mean no disrespect either to him or to our coalition partners if I say that I had some difficulty in parsing Mr Clegg’s reply before the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee when he said,
“Do I think that in practice 12 months makes an earth-shattering difference in terms of the length of time of a fixed-term Parliament?”,
and he answered his own rhetorical question,
“No. I do … ”.
If the trumpet sounds an uncertain note, who will gird himself for battle?
I understand that several national polling projects have reported that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the nation are in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, but I have not seen any qualitative evidence of why they hold that opinion. For myself, I find the arguments for one side or the other remarkably evenly balanced. I do not propose to draw up a personal balance sheet but shall listen closely to the rest of the debate.
In the mean time, as I am speaking from the government Benches, perhaps I may say that I approve of the argument that a fixed-term Parliament would make for better planning of parliamentary business; nor am I disturbed by the alternative contention that a fixed-term Parliament would enable Her Majesty’s Government better to manipulate the economic cycle. Given that any Government hope to succeed themselves, I do not have such unyielding confidence in Her Majesty’s Treasury so to conduct itself as to achieve the optimal result.
I also think that there is much to be said for the final sentence in lighter print—not the heavy print of a recommendation—of paragraph 43 of the Constitution Select Committee’s report:
“There is a case for saying that any new Prime Minister should at least have the opportunity to seek a fresh mandate in a general election”,
as Eden did in 1955 and as Mr Blair’s delayed retirement prevented his successor from doing, had he wished, prior to the Summer Recess in 2007.
For myself, I am left a little agnostic about the balance underlying the Bill. Where I may be in a gang of one—as my noble friend Lord St John of Fawsley once described the then Mr Hattersley, now the noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, in his winding-up speech in the Queen’s Speech debate in 1979—is that, despite the coalition’s rapid resolution of the post-election crisis of last year, I doubt whether the crisis of February 1974 would have been resolved as rapidly without the benefit of the Queen’s prerogative in the background. Together with my noble friend Lord Taverne, I have spent many happy hours explaining British politics to young American students at the start of their semesters abroad in British universities. The students’ curiosity about the Queen’s position in the British constitution always prompts me to allude to February 1974.
It is in part because of the abolition of the prerogative—and, were this the subject of polling, I doubt that a national majority would be found for its abolition—that I regret that a move towards more constitutional consultation or scrutiny on these issues has not found favour with the coalition. There are enough loose ends lying around on the quarterdeck, as the Bill now is, to prompt resort to the memorable conviction of that tersest of American politicians, President Johnson’s great Texan ally, Sam Rayburn, that the wisest words in the English language are, “Wait a minute”. On St David’s Day, I am encouraged by the speech of my noble and learned friend and fellow Welshman Lord Howe of Aberavon to believe that the remaining stages of this Bill are going to be interesting.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, perhaps the wisest words in the English language are those of Oliver Cromwell, which we can now address to the government Front Bench:
“in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”.
There is no agnosticism but a firm absolutism in the way in which these proposals have been put forward when they are clearly matters of judgment and not matters of utter rigid determination.
It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, with his historical sweep. I was musing on the fact that, if Montesquieu had it wrong and that was translated into the US constitution, nevertheless the US constitution has lasted and it has been rather difficult to amend, so perhaps there are some lessons to be learnt from that. However, I follow the noble Lord in congratulating someone whom I can call my noble friend, Lord Cormack, on his most felicitous maiden speech. I served with him for 30 years in the other place and believe he is an outstanding parliamentarian and—dare I say it—a natural for this place. He would have glided down the Corridor to this place and I welcome him warmly.
I begin by saying that I was most impressed with the report of the committee presided over by my noble friend Lady Jay. When I chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place, I had enormous admiration for the foreign affairs reports of this place. I cannot honestly say that I said so at the time but I certainly had that admiration, and this report is very much within that same tradition. Indeed, that is the case to the point where I wonder whether political science professors such as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will ever again ask their first-year students to write on fixed-term Parliaments because they can only harmonise on the themes in this report. I look forward to his contribution and to that of my noble friend Lord Morgan, at whose feet I sat for some time. Indeed, I also very much enjoyed the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy.
I was astonished—this is my initial point—at the letter of 16 February from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who I dare say was one of the few on the other side who improved his reputation very much during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. The letter of 16 February was one of the most selective letters I have ever seen. It says that the Constitution Committee published a report on the Bill on 16 December and that the committee,
“endorsed significant elements of the Bill”,
specifically X and Y. The committee indeed endorsed one or two details. However, from reading that letter and the introduction to the response to the report of the Constitution Committee that the Government published last month, which states that,
“The Government was pleased to note therefore the Committee’s endorsement of significant elements of the Government’s proposals”,
who would have thought that the all-party committee’s conclusion was the most devastating indictment? The committee’s report states:
“We take the view that the origins and contents of this Bill owe more to short-term considerations than to a mature assessment of enduring constitutional principles or sustained public demand”.
Why was that not mentioned? It was such a selective letter. In short, the all-party committee concluded that this is no way to run a railroad and certainly no way to change our constitution. Equally, no one can deny the lack of public debate; so much of this has been drawn out of a hat.
As to the proposal’s origins, the Conservative Party traditionally has a tremendous reverence for the constitution and is wary of change—a tradition reflected in the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and in the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—but that reverence was abandoned to give free rein to the Liberal Democrats and to give them free rein on economic and social policy. The Liberal Democrat Party has again shown an obsession with constitutional change. It was clearly part of a deal and lacked consultation. I cite evidence of the lack of consultation when the Deputy Prime Minister said that he would consult the devolved Administrations about the details that affect them. Would it not have been better to have had that consultation with the devolved Administrations beforehand rather than to do it on the hoof? The context is ill thought through and it smacks of partisan calculations. On page 39, the committee’s report states:
“There is strong evidence to suggest that the Government’s proposals have not been properly thought through”.
On page 41, the committee concludes:
“the constitutional relationship between the provisions of this Bill and the Government’s other proposals for constitutional reform have not been adequately thought through”.
The charge is clearly that the Bill is partisan, ill judged and piecemeal.
The Government’s argument essentially is that the Bill removes powers from the Executive and gives power to Parliament and the wider electorate. The point has been well made about the vote of confidence—my noble friend Lord Grocott made the point about 1979. While he was speaking, I was musing on the recent election in Ireland. Clearly, as a result of the awful mess of the economy made by Fianna Fáil, there was an enormous revolt of public opinion against that party. Had that dramatic drop in confidence taken place halfway through the fixed term and had there therefore been a vote of no confidence in Fianna Fáil, under this provision there would have been 14 days in which Fianna Fáil, with its substantial numbers in the Dáil, could have cobbled together a new coalition with some elements who would not otherwise have found their way into Government. That new coalition could have been formed in spite of the enormous public rejection—so much for public accountability.
The point has been well made that the Government can, in any event, manipulate the economy. The broad principle, in my judgment, is that the less frequent are elections, the less accountable Parliament is to the electorate. I would not go quite as far as the Chartists in arguing for annual elections, nor do I agree with the two years of the House of Representatives, because there is constant electioneering within that branch of the US legislature, but five years means, effectively, that there is less opportunity—the French have a phrase, “sortir les sortants”—to get rid of the rascals, to bring accountability.
There is clearly a correlation between the length of a fixed-term parliament and accountability to the people. A Government can bring in all the unpopular measures within the first couple of years of a five-year term and therefore seek to feed the great beast and give the Government what they want. Equally, there have been allegations of inconsistency on the part of some of my friends on this side, but in 2007, when there was a change of Prime Minister without an election, the Conservative Party called for an election. That would not be possible under the proposals which the coalition is now bringing forward. In my judgment, there is much grounds for the unease which the committee talks about.
Should it be four or five years? I have not heard any, or any sufficient, case for a length of five years. Nowadays events seem to move far more speedily. On the international scene, one thinks of the year of revolutions in 1989, or the current troubles in the Middle East. Equally, in terms of the financial crises, the whole context of a Parliament can change very speedily. The Conservatives have not mentioned any particular date; the Liberal Democrats have argued in the past for four years, which is the pattern for devolved Administrations, and there has been little serious argument in favour of a longer period, which, as I have sought to submit, would make the Parliament less accountable. Will it last? My noble friend Lord Grocott said no. I fear that it may, because the Executive have such a vested interest in continuing. There is real concern that a Government may well be content with the five years; any Executive would like to have the certainty of five years rather than four.
If your Lordships will allow me one final reflection, I share the sense of unease, but I am prepared to accept the case for a fixed-term Parliament, which I will support, even though I would argue for greater flexibility. It is clearly not a matter of absolutes, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has argued very persuasively, a matter of judgment. Therefore, the response to the debate will provide a clear test of whether the Government are listening and open to persuasion; or whether, as we saw with the constituencies and AV Bill, the Bill will be brought down to us like tablets from the mountain, with no possibility of serious change, however well the argument is made against it. The danger is that, rather as with the AV Bill, we will be faced with coalition sclerosis—the inability of the two coalition parties to reach agreement on the changes.
The debate has only just started. Surely the proper course is to debate first and then enshrine in legislation. The Government have chosen to do otherwise. The Deputy Prime Minister told the committee:
“We want to make sure that it”—
that is, the Bill—
“is subject to the greatest possible scrutiny, which it rightly deserves”.
Surely this is not an academic matter but one, as I have argued, of judgment. The Government may well have an argument, but at least let them concede that, if they are not wrong, there may be a better view on certain of the matters. I end, as I began, by quoting Cromwell: the Government should think that they “may be mistaken”.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I, too, express great appreciation of the maiden speech of our new colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I had the privilege of serving with him in another place for 30 years and came greatly to admire his understanding and perception of how our constitution worked. As others have said, today was the ideal opportunity for him to make his debut in this House. He will continue to be listened to with great interest and even affection.
I am, however, surprised by the tenor of the speeches that have come from the opposition Benches today, bearing in mind the Opposition’s commitment to a fixed-term Parliament in their recent election manifesto. It was also strange to hear the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, say that he saw partisanship in this Bill. I would have liked to hear that spelt out a little more clearly so that the criticism might have been answered. The noble Lord spoke for 13 minutes but did not make that case.
I was also surprised to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, from the Front Bench describe the Bill as a disaster, when he also—at least, by implication—seems to be committed to the notion of a fixed-term Parliament. We must therefore focus on the problems that give rise to such extreme criticism from those who are apparently supportive of the principle. However, I am bound to say that there was a difference between the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who plainly does not like any kind of constitutional reform and sets his face entirely against any change in our system of government, which suggests a sentimentality that I find rather strange, given that the Government in which he served presided over such significant changes.
It seems that the Bill has not been scrutinised with the necessary time that would ideally be given to an important piece of constitutional legislation. However, those committees of both Houses that have deliberated upon it have found much to commend and much to criticise. Surely, during our debates in this House we can take account of the suggestions that have been made without throwing out the baby with the bath water. As to the main question which seems to have given rise to difficulty, about whether a fixed-term Parliament should be for four or five years, it is a genuinely difficult matter to decide. Having served in nine Parliaments in another place, I have had experience of short and long Parliaments and I am bound to say that short Parliaments seemed to me for the most part to constitute interregnums during which no significant steps could be taken, the country was in a turmoil of uncertainty, business did not know the background against which it had to make its decisions and private citizens could not make up their minds about what their future best interests would be. It seems to me that fixed-term Parliaments provide the stability that is utterly desirable. It is not an accident that most democracies have them.
On balance, I come down in favour of a five-year term, although I listened with great interest to the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. I believe that the last year of any Parliament is apt to be unsettled. However, if the last year of a four-year Parliament is unsettled, there is a very limited amount of time in which Governments can put their best thinking to work. In my judgment, in 1,000 days they do not have the opportunity to fine-tune, take account of opinion outside, listen and shape their decisions with the deliberation and consideration that they ought to give to that.
It is also clearly right that there should be ways of recognising the need for early elections in the event of political crises. These happen in the best organised countries. The change from the 55 per cent cut-off to the two-thirds requirement for parliamentary voting for dissolution was a sensible step. I have not heard much criticism of that that seems to me to have stuck. As for the passing of the vote of no confidence in two weeks followed by the automatic dissolution if a vote of confidence in a new Parliament is not put in its place, we can deal with some of those issues at later stages of the Bill. I suggest that the case is very strong for defining the terms of the vote of no confidence that would bring about the dissolution. Looking back through the motions of no confidence over the past 100 years, I see that only four led to the downfall of a Government but there were many other cases when the language was such that it might have been construed by the Speaker as having been the equivalent of a vote of no confidence. I also think that the Speaker’s position would be extremely uncomfortable if he had the power to exercise discretion in these matters. I do not think that that would work effectively, notwithstanding the precedents that we have had. The Bill has to be a great deal more precise about what is required to enable a dissolution to occur.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, referred to possible manipulation by the Prime Minister of the day as being a serious danger. He has a real point there. We have to consider how to avoid the possibility that a resignation by a Government to force a dissolution would be made impossible. Two weeks may not be long enough to sort out that problem and it may well be difficult to construct another Government in that period. I hope that we shall come back to that issue later.
I take a less fatal view of the possibility of clashes with the other election date in May. It appears to me that in the United States at least the electors are capable of voting on many things on the same day—on individual appointments, elections at different tiers, the election of judges—and I have not noticed that that does not work very well. In the devolved Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales it is feared that electors might be distracted by focusing on national, United Kingdom issues. Those thoughts have to be listened to very carefully. However, as my noble friend Lord Rennard said, it would be possible to adjust that slightly. Again, that is not a reason for opposing the Bill and it seems to me that it is a matter to which we can return in Committee.
I very much welcome the general principle of the Bill. It is a forward looking step. It intends to—and, I believe, does—transfer to Parliament from the Executive the responsibility for elections and when they should occur. I very much welcome that. There have been too many opportunistic, manipulative moves by Prime Ministers for party advantage. The Bill enables us to depart from that.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his maiden speech. I note with pleasure that he now seems to be in robust good health. I have known him for 10 years in two capacities, one is his chairmanship of the all-party group that has been indefatigable in sustaining the arguments against an elected second Chamber and for a reformed appointed Chamber along the lines of the Bill introduced—I cannot remember how many times now—by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. The second capacity is his chairmanship—for many decades, I believe—of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group, which has given such great pleasure and, indeed, education to so many of us.
In preparing my speech I have been very much assisted, as we all have, by the report of the Constitution Committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington. I look forward to a riposte to the Government’s riposte. I hope that she will add her own recollections—perhaps this has been mentioned—of her father’s very relevant experience in 1979.
The central scenario that I want to consider is to some extent my response to the very fair question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart—this is not said in a partisan spirit, although it might be viewed as such—namely, what happens when the coalition collapses? That is the central question. The whole Bill is framed to try to ensure that it cannot collapse and that it can be nailed down as if by President Mubarak. People say it is like being locked in a loveless marriage, but the idea that it was dreamt up in heaven does not quite tally with one’s instincts.
Why were some of us quite content with the Labour party manifesto one minute and then appearing to say something else the next? In the case of two recent Bills, many of us were supportive. My reaction to the Bill preceding this on AV was to be vaguely supportive until we started to look at some of the detail. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, will accept in good faith that there are so many contortions in the detail because of the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny, the lack of a Green Paper and a White Paper and the fact that the Bill is designed specifically not for the good of the Commonwealth for the next 500 years but to keep the coalition going for five years.
There is going to be a degree of sophistry in the arguments that are put forward. I would compare the central argument to the famous Catch-22 in Joseph Heller’s novel. Once one has nailed down the idea that there has to be a fixed-term Parliament for five years, obviously all the arrangements for votes of confidence and the question of whether the Prime Minister has to agree with the Speaker and whether anyone can turn up at Buckingham Palace or whatever are secondary to ensuring that the scheme cannot fail. Five years, again, has been designed clearly to maximise the period of this particular coalition, because not until five years have passed—it is hoped on the other side—can the economic and social crisis facing this country possibly turn around so that not everyone on the other side will be decimated at the next general election. If bets were taken on how the public would view a vote on five years versus four years at the moment, I do not think the bookmakers would agree to take any bets other than one way for very long.
The little exchange between the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Rooker, was very informative. As I understand it, the argument is that we have made arrangements on party funding in a five-year cycle and somehow it would be very inconvenient if the electoral cycle did not match that cycle. What an extraordinary way of putting the tail before the dog. Without necessarily repeating every word my noble friend said—I agree with the sentiments and the language—I must say that he made a very fair point in his question. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made an inappropriate remark. He is forensically very able in dealing with all these matters, but I did not think that that remark was particularly apt.
I have one question about how this would work in practice. We all remember 1974 and everything that happened in January, February and March that year, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who will have it branded on his soul; he was Principal Private Secretary to Mr Heath. Let us say that this Bill had been an Act. The Labour Government came in with a majority of minus one or plus one or whatever it was.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Minus three, jolly good. Can someone just spell out what the scenario would have been then? Who would have done what, with which and to whom, and would not the royal prerogative have somehow come into it at all? I ask the question in all innocence because I just cannot work out the answer looking at this Bill. I suppose that Harold Wilson would have been able to manufacture Dissolution by manufacturing a confidence vote that he would lose. Is that what we are supposed to believe? I would like to know where I am wrong. It seems to me an extraordinary contortion. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said so eloquently, when you go around the Commonwealth and other places on electoral missions and to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and so on, people tend to respect the very things that we are now going to tear up. It is English or British pragmatism gone mad, you might say, but these things work, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The balance of evidence for deciding this matter is the degree to which it is broke and the degree to which fixing it will be satisfactory. That is the balance that we should obviously look to.
Finally, as an aside, how many of the IPU 77 countries cited by the Government in their reposte to the memorandum of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, can change their whole constitution by a single vote in the House of Commons? That worries me as well because many of them, I am sure, have a two-thirds majority to change the constitution. We have in this Bill a two-thirds majority to instruct the Speaker to sign a piece of paper, like Cromwell or someone, to say that this is now a lost vote of confidence. If the principle of a two-thirds majority is so important for that, why do we not have some sort of two-thirds majority provision on constitutional Bills generally? I am happy to echo what my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton said in this characteristically superb forensic speech: that we will be protected only by the fact that unless the Government make some significant changes, they will be up a gum-tree so far as the Parliament Act is concerned. They could get away from under the Parliament Act if they do another U-turn on all the arguments that they have been advancing today, but that is something else. It is against that background that we will, I am sure, have a very interesting Committee indeed.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
My Lords, I echo those who have expressed their pleasure at the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in this House and welcome him here among us. I did not have the pleasure of working with him in the other place, but I have enjoyed his friendship for a number of years and I believe that he will add greatly to the light as well as the enlightenment of our proceedings.
None of your Lordships would query the need for a statutory limit on the maximum term of a Parliament, even if there is room for disagreement on how long that maximum term should be. However, the case for a statutory fixed term seems to be much less clear. It would have been beneficial to have had much more pre-legislative scrutiny of these proposals, although that would mean that we would be talking about something else today.
If one introduces statutory provisions for fixed-term Parliaments, one immediately has to try to define, and prescribe for, the circumstances in which, despite that provision, political conditions make it necessary for there to be Dissolution before the end of the statutory fixed term. It is almost certainly impossible to define in the statute all the possible circumstances in which premature Dissolution should be permitted. As the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, has just reminded us, there were two elections in 1974, during both of which I was the Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, first to Mr Heath and then to Mr Wilson. I have been scratching my head to think how those elections could have been fitted into the straitjacket of this Bill. Would Mr Heath have had to engineer a vote of confidence in the House of Commons by instructing a number of his members to abstain on the vote so that he lost it? Is that how Mr Wilson would have had to deal with the matter in October 1974? It is difficult to see how a situation of that kind could have been fitted into the provisions of this Bill. That suggests to me that more consideration needs to be given to this whole matter.
When a situation arises that is not covered by the statute, politicians will be obliged to devise some clever way of stretching the statute and precipitating the Dissolution of Parliament and a general election. While that process is going on, no doubt in an atmosphere of crisis, there will inevitably be doubt and uncertainty. I would be inclined to argue, therefore, that a fixed term for a Parliament is a political objective that can be considered only in the political circumstances of the time. If with a statutory fixed term in place that objective became for whatever reason unattainable, in circumstances in which the statute did not permit Dissolution, the Government would presumably have to introduce emergency legislation to override the statutory provision and take whatever time was required for that: or, conceivably, the Sovereign would have to be requested by the Prime Minister, or perhaps by Parliament, to grant Dissolution despite the legislation.
It is argued that the present system, which confers on the Prime Minister the right to request the Dissolution of Parliament at a time of his choosing, gives an incumbent Prime Minister an unfair advantage over his political opponents. As one noble Lord suggested, this is a matter as much, or more, of media speculation as of reality. In practice, the issue is rarely as simple as that. For one thing, a Prime Minister who exercised that right prematurely and purely to seek political advantage over his political opponents would run the risk of being punished by the voters for his opportunism. The exercise of the right imposes upon a Prime Minister, as I have seen, an agonising choice, in deciding upon which he puts his party's future in government and his own political career on the line. In practical terms, whether and when to exercise the right to request Dissolution must always be a very complex question. It is a lonely decision, but one that can be taken only after extensive consultation.
I recognise why it suits the present Government to create a presumption that the next general election will not be held until May 2015, but I question whether that justifies the introduction of this legislation. The objective could be just as effectively achieved by a commitment in a White Paper or even a Statement by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons that for the duration of this Parliament he will not exercise his right to request Dissolution before the end of the maximum period that he has stated unless ineluctable circumstances arising from unforeseen changes in parliamentary or political circumstances oblige him to do so.
I take some consolation in the thought that, even if this Bill is passed and this Parliament runs its full statutory course, no Parliament can bind its successors. The next Government and the next Parliament will not be bound by this statute if they do not want to be; they will be able to repeal it and revert to traditional practice. I therefore suggest to your Lordships that the question whether and, if so, when a Parliament should be dissolved before the end of its statutory maximum life should be determined pre-eminently by political process and is not really amenable to statutory provision.
If this proposal for a statutory fixed term goes forward, there is then the question of how long that term should be. I share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Experience shows that the imminence of a general election casts its shadow over government and Parliament for many months. Even with a term of five years, that shadow extends over the last year of the term and tends to reduce to no more than four years the period during which government policy-making and parliamentary debate can effectively be pursued without too much looking over the shoulder at electoral considerations. If legislation were to set a fixed term of, let us say, four years, that period would be reduced to more like three years. That would not leave enough room for sensible policy-making and good parliamentary debate before the imminence of the forthcoming election began to cast its distorting shadow. So I hope that, if this Bill becomes law, the fixed term will be five years, as is proposed in the Bill, and not some shorter term.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, before indicating my thoughts about the Bill, perhaps I may say gently to the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Clegg, that between 1832 and now there have been a number of extremely significant constitutional changes, not least the giving to the people of Scotland and Wales a voice in their own decision-making and, perhaps even more significant, the introduction of the universal franchise and the giving of the vote to women.
It has been fascinating to listen to some of the lessons from history that we should take on board as we go through the process of scrutinising the Bill and to hear of some of the problems that have arisen when previous elections have been declared. As many noble Lords have said, this Bill has been cobbled together in haste, clearly with narrow, short-term party interests in mind, without a Green Paper, White Paper or pre-legislative scrutiny, and to a very tight timetable—what the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in the other place referred to as a “scrutiny bypass”.
I can see no cause for speed, not least because of the longer parliamentary Session. It was clearly no coincidence that the Leader of the Commons announced the extension of the Session on the day of the Second Reading of this Bill. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, it was done to align the Sessions of this Parliament to the fixed-term provision. That produced ill thought-out proposals, as was clearly shown in the embarrassing U-turn that had to be done by the Deputy Prime Minister in response to the furore that followed the coalition agreement’s statement that a “binding Motion” would be put before the House of Commons stating that the next general election would be held on the first Thursday of May 2015 and that a vote of 55 per cent of Members would be needed to bring down the Government. That proved to be an unsustainable proposition. The “binding Motion” disappeared and the 55 per cent vote became a two-thirds majority. I mention that because it shows the confusion that seems to have surrounded the whole Bill right from its inception.
A statement made by the current Prime Minister during the general election campaign has also disappeared. He said that if there was a change of Prime Minister during the course of a Parliament—clearly he was trying to have a go at Gordon Brown—there should be a general election within six months. That, we are told, has been superseded and improved on by this Bill. It may have been superseded, but nothing could be improved by this flawed piece of legislation.
It is a great pity that a Bill that I support in principle is so flawed in detail. I have been committed to four-year fixed-term Parliaments since it became Labour Party policy in the early 1990s, as ironed out by the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Plant, in which both the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and I were involved. The policy was ultimately carried by the Labour Party conference. We had long discussions as to how to arrive at a fixed-term Parliament and how to arrive at a four-year fixed-term Parliament. We had to ensure the integrity of the proposal. It was made clear that it would have to be built into legislation to allow for an election to be triggered when a Government lack the support of Parliament and would operate under a strict, clearly defined set of rules, unlike the sort of confusion that we seem to have in this Bill.
As has been said, there is nothing unique about the introduction of fixed-term Parliaments. They apply to our devolved Parliaments and Assemblies and to local government. They have been introduced in most western European states, the US, the EU, most of the Australian states and in most of the provinces of Canada, as well as at federal level. But in all those instances there are safety valves that have been either legislated for or provided by constitutional conventions of no confidence motions leading to dissolution.
There are reasons why, as a past party organiser, I think that a fixed-term Parliament is a good thing. As well as removing the power of the Prime Minister, it gives clarity to our electoral procedures. It will enable electoral registration officers to schedule their work and put current deadlines into a more coherent timetable. It will give time to increase voter registration and without doubt it will bring clarity to the timing of the electoral expenditure limits, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred, by enabling people to work to fixed dates. It might also bring some sensible construction to the legislative programme, building in time for consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny—something denied to this and the other constitutional Bills that have been rushed through Parliament.
My main objection to the Bill is the proposal to turn a five-year maximum into a five-year norm. Well, it might be five years, or it might be five years and two months in exceptional circumstances. I ask the Minister whether it can be envisaged that those exceptional circumstances—and we do not know what they might be—could further extend the period, with the approval of both Houses, of course.
As has been spelt out, since 1945 three years and 10 months has been the average for a Parliament. Since 1979, four Parliaments have been around for four years and, exceptionally, three lasted for five years. Overall, four years has been the norm. The Deputy Prime Minister tried to negate these facts by misinterpreting the words of Lord Asquith during the passage of the 1911 Parliament Bill. The words to me are quite clear. Lord Asquith said that a five-year term,
“probably amounts in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/2/1911; col. 1749.]
Those words could not be clearer and to cite them as a reason for five-year terms I find extraordinary.
Here we have yet another somersault by the Liberal Democrats, who were long-term supporters of four-year fixed-term Parliaments, as approved by their 2007 party conference, and who vehemently supported the Bill introduced by David Heath MP for four-year Parliaments. When and why in the negotiations between the Conservative and Lib Dem teams did four years become five years? We are told that it was a matter of judgment, but perhaps we could have a little clarification of how that judgment was arrived at. I am not sure whether we will get it, because we are still waiting to be told why the number of MPs had to be 600.
The arguments for four years as opposed to five are quite evident. They reflect devolved control and international experience. As several constitutional experts made clear as witnesses to the Constitution Committee, that period is by far the most accountable time for a Government to sit. I hope that when we have the debates in Committee we can have much further discussion as to the benefits and values of a four-year Parliament. I do not accept the argument that we would end up having the last year solely discussing when an election would be. That happens even with fixed five-year Parliaments. There is a lot more confusion about when the election might be and a lot of pressure is put on. I cannot accept arguments that say that we should not have any timing or that we should go for five years.
I do not wish to intrude on the question of the date, because I am sure that my friends from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will wish to do that for themselves, but I make reference to the Scottish elections review that was carried out by my namesake, although no relation, Ron Gould. The review followed the holding of the Scottish Parliament and local elections on 3 May 2007, when 140,000 electors lost their vote. His comments are equally applicable to this debate. He said that,
“the voter was treated as an afterthought”,
in the planning and organisation of those elections. This has clearly not entered the Government’s thinking. He also said that Ministers should take,
“voters’ interests as the primary objective”.
Again, it appears that the voters’ interests have been ignored.
The Scottish Parliament decoupled the Scottish parliamentary elections from the local elections only to find the principle undermined by the fact that the general election will be held on the same date. I appreciate that an offer has been made for discussions with the Scottish Parliament and the devolved Assemblies to ask and perhaps suggest that they might wish to look at their dates, but it would be much simpler for this Bill to change its date than to go through the complicated process of asking the Scottish Parliament and devolved Assemblies to look at their dates. It is a great pity that it did not occur to the Government to have discussions with the devolved areas prior to the introduction of this Bill. Whatever happens, whether we change the date in this Bill or whether the Scottish Parliament and the devolved Assemblies change their dates, there will be a serious impact on devolved institutions. Asking people in those areas to elect two different Executives on different electoral boundaries—and there may well be different manifestos—on the same day could be a recipe for disaster.
What I find absolutely confusing about this Bill—I have a very simple mind and I like things to be simple—are the provisions in Clause 2. I do not intend to go into them as so many have done, but the complexities of that clause and the debate that we have had today have made my confusion even worse. I would like somebody to say why we cannot have a simple solution. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in his excellent maiden speech, made that point very clearly. It seems to me that what we are looking for is simplicity, not confusion, when we are building legislation. Surely there is something wrong if we can have confused legislation. My other point is that, if there is to be a vote of no confidence in a Government, surely it is then for the electorate, not MPs, to decide who the new Government should be.
My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said that he did not think that there was any difficulty or problem in respect of the courts on what is a vote of no confidence and who can take a confidence Motion. However, I would like greater clarity. I absolutely respect his knowledge as compared to mine, which is nil, but this is all the more reason why I would like him to explain why he thinks that the Speaker’s certificate could not be challenged in court. The paper from the House of Commons Library goes even further. The lack of clarity creates the remote possibility of a lame-duck Government unable to secure their business yet imprisoned in office by an Opposition unwilling to trigger an election.
The legislation also fails to deal with the issue of prerogative powers. On the one hand, the Bill removes the prerogative powers of the Queen to dissolve Parliament, but on the other hand it does not remove the Queen’s prerogative power to prorogue Parliament. That surely cannot be right. This could be interpreted as a get-out for a Prime Minister, as it makes it possible for a Prime Minister facing a vote of no confidence that he is likely to lose to go to the Queen and seek the prorogation of Parliament to avoid that crisis and to buy time to restore a coalition. Another scenario could be where the Government had lost a vote of confidence. During the 14-day grace to form a new Government, they would have an opportunity to prorogue Parliament expressly to prevent an alternative Government and thereby trigger a general election. I find it all extremely confusing and I cannot understand why we cannot have a simple vote of confidence.
In conclusion, I can only reiterate the words of my right honourable friend Sadiq Khan, who said that,
“unfortunately the coalition has hijacked a sensible and progressive idea, amended it for its own means and tried to rush through legislation preventing a proper, wide-ranging debate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/1/11; col. 797.]
There has been no consultation and scrutiny. The Bill is a short-term compromise to hold together two coalition parties. Far from being a careful analysis of how to redesign our constitution, it is the product of a political imperative in an attempt to ensure survival of the coalition to a full term. To me, it seems like a piece of—and I use the word advisedly—gerrymandering in that it does not, as has been stated, take the absolute power from the Prime Minister that we are told it should do. It gives extra power to the Speaker and I wonder whether that is appropriate—I do not accept the analogy given by the Minister in relation to money Bills. Nor does it strengthen the powers of MPs in the other place. I hope that when the Bill leaves this House it will be more coherent and completely simplified and that it will provide for four-year fixed-term Parliaments.
International Aid Reviews: Conclusions
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in the other place. The Statement is as follows.
“Mr Speaker, with permission, I should like to make a Statement about the Government’s bilateral and multilateral aid reviews which are published today. The coalition Government’s decision to increase the UK’s aid budget to 0.7 per cent of national income from 2013 reflects the values that we hold as a nation. It is also firmly in Britain’s national interest. But this decision imposes on us a double duty to spend this money well.
On my first day in office, I took immediate steps to make our aid as focused and effective as possible. I commissioned reviews of DfID’s bilateral programmes in developing countries, and of the UK’s aid funding to international organisations. These reviews have been thorough, rigorous, evidence-based and scrutinised by independent development experts. They will fundamentally change the way that aid is allocated.
Recent events in north Africa and the wider Middle East have demonstrated why it is critical that the UK increases its focus on helping countries to build open and responsive political systems, tackle the root causes of fragility and empower citizens to hold their Governments to account. It is the best investment we can make to avoid violence and protect the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
The bilateral aid review considered where and how we should spend UK aid. Each DfID country team was asked to develop a ‘results offer’ setting out what it could achieve for poor people over the next four years. Each offer was underpinned by evidence, analysis of value for money and a focus on girls and women. The results offers were scrutinised by more than 100 internal technical reviewers and a panel of independent experts. Ministers then considered the whole picture deciding which results should be prioritised in each country. Consultation with civil society and other government departments was undertaken throughout.
As a result of the bilateral aid review, we will dramatically increase our focus on tackling ill health and killer diseases in poor countries, with a particular effort on immunisation, malaria, maternal and newborn health, extending choice to women and girls over when and whether they have children; and polio eradication. We will do more to tackle malnutrition, which stunts children’s development and destroys their life chances; and do more to get children—particularly girls—into school. We will put wealth creation at the heart of our efforts, with far more emphasis on giving poor people property rights and encouraging investment and trade in the poorest countries. We will deal with the root causes of conflict and help to build more stable societies, as people who live amidst violence have no chance of lifting themselves out of poverty, and we will help the poorest who will be hit first and hardest by the effects of climate change—floods, drought and extreme weather.
As a result of the review, we have decided to focus UK aid more tightly on the countries where the UK is well placed to have a significant long-term impact on poverty. By 2016, DfID will have closed significant bilateral programmes in 16 countries. This will be a phased process honouring our existing commitments and exiting responsibly. The countries are: China, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Moldova, Bosnia, Cameroon, Lesotho, Niger, Kosovo, Angola, Burundi, the Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq and Serbia. This will allow us to focus our bilateral resources in the following 27 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Together, these countries account for three quarters of global maternal mortality, nearly three quarters of global malaria deaths and almost two thirds of children out of school. Many of them are affected by fragility and conflict, so we will meet the commitment made through the strategic defence and security review to spend 30 per cent of UK aid to support fragile and conflict-affected states and to help some of the poorest countries in the world address the root causes of their problems. We will also have three regional programmes in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, and an ongoing aid relationship with three aid-dependent overseas territories; namely, St Helena, the Pitcairn Islands and Montserrat.
The multilateral aid review took a hard look at the value for money offered by 43 international funds and organisations through which the UK spends aid. The review considered how effective each organisation was at tackling poverty. It provided a detailed evidence base upon which Ministers can take decisions about where to increase funding, where to press for reforms and improvements, and in some cases where to withdraw taxpayer funding altogether. The 43 multilateral agencies have fallen into four broad categories.
First, I am delighted to tell the House that nine organisations have been assessed as providing very good value for the British taxpayer. These include UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We will increase funding to these organisations, because they have a proven track record of delivering excellent results for poor people. But of course there will always be room for improvement and we will still require strong commitments to continued reform and even better performance.
Funding for the next group of agencies—those rated as good or adequate value for money, such as the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation—will be accompanied by specific pressure from the UK for a series of reforms and improvements we expect to see in the coming years.
We are placing four organisations in special measures and demanding they improve their performance as a matter of urgency. These organisations are UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the development programmes of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the International Organisation for Migration. These organisations offer poor value for money for UK aid but have a potentially critical niche development or humanitarian role which is not well covered elsewhere in the international system or contribute to broader UK Government objectives. We expect to see serious reforms and improvements in performance. We will take stock within two years and DfID's core funding may be ceased if improvements are not made.
The review found that four agencies performed poorly or failed to demonstrate relevance to Britain’s development objectives. The review therefore concluded that it is no longer acceptable for taxpayers’ money from my department to continue to fund them centrally. So, I can tell the House today that the British Government will withdraw their membership of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and that DfID will stop voluntary core funding to UN-HABITAT, the International Labour Organisation and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. This will allow over £50 million of aid money to be redirected immediately to better performing agencies.
We are working closely with other countries to build a coalition for ambitious reform and improvement of all multilateral agencies. As a result of these reviews, over the next four years, UK aid will: secure schooling for 11 million children—more than we educate throughout the UK but at 2.5 per cent of the cost; vaccinate more children against preventable diseases than there are people in the whole of England; provide access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation to more people than there are in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined; save the lives of 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth; stop 250,000 new-born babies dying needlessly; support 13 countries to hold freer and fairer elections; and help 10 million women get access to modern family planning.
I believe that these results—which will transform the lives of millions of people across the world—will make everyone in this House and this country proud. They reflect our values as a nation: generosity, compassion and humanity. But these results are not only delivered from the British people; they are also for the British people. They contribute to building a safer, more stable and prosperous world, which, in turn, helps keep our country safe from instability, infectious disease and organised crime.
Aid can perform miracles but it must be well spent and properly targeted. The UK’s development programme has now been reshaped and refocused so that it can meet that challenge”.
I commend this Statement to the House.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made earlier by the Secretary of State in the other place. It is indeed encouraging to note the emphasis on value for money—who would not agree with that? This objective was a central plank of the Labour Government’s policy from the very first DfID White Paper in 1997, so talk of value for money is certainly not a new thing. While welcoming the emphasis on maternal mortality and on girls’ education, I would like the noble Baroness to confirm that the Government’s view is that it is essential also to promote the rights and empowerment of women and to encourage their leadership and participation. Should women not participate equally in public dialogue and decision-making?
As the Secretary of State listed the countries with which we shall no longer engage, is the noble Baroness aware that bilateral aid to Russia ended in 2007 and that the Labour Government were also committed to closing programmes in China? Last week I travelled with members of the APG to the north and the south of Sudan and can confirm that there are enormous needs and very high expectations in the south. Will the noble Baroness comment on the fact that aid to Sudan is not set to increase—it is currently £140 million a year to 2015—despite the fact that that aid will now be dealing with the needs of two countries, especially, of course, the south?
Sixteen countries have been listed as ones that the Government feel no longer need the support of Her Majesty’s Government, including, for instance, Burundi, which has enormous needs and is in the Great Lakes region of Africa, where the whole situation is always very vulnerable; and Lesotho, a very small country in the south of Africa, which is very much supported by Wales, where many of us are very much aware of its needs. Will the noble Baroness tell us whether adequate donor co-ordination will take place to make sure that the needs in these countries—which will undoubtedly still exist when we exit—are picked up? This very serious point was raised today in a press release from Save the Children.
The agency UN Women urgently needs long-term, predictable funding. Thirty countries have contributed already—Spain, a country experiencing enormous financial difficulties at the time, was the very first country to contribute to UN Women. Michelle Bachelet, the head of the agency, is struggling to manage the resources that she currently has, and I fear that we cannot accept the statement from the Secretary of State that she has to wait until June when an assessment will have been made of the objectives. To leave her struggling for these resources at this time, when the other agencies that are working for women’s interests have been more or less disbanded, is extremely serious.
Will the Government make a commitment to increase cross-border aid to reach parts of Burma where the dictatorship refuses access for aid to people there? Is the noble Baroness aware that DfID aid to Burma under the current circumstances is almost entirely channelled through registered organisations that have been vetted by the regime? Should DfID not seek other channels to achieve a more equitable outcome?
Finally, after the funding of part of the Pope’s visit and the loan to the Turks and Caicos Islands, can we feel sure that our aid programmes will not be driven by the priorities of other departments of state?
Baroness Verma
First of all, I thank the noble Baroness for her opening comments. We all accept that DfID did some fantastic work when the Opposition were in government. However, the focus there was on inputs. We want to try to reshape the programmes and put the focus on outputs as well as inputs, so that we can measure the results and see that, where programmes are working, they are working well. The noble Baroness has asked a number of questions and I will try to answer as many of them as I can. Where I do not answer, I will of course write back to her.
A larger scale-up of aid for Burundi would have required us to show a significant impact on value for money and we believe that there are other comparative partners and donors in Burundi who will do far better than us. We would not have been able to achieve the sorts of results that we would have wanted by scaling up in the short term. We want to deliver value for money and results-based aid through larger existing programmes. From 2012, DfID will focus exclusively on supporting Burundi’s integration into the East African Community, as we believe that this is a critical factor in the country’s medium-term growth. All of DfID’s regional integration work will be managed by TradeMark East Africa, which has an established office. DfID will continue to support Burundi from Rwanda and Nairobi through those organisations.
The noble Baroness asked about UN Women's funding. We have agreed to support transitional costs but, when I spoke to Michelle Bachelet at the launch of UN Women, we made it clear to her that we wanted to see a strategic framework and, based on that framework, most major donors want to see what the priorities will be. She has readily accepted that and she has accepted that, if we are to be key donors to UN Women—the noble Baroness will be aware that we were through UNIFEM—we need to ensure that the money will be spent and directed through a strategic plan which will deliver the outcomes, as I am sure the noble Baroness would wish.
I noticed that the noble Baroness raised the Pope's visit again. I remind her that the funding for that was agreed to by her Government in March 2010; they agreed that different departments would pay for the visit. We also need to highlight the fact that the Catholic Church does a lot of genuinely good work across the globe and that it was right that his visit highlighted the excellent work undertaken by the Catholic Church. As her Government agreed to it, we honoured the undertaking.
On the Sudanese question, we agree that there are enormous needs there. It will take a lot of time and intervention but we will be very supportive of both sides in Sudan. We want to ensure that we build capacity for them. Noble Lords will understand that we shall be delivering in very difficult environments, but we shall continue to be responsive on the ground and see where we can deliver better and more.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I broadly support my noble friend in describing the outcome of the two reviews. The Government should be congratulated on becoming, by 2014, the largest rich economy to attain the United Nations target of providing 0.7 per cent of GDP in aid, which in the light of our very straitened circumstances is noble indeed. Fourteen years since the establishment of DfID—I pay tribute to the Labour Government for having set up that department—it is right that there should be this level of comprehensive review to look at the focus of its expenditure. I particularly welcome the emphasis now on fragile and conflict states. It is right that we focus on those where the need is greatest.
I have two questions to put to the noble Baroness. One is on the bilateral review and concerns India. I am somewhat concerned that a country which is in the queue to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a country which has a £20 billion space programme and which gives aid to other countries, should still continue to be a recipient of hard-pressed aid which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, pointed out, should be going to other organisations, such as UN Women. I look forward to hearing my noble friend's response to that. It leaves one slightly uncomfortable.
On multilateral aid—I declare an interest as a former employee of the Commonwealth Secretariat until 2003—I notice that the Statement suggests that those organisations in special measures will be given two years to show significant improvement. I wonder whether two years is too short a period and whether there have been any conversations with those organisations in special measures to see whether they believe that they can show significant improvement in just two years or whether they need longer.
Baroness Verma
I thank my noble friend for both her questions. I know she has some concerns about aid going to India. Perhaps I can point out to noble Lords that India has one-third of the world's population living on less than $1.25 a day. Last year, DfID spent 58p per poor person in India compared with £3.50 per poor person in sub-Saharan Africa. We shall have to shift our focus and, therefore, the Secretary of State has decided to shift it to three states in India—the poorest states—to ensure that we are able to maximise our aid there.
India’s space programme adds up to 0.1 per cent of the country’s overall budget, but the issue is not just about the space programme. From that programme, the Indians are able to use the technologies to deliver mobile technology to villages and particularly to women who are able to access information which they would not otherwise be able to access. The programme is not just about space but about using the technology for other things as well. I completely understand that the noble Baroness has concerns, but she would perhaps also agree that we have a special relationship with India. If we are to see the aid programme go down, we must be able to lift far more of the people of India out of poverty.
On the organisations in special measures, I respond to the noble Baroness by saying that two years may seem a short time, but the organisations are fully aware that they have to make some serious reforms. Of course we will keep in constant dialogue with the Commonwealth Secretariat to see where the improvements are taking place. The secretariat reaches out to places where we, as a single country, would not. It has special niches and therefore it is important to support it fully.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
What the Minister has said is very encouraging indeed and, I am sure, will enjoy widespread support across the House. I have two brief questions. Will she say something about how this review is affecting non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and CAFOD? As she will be aware, they are sometimes able to provide the most sharply focused and effective forms of aid and they are often in receipt of government grants for their projects.
The second question follows up on India. As the noble Baroness knows, the poorest section of the Indian population is the Dalits, of whom there are 200 million in the world, most of whom are in India. They are not only desperately poor but are shunned and humiliated. Would she say something about how the Government will support the Dalits in raising them from the very bottom of Indian poverty?
Baroness Verma
I thank the noble and right reverend Lord. On the NGOs, the Secretary of State has made it very clear that much of our aid, particularly in countries where there is conflict, is delivered through NGOs, and we want to strengthen that ability. We recognise that there will be times when we will work in partnership with NGOs to ensure that we can reach a much wider population. The Secretary of State has made it clear, time and again, that the major NGOs are key to the success of development programmes at grass-roots level, and therefore we will work hand in hand with them to ensure that that is strengthened.
I accept what the noble and right reverend Lord says about the Dalits. Through the programmes, we will continuously see that monitoring is in place to ensure that all the poor benefit from our programmes and that no one who needs a beneficial response is excluded. I hope that he is reassured by that. I am very aware of the difficulties that the Dalit community faces, and I raise it constantly.
Lord Judd
I declare an interest as a former director of Oxfam and as a current trustee of Saferworld. There is a great deal of material in this Statement. Can the noble Baroness give us an assurance that we shall be able to have a proper and full debate on its implications at an early date?
Reference was made to the desire to see poor people being able to own property. Does that also envisage a stake in land and land reform to ensure that poor people can farm for themselves and engage in their own agricultural production? Can the Government also assure us that priority will continue to be given to the whole issue of security sector reform that we can see is essential for providing the context within which development can take place?
More specifically, does this Statement cover the immense needs that will now arrive among the impoverished homeless, in many cases in effect stateless refugees from Libya and elsewhere in north Africa? If there is concern about conflict resolution and areas of conflict, why is there no mention in the Statement of the north Caucasus?
Baroness Verma
On the noble Lord’s question about the debate, this is, as I have always said, in the hands of the usual channels. If he feels that a debate is required, we need to address that through them.
We have already distributed some humanitarian aid to Libya. We were already placed to ensure that refugees fleeing could have some humanitarian aid. The noble Lord is absolutely right that this will develop into looking after many thousands of people who are fleeing a very unstable place. We chartered an aircraft that left Dubai this morning with blankets for 36,000 people and 300 tents to shelter at least 1,500 people. This was in response to a request from the UNHCR. As of yesterday, at least 126,000 who have crossed international borders out of Libya, including Egypt and Tunisia, will we hope be helped by some of the humanitarian aid that we will be providing them.
As you know, this is a moving picture. A lot is going on, and it is very difficult to be able to comment further. We also need to be very mindful that whatever we say in this country is immediately responded to elsewhere. However, I reassure the noble Lord that humanitarian aid is at the forefront of our thinking.
Baroness Morris of Bolton
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK. We very much welcome the announcement that the Government are doubling our core funding for the next two years because of the results that we have had in tackling child mortality, maternal health issues, HIV and AIDS. I pay tribute to UNICEF, NGOs and all our aid workers throughout the country who do amazing work in challenging circumstances.
I also welcome in the Statement the help that will be given to countries that are trying to build open and stable societies. Events are moving fast and furiously in the Middle East and north Africa. I therefore welcome the extra money that will be given to the occupied Palestinian territories. Over the last few years, DfID has been withdrawn from some countries in the Middle East. Will DfID be keeping an eye on this? Will it sometimes look at and review where the money can be spent, particularly to help countries that are doing their very best to open up their societies?
Baroness Verma
I thank my noble friend for her very warm words. I also pay tribute to UNICEF and many of the great NGOs that do incredible work often in very difficult circumstances. She raised some points about countries from which DfID money was withdrawn. We are going continuously to countries that will need our assistance. However, the infrastructure must be in place to be able to deliver it on the ground. If it is not, it is often difficult. I very much take on board what my noble friend has said and will take it back to the department for the Secretary of State.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, will the Minister accept a very warm welcome for the way in which the Government have withstood the slings and arrows of the tabloid press, who have asked them to cut our aid programme? How welcome it is that they are sustaining it, particularly given that, if you do a mathematical calculation, you will find that, because of the crisis, the 0.7 per cent of GNI will be worth less in 2013 than when it was pledged in 2005. These countries have already taken a hit. It is very good that the Government are standing up to that.
Does the noble Baroness recognise that seeking reforms to these multilateral organisations, which is entirely legitimate, depends crucially on getting allies in other countries who take the same view as us and press for the same reforms, otherwise it is just a concealed cutting operation? I hope she will be able to say that the Government put a lot of effort into that.
India, Brazil and China are now becoming aid donors. They are countries with a lot of working experience of how to lift people out of poverty. I hope that we will work closely with countries such as Brazil, India and China in future because we have both a lot to contribute and a lot of work to do with them.
Baroness Verma
I thank the noble Lord for all his comments. In fact there was very little that I could disagree with. As he is very well aware through his own experience, building good partnerships is very important. He is absolutely right; we will be working with China and Brazil and, hopefully not too far into the future, with India, too. We are having very constructive conversations with our other partners who provide donor aid. Many have shown a very keen interest in how we have gone through our review process and are looking very closely at what we have managed to do to ensure that their programmes are also going to be targeted and focused so that we all work toward the same end, which is getting people out of poverty.
Lord Boateng
My Lords, there is much to be welcomed in the outcome of this review, not least the new-found emphasis on agriculture, food production and wealth creation. Does the Minister recognise that there will be widespread concern in southern Africa, in particular, at the decision to end the bilateral programme in Lesotho, a small state that has been fragile in the past, and Angola, which is conflict ridden and has many millions of people who continue to live in grinding poverty?
Will the Minister assure the House that these two countries in particular will be the subject of concerted effort to improve donor co-ordination, particularly from the multilateral organisations that we fund, and will also be the beneficiaries of the southern African regional programme, within which region Angola and Lesotho quite clearly fall? Will she assure us that resources to that regional programme will be enhanced and will be delivered to those two countries?
Baroness Verma
The noble Lord maybe missed the part of the speech that said that the Secretary of State has committed to supporting regional programmes. As he absolutely rightly points out, some of the smaller countries will have greater responses from their regional areas than from bilateral programmes, which are smaller and less able to reach widely. We support the regional programmes very much.
I come back to the point about Burundi and Lesotho, which I keep pronouncing wrongly. We believe that they have comparative partners that are far better placed than us to deliver aid. Therefore, we will help them through the regional programmes.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, I should say that our regional integration work, which is managed by TradeMark East Africa, which has an established office in Bujumbura, will provide support for Angola and Burundi, so that is covered well. We will not just leave them out there and we are not suddenly going to stop—the process will phase down by 2016.
The noble Lord is absolutely right that we have a keen focus on agriculture, which is really important for food security, not only for that area but for us, too. We have pledged from 2009, when the Opposition were in government, £1.1 billion over three years. We are therefore taking agriculture sustainability very seriously. We are committed to food security and agriculture and are working with the FAO as well as other multilaterals, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme, to ensure that we have a strong programme in place.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I press the Minister on an aspect of the Statement that has not featured in the questions so far—the point that,
“it is critical that the UK increases its focus on helping countries to build open and responsive political systems”.
In the conclusions there is simply a reference to holding “freer and fairer elections”, but building democracies is about more than just helping countries to hold elections; it is about helping to build institutions in a society that support democracy. Could the Minister say a bit more about that?
Baroness Verma
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. Of course this is about more than just fairer elections; it is about making sure that the institutions in countries where there has been corruption and where unstable Governments have held office are removed or strengthened. Therefore, DfID, through its programmes of technical support and assistance, can ensure that we help Governments who want our help to train people in place to be able to hold Governments and funded institutions to account. We will not tolerate corruption; we want corruption to be eradicated. Therefore, we take all allegations of corruption and of misappropriation of funds very seriously, and we will work very strongly with Governments to ensure, with their assistance, that we put in place stronger good governance in the political systems. However, this is not about freer and fairer elections—I understand that; it is about giving people at grass-roots level the ability to hold the politicians representing them to account.
We have also put into place a watchdog that will monitor all our aid—where it is spent, how it is spent and what the outcomes and results are—so that people across the world can just log on and see for themselves. If that aid is not reaching them, they have a place to come back to and ask for recourse.
Railways: Intercity Express and Electrification
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, with permission I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport. The Statement is as follows:
“I wish to make a Statement on the Government’s plans for the extension of the electrification of the Great Western main line and for the procurement of a replacement for the existing diesel intercity trains. These two issues are closely connected.
I turn first to the provision of a new generation of intercity 125 mile per hour trains to take advantage of the electrification of the Great Western main line and to allow for the phasing out of most of the ageing diesel InterCity 125s.
In February 2009, the intercity express programme, launched by the previous Government, identified Agility Trains, a consortium of Hitachi Rail (Europe) Ltd and John Laing plc, as the preferred bidder to provide a new fleet of intercity trains. Subsequently, the previous Government placed this process on hold and ordered a review of the procurement by Sir Andrew Foster. Last summer, recognising the fiscal challenges that the UK faces and the challenges that the new Government’s plans for high-speed rail to Leeds and Manchester introduce, Agility put forward an improved, lower-cost proposal, which provides the required service through a mixed IEP fleet—some all-electric trains and some with a combination of electric and diesel power, allowing them to operate through services beyond the electrified railway. This proposal retained the more modern electric InterCity 225s on the east coast main line, as the previous Administration had proposed.
We have reviewed this proposal against the alternative of an all-electric fleet with purpose-built diesel locomotives being coupled to trains to haul them beyond the electrified railway. Either way, this would represent a multibillion pound investment for this country, underpinning the operation of intercity services on the conventional railway for many years to come, and it is imperative that the right choice is made.
As I said at the time of my Statement to the House on 25 November, there were complex legal, technical and commercial issues to be addressed. Both the Government and Agility Trains as preferred bidder recognised this. Over the past few months we have worked together on these issues and I can now announce that I am resuming the IEP procurement and proceeding with the proposal that Agility Trains put forward as preferred bidder. We will now work with Agility Trains with a view to reaching financial close by the end of the year. This is, of course, subject to the Government continuing to be satisfied that the proposal offers value for money as the commercial negotiations are concluded and that the final arrangements are compliant with the United Kingdom’s EU obligations.
This deal will allow us to provide better, faster, more comfortable services and to continue providing through journeys between London and parts of the rail network that are not electrified. In total, there will be over 11,000 more peak-time seats each day on the Great Western main line and east coast main line on the IEP trains, compared to today.
Hitachi is today confirming its plans to locate its European train manufacturing and assembly centre at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. This investment is expected to create at least 500 direct permanent jobs, as well as hundreds of temporary construction jobs. Thousands more job opportunities will be created in the UK manufacturing and service supply chains. Coming just days after the news of the reopening of the Redcar steelworks, this is a massive and very welcome shot in the arm for the skilled workforces of the north-east’s industrial heartland.
I turn now to the related issue of electrification of the Great Western main line. I announced to the House on 25 November that, over the next six years, Network Rail will electrify the commuter services on the Great Western main line from London to Didcot, Oxford and Newbury. I recognise that this announcement, although welcomed in the Thames valley, left unanswered the clear aspirations of rail users further west for the extension of electrification to Bristol and into Wales. I and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales have subsequently considered the options for extending electrification alongside the Government’s consideration of the proposals for replacement of the current diesel intercity trains, and in close consultation with the Welsh Assembly Government.
We have concluded that there is a case for extending electrification westwards to Bristol and Cardiff and I am today asking Network Rail to add this major extension to its electrification programme immediately. This is good news for Wales and the south-west against a backdrop of public spending constraint, as we deal with the legacy of debt that we have inherited. Bringing electrification to Cardiff will mean that we are linking, for the first time, the capital cities of England, Scotland and Wales by electrified rail. These measures will deliver a London to Cardiff journey time of one hour and 42 minutes and will shave 22 minutes off the London to Bristol journey.
I have received representations calling for electrification of the Great Western main line to be extended as far west as Swansea. We have looked carefully at the arguments. The business case for electrification is heavily dependent on the frequency of service. Services between London and Swansea currently operate at a frequency of only one train an hour off-peak. There is no evidence of a pattern of demand that would be likely to lead imminently to an increase in this frequency. Consequently, I regret to say that there is not, at present, a viable business case for electrification of the main line between Cardiff and Swansea.
Because of the decision to proceed with Agility’s proposal for a bi-mode train, journey times from London to Swansea will be shortened to two hours and 39 minutes—20 minutes faster than today—with trains switching automatically to diesel power as they leave Cardiff. Because the constraining factor on the south Wales main line is speed limitations dictated by the geometry of the line, there would be no time-saving benefits from electrifying the line from Cardiff to Swansea. However, the policy of the Government is to support a progressive electrification of the rail network in England and Wales, for environmental among other reasons. My right honourable friend and I will therefore keep under active review the business case for future electrification of the Great Western main line between Cardiff and Swansea in the light of future service patterns.
I have a further announcement to make to the House. In the course of the examination of the case for electrification in south Wales that my right honourable friend and I have undertaken, we have established, at an initial high level, that a good case appears to exist for electrifying the key valley commuter lines north of Cardiff via Pontypridd and Caerphilly to Treherbert, Aberdare, Merthyr Tydfil, Coryton and Rhymney, as well as the lines to Penarth and Barry Island to the west. My department will therefore work with the Welsh Assembly Government to develop a full business case for the electrification of the Cardiff valley lines within the next rail investment control period, beginning in 2014. The Welsh Assembly Government will need, in parallel, to consider the case for specifying suitable electric trains for these routes when the Wales and Borders franchise is relet in 2018. This would, of course, be a prerequisite for electrification to proceed, and the timetable for franchise reletting and respecification necessarily dictates the timescale of this proposed electrification.
On the basis of our preliminary evaluation, the valleys electrification represents the best value-for-money rail electrification investment that can be made in Wales. It promises to bring all the benefits of electric commuter trains—faster acceleration, greater comfort and cleaner, greener travel—to rail users in south Wales. It would have a significant effect on the economy of Cardiff and the valleys, deepening labour markets, improving connectivity and significantly enhancing the attractiveness of the area to investors. Coupled with the electrification of the Great Western main line, this represents a major boost to the economy of south Wales as a whole.
These three decisions—on intercity express, Great Western main line electrification and electrification of the valley commuter lines—represent a major further investment in UK rail infrastructure, following the announcements that I have already made on Crossrail, Thameslink, Tube upgrades, Thames valley and north-western electrification and additional rolling stock. They sit alongside the Government’s proposals for high-speed rail, the consultation on which I announced to the House in a Written Statement yesterday, as testimony to this Government’s commitment to investment in the future of Britain’s railways. They represent excellent news for passengers on the Great Western main line and the east coast main line, for commuters on the Cardiff valley lines and for the economies of south Wales and north-east England as a whole”.
I commend this Statement to the House.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement made earlier this day in another place, particularly as I understand that he is a late stand-in for the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who is indisposed. We wish the noble Earl a full recovery to health as quickly as possible. I commiserate with him. In the past I have been somewhat critical of transport Statements presented by the noble Earl from the Dispatch Box, but today the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has drawn the long straw, because this is a Statement on which we can offer some commendation and approval. In fact, there is much in this Statement that the Opposition welcome.
We welcome, of course, the news about the intercity express programme. I hope that the noble Lord will recognise the perspicacity of the previous Administration, who last year asked Sir Andrew Foster to carry out a review of the situation. This was important, because the original bid contained unsatisfactory features. We are glad that the Government have been able to take advantage of the review and the additional time to agree a deal with Agility Trains that is a substantial advance on what otherwise would have been the case. It also means that they will be producing not just all-electric trains but a combination of diesel and electric power. As the noble Lord indicates, with the rejection of the case for electrification through to Swansea, this dual capacity is of great importance.
We also welcome the fact that Agility Trains and Hitachi have planned to locate their European train capacity in the north-east, at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. We all know the present difficulties of many parts of our economy; all our regions are due to have very difficult times but particularly the north-east, so this will be a welcome development in terms of the number of manufacturing jobs created in County Durham.
We are somewhat concerned about the Government’s argument with regard to Swansea. After all, south Wales shares with the north-east difficulties with regard to its economy and a degree of remoteness from the centres of financial power in the United Kingdom. It may be regarded as a relatively short distance between Cardiff and Swansea, but the noble Lord must recognise that they are two different economies. This will inevitably be looked on in Wales as a gain for Cardiff—I will come on to the valleys in a moment—but as a rebuttal of the needs of Swansea, where links with London are of very great significance. I hear what the noble Lord says about the business case not having been made, but this is calculated using present traffic flow numbers. If the Government invest in infrastructure, the improvements will generate a degree of economic activity that will increase traffic flow and the numbers of passengers. We are sorry about that dimension of the Government’s decision.
We very much appreciate that the opportunity was taken to look at the valleys economy. There is no doubt at all that it is important to improve communications between the valleys and Cardiff—and, to that extent, Newport, too—and then the links to London. The House knows only too well the struggles that the valley towns have had in trying to replace industry, as the original, vast coal-mining activity is now long since gone. The extent to which effective communication between the valleys and Cardiff is absolutely essential has only more recently been appreciated, with regard to employment in the valleys. Effective communication gives the opportunity for people who live in the valleys to get to Cardiff and to that part of southern Wales where rather more jobs are available.
We welcome this Statement. It is a reflection of essential investment. It also reflects something of which we must all take due stock. We will all have our differences about economic strategies and policies and there is, of course, a fairly obvious division between the perspective of my party and that of the coalition on how to handle the present crisis. However, we must renew our commitment to long-term investment in infrastructure, which must survive changes in government if we are to build the crucial infrastructure that the nation requires. That is why I have not the slightest doubt today about the importance of this Statement and the fact that the House should take pleasure in it.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, for his comments regarding my noble friend Lord Attlee, who I certainly hope will soon be fit and well. It is of course a joy to be presenting a good-news story, which is exactly how the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has seen it, too. I thank him for that and for having the grace to understand that good-news stories can emanate from this Dispatch Box.
The noble Lord raised an interesting point about Swansea. I understand the disappointment, but the two things are linked, in that getting the intercity express train, which is electro-diesel, means that no one has to get out at Cardiff to get on to a connecting train, nor do they have to wait the 10 minutes or so for a diesel engine to be put on to the front. The train goes straight forward. Because of the nature of the track between Cardiff and Swansea, that journey time will be the same whether it is electrified or not. To that extent, there is no sense in these proposals that Swansea is being done down. Indeed, as I said in repeating the Statement, although the case is not at present viable, the Government propose to go on with further electrification and it may well be that an extension comes at some future time. I am grateful that the noble Lord referred to the valleys. This is, of course, a new scheme, which has not been raised previously. It will do a great deal for the area around Cardiff.
I particularly want to comment on the noble Lord’s concern about the long-term infrastructure. It is quite interesting that this is an interlude from talking about the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, on which I make no comment whatsoever. Yet however long the term is, of the terms that have been mentioned, those terms are often longer than it takes to get a major infrastructure project going. It will be towards the end of this Parliament that we see some wires and trains in some of the electrification proposals being put forward. It will certainly be into our next Parliament when we see more of that.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, will my noble friend convey to the Secretary of State in another place our warmest congratulations for a surprisingly upbeat Statement? It is probably one of the best that I have ever heard, but will he take back two or three small points? First, if we are to have electrification to south Wales, before anybody starts any engineering work we must have the line between Swindon and Kemble doubled so that we maintain a reliable connection between London and south Wales and vice versa.
Secondly, the procurement process for Agility Trains has been extraordinarily long-winded and expensive. It has employed a lot of consultants. Will my noble friend try to convey to the Secretary of State the need, in the new franchises, to simplify the acquisition of new rolling stock? That is something which the Department for Transport is singularly ill-equipped to do. I believe that we need to bring the train operators much closer to the process.
Lastly, would my noble friend remind the Secretary of State that there is no reason why some of the journey times between south Wales and London should not be shortened by, I believe, up to 15 minutes? That could be done by using the current equipment but taking out the intermediate stops which have been placed on those services at places such as Swindon, Didcot and Reading—again, I believe, at the behest of his own department.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his comments. I immediately looked at my railway map and thought, “What does this mean in terms of the construction period?”, particularly for the tunnel to south Wales and the electrification thereof. Clearly, there is the problem of that single line between Swindon and Kemble. I am told that much of the work is likely to take place at night. However, there is work going on at the moment, with Network Rail looking at its next programme of work from 2014-19. There is still a possibility that, if it is really believed that it would enhance the diversionary route for that period when work is taking place, it could be considered or, indeed, brought forward.
Secondly, on procurement, the likelihood is that there will be longer franchises in future, which may well mean that my noble friend Lord Bradshaw has his wishes in that regard. One feature of this procurement is the knock-on effect of various proposals and the fact that Agility Trains may well mean agility, in terms of trains moving from place to place. For example, if ultimately there were to be electrification to Swansea after this programme, you could then have all-electric trains while the electro-diesels could go somewhere else where they can go under the wires and not be where the line is electric. There is a sense in which this proposal is about more than one train company and one piece of work.
Concerning the third item, the journey times on the Great Western main line, we all know that the Thames valley has, over the years, become something of a honey-pot. Places such as Swindon and Reading have grown and grown, so commercial reasons have meant that more trains have stopped at those places rather than being express trains. With electrification, the likelihood is that there will be more trains—there are plans to have them—and fast trains. I cannot guarantee that there will be any enhancement in services prior to electrification but I will pass back to the department the comments that my noble friend has made.
Lord Berkeley
I congratulate the noble Lord on this Statement, which is very positive, as my noble friend has said. It has resolved many of the uncertainties surrounding the whole of the Great Western network in terms of electrification, new trains and everything else.
I just draw his attention to one issue that needs a little more resolution: the section between Reading and London and the relationship with Crossrail. As noble Lords will know, Reading station is being subject to a major upgrade, which is very welcome too. At the moment, however, the Crossrail services are due to stop at Maidenhead, where I believe construction work has started on a big maintenance facility. Most people think that it would be much better if Crossrail trains went on to Reading, which is a major interchange; I do not think anyone would suggest that Maidenhead was the centre of the universe when it comes to changing trains. That would also avoid having a separate shuttle train, which I think is still planned to be a diesel, between Reading and Slough, stopping at Maidenhead. Reading station is being extended to take Crossrail trains, but there has been no decision on where they will go.
I have one final suggestion that my noble friend could pass on to the Secretary of State. It is very welcome that there will be 11,000 more peak-time seats with these new trains, but there is still an enormous demand for fast services between Reading and Paddington. It may be that there should be some faster services as well as the stopping Crossrail services to take up some of the slack, so that the seats are not empty all the way from Reading to Swansea.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his comments and hear what he says about Reading and the extension of Crossrail beyond Maidenhead. Of course, until there was certainty of the electrification, I do not think that that could have been planned; clearly, it can now be planned. I am not sighted of any specific plans of today as to trains terminating at Maidenhead or going forward to Reading, but I believe that that is likely to be the case. Indeed, they may even go further, to Oxford. It is likely that that will be embraced, and this electrification means that that is possible.
Lord Walpole
I would like to take the Minister on a little trip. If he went to Westminster station and got on the Circle line, he would end up somewhere near Liverpool Street station. Liverpool Street station and Norwich are 111 miles apart and the line is electric, but the trains that we have there are—I was told yesterday—well over 40 years old. The rails and the catenas are frankly not of the quality that one would need for a fast train. The signalling is still very bad. It is appalling, in fact. The staff on the trains and the station have been trained to be nice and to keep you informed the whole time, which is wonderful; I think they deserve something for that. Every time the train stops in the wrong place, someone tells you why you have stopped there—or at least he tries to find out. Also, on this line is the rather important train for the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which runs from Felixstowe to the Midlands, but you cannot go from Felixstowe to the Midlands yet. You can get under the bridge—through the tunnel—at Ipswich, but you have to come all the way down to London to go all the way back again. You have to do another 20 kilometres. Minister, this is a very important bit: it would relieve the main line to Norwich.
Lord Walpole
I am coming to the question now. If you go to Norwich, you can go to Liverpool Lime Street or London Liverpool Street, but you have to get on the right train—they are not in the same place.
When are we going to have some new trains? That is the question.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, it is good to have the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Walpole, and for him to extol the virtue of rail travel to Norwich. I am afraid, however, that I cannot say much about that. I leave that to someone else on another occasion. What the announcement means is that the new train will be electro-diesel. At some point you may even be able to go from London to Norwich and then a diesel will take you on to Great Yarmouth. That could well be possible because of this new way forward. He can at least have the comfort that there are these possibilities of enhancement. I have nothing to say at the moment, I regret to say, on further electrification beyond that which has been announced—or indeed on any other enhancements other than those in the Statement. However, the noble Lord knows about campaigning and knows how to make the case, and I am sure that he will continue—just as he has this evening—to do that.
Lord Bates
My Lords, is my noble friend aware how warmly welcomed this announcement will be in the north-east of England, which is the home of the railways, of Stephenson and of the Stockton and Darlington Railway? This is a fantastic announcement for the north-east, which comes on the back of that great announcement of the planned reopening of the Teesside Cast Products at Redcar and the thousands of jobs that that will mean, which itself came on the back of announcements about the Tyne and Wear Metro upgrade of half a billion pounds. This is a huge amount of good news and demonstrates this Government’s commitment to that region. Would he care to contrast that announcement with the time a year ago when the Labour Cabinet arrived in Durham to mothball the TCP plant at Redcar and to postpone the announcement on Agility Trains? Would he care to contrast those two approaches to manufacturing in the north-east of England?
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I am grateful for the comments my noble friend Lord Bates. Clearly, as a north-easterner, he is very concerned and happy that there is to be investment there. He is quite right to point out the change that has taken place. This positive piece of work will go on there. Not only will north-east England benefit from new employment opportunities, there will be the possibility of even greater employment opportunities because of the railway factory and other places that will enhance and put further work there. He is right that this is a real piece of work about which the coalition Government can be really be proud. As I say, this is a real good news story.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, it is not often that I welcome a decision of this Government, let alone feel inclined to congratulate the Government on anything. The only other major infrastructural decision they have taken over the past nine months—the decision to veto the third runway for Heathrow—was absolutely deplorable. However, today I really congratulate them. Those three projects are going to be enormously important for the economy of the country and clearly the most important one of all is the high-speed rail link. Will the Government do everything possible to accelerate these projects now this decision has been taken? We in this country generally take far too long to implement infrastructural projects. The longer such projects take to be built and to be commissioned, the more you postpone both the internal return and the external return and the more you damage the economics of the initial decision. Will the Government take a close look at the lead time for such projects in France, Germany and Spain between a decision being taken and the first high-speed train running, and will he try to make sure that they treat that as a target, which this country should seek to beat?
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for his contribution. I hear exactly what he says about lead time, and I will take back to the department his comments on that. Let us hope that these things can be speeded up.
The Earl of Mar and Kellie
My Lords, future travellers to Swansea will have to travel in the bimode train for about 35 miles. By comparison, London-to-Inverness travellers will need a bimode electro-diesel for 180 miles and those who travel on the hard road up to Aberdeen will need that for 150 miles. With regards to the split between pure electric and electro-diesel, can my noble friend please tell us whether there will be enough electro-diesels in the programme to cover such routes? Also, will the electro-diesels have enough power to handle the Drumochter and Slochd summits?
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I am not able to give details of the power that the trains will have to tackle the road to Inverness, but they are going to be brand new and had better be right for purpose. My noble friend makes a good point. Although I suppose he would love the electric wires to go to Aberdeen and Inverness, I do not think that that is on the list at the moment. However, the beauty of the bimodal system is that diesel trains will not go from London to Inverness under the wire; they will be electric to Edinburgh and will then turn to diesel on the way to Aberdeen. Therefore, the people in Aberdeen and Inverness, and those at points between Edinburgh and those places, will benefit from the electric railway between London and Edinburgh.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, a popular pub question is: what do Albania and Wales have in common? The answer is that they are two nations in Europe without a single mile of electrified railway. I warmly welcome the Statement that the Minister has made today because that is now going to be put right so far as concerns Wales, and I am delighted that the decision has been taken, after initial hesitancy some months ago, to extend the wires through the Severn tunnel into Cardiff. I think that the Minister or his colleagues will have to deal with the Welsh Assembly Government’s disappointment. They have certainly been campaigning very hard for the electrification to continue to Swansea. However, the news of the valley electrification is particularly welcome. The diesel multiple units that currently serve those lines are already life-expired, and the opportunity for new journeys and new trains is very welcome.
Perhaps I may be allowed one further comment. Today’s Statement is a very welcome, and clearly bipartisan, extension of the policy concerning the railway begun by my noble friend Lord Adonis. It was he who got the debate on High Speed 2 up and running and it was he who made the announcement on electrification. I certainly commend the Government for picking up the baton where he laid it down in May. I warmly welcome that and I think that my noble friend deserves some credit for it as well.
Perhaps I may ask a specific question, which the Minister has already been asked by his noble friend Lord Bradshaw, concerning the need to improve the line between Swindon and Gloucester. It is not just a diversionary line; it is an important service which already has an hourly train in each direction. However, when the Severn tunnel is closed, as it will be for part of the electrification works, it is going to be crucial that that line is double-tracked again. It was a very short-sighted decision to take the double track out.
I have one other specific question. Is it intended that the bimodal train which operates on the Great Western main line will be electric as far as Oxford and then diesel-powered on the Cotswold line to Worcester and Hereford? I should declare an interest as president of the Cotswold line promotion group and as an unpaid member of the First Great Western advisory board.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, and pay tribute to his service, and indeed that of his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in the latter part of the previous Government at the Department for Transport. There may be disappointment in Wales about the line from Cardiff to Swansea but there will of course be rejoicing about the valleys. The Government have looked at this matter in great detail and have concluded that, in terms of value for money and the return, it is a better bet to look at the valleys than at Cardiff to Swansea, particularly when there is now a prospect of a bimodal system for Cardiff to Swansea.
I note the noble Lord’s comments about the Gloucester line. Indeed, in the couple of hours that I had to look at this issue and discuss it with the department, I said, “Just a minute. Not only is there the prospect of this line being needed because of the tunnel being closed and construction work and so on, but, as I understand it, this is being looked at in its own right anyway”. Therefore, there could well be double the case for improving this line. I hope, and believe, that it will be considered very seriously.
I am not sighted on any proposals for bimodal trains to go beyond Oxford, although of course that is a possibility. Bimodal means that the wire can be used to Oxford and you can then go beyond that with the diesel system.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, by the end of the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, I had almost forgotten that he had opened it by reminding us that the Labour Party supports fixed-termed parliaments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, I was surprised that he omitted to say how he would legislate for fixed-term parliaments. I look forward to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, telling us.
I will be very happy to subject the Opposition’s Bill to the same critical scrutiny that I now plan to bring to the Government’s Bill. I share the scepticism of my noble friend Lord Cormack, a fellow son of Lincolnshire, who I have known for well over 40 years since I was a young and precocious schoolboy.
I propose to discuss the Bill in terms of process and substance. I begin with process and the Government’s response to the report on the Bill from the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. I declare an interest as a member of the committee. In our report on the Bill, as various noble Lords have noted, we drew attention to the speed with which it had been prepared. It was introduced with no Green Paper, no prior consultation and certainly no formal pre-legislative scrutiny. We had to move extremely quickly, as did the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place. We also made the point that in recent times there has been little public discussion of fixed-term parliaments, although the issue has been on the constitutional reform agenda for the past 20 years. The Bill, we further recorded, appeared to be the product of short-term political expediency rather than the result of a mature consideration of enduring constitutional principles or sustained public demand.
How, then, did the Government respond to these points? They claim in paragraph 3 that the committee had heard evidence from constitutional experts that,
“the concept of fixed-term Parliaments has been considered and debated by politicians and academics for many years and in great detail”.
Really? Some Private Members’ Bills have been introduced on the subject—three in the past 10 years—but what academic debate has there been? Perhaps the Minister can tell us what academic literature, since Owen Hood Phillips’s Reform of the Constitution, published in 1970, has addressed the issue of fixed-term parliaments and done so in any detail, never mind great detail? There is some work by Robert Blackburn, not least a section in his book, The Electoral System in Britain, but, apart from that, what literature is there and to what extent has that literature engendered debate? Can my noble and learned friend identify any substantial academic debate that has taken place?
The claim that there has been such a debate is taken as the basis for the Government not accepting that there has been no mature assessment of the constitutional principles relating to fixed-term parliaments. Perhaps, then, my noble and learned friend can explain why this Bill derives from a coalition agreement that said that there would be a “binding Motion” placed before the House of Commons stating that the next election would be held on the first Thursday of May 2015? At what point was it realised within government that there was no one to be bound by such a “binding” Motion?
The agreement also stated that legislation would provide for Dissolution if 55 per cent or more of the House voted in favour. Any suggestion that this derived from any clear constitutional principle is somewhat undermined by David Laws in his recent book, 22 Days in May, where he writes:
“After some work on Ed Llewellyn’s calculator, and consideration of by-election risks, it was decided that a 55% vote of MPs would be required to provide a dissolution. This was just greater than the combined opposition and Lib Dem parliamentary parties, thereby safeguarding the Conservative position”.
No doubt it was a more mature assessment of constitutional principles that led to the threshold being set in this Bill at two-thirds of MPs voting rather than 55 per cent.
The response also claims:
“It is also wrong to say that there is not public support for the principles of fixed-term Parliaments. There was a very strong demonstration at the 2010 general election that political reform was a high priority for the electorate”.
The committee report did not refer to public support—we know that people when asked say they support fixed terms—but to “sustained public demand”. Again, can the Minister kindly provide evidence for that claim? Were fixed-term Parliaments really an election issue? I remind him of what Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley say in The British General Election of 2010. They note that political reform was, unusually, an issue but go on to say:
“But focus groups reported that media discussion about different electoral systems, hung parliaments and coalitions passed over the heads of voters”.
Perhaps the issue of fixed-term Parliaments did not go over their heads and they did engage, in which case perhaps my noble and learned friend can provide empirical evidence for that claim.
The Government in their response also refute any claim that the Bill is being rushed. We are told that the Bill was introduced in the other place on 22 July last year and did not complete its Commons stages until 18 January of this year. That may be because of the delay in scheduling the Bill. It had its Second Reading on 13 September and had three days in Committee, the last of which was an extra day that had to be allocated. We are told that at Report stage,
“all amendments which were selected for debate were in fact debated in full”.
The operative words there are,
“all amendments which were selected for debate”.
This is by way of failing to engage properly with the Constitution Committee’s observation that, save where there are justifiable reasons for acting more quickly, the proper way to introduce a constitutional reform proposal is to publish a Green or White Paper, or a draft Bill, and to take the comments and concerns raised in the process of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny into account in the legislation that follows. As it stands, there has been no time for thorough scrutiny and examination. Why in any event is there a need to move so quickly? It is not like the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill where there was an obvious time constraint. In this case, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said, it is sufficient for the Prime Minister to announce that he will not be inviting the Queen to dissolve Parliament until May 2015. There is then the rest of the Parliament available to get the Bill through. I shall be interested to hear why this is a measure regarded as requiring such speedy passage.
I turn to the substance of the Bill. I have a particular concern with the definition of a vote of confidence in Clause 2(2). As we have already heard, an early general election is triggered if the Speaker of the House of Commons certifies that on a specified day,
“the House passed a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty's Government (as then constituted)”
and a period of 14 days elapses without the House passing any Motion expressing confidence in any Government of Her Majesty.
As has been noted, there is no definition of what constitutes a vote of no confidence. The elephant definition is assumed—that is, one knows one when one sees one, or rather that the Speaker knows one when he sees one. But will he? A vote of confidence takes different forms. It has not been confined to an expressly worded Motion. I did research looking at every vote for most of the 20th century. The Bill stipulates that a certificate is issued when the House has passed a Motion of confidence. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked, what happens if the Government introduce a Motion of confidence and it is defeated? The House has not passed a Motion of no confidence; it has negated a Motion of confidence.
However, I wish to focus on those Motions which the Government believe are so crucial that the Government cannot sensibly continue if they are defeated. I remind my noble and learned friend what the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said at the conclusion of Second Reading of the European Communities Bill in 1972. If the Government lost the vote, he said,
“this Parliament cannot sensibly continue”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/72; col. 752.]
There have been a number of Bills of similar importance since that time.
If this Bill is passed and a similar measure comes before Parliament—one crucial to the Government’s programme—what does the Speaker do? Bear in mind that the situation is not comparable to the Speaker certifying a money Bill. There is a statutory definition of a money Bill and, for quite understandable reasons, the Speaker waits until a Bill has cleared the Commons before certifying it as a money Bill. This is all clearly explained in the Constitution Committee’s recent report, Money Bills and Commons Financial Privilege. Under the Bill before us, the Speaker will have to act prospectively without any statutory guidance. The Government’s response to the Constitution Committee report states:
“Where there is doubt about whether a motion is a no-confidence motion, we would expect the Speaker to inform Members before they vote on it whether, were it to be passed, he would certify it as a no-confidence motion”.
So, on a Bill similar to the European Communities Bill, what would he do? Would he check with Government as to their stance? Would that not raise the prospect of drawing him into political controversy? What if he failed to consult and took a view at odds with that of the Government? Again, there would be the prospect of being dragged into political controversy. Also, what happens if the Speaker fails to certify a vote as one of no confidence but the Government regard it as a matter of confidence and, on losing the vote, resign? In that situation, the 14-day rule does not apply. The quest to find a new Government, as the Minister, Mark Harper has confirmed, is not time-limited. If the Opposition wish to avoid an election and oppose a Dissolution Motion, what happens? The situation may be unlikely, but as long as it is not impossible, we need to consider whether more needs to be done to cover such an eventuality.
Before I leave Clause 2, I have one further question for my noble and learned friend. Subsection (2)(b) refers to the 14-day period ending,
“without the House passing any motion expressing confidence in any Government of Her Majesty”.
The Explanatory Notes refer to the House passing “a” motion rather than “any” motion. The wording appears more flexible than that in subsection (2)(a). Can my noble and learned friend explain the reason for that particular wording in subsection (2)(b)?
I turn briefly to the provision for a five-year rather than a four-year fixed term. The Deputy Prime Minister said that a five-year term flows with some of the founding texts of our unwritten constitution. When I asked him what these were, when he appeared before the Constitution Committee, he cited only the Parliament Act 1911. Can my noble and learned friend enlighten us as to what the other documents are?
We are told that for most legislatures around the globe, a four-year term is the norm, although the data appear to cover terms rather than necessarily fixed terms and do not distinguish by type of regime. Can my noble and learned friend confirm the evidence offered to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place by Professor Robert Hazell that a four-year term is the norm in continental Europe and in Westminster systems?
I was also going to quote Professor Hazell’s evidence in which he lists in some detail the commitment to four-year fixed terms by both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party, but that is no longer necessary as others have made the point. I was also going to respond to the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee’s report asserting that the reason that some Parliaments are ended after four years is political opportunism. I was going to point out that exactly the same observation could be made about Parliaments extending to five Sessions, but I no longer need to do so as my noble and learned friend conceded exactly that point in his opening speech. I heard nothing in his speech that constituted a compelling argument for a five-year term. I think it would be difficult for a Government to generate a full five-year programme and remain vigorous by the fifth Session. I do not think that it is necessarily healthy for the Government, as government, or for the electorate.
As we have heard, the Bill is supposed to restore trust in politics, but I am not sure how pushing ahead with it, with no pre-legislative scrutiny and no attempt to consult the public on whether they would prefer a five or a four-year term helps bolster trust in the political process. I know the argument that the measure reduces the power of the Prime Minister, but that is not relevant to the point I am making. Does one restore the trust of people in politics by leaving them out of the process?
That brings me full circle. Why the hurry? My noble and learned friend may feel that I have put a lot of questions to him but that is a necessary consequence of the absence of any consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny. There remain a lot more questions still to be put.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I feel privileged to join all those who have tendered their congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I think it was 41 years ago when he joined me in the House of Commons. He was then a callow youth, but I remember that within a very short time he had made a considerable impact upon that august body. I am very proud indeed to follow the address of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I agree with everything he says, but putting it that way would almost make it seem as though we are speaking as equals; we are not. He has given a scholarly and professional analysis of the situation and a most magisterial and utterly justified rebuke to the massive, porcupinal difficulties with which this piece of legislation bristles.
Somebody asked the Abbé Sieyès at the end of the French Revolution, “What did you do, Father Abbé, during the great upheaval?”. He said, “I survived, my son”. That is the great thing, in politics and in life; survival. I have no doubt but that, in those heady hours and days after the election of May last year, survival must have been foremost in the minds of Conservatives, who realised that they could not govern, certainly not govern credibly or effectively, for any period of time without some form of alliance. The Liberal Democrats suddenly found themselves, for the first time since December 1917, in Government—that excludes the rather artificial period of coalition during the Second World War. One can well understand, therefore, that flashing like a light in the minds of the two parties would have been the question of survival. There is nothing disgraceful in that; nothing wrong at all.
That, of course, could have been done quite simply, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, with his vast experience and understanding, made perfectly clear. It would only have needed, possibly, a White Paper—not even that; a solemn undertaking given by the Prime Minister, joined by the Deputy Prime Minister, would have made it perfectly clear that this was an arrangement that would last for five years, unless there were unforeseen circumstances. A binding motion would not have been any more binding than either or both of those two methods. That, I think, is where the problem began. Whereas they could so clearly have declared to the whole world what was a perfectly understandable and, I think, honourable agreement, they nevertheless sought to improve upon it. They sought to elevate what was a perfectly practical piece of day-to-day politics to a principle. They sought to graft what was a political agreement of mutual benefit to them onto principle and when you do that, you sometimes get some very strange fruit. That, I think, is the problem the House faces at the moment with the Bill.
I do not consider that it is either necessary or, indeed, appropriate, that there should be fixed-term Parliaments. They have a superficial attraction, but there are many dangers inherent in the whole principle. I cast this gauntlet down to the Government, both parts of it, if I may do so without impertinence. The case that has been put forward for a fixed-term Parliament is that there is an abuse that has been perpetrated by more than one Prime Minister from time to time in dealing cynically with the British electorate and going to the country when there was no need to go to the county, but in order either to safeguard or, indeed, to further advance his or her political advantage. Where is the evidence? I do not believe that one can properly point to any situation since the Second World War when there has been any clear evidence of such action.
In 1951, Attlee’s Government had, I think, a majority of six or seven, if I remember rightly. On top of that, of course, many Members, especially leading figures of the party were old and ill and, indeed, to cap it all, a very brilliant young Minister by the name of Evan Durbin died tragically in a swimming accident. That was the last straw for Prime Minister Attlee and he went to the country. That was not a case of jumping the gun, or anything like that. It would have been impossible for him to have carried on and it would have done nobody any good, nor would it have served any constitutional principle.
In 1964, Harold Wilson had a majority of three and it was clear that it was only a matter of time before he would have to seek a proper mandate from the people, which he did and which he obtained. In 1974, the situation was even clearer. In February/March of 1974 there was an election which yielded a hung Parliament. What else could he do but to go to the country? He soldiered on for six months and a second election was held. That election gave him a majority of the order of only three, four or five. Then there was an agreement, a very proper agreement, with the Liberal Party for some period of time. It was a brave act, to soldier on until 1979.
Where is the evidence of abuse on the part of a Prime Minister jumping the gun and therefore creating a justification for this legislation? It simply is not there. Of course, one may very well argue that it not just the case of the actual abuse; it is the threat of it and there is some truth in that. The Liberal Democrats have been saying from time to time that it was utterly wrong—as, indeed, did the Conservatives—for there not to have been an election when Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair. There was precedent for an election, as when Anthony Eden took over from Churchill in 1955. There were other situations, as when John Major succeeded the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when there was no election and there was no great upheaval about that.
It is a fair point, but it is a point which has been totally destroyed by the fact that Mr Cameron blew hot and cold and hot again about it. When the succession took place in June 2007, his first reaction was, “Well, there must be an election”. At the time, Labour was well behind in the polls. Then Labour caught up in the polls and Mr Cameron said there need be no election at all; it would be a waste of time. Then the polls changed, as they have a habit of doing from time to time, and Mr Cameron said, “Come, come—we must have an election, because the polls now point to a possible Conservative victory”. There is no white sheet of purity in which he can clothe himself in relation to this matter.
I believe that the Bill is wholly unnecessary; it comes from pragmatism that has been wrongly grafted onto principle and is creating a situation that is utterly impossible. I need not seek to add to the very erudite speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. He described the statutory straitjacket that the Bill creates for a Prime Minister. There are situations in which a Prime Minister would wish to go to the country and should go to the country, but will not be able to go to the country because of that impossible straitjacket. I do not need to say any more about that matter.
One matter that I will touch upon is that of how much harm the Bill will do to the whole concept of parliamentary democracy. I put it in this way: generations of schoolchildren are taught that with the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights at the end of the 17th century there was a massive transfer of authority from monarch to people. That is not so. It was a massive transfer of authority from monarch to Parliament. The people were ultimately the beneficiaries of that transfer, if indeed Parliament was acting in a proper trusteeship and holding that authority for the people—something that it has not always done in past centuries. Be that as it may, there was that transfer towards the people. At the same time, Parliament—or, rather, the Executive—was feathering its own nest and arrogating much of that power to itself, yielding it only gradually and reluctantly to the direct arbitrament of the people.
Our situation is not the same as that of a Greek city state or a Roman republic, where there was direct involvement of the public. We do not have that except in general elections, by-elections and, very occasionally, in referendums. However, that is the situation. It is the people who have the sovereignty—not Parliament and not the Executive. Many will remember the book by Quintin Hogg, the late Lord Hailsham, Elective Dictatorship. He was right in most of his submissions. Whether he would have made them in relation to a Conservative Government is arguable, but that was his verdict on the constitutional situation. My point at this stage is this: anything that comes between the sovereignty of the people and Parliament is, of itself, bad. It reneges on and betrays the trusteeship that Parliament owes to the people.
William Lovett, in his charter of 1836, wanted annual general elections. God forbid. However, his heart was in the right place. He realised that the more you place Members of Parliament at the mercy of the electors—the more you expose them to the arbitrament and verdict of the electors—the better it is. The more you cosset them and hide them from the electorate, the worse it is. It is as simple as that.
I make one other point about the situation of the Assembly of Wales and the Scottish Parliament as regards a May 2015 election. I have raised the question before and I do not ask it impertinently of the Minister. Was that a deliberate slur—a deliberate attempt to avoid consultation with those bodies beforehand—or was it mere forgetfulness? Does he not agree that it would be entirely wrong at this stage for the United Kingdom Parliament to say to the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish, “You do this. You rejig your programmes and we will accept that”? No, it should be the other way. It is the United Kingdom Parliament that has created the problem and it is the United Kingdom Parliament that should avoid the duplicity of having both elections on the same day.
The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, made the point that in America people vote for dozens of different things. I understand that; they vote for a Congressman, a judge, a fire chief, et cetera. However, they do not vote in two general elections on the same day. There would be a general election in Scotland and a general election in Britain; and a general election in Wales and a general election in Britain. That is the issue. It is clear to anybody, bearing in mind that there are different constituencies and different issues altogether, that they simply should not be held on one and the same day.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I join noble Lords all around the House in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his sparkling maiden speech. I was very touched by his kind references to my father, James Callaghan. It was very kind of him to speak in that way.
I declare my interest as chairman of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution, of which we have heard much this afternoon in contributions from Members—again, on all sides of the House—who referred to its substantial report. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, who reinforced many of the points that the committee made about the historical problems that it saw with this legislation. We took the view that this was of sufficient importance that we needed to hold a full inquiry into fixed-term Parliaments, and not simply scrutinise the Bill. Therefore, our report contains reference to the general issue as well as the particular issues in this legislation.
It is worth, even at this stage of the debate, simply elaborating some of the process and outcome of what the committee discovered and heard from witnesses, who included people from many of the countries that already have fixed-term Parliaments. It is important to say that we have, as the House knows, now had a response from the Government, although I must say to the Minister that this was published only yesterday. It was therefore again outside the convention that responses to Select Committees should be made within two months. As we have heard from, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, the committee’s report was published in the middle of December. Within the two-month limit, we should certainly have heard from the Government by 14 February. However, at least on this occasion—I am sorry to go back into the past—it was here in time for Second Reading. The House will remember that on the previous constitutional Bill—the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill—the Government response was issued only at Third Reading. In another place the Government failed to respond in time for the consideration even of your Lordships’ amendments.
At the time, Mr Graham Allen MP, the chairman of the committee of a similar nature to ours in another place, described this as a failure of duty to Parliament. Noble Lords will remember that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, referred to it as being a “deplorable occurrence”. I do not emphasise these points of process to go over old ground. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, was kind enough to apologise for the Government’s dilatoriness on the previous Bill. Nor do I have an exaggerated opinion of the Select Committee’s significance. However, as has been said time and time again today, in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, as in the previous Bill, we have before your Lordships a Bill of great constitutional significance, about which virtually every speaker has made the point that there has been no formal public consultation beyond the rather random opinion polling. No Green Papers or White Papers have been published and there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny—all of which the committee unanimously thinks should be undertaken before Bills of this nature are ever introduced.
I know that the Deputy Prime Minister has said, as he told your Lordships’ committee, that he must move ahead rapidly with proposals for what he sometimes grandiloquently describes as the greatest reforms since 1832. Therefore, he has little time for these conventional processes. However, in these circumstances, where there is the pressure for rapid movement that has been vividly described by noble Lords, the Government should pay special attention to the work of parliamentary Select Committees, particularly—as in this case—when your Lordships’ committee has conducted a detailed inquiry and written a very full report.
I have not had time to discuss my comments on the Government’s response with my colleagues on the Select Committee. As I have said, this report was published only yesterday, which was at the end of our week’s Recess. However, I was interested in the useful and forensic dissection of it by my colleague on the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I find both the timing and content of the Government’s response to the fixed-term Parliaments inquiry disappointing. It is slightly sketchy. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has said, the committee is concerned that the constitutional relationship between the provisions of this Bill and the Government’s other proposals for constitutional reform has not been adequately thought through. In reply, the Government simply reiterate that as a package they will provide for a fairer and more stable political structure. Frankly, that is not very adequate. Indeed, that same paragraph goes on in a rather worrying way to say, for example, that the provisions of the boundary reviews in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill require them to be held every five years, consistent with the five-year cycle of elections set out in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. This seems to me precisely to confirm the worry and concern that was expressed by my noble friend Lord Rooker when he intervened in the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard.
When we turned to the policy issues, we as a committee considered two major issues of principle, as is our formal remit. The first was whether the Government’s case in favour of fixed-term Parliaments had been made and what the length of the fixed-term Parliament, if introduced, should be. I must tell your Lordships that on both these two issues the committee simply did not accept the case made by the Government. The Deputy Prime Minister told us that the basic motive was, as we have heard this afternoon,
“seeking to remove from the executive and the Prime Minister … the ability to play politics with the timing of the election”.
We recognise, of course, that in promoting this Bill, the Prime Minister is prepared to relinquish an important prerogative power. This has been emphasised round the House this afternoon. However, the evidence we received—I would like to speak a little about that—showed us that there is another important side to this argument. Authoritative academic witnesses and witnesses from other countries with fixed-term arrangements suggested that in practice the advantage to the Prime Minister under the current system had been “greatly overstated”. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, put that in a historical context. The witnesses told us that on most occasions when a Prime Minister “went early”, in the jargon, he or she would have won anyway. More importantly, the case was put to us that fixed terms could actually undermine the democratic process by preventing an early election being held when there may be legitimate demand for one. Several historical examples were cited and I shall mention just a few of them. These included following a change of Prime Minister—we have heard examples of that again this afternoon—when a Government with a very small majority were unable to govern effectively, or where a Prime Minister wished to seek a mandate for a significant new policy. All of these are described in some detail in paragraph 39 of our report but I will not elaborate on them now. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, one of our witnesses, also raised a particular contemporary issue. He said:
“Most importantly of all, because we could be moving into that situation with our hung Parliaments, it means that coalitions can change in the middle of a Parliament without the people being allowed to pronounce on that”.
This again raises the question to which several noble Lords have referred of whether it is important that Parliament should decide whether a Government continue or are reformed, or whether that decision should be taken by the electorate.
The Government argue that the Bill provides for the other place to vote in favour of an early election where there is a need for one, but it may be that in the circumstances I have described—they have been illuminated by several vivid examples from other speakers today—particularly in a hung Parliament, it would not be possible for the House of Commons to achieve a two-thirds majority for dissolution, as the Bill demands. The committee recognised that the arguments for moving along the spectrum—it is a spectrum—from a fully flexible to a fully fixed Parliament, as the Bill does, are, in practice, finely balanced. We must remember that the Bill provides only for a semi, not a fully, fixed arrangement.
However, as noble Lords have said several times today—the committee was very sure that this was the case—if the original proposal was designed, as the coalition agreement appeared to suggest, as a confidence-building measure to the Liberal Democrats to ensure that this Parliament lasted a full five years, it could certainly have been achieved under existing statutes. Witnesses suggested to the committee that it was not appropriate—we have heard this again several times—to confuse this short-term political motive with the fundamental decision to change the constitution. This leads, of course, to the question of the length of any fixed parliamentary term and here the Constitution Committee agreed with all those noble Lords who have said that they preferred the original 2007 Liberal Democrat proposal of four years rather than the five years which is now in the Bill. Most members of the committee thought that fixed five-year Parliaments were more likely to reduce democratic accountability than increase it, in the way that Ministers have said that they intend. It is, after all, worth noting, as our report does, that had all Parliaments since 1945 lasted the full five-year term, there would have been four fewer general elections.
The weight of evidence from British and international experts to the committee was against a five-year norm, as against a five-year maximum. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has already quoted Democratic Audit, which expressed alarm that a five-year term would present,
“a reversal of a long struggle for more accountable government”.
Overseas experience, for example from Canada and Sweden, suggested, in the words of witnesses, that,
“there seems to be a kind of natural rhythm around four years”,
and,
“four years is more consistent with voter expectations”,
all of which appears inconsistent with the Deputy Prime Minister’s evidence to us that his “unambiguous aim” is to,
“make the legislature more accountable to the electorate and to introduce the mechanisms by which people can exercise greater control over politicians”.
Our evidence suggests very clearly that this unambiguous aim may not be achieved by this Bill.
On the practical side, the Constitution Select Committee's report notes with concern the potential clash—this has been raised by several noble Lords—about the five-year term being adopted for Westminster elections and this clashing with the devolved institutions. Again, we unanimously think it is regrettable that the coalition Government did not try to consult those institutions to sort this out before the Bill was introduced. On another practical, but important, issue of the safety valves proposed in the Bill, we broadly accept most of the Government's proposals but I agree with my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton that we felt that it was extremely complex. We have asked as a committee for clarification of a number of detailed points, especially on the question of what constitutes a vote of no confidence and what the result of that would be. I hope very much that these points will be examined fully as the Bill progresses.
As noble Lords all round the House, particularly in the most recent stages of the debate have said—the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, mentioned this—there will be a large number of issues and questions which need to be answered and scrutinised in Committee and on Report. I very much hope that there will be sufficient time to do so. I recognise that the Government, as they say in their response to our committee, have already given additional time for scrutiny in the other place but I still think that this House has a considerable amount of work to do. After all, the Deputy Prime Minister has already conceded to us that,
“the principle should be to time these things in a way that allows for proper pre-legislative scrutiny”,
and he has also said that reform proposals should be brought forward in a more measured way in the future.
I hope that the House will be encouraged to learn that the Constitution Select Committee is now embarking on a new inquiry looking at the whole process of constitutional reform. We have sent out a call for evidence and it would obviously be very valuable if any noble Lord wished to contribute. The committee hopes that, at the end of this inquiry, we will be able to bring forward some constructive proposals for improvement.
However, in the mean time I do not wish to repeat the quote that both my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton and my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall quoted about the conclusion of the committee’s report, but I will give another quotation from the final report on our fixed-term Parliament inquiry:
“The policy behind the Bill shows little sign of being developed with constitutional principles in mind … We acknowledge the political imperative behind the coalition Government's wish to state in advance its intent to govern for the full five-year term, but this could have been achieved under the current constitutional conventions”.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I believe that this Bill and the principle that it embodies represent a significant and beneficial step towards modernising our democracy.
As a preliminary point, the monarch’s ancient prerogative power to dissolve Parliament may on one view be a constitutional power only, but we should not forget the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, the Australian Prime Minister, by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr in 1975. One effect of this Bill is that on its enactment the Dissolution of Parliament will be a matter that is governed by statute, subject to the will of the elected House of Parliament, as I believe it should be.
There is an important distinction between the position in Canada to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, referred and the position in the light of the enactment of this Bill, which is that the Canadian legislation specifically reserved the power of the Queen to dissolve Parliament by the Governor-General, whereas this legislation abolishes that power—an approach with which the Constitution Committee expressly agreed on the basis that we had a fixed-term Parliament system.
On the principle of the fixed term, it has been an anomaly that to this day we have a system whereby it is for the Prime Minister alone to decide when to seek the Dissolution of Parliament. It has therefore been open to Prime Ministers and Governments to tailor policy, including economic and fiscal policy, to electoral plans of their own choosing without any figment of transparency. Indeed, it has been quite the opposite. The elements of secrecy and the teasing of the Opposition and of the electorate have been at the heart of the system, obliging Oppositions to expend time and money preparing for elections without any information as to when they will take place. The game for Governments has been to decide when their opponents are at their least effective and then to time the start of the race on that sole basis—that it is to be run when the incumbent Government’s chances of winning are at their highest.
These things are too important for a game. We would not accept such a system as fair in sport and nor should we in politics. That is the answer to the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as to why we should leave the present system alone. The Constitution Committee quoted the former chair of the Constitution Committee of this House, the late Lord Holme of Cheltenham, who rightly described a British general election as,
“a race in which the Prime Minister is allowed to approach it with his running shoes in one hand and his starting pistol in the other”.
The present system, I suggest, damages stability—witness the events, or rather the non-event, of November 2007. It damages confidence among the electorate in the integrity of our democratic process, and it damages the image of British democracy abroad. These are no doubt among the reasons why both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party had a commitment to fixed-term Parliaments in their 2010 manifestos. It is a concept that the Labour Party has long supported and why our Conservative colleagues were pleased to include such a commitment in the coalition agreement.
There is a further point, which we concede and assert. Where government is by coalitions, of whatever political make-up, a fixed-term Parliament enhances stability and confidence. That is a serious point. It is not an illegitimate glue or odd nails for coalition politicians; it is a legitimate arrangement to secure political stability for the country. A programme for government can then be planned, agreed and implemented on that basis in the event that no one party has an overall majority.
Should the fixed term be four years or five? The Bill commits to five-year terms. It has been the policy of my party in the past, as has been pointed out, that they should be four years, but I suggest that, on balance, five years is the better solution. Parliament is at present elected for a five-year term. Parliaments have lasted for less in the past precisely because Prime Ministers have cut short their terms, thinking that they could win an early election, not because the shorter term is for the objective benefit of the country at large.
The argument is sometimes made, as it was by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, that where Parliaments have run their full five years, it has led to lame-duck Governments in the final year. However, if that is right, the reason is the same: that where a Prime Minister has seemed to be in a winning position after four years, he or she has then gone to the country early. Only when the Government have expected to lose have recent Parliaments gone to full term. The catalogue of those elections cited by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, bears that out. In the elections of 1964, 1979, 1997 and 2010, the likelihood of losing was the reason for the apparent ineffectiveness of the last year, not the fact that the Government was a five-year Government.
Once we have five-year fixed terms, there is no reason to expect lame-duck Governments in the last year. On the contrary, the electoral cycle will be clear, and that of itself should increase effectiveness. Government planning can be more confident and effective, as has been pointed out. Five years allows an appreciable time between a Government becoming established and the next election inevitably starting to dictate the course and pace of political life. We have much of benefit to learn from the United States and its constitution, but I suggest that choosing a four-year electoral cycle over a five-year cycle is not one of them.
It was the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who pointed out forcefully, and rightly, that every election has a pre-election period that clouds the judgment and the actions of government. If that is right, the period before that pre-election period needs to be longer rather than shorter. That strengthens the argument for five years rather than four.
I accept that those of us who advocate a five-year rather than a four-year term must concede that there is a price to be paid for the stability that derives from the longer period; the electorate is consulted less frequently, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, pointed out. However, against that, I would argue that the electorate needs time to make an informed judgment both on the performance and competence of a Government and on the consequences of that Government's policy and actions as they develop. In particular, the management of the economy through difficult times, the effects of fiscal policy and the changes that are made by Governments of every colour in delivering public services take time to be capable of thorough assessment. I would argue that the electorate can make a significantly better judgment after five years than after four of the long-term effects and effectiveness of government policy.
On the two trigger mechanisms for an early election, I suggest that the two alternatives strike the right balance between establishing a secure five-year electoral cycle and allowing for an early election when either the overwhelming view of the House of Commons is that one is necessary or it is clear that no Government can be formed who command the support of the existing House of Commons.
The two-thirds majority required for early Dissolution would ensure that there would have to be broad cross-party support for an early election before the cycle could be broken. In February 1974, that might well have been achieved.
The 14-day period after a vote of no confidence would ensure that a reasonable although necessarily restricted time would be available to explore alternative Governments in the event of a coalition breaking down. Two points arise from that. The first is that if you accept the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, as the Labour Party does, then it is consistent with the principles of representative democracy for Members of Parliament who are elected for five years that if a new Government can be formed quickly following a no-confidence vote, and if that Government commands the confidence of the House of Commons, they should govern for the balance of the five-year Parliament. That system might lack the elegance and simplicity of the late Lord Callaghan’s resignation, but it is none the less a valid system for that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, sees the Machiavellian possibility of a Government proposing a vote of no confidence in itself and then allowing the 14 days to elapse to preserve the Prime Minister’s power. One view that has been expressed is that were a Government to seek to make such a mockery of the provisions of this Bill, that Government could expect to be punished at the ballot box. However, if the fact is that Machiavelli is alive and well on whatever Benches he or she might sit, some amendment to the Bill to prevent this happening could be considered.
It is significant that the Scottish and Welsh provisions are in almost identical terms, except that 28 days rather than 14 days are allowed to explore forming an alternative Government. In neither Scotland nor Wales have the triggers for an early election yet been required, nor has there been any attempt to manipulate votes of confidence in the way suggested by the noble and learned Lord. I suggest that it is sensible to accept the shorter period of 14 days for the United Kingdom rather than the 28 days because of the desirability of stability, and the desirability that the country should know the consequences of such a vote of no confidence as soon as possible.
This is an important Bill. There is of course scope for clarification of some of its provisions, but that is the function of this House at the later stages of the Bill. The Bill is short because the concept is a simple one, but it is none the less necessary and commendable for that, and it should be given its Second Reading.
Lord Morgan
This has been a very enjoyable debate, notable for the criticism from eminent Conservatives: the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who are not in their places, and most certainly the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in his splendid maiden speech. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, shredded the Bill entirely and left it just a pile of ruins. I particularly wish to say how much we all appreciated the admirable maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I have had the privilege of being one of the trustees of the history of Parliament group under the genial presidency of the noble Lord, which has been very strongly marked by a sense of historical awareness. It brings back to my mind the famous novel of my late Swansea colleague, Kingsley Amis, and the professor who observed “history speaking”; that is how I respond to the noble Lord’s admirable views in welcoming him here.
It is late in the day and I want to strike one new note, at least from these Benches. There is one important feature of the Bill that I very strongly welcome: it is a step towards a codified constitution. That seems to be an admirable principle, originally brought forward in his last months by Gordon Brown, now being considered by the House of Commons Constitution Committee. It is a further nail in the coffin of the royal prerogative, which has always been an obstacle to a more democratic constitution. In the sense that the Bill creates a stronger sense of citizenship and a stronger sense that the people are in ownership of their own institutions, I welcome it.
As has been said, there are arguments in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, but some features of the Bill seem to be less admirable. It is, first, like other aspects of the constitutional programme that we have had, a contrived measure put together, as the Select Committee said, not after mature long-term reflection, but hastily during the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to the agreement. It is reflective of short-term consideration, as was the original proposal, happily now jettisoned, to have a 55 per cent vote to trigger a Dissolution. The purpose of that was to give an instrument to the Liberal Democrats so that they would have a significant role to play in the timing of a Dissolution.
This is designed for the needs of the Conservatives, who did best but did not quite win the election, and the Liberal Democrats, who did extremely badly. The Liberal Democrats polled 23 per cent and lost several seats, but are nevertheless driving the constitutional agenda. It is a question of an imbalance between two parties, which they are trying to rectify, as it was in 1918 in the coalition of Liberals and Conservatives and in the 1931 coalition of Liberals and Conservatives. To quote a famous American baseball player:
“It's déjà vu all over again”.
It is also open to objection because other constitutional reform measures are not considered. It is a piecemeal, non-comprehensive system of constitutional change. For example, the proposal for fixed-term Parliaments rests on the proposition that we keep our present voting system of first past the post and there will be an adversarial situation in the House of Commons. However, it is perfectly possible that AV might come about, in which case hung Parliaments would become the norm and coalitions would become far more prevalent. The trigger for a Dissolution would then be far less certain in its operation.
There is no clear connection either between a fixed term of five or any other years and the timing, as has been said, of the boundary reviews and how they will relate when a general election comes about. Also, there is no obvious link between this and the elections that might or might not be held if we have an elected House of Lords. Frankly, like a good deal of constitutional reform in recent years, it has been a piecemeal and non-inclusive affair and unfortunate for that.
It has also been claimed that the purpose of the Bill is to give the House of Commons more control over the termination of a Government and the processes of devolution. In fact, the Bill will have precisely the opposite effect. It will actually strengthen the power over the legislature and make it more difficult to dissolve a Parliament. It will offer more opportunities for an Executive to stay in office. Therefore, the recourse to the will of the people will be weakened even if there is a clear wish or need to have a general election.
While other noble Lords were speaking I was reflecting on the Parliament Act of 1911. That could not have come about under this legislation because neither of the two 1910 elections would have been possible. The first was to confirm Lloyd George's People's Budget and the second was to confirm the terms of the Parliament Bill. In both cases, the Liberals had a clear majority. Therefore those elections would not have been held and what seems to have been a highly desirable political transformation would not have come about.
In addition, as other noble Lords have said, there has been remarkably little scrutiny—no Green Paper and no White Paper; and, as my noble friend Lord Anderson observed, amazingly selective quotation. I would quite like to appoint the Minister as my literary agent as he would be an absolute genius at finding the two or three subordinate clauses in a book review that said the book was valuable or interesting and being able to wave aside a whole swathe of criticism saying it was boring or foolish. It is a talent, but a political talent and one that might perhaps be used elsewhere.
Many questions have been raised, including the issue of why the period should be as long as five years. Many noble Lords have considered this from the standpoint of the effectiveness of government. I would like to look at it from a different point of view—that of the will of the people. It is perfectly clear that this diminishes the control of the popular will over government. There was lots of evidence to the Power inquiry—chaired by my noble friend Lady Kennedy—saying that people wish to have more frequent elections and that they wish to have more opportunities to give their views to the Government, but that opportunity is being whittled away. The clash with the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly is really deplorable—it is a form of Anglo-centric imperialism from the 19th century, which they have just presented on a “take it or leave it” basis. I regard that as a quite contemptuous attitude and I hope that the noble and learned Lord who comes from one of these fine countries can make an observation on that. There has been no public debate on the timing. We might even have a referendum—at any rate have the popular view and not sheer guesswork—even though there is no guide as to why we have them or what we have them on.
The whole process for triggering an election is extremely unclear and an area ripe for confusion. There is no necessary link between having the confidence of the House, having a vote of confidence—and, as noble Lords have said, defining what that vote of confidence should be on—and then triggering a Dissolution. There would be 14 days of mayhem, and, if we have hung Parliaments, it would be even more inconclusive. It is absolutely central to define what a vote of confidence is. If the Government are defeated over their proposals in the Finance Bill, how can they get going? It may be less formal than that—I do not want to be too historical, but one of the various Dissolutions that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer referred to was in 1895. The Government were defeated on an utterly trivial issue, but it was their first defeat and they had lost the confidence of the House, with majorities of two and seven against them. I simply make the point that you do not need a formal vote of confidence necessarily to feel that a general election should come into play.
It will also seriously compromise the position of the Speaker, just as the definition of money Bills has latterly put the Speaker’s role into some question. There are many cases when the democratic thing to do is not to defer a Dissolution, but to proceed. The alternative can be a Government meandering and a House in total stagnation. Many examples have been quoted—October 1974 and perhaps earlier in 1951. There is an overwhelming need for a proper Government who can govern without the complications and hazards of this Bill. The effect of it will be to diminish popular control. The great slogan in American politics was “Throw the rapscallions out”. Throwing the rapscallions out—I think sometimes other terms have been used—will be made more hazardous and more difficult. Dissolution of a Parliament will be governed, not by the needs of the country, not by having a Government necessarily unable to govern, but by party manoeuvres in the House of Commons. Much of this is a comment on the role of Members of Parliament in deciding whether a Government should continue. It is based on a very curious view of Members of Parliament, as though they are isolated entities, like Rodin's “The Thinker”, rather than people who are in fact swayed by the Whips and whose views are, therefore, imposed on them. That will decide the Dissolution rather than the will of the people.
Much of the argument about reducing the role of a Prime Minister is highly exaggerated, and some of it is thrown in with attacks on Gordon Brown, which is what the coalition supporters do: when all thought stops, you attack Gordon Brown. Prime Ministers have not made much use of the prerogative. I can think of at least two occasions when Prime Ministers tried to cut and run early: Edward Heath in 1974 and Harold Wilson in 1970. Those uses of prime ministerial prerogative proved resoundingly unsuccessful. To a degree, power would continue to lie in the Prime Minister and in his room for manoeuvre in a divided House, but it would put power primarily in the party machines in the House of Commons rather than in the hands of the voters.
This is not a satisfactory Bill. It is not based on high constitutional principles. It is not based on the outcome of a public debate but of a private deal. It is not a fulfilment of democracy but a bypassing of democracy.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, restoring public confidence in our political system is important, is something on which all parties campaigned in the general election and was highlighted as a priority for Government and Parliament. It is that priority, that common goal, which has motivated me to contribute to the debate.
We cannot begin to restore public confidence in our political system unless and until we are willing to make significant changes to the way it operates. Introducing fixed-term Parliaments is not a silver bullet—no single measure ever is—but it is one of the most tangible and meaningful moves we can make to show the public that we are serious about putting their interests before any opportunities that we might spot for political advantage. Put simply, the change to which I refer is removing the Prime Minister's power to call an election at the time of his choosing so that the Government and their opponents have to face the electorate on a predetermined date, whatever the political conditions at that time.
There is evidence to show that the public support that. When the polling company Populus carried out a poll for the Times in 2009 at the height of the expenses scandal, it showed that 74 per cent of the public supported fixed-term Parliaments as a change to improve the political system. At that time, the only measures ranking higher among a list of 13 possible reforms were a recall for MPs found to have broken parliamentary rules, national referendums on major constitutional issues and local referendums on local issues where interest warranted them.
Like all Bills, this one requires appropriate safeguards and deserves proper scrutiny. I certainly bow to the expertise and experience of many other noble Lords and many noble friends, among whom I am very privileged to count my noble friend Lord Cormack. It was a great privilege to be present in the Chamber to hear his maiden speech.
A central issue for debate on this Bill concerns the length of Parliaments, on which point I would like to offer some thoughts. Right now, the British public elect a Government for up to five years, but a Government serve five years only if they have not identified an earlier time when they think it would be to their political advantage to call an election. This Bill offers the electorate certainty on that five-year term. In future, five years would mean five years. It would mean a Government concentrating on governing for all that time, with the exception of the period in the final year when preparing for the general election.
If we are serious about taking action to address the public’s lack of confidence in our political system, we have to make changes to the system—the sort of changes that the electorate want—with the purpose of providing greater certainty and transparency. A fixed-term Parliament of five years would surely be a step in the right direction. Where it is possible to make a genuine concession that could start to give the public some confidence that the political system is willing to change and demonstrate even more clearly that it works in their interest, it is a change worth making. I will certainly go on listening to the views of experienced and expert noble Lords about points of detail during this debate and in the future stages of this Bill. However, I am happy to make it clear today that I support both the principle and purpose of the Bill to introduce a five-year fixed-term Parliament.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, as she thoughtfully made the case in support of this Bill. It is also a very particular pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on his splendid maiden speech. He showed himself to be—as we all knew he is—a fine and committed parliamentarian. As so often in the past, I look forward to working with him on causes that we both care about.
I have not been persuaded by the case for legislating for fixed-term Parliaments—certainly not in the manner in which this Bill does. I join members of Select Committees in both Houses in deploring the haste and lack of care with which this Bill has been brought forward. It was wrong of the coalition to bounce the House of Commons early into a Second Reading in September. Like my noble friend Lord Grocott, I ask what mischief this Bill undoes and what mischief it might create.
The Deputy Prime Minister made the case for the Bill at Second Reading. He said that it would remove the right of the Prime Minister to seek the Dissolution of Parliament for—as he put it—“pure political gain”. Yes, for what it is worth, it does do that. However, I do not believe that the right of the Prime Minister to determine the date of the next general election has been a great mischief. He said that it would stop feverish speculation about the date of the general election, distracting politicians from getting on with running the country; that it would bring greater stability to our political system; and that it would stop parties ending up in perpetual campaign mode, which make it very difficult for Parliament to function effectively.
In their last minute response to the Constitution Select Committee yesterday, the Government added that it would engender a more long-term policy-making approach. There are other reasons why politicians are distracted, why journalists speculate, why there is political instability, why there is perpetual campaigning and why there is governmental short-termism. Fixed-term Parliaments would be no political cure-all.
The benefits of the Bill have been exaggerated. The Bill would make another more serious mischief worse, and it would create new mischiefs. The existing serious mischief that it would make worse is the excessive domination of the House of Commons by the Executive and the ineffectuality of the House of Commons on behalf of the people in holding the Executive to account. A Government who are more secure about staying in office for a full five years will be more dominant and less accountable.
On 5 July, the Deputy Prime Minister declared to the House of Commons that the Government’s mission was to transfer power away from the Executive to empower Parliament. In his Hansard lecture of 16 November, he proclaimed,
“a programme that we can set against a single test … are we giving people the choice and control they—rightly—now expect?”.
This Bill fails the single test that the Deputy Prime Minister set himself. The average interval between general elections since 1945 has been three years and 10 months. With this legislation, the people would in future have to wait a full five years before they had the opportunity to exercise their choice and control as to who should be their Members of Parliament and members of the Government. The coalition has conflated two issues to its own political advantage. There was the political question of how to ensure the longevity of the coalition and the constitutional issue as to whether we should have fixed-term Parliaments. To legislate to protect the coalition parties from facing the electors before five years are up is very convenient for two parties that formed a Government without having won an election and which are incurring bitter unpopularity for their scorched earth policies towards the economy and society.
Mr Clegg affirmed on 19 May:
“This government is going to persuade you to put your faith in politics once again”,
even as Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament were meditating on breaking their promise on tuition fees and provoking new depths of cynicism among the public about politics. No wonder the Deputy Prime Minister was glad to announce to the House of Commons on 5 July that the date of the next general election would be 7 May 2015.
To introduce fixed-term Parliaments is more than a wheeze to shelter the coalition from the people’s anger. As the Deputy Prime Minister went on to say on 5 July:
“This is a hugely significant constitutional innovation”.—[Official Report, 5/7/11; col. 23.]
As such, the proposal should have been put forward tentatively, consultatively and in the search for a consensus about carefully considered and genuinely necessary constitutional change. That fixed-term Parliaments were in the manifestos of two political parties does not unfortunately mean that they had been as carefully considered as they should have been. They have been considered as devices to attract votes, but I do not think that they were considered in their full constitutional significance.
The spirit of caution and respect is not the spirit in which the coalition proceeds. Mr Clegg declared on 19 May:
“It is time for a wholesale, big bang approach to political reform”.
That seems to me to be one of the most foolish things that I have ever heard any senior politician in this country say. Can the experienced noble Lords on the Conservative Benches do nothing to restrain these boys?
As with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, there has been no Green Paper or White Paper and no draft Bill or pre-legislative scrutiny. How much better it would have been had Ministers been able to hear the thoughts of noble Lords who have spoken in this debate before they formulated their legislation. Political convenience for the coalition has again trumped respect for Parliament and the constitution. The Deputy Prime Minister said at Second Reading that,
“the timing of general elections”,
should,
“not be a plaything of Governments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/9/10; col. 621.]
The constitution should not be the plaything of politicians who happen to be in office for the time being.
Why might fixed-term Parliaments be a bad idea? In some circumstances an early general election might well be desirable. I have been impressed by that case as it has been made by a number of noble Lords in the debate so far, and I was impressed by the evidence that Professor Vernon Bogdanor offered to the Constitution Committee. A Parliament might be judged not to be viable—that was the judgment that Mr Attlee took in 1951 and that Mr Wilson took in October 1974. It cannot be a good thing for a lame-duck Parliament to hobble along with a Government unable to govern effectively. It might be right for the country to have the opportunity to endorse a new Prime Minister, a judgment that Anthony Eden made in 1955 and that Gordon Brown nearly made in 2007—and the judgment that, by fits and starts, Mr David Cameron has also made. It might be right for the country to have the opportunity to endorse a new policy, as Baldwin thought about tariff reform in 1923 and as the coalition ought to think now about its extremely radical and contentious policies on the National Health Service and the welfare state. To make changes of this kind, so bitterly contentious, without any authority from the people, is an offence against democracy. It might be appropriate for the country to have the opportunity to endorse a new coalition, as was the case when the national Government were formed in 1931, and might yet be the case when Tory and Liberal Democrat Back-Benchers can no longer bear this coalition.
We are advised to expect that hung Parliaments will occur more frequently in the future with the reducing percentage of the vote for the two major parties, and particularly if we have the alternative vote. Why should Governments be made mid-term by wheeler-dealer politicians supervised by the Cabinet Secretary inside 70 Whitehall rather than by the people in a new general election? The Deputy Prime Minister on 7 June blustered that,
“we have this great opportunity to renew our democracy from top to toe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/10; col. 46.]—
not, however, if a renewal of our democracy limits the opportunity for Liberal Democrats, discredited in public opinion, to negotiate another coalition and extend their hold on office.
It might be right to hold a general election if Parliament is quite simply clapped-out and discredited. Would it not have been preferable to have had a general election in 1996 rather than wait until 1997? Would it not have been preferable to have had a general election in 2009 rather than wait until 2010?
There are two safety valves in the Bill that will enable, exceptionally, an early general election to take place. Are they appropriate? Yes, in the case of the retention of the traditional right of the House of Commons to expel a Government on a vote of no confidence with a majority of one, but why legislate for a maximum of 14 days of negotiations following a vote of no confidence? Legislation is not needed to allow a period of negotiations in such circumstances, so why specify a time limit? I do not believe that in this country we will find ourselves in the same case as in Belgium or Iraq.
The second safety valve is very questionable: the provision that by a vote of two-thirds of all Members of Parliament the House of Commons can vote for an early general election. Why legislate for a super-majority? The reason is political: to stop the Tories and the Liberal Democrats ratting on each other. This threshold for Dissolution is too high; a majority of one should be enough, and I believe that all this apparatus is unnecessary. Gordon Brown, in the previous Parliament, proposed that the Prime Minister should not simply be able to go to the Palace in the future but should be required to seek a majority in the House of Commons before requesting Dissolution. If that were to be the convention—and I do not believe that we would need legislation to secure it as such—it would be a simple and satisfactory solution to the primary problem which the proponents of this Bill have identified.
The more we look at this short and apparently simple Bill, the more difficulties appear, as the Constitution Committee has found. What exactly is a no confidence vote? What is a confidence vote? How, indeed, are votes to be counted? That might seem an unnecessary question, except that Dr Jack, the Clerk of the House of Commons himself, raised anxieties about this in his evidence to the Select Committee in another place. Will not the impact on the Speakership of requiring the Speaker to certify a no-confidence or a confidence Motion in very contentious circumstances be dangerous indeed? The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, spoke brilliantly and devastatingly on this matter. What will be the impact on parliamentary privilege if the inclusive cognisance by the House of Commons of its own procedures is liable to be questioned by the courts consequent upon parliamentary procedures prescribed by statute? Mr Mark Harper, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, has asserted his expert authority in contradiction to that of the Clerk of the House of Commons. I note that other noble Lords have tended to dismiss the anxiety that the Clerk expressed. As we look at this Bill in Committee, we should consider this issue very carefully.
Some of these matters that I have just touched upon seem to me to illustrate the dangers of moving towards a written constitution—here I differ from my noble friend Lord Morgan. If there is to be a fixed-term Parliament, how long should the term be? Four years is more normal where there are fixed terms, we are advised. Mr Asquith intended that four years should be the norm. Since the war, only weak and unpopular Governments have staggered to the full five years. The people of this country accept that after four years, or very shortly after that, it is a fair do if the Government call the election.
Whether the term should be four years or five is, as the Government have said, a matter of judgment, but it is significant that the judgment they have made is that it should be a five-year term, thus increasing the benefit for themselves and reducing the frequency with which the people will have the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights at a general election. This is just the kind of political opportunism that the Government, in their response to the Constitution Select Committee, have said that the public are tired of. I believe that we should amend this to four years.
As for resetting the clock and the question of whether, after an early general election, there should be a new five-year term or whether the new Parliament should simply use up the balance of the previous five-year term, again, the coalition has opted to extend the power of the Executive and to diminish accountability. I think that is the preferable choice—not being in favour of fixed-term Parliaments—but it should also be noted that if there is an early general election and the clock is reset, the relationship between five-yearly boundary reviews and the new Parliaments that the Government attached so much importance to when we were considering the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is thrown out.
If five-yearly Parliaments proceed without interruption, there will be an unfortunate coincidence in 2015, and every 20 years after, between general elections for the country as a whole and elections to the devolved institutions. It is simply boorish for the Government to impose general elections on the same day as elections to the devolved institutions, candidates for which should be judged on their own performance and their own promise, not immersed in the backwash of a UK general election. The coalition has already wrecked the 2011 devolved elections; it is now belatedly consulting. What would be wrong with amending this Bill to move the date of elections to October? The interaction with other constitutional changes has not been thought about. There are possible elections to a second Chamber and there is the interaction with the parliamentary privileges Bill that we are promised in draft.
This Bill is unnecessary. It does not respond to any significant problems or real grievances. Mr Harper cites opinion polls showing, he asserts, that the public broadly welcome fixed-term Parliaments, but the Hansard Society’s audit of democratic engagement shows the public uncertain and indifferent: 60 per cent had no understanding of the issue; 39 per cent were satisfied that the Government should appoint the date of the general election; 38 per cent had no preference or view; and only 28 per cent were dissatisfied.
The Bill would limit the power of the Executive in one respect—the power of the Prime Minister to determine the date of the general election—but would increase the power of the Executive through guaranteeing them prolonged life. It is busybody legislation brought in by people who want to parade themselves as constitutional reformers without having thought carefully about the constitution. It will be the duty of this House, once again, to limit the damage. I hope that when we are in Committee the Government will not regard this as a trial of strength but will look forward to Committee and treat it as a collaborative attempt to improve the legislation.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, like many noble Lords I pay tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. For those of us who knew him in the other place, I can honestly say that it was vintage Cormack. When he speaks in future, I am sure we will note that he is a distinguished parliamentarian who is worth listening to because he talks a lot of sense.
It is somewhat ironic that this debate on further changes to our constitution by introducing fixed-term Parliaments is being held on St David’s Day. I was delighted, by the way, to see the Draig Goch flying above Westminster Abbey as I came in this morning for St David’s Day, that great day which we celebrate. It is ironic because this Government have shown a complete lack of regard—indeed, have shown nothing but contempt—for Wales in their constitutional changes put so far before Parliament. We have already seen the gross spectacle of the Government forcing through a blatantly partisan Bill, which will reduce the number of Welsh representatives in the other place by a quarter and will certainly damage the relationship between Wales and the rest of the union. This Bill has been drafted with little or no concern for the impact that it will have on Wales or, for that matter, on Scotland and Northern Ireland.
At the heart of this matter is the Government’s failure to test their proposals by way of pre-legislative scrutiny. We have constantly been told by the Government that they are committed to pre-legislative scrutiny, but we have yet to see the evidence. The Constitution Committee in your Lordships’ House has stated:
“There is strong evidence to suggest that the Government’s proposals have not been properly thought through”.
The committee is certainly right so far as that is concerned. The Government originally proposed a threshold of 55 per cent in order for a dissolution to occur in the other place; that has now been revised after much criticism to a two-thirds majority. Equally, the Government originally proposed to put a binding order for dissolution to occur—an order which would have made the next election be held in May 2015—but that has now been revised or abandoned because such an order would have no effect. These changes demonstrate that the Government simply have not thought through their proposals. It is deeply concerning that the Government are willing to take such a shoddy approach to our constitution.
The Government have equally failed to consider properly the importance of this Bill and how it interrelates with other proposed constitutional changes. They seem obsessed with piecemeal changes to our constitution. For example, it is not at all clear why changing how people vote demands a referendum, but changing when they vote does not require a referendum. None of the detail of the Bill was subjected to proper consultation or proper pre-legislative scrutiny. The Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Mr Harper, when challenged on this, informed the Constitution Committee that pre-legislative scrutiny was less important in the first term since,
“if the whole programme was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny … you would not get on and do very much”.
He was serious when he made that statement. Surely when it comes to our constitution, proper pre-legislative scrutiny should always occur—no matter how much of a brake that places upon the Government.
We all know that the Deputy Prime Minister is under a lot of pressure—so much so that he forgot the Prime Minister was abroad last week and had left him in charge of the country. It says something about the arrogant way in which the Government and the Deputy Prime Minister in particular have proceeded with this legislation that the Constitution Committee found it necessary to remind the Government that the proper way to introduce a constitutional reform proposal is to publish a Green Paper or a White Paper or a draft Bill and take into account the comments and concerns raised in the process of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny in the Bill that is finally introduced. The Bill has simply not been properly consulted upon and, as I have said, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny that is worthy of the name.
The Bill allows for an election to be called in the aftermath of the vote of no confidence and sets out a procedure to be followed after such a vote. The Bill, however, fails to state what constitutes a vote of no confidence. Instead, Clause 2(2) places the onus on the Speaker of the House of Commons to determine whether the requirements for an early election have been met. The Minister, Mr Harper, told the Constitution Committee that the Speaker of the House of Commons would be guided by convention in determining whether the requirements have been met. The conventions, however, are not clear on what constitutes a Motion of no confidence. As such, the Speaker is in effect given a significant amount of responsibility to determine when a Motion amounts to a vote of no confidence—and hence to determine when an election can be called. Such powers for the Speaker are completely unprecedented and risk radically altering the role of the holder of that office.
Conspiracy theorists who might have read the weekend press will have learned that the Government are allegedly plotting a way in which the House of Commons can remove the Speaker. Some people might think that these two things are linked, and that the Government would much prefer a compliant holder of that office in the other place. Let us not forget that it was a Speaker—a previous holder of that office—who told the King of England where to go. The Speaker has a very important role. We do not want to see that role in any way compromised.
As the Constitution Committee noted, the Speaker’s judgment on what amounts to a Motion of no confidence risks placing him in conflict with the Government, and hence with a majority of the House. It is unclear whether Motions of no confidence include defeats on key confidence issues, such as the Queen’s Speech or the Budget, or whether they include cases where the Government lose votes on other matters.
The Government have, without any consultation on the issue and with very limited justification for the position that they have taken, arrived at the decision that the appropriate length for a fixed-term Parliament is five years. The Deputy Prime Minister has stated:
“There is a pattern of five-year Parliaments, at least recently”,
with which people are familiar. However, as my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport has just pointed out, since 1945 Parliaments have sat for an average of three years and 10 months. Of the last three general elections, two were called after around four years and one was called after a full period of five years. Therefore, I contend that there is little support for the Deputy Prime Minister’s assertion that people are used to a pattern of five-year Parliaments. When my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer opened the debate for this side, he reminded us that five-year Parliaments were introduced by the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. However, it is worth remembering that Asquith said at the time that in all probability this would result in an actual working legislative period of around four years. Therefore, when a five-year maximum term was introduced, it was expected that five years would indeed be the maximum and that general elections would occur more frequently than once every five years.
A five-year, as opposed to a four-year, maximum would make elections significantly less frequent than they are at present, which would surely make politicians less accountable to their constituents. Yet we all remember that the Deputy Prime Minister promised an era of “new politics” in which voters would be more, not less, engaged in the democratic process. More important, people want to hold their politicians to account for the actions that they take in power, and we should do nothing to restrict them in exercising that right. That was certainly the view of the Liberal Democrat Party when in 2007 it published documents that favoured a four-year fixed term. One wonders whether the Deputy Prime Minister’s new-found commitment to five-year Parliaments is borne more out of fear of facing the electorate than out of principle.
The Government have not made a particularly compelling case that fixed-term Parliaments are a good thing. Even if allowing Prime Ministers to manipulate the electoral cycle to their own advantage is a bad thing, it is not clear that the Bill will improve that situation very much at all. The Government have argued that fixing each election time will improve the democratic legitimacy of Parliament, yet in reality there are a number of circumstances in which it is more, rather than less, democratic to hold an early election. First, there may have been a change of Prime Minister within the life of a Parliament, and many have argued that that should precipitate a general election. The present Prime Minister was a great fan of that until the 2010 election. Indeed, he constantly called for a general election when there was a change of Prime Minister. He now seems to have had a change of heart. Equally, where a Government change in the course of a Parliament, it would seem logical for there to be an election. If the present coalition were to fall apart and a new coalition formed, would it not be right to test in a general election whether that coalition Government had the support of the British people? Of course it would be right.
The Bill leaves many questions unanswered. We in this House must therefore give it the closest possible scrutiny in the coming weeks and months.
Lord Dobbs
My Lords, it is a pleasure for me to be able to participate in a debate which has seen the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Cormack. It was joyous and I look forward to listening to his speeches for many years to come.
It is also a great pleasure to speak on St David’s Day, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has pointed out, and to listen to the fine speeches of so many Welshmen. As a naive newcomer to this place, I might have been forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the vast majority of Members of this House were Scots.
I have never been elected. I have never even stood for election, although many years ago I did suggest to the Conservative Party that it should adopt me as its candidate in the constituency of Manchester Moss Side. Very wisely it turned me down, as no doubt the electors would have done had they been given the chance. However, I have had various other roles and have come to revere elections—the unelected in pursuit of the uninterested, to mangle Oscar Wilde, although I have never been entirely sure which is the hunter and which is the fox.
I was fortunate, indeed honoured, to be with my noble friend Lady Thatcher in Barnet town hall in 1979 watching her own count on the night of her election victory. I was the first to be able to tell her that she had won. I was with her the following day in Downing Street as she took her first steps across the threshold as Prime Minister and quoted St Francis of Assisi:
“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony”.
Yes, I have to admit that I thought we had lost her there for a moment. I was there when she went in and I was there with John Major when we were kicked out, so I know a little about both the triumphs and the tears that go with these great outbursts of the people’s will.
I do not wish to tread over ground already so well trodden during this debate and will perhaps find a slightly different path in considering the Bill. I do not relish change for the sake of change. If in doubt, don’t. If our constitution has to be changed, it must be for sound and solid reasons. But I think there are good reasons for looking favourably on fixed-term Parliaments, one of which probably will not be considered in Committee. That is money—party-political money to be precise, which is not a subject we like to shout about but perhaps one that in quiet moments we all know is of real practical importance.
The costs of running political machines are huge, and those costs regularly leave our political parties in a state of financial chaos—often near bankruptcy. Of the millions that are raised, so much is spent—some would say squandered—during a few weeks of electoral warfare, leaving the parties to starve in the following years when issues on which those elections were fought are pursued through Parliament. Great political machines are built to win the campaign only to be ripped apart immediately thereafter. Party workers are sacked and discarded just at the point when they might have been working for the long-term health of their parties and our political system. It is a sad and desperately inefficient way to run a democracy.
Perhaps I should declare an old and perhaps expired interest because I was once an employee of the Conservative research department—a place where I laboured many long hours and for very little money under the direction of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. As I said, it was a long time ago. Finding the money to run a healthy political system is not easy but I believe that this Bill will help. Under the present system, party managers never dare take the risk of being unprepared, so at the first whiff of a possible election they gear up before any spending caps ever come into consideration. Staff are employed, premises are leased, equipment is found, posters sites are booked and battle buses are commissioned. The troops are brought up to speed and made ready for war, but having been marched up the hill, under present circumstances, they are often then marched down again until the next scare, and much of the precious money raised is wasted.
We have not yet found the right answer to funding political parties but I believe that fixed-term Parliaments will help by allowing party managers to plan more effectively and party treasurers to fund more wisely. That may not be the most important outcome of this Bill but it must be a good outcome. I have no doubt that in Committee my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will listen with all his characteristic sensitivity to suggestions for improvement that are already being put forward. I hope that he will not close his mind to them even if they take matters a little beyond the fixed wording of the coalition agreement. I mention just one. It is not the matter of thresholds—although I have to say that a two-thirds threshold is a very generous offer and one that I would happily have accepted a couple of weeks ago. I want to endorse the point raised by many Members here. The noble Lords, Lord Foulkes, Lord Wigley and Lord Howarth, have asked, why May? Why not, for example, June or October? I hope we will be allowed to identify a date that is most suitable in the long term, not just one which, through present circumstances, is temporarily convenient.
The month of May creates issues with elections for devolved institutions which others will raise, but May is not often an ideal general election date. Campaigns fought over April almost inevitably run into the barriers of Easter and school holidays. Asking party workers to campaign through these periods and then to give up their May Day bank holiday seems unnecessarily clumsy. Of course, an election fought on the first Thursday in October would also have its drawbacks. It would require us, for instance, to abandon our party conferences, but somehow I feel that the electorate would find it in their hearts to forgive us.
Underlying the Bill is the decision to take away from the Prime Minister the right to choose the election date. I can recall very few occasions in recent years when Prime Ministers have given up anything, let alone a key prerogative such as this. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, on that—I believe that this is an entirely genuine matter. I am all in favour of the Executive giving up powers to Parliament. I think that we should have more of it and I applaud the Prime Minister for taking this step.
In any event, Prime Ministers are often very poor at taking these decisions about election timing. They gather their soothsayers, the entrails are extracted, the runes are read and, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, pointed out, still they make a mess of it. How different might things have been. Ted Heath going to the polls in February 1974; Jim Callaghan not going in October 1978; Gordon Brown too—how might history have been rewritten if they had made different decisions?
There is an inherent uncertainty that accompanies all elections; that is one of the many splendours of democracy. After Winston Churchill’s extraordinary election defeat in 1945, his wife, Clementine, tried to comfort him. “Darling, it is a blessing in disguise”, she said. “If it is a blessing”, the old man said, “it is very well disguised”. The Bill contains many blessings, even if at times some of them seem to be rather well disguised.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, I will bear in mind the time and the fact that many more experienced colleagues than me have spoken. First, I join the massed ranks of those welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to our midst. I, too, have happy and sound memories of him in another place and I am quite sure that over the next months and years, there will be at least one or two causes that we will be completely united on.
I want to take head-on the point made by noble Peers, but particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that the Labour Party had fixed-term Parliaments in its manifesto. I think that we had that in 1992, but I was a bit closer in 2010 to the formulation of the general election strategy, policy and manifesto issues. I remember that from right back to 1992 and right up to 2010, there was always the spoken assumption that there would be pre-legislative scrutiny and a full process of Green Papers, White Papers and draft Bills. That was always inherent in it, so I do not think that we have anything to hide in indicating that the Labour Party followed that. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, might be being a bit optimistic in thinking that he will get some leeway from the Front Bench. After having endured 17 days of valid points from all corners of this House, we achieved absolutely nothing. If the noble Lord wants something, he will need to speak to Mr Clegg and get his permission.
Once again, what we have here is an abuse of the House of Lords. We have a constitutional Bill being rammed through this place without a single jot of notice being given to its conventions. I am well aware—because I was told often enough—that the new incomers from the other place over the past year or so breached the conventions of this place. There is some justification in that charge but, in answer to it, the circumstances must be borne in mind. The Government had thrown away all the conventions. The anger felt at that was certainly reflected on these Benches. I have learnt not to be too robust in this place, but it is a bit of a cheek for people to complain about others breaching conventions when they have provoked the anger. That is a fact of life. There are supposed to be 14 days between Committee stage and Report stage; with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill we got a day’s notice. I do not want to go over old ground. I am just making the point that this Bill must be seen in that context.
What we see here is the Liberal party’s obsession with tinkering with the constitution and coming up with systems, rather than democracy and paying attention to the true needs of people. Take the record of the Liberal party every time it is put in a position where it can gain something for itself. I go back to the formulation of the Scottish devolution policy between the Labour Party, the Liberal party and other parties in Scotland, except the Conservatives and the SNP. It was crucial that we got consensus at that time, and crucial that we got the Liberals on side. We got them on side but at the price of giving two seats—that is, preferential treatment—to Orkney and Shetland. That was the first instance that I saw of the Liberals using a position for their own political gain.
There was then the situation where Mr Clegg was in a position where he could blackmail another party when two parties were bidding for him to form a coalition. What does he get out of it? He gets out of it constitutional matters—the greatest reform since 1832. He says that it will be a “big bang” for the constitution that has served this country well for hundreds of years—all driven by the Liberals. When they get into a position where they can control and blackmail other parties, they use it to the full. Folk should be aware of that. The be all and end all of this is that if they get AV—God forbid that they should win—we will have maybe not Mr Clegg but a Liberal as Deputy Prime Minister. Where is the democracy there? Where is the paying heed to people and making sure that there is democracy?
Speaking as a reasonably active former Whip, I would have loved to have 14 days to deal with a government defeat and fix the situation. By rights, the Government should resign after being defeated, especially on an important matter. My noble friend Lady Taylor is a former government Chief Whip in the Commons; I served many years with her. We are talking about 14 days to fix something and do all sorts of things—all in a persuasive and kindly way, naturally—to make sure that the will of the House of Commons is defeated. It is absolutely wrong that we are under this pressure and that this priority is being given to tinkering with the constitution when it has served us well.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, was, I think, the only one from the Conservative side who gave unconditional support to the Bill. Having persuaded many a colleague to speak in the House of Commons in particular situations, I recognise a press-ganged Member when I see one. I mean no disrespect to the noble Baroness but I certainly recognise the symptoms.
The noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Norton of Louth, made unanswerable cases. One of them was perhaps political but the other constituted an absolutely clinical, methodical and systematic dismantling of the Bill. I offer a word of warning to Conservative colleagues who may think that they can pay the blackmailer once and he or she will go away. However, I assure them that they will return again and again until their party is absolutely demolished.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I was interested to hear that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, thinks that we will be able to demolish the Conservative Party in future. We might demolish the Labour Party as well—who knows?—and then we will have achieved our goal in life. However, at the moment we are in coalition and we shall be loyal members of the coalition.
This has indeed been a very interesting debate. The one thing that has united everybody who has taken part is the importance of the Bill. It is a slim but important Bill. I am strongly in favour of the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, which forms the basis of the Bill. I believe that the power of a Prime Minister to seek a Dissolution is a democratic outrage and should have been abolished long ago. As noble Lords will know, I am also strongly in favour of this House doing its job properly and of the practicalities of this legislation being properly scrutinised and discussed in this House. I hope that that will happen and that we will not again witness the fairly deplorable events that occurred during the passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I am not at this stage pointing the finger at anybody. The House got itself into a huge tangle on that and, as they always say, it takes two to tangle. I do not believe that the Government were blameless although my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness played a blinder during that Bill.
The principle of this legislation has been Liberal Party and Liberal Democrat policy for decades. If anybody suggests that we have just invented it for party political advantage, that is complete nonsense. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who is not in his place, said that the Liberal Democrats have an obsession with constitutional reform. Constitutional reform has certainly formed a very important part of our party policy and our party election manifestos for as long as I can remember. If we are now in a position to try to do something about that, we shall do so. It has been pointed out that it is also a Labour manifesto commitment—I assume that it is still Labour Party policy—that the principle we are discussing is correct. At some stage we want a very clear statement of what the Labour Party now stands for as regards fixed-term Parliaments.
I listened with great interest to the fluent, eloquent and interesting speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and to those of other speakers. I listened carefully to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is not in his place, and to that of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, who said that he was not persuaded by the Bill. I think that is his normal way of saying that he is completely against it but we will find that out. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that he was against all change. He thought that our constitution was wonderful and marvellous and that it should not be messed about with at all. Having listened to the speeches of a number of Labour Members, I got the impression that they could not imagine that anything different from what happens now was remotely desirable. We have seen on the part of quite a lot of Members the deep well of conservatism which exists within the Labour Party on constitutional matters. It was not always thus. Robin Cook was a pioneer in constitutional reform and the Cook-Maclennan agreement formed the basis of a lot of what the Labour Government did in the years after 1997 in setting up the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, changing the role of the Lord Chancellor, introducing changes in this House and, indeed, in phase 1 reform of your Lordships' House.
So there was an agenda there—it was a radical agenda but in latter years the Labour Government ran out of steam. We need to know what Labour policy is now and specifically what its policy on a fixed-term Parliament is. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that the proposal had a high-minded aim. I agree with that but he then went on to say it is damaging and at the end of his speech he said it is an utter disaster and it is messing up the British constitution. Well, let us put on one side the way in which the legislation has been brought in. We have a job to do here—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I did not say, I am afraid, it had “a high-minded aim”. I said there is very little to be said for this Bill and that it seeks to dress up as a piece of high-minded constitutional reform the chronic mistrust that the two parties, in my view correctly, have for each other. It is my fault for not expressing it clearly but I certainly was not intending to say it had a high-minded aim.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for that correction but the noble and learned Lord allowed me to use the words. I believe it has a high-minded aim and it is something with which we agree. However, we still need to know, as a basis for our discussions in Committee and at following stages, what the Labour Party would like to do. What policies would the Labour Party be putting forward on this if it was still the Government? We have been told that we have to operate on the basis of what Mr Asquith said 100 years ago. Well, no one has greater admiration than me for the achievements of the great Liberal Governments in the eight years before the Great War. Really, things have changed a little bit in the past 100 years and if we are to argue on the basis of conditions 100 years ago we are not going to get very far, although the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, did say that what he said was for reasons of nostalgia and it would not have allowed Mr Callaghan to make his wonderful speech in 1979. I think we have got to start looking into the situation in the second decade of the present millennium.
Does the right of the Prime Minister to call an election give the Prime Minister a great advantage? We are being asked to believe that it does not. Whether or not it does it certainly dominates politics in the months and sometimes years leading up to a general election. It dominates politics, in my view, in a very undesirable way. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that Mr Blair and Mrs Thatcher were evidence that it did not work. They between them fought five elections, I think, and won them all as Prime Ministers. That is a very strange argument.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, in a very thoughtful speech from her position as chairman of the Constitution Committee, said that what we need is more accountable Government. I agree that Governments need to be much more accountable than they are now and have been for as long as I have known—and I think that the position has probably got worse over the years—but I believe that that accountability is far more to do with the relationship between government and Parliament; both Houses, but particularly the House of Commons. We have a convention here. One cannot be too acerbic in one’s criticism of the House of Commons so I am not going to be. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, is encouraging me to be critical. I am very critical of the way the House of Commons works. I do not think it holds the Government to account properly. There have been some recent changes which are beneficial but I believe that that whole area is far more important than whether it is elected for four or five years. I am disappointed at the way in which the coalition Government have related to Parliament. I understand why—the enthusiasm of new brooms wanting to sweep clean and wanting to get things done but I believe that they have been careless. In some areas they have been too bullying and I believe that is probably coming to an end now. I hope it is; we will see. It is up to Members of Parliament in both Houses to stand firm and say this must not continue. I believe that slowly that is beginning to happen.
We have a system in this country where people elect Parliaments. I know that a lot of people think that they are voting for the Prime Minister. At the previous election, the single most common telephone call made to the election department in my own area of Pendle was from people who had postal votes and were ringing up to find out why they could not find the names Cameron, Clegg and Brown on the ballot paper.
Lord Greaves
I do not think that people in my part of the world are any more stupid than anywhere else, but scores of such telephone calls were being made all over the country. We have moved to a more presidential system in recent years, but we nevertheless elect the House of Commons and not the Government. It is up to the House of Commons to decide who will form the Government, and it is up to the House of Commons to decide whether the Government still have their confidence. All the talk about a five-year Parliament putting more power in the hands of the Executive is not necessarily correct.
A number of important issues will have to be discussed. For example, what constitutes a vote of confidence must be clear. However, once that is clear, all the talk about what happened in 1895—I think that it was the vote of no confidence in Campbell-Bannerman and the attempt to take away his wages—as well as in 1910 and 1951, will become irrelevant. What will be important is what people think and know they must do in order to express no confidence in the Government. That must be absolutely clear, but it will then define the behaviour of politicians in the House of Commons.
I do not believe that whether the fixed term should be four years or five years is a major issue; other people do. I was fascinated by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, talking about biorhythms. I know that when I am going through a low patch my wife always looks up the book of biorhythms and tells me what is happening. If that does not work, she looks at the phases of the moon. I say to her, “Well, it’s to do with the viruses I’ve got in my head. It’s the head-cold viruses, or perhaps it is just to do with the latest government announcement I don’t agree with”. I am not quite sure that parliamentary biorhythms are much to do with it, but I shall be interested to hear more about that fascinating theory.
It has been said that the average length of Parliament since the war has been three years and 10 months, which I assume is true, but that has been utterly distorted by the fact that there were three very short Parliaments in 1950, 1964 and 1974. If one takes those out, the average rises to something over four years.
Of course, it can be argued, as we will do, that having a longer Parliament gives the House of Commons more time to scrutinise what the Government are doing. That is a perfectly good argument to use if Parliament is doing its job properly. At least, if one knows when a general election is going to be, one of the democratic outrages of Parliament, the wash-up, will not take place That is when Bills which have often had little or no scrutiny are nodded through behind closed doors by the parliamentary parties, leading to a lot of bad legislation. If the wash-up is done away with, that is a good thing.
The clash of election dates is a very important issue which we will have to discuss. I do not believe that the new system will, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, suggested in different words, allow the Prime Minister to fiddle when he wants an election anyway, because discussion on it will have been taken out of the context and dynamic of the politics of the time.
I hope that we will not have a major trial of strength over this Bill. There are very important issues to discuss. It may take some time to scrutinise the Bill in Committee, but I hope that it will all be done constructively on both sides. I have great confidence that the Government will be prepared to approach it in that way. I hope that the Opposition will do so, too.
Lord Howard of Rising
My Lords, I must first apologise to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, for missing the first moments of his speech, although I was in time to admire the patience with which he dealt with interventions.
Many good points have been made during the debate, including those made by my noble friend Lord Cormack, whom I join in welcoming. I will not waste your Lordships’ time in respect of all the points that have been raised, but I would like to touch on one aspect embodied by this Bill: the increase in the power of the Executive at the expense of the power of Parliament.
Any action which takes away the ability of Parliament to call the Executive to account is a retrograde step. Put simply, this proposal to have a fixed-term Parliament for five years is an erosion of the power of Parliament to call the Executive to account, because whatever way it is dressed up it reduces the ability of Parliament to shorten the life of a Government.
The Government claim that by taking away from the Prime Minister the ability to choose a propitious moment to recommend to the Sovereign that an election be called, the timing of an election is made fairer. That may be so, although except for a few inconsequential bodies I cannot recall this being an issue of much interest to anyone, and certainly no one much outside of Westminster. In any event, the argument was put firmly in its place by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others. As has been pointed out by noble Lords, it would be a simple matter for a Prime Minister to get around this in any event by arranging to lose a vote of no confidence. The price being exacted for this supposed benefit is to make it more difficult for Parliament to call for a change of Government.
A further benefit being claimed is that it makes the scheduling of government business easier, but the easier life is for Government, the more difficult it is for Parliament to exercise proper control over the actions of the Executive.
The Government claim in answer to the report by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee that this Bill gives the House of Commons a fundamental constitutional power which it currently does not possess, namely to require that there be an early general election. Reading those words I am not sure whether I have entered the world of Alice in Wonderland or Animal Farm. As noble Lords have already pointed out, the House of Commons already has the power to force the Prime Minister to call an election. A simple majority on a vote of no confidence and down go the Government.
To pretend that a vote for Dissolution by two-thirds of the Members of Parliament is an increase in the power of Parliament is absurd. As for introducing a 14-day cooling off period, the mind boggles. I am sure the present Government would never stoop so low, but imagine the cornucopia of inducements, together with the bullying, which a future Government might carry out during those 14 days. We might even get a few more Dukes in this House.
In recent years too much power has been taken by the Executive at the expense of Parliament. For example, in the 50 years between 1947 and 1997 time-limiting, or guillotine, Motions were used 136 times—that’s 136 times in 50 years. Between 1997 and 2007 this type of Motion was used 438 times: 438 times in 10 years. The result was rotten legislation and too much of it. The ability to ram legislation through Parliament by reducing the ability of Opposition and Back-Benchers to force Government to look properly at what they are doing lowers the quality of legislation.
This may come as a surprise, but the Prime Minster himself is aware of this. In an article for the Guardian in 2009, he said:
“Every bill now has a "programme motion" setting out how much time can be spent scrutinising and debating each part. These are automatic guillotines, and the time allowed for scrutiny is set in advance, before anyone can see whether a particular issue is contentious or complex. Watching a minister in the Commons drawing out one point for an hour to fill the time, to an audience of dozing backbenchers—this is not accountability. How has the mother of all parliaments turned itself into such a pliant child?
If we're serious about redistributing power from the powerful to the powerless, it's time to strengthen parliament so it can properly hold the government to account on behalf of voters. The House of Commons should have more control over its own timetable, so there is time for proper scrutiny and debate”.
The Prime Minister was not alone in those sentiments. Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons, pledged on ConservativeHome’s Platform:
“Fixed term parliaments are undoubtedly a major constitutional change and it is proper that people should express their views. That is why there will be a Bill with full and proper debate in Parliament. Indeed, because I have pledged to abolish programme motions for legislation—known as ‘guillotines’—Parliament will have more time to scrutinise this Bill than they would have done under Labour”.
What did the House of Commons get? As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, pointed out earlier, it got a programmed Bill which was hurried through the Commons amidst complaints from Members of Parliament.
Where is the respect of Parliament? In spite of the fine words, there is none. The Bill before us today is a further limitation of the power of Parliament to call the Administration to account. This House, as one of the Houses of Parliament, must act as a protector of the power of elected Members of Parliament and not as a poodle of the Executive.
Lord Plant of Highfield
My Lords, I add my voice to all those who welcomed the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I am very pleased that he has become a Member of this House. We go back a very long way. We were at school together. I was well under his radar. He was head boy and I was a recalcitrant first-year pupil. But after he left he endowed an essay prize that I happened to win one year. I still have the Oxford Book of Latin Verse, which was the PT Cormack essay prize. I should own up that I also have his copy of Livy’s histories, which after 49 years I suppose I should remember to return to him someday.
One of the constant refrains of recent political commentary over the past two or three years—and the reasons are fairly obvious—is that we have to accept that Parliament and Government need to be made more accountable to the people. My objection to the Bill as currently drafted is that it weakens that accountability. It is fairly easy to see why.
I want to make the case by focusing on a change of Administration during a fixed-term Parliament under the terms set out in the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, the constitutional convention is that a Prime Minister, for example, can succeed another Prime Minister but only if he or she is capable of leading an Administration with the confidence of the House of Commons. It is the Members of Parliament who elect or choose the Prime Minister, not the population at large. Given that the Prime Minister has to have the confidence of Parliament, he or she can succeed an incumbent Prime Minister in a perfectly legitimate way.
That has been the normal process of British politics since the Second World War—so Churchill succeeded Chamberlain, Eden succeeded Churchill, Macmillan succeeded Eden, Lord Home succeeded Macmillan, Callaghan succeeded Wilson, Brown succeeded Blair, and Major succeeded the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher. In only one of those cases—namely when Eden succeeded Churchill—was there an early general election to confirm the mandate of the new Prime Minister. In all these cases without an early election, excepting that particular case, it seemed perfectly fair, reasonable and legitimate that the new Prime Minister came into office because that was in accordance with the constitutional convention.
In the case of Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair, the assumption came seriously into question in the media, in the polls, in quite a lot of political commentary in the newspapers and among politicians themselves. It was argued that somehow this succession lacked legitimacy, although it was exactly comparable to previous changes I have mentioned. I suspect the reason is not just political opportunism—although that no doubt played a fairly important part—but because over the past 20 years or so there has been something of a change in public opinion and the electorate are not so ready to accept that Government can and should emerge just through intra-parliamentary debate and deal-making. People want to have a bit more of a say in the outcome. After all, there are many more opportunities for non-political voting in a straightforward sense through interactive television, newspaper polls virtually every day of the week on some public issue and so on. Yet, many people now feel rather distant from Parliament when someone can become Prime Minister without them having voted for him. I fully accept and understand the account of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, of the constitutional position. However, I think that position may be leaving behind a bit the way in which society more generally is evolving.
If there is some truth in the idea that people are demanding more of a political say, then I think this Bill—particularly if the AV vote turns out to be positive —is going to cause us great problems, because it is going to insulate the processes of intra-parliamentary politics more and more from public opinion. If we have AV, we are going to have more coalitions; and a coalition can change part of the way through a fixed-term Parliament and possibly without the same priorities as its predecessor. I doubt whether the electorate would regard this as acceptable. It is fashionable at the moment to decry the idea of the mandate—one can see that it is very difficult at the moment for the Government to claim a mandate in the sense that people have not voted for the coalition agreement. I fully understand the difficulty. Nevertheless, if one coalition were to succeed another and you had a second coalition agreement that no one had ever voted for, it is straining credulity to believe that this would be regarded as legitimate. Whatever degree of confidence the House of Commons has in a new coalition—reflecting what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said—I do not think the idea that you can have one coalition succeeding another will wash with the British people. It makes Parliament appear to be too insulated from public opinion. There is a great deal more that could be said, but the time is getting late and so I will not say it.
I will finish on a point made by someone who has always had a great interest in constitutional reform and has been a member of the Liberal Democrats, Professor David Marquand, who once described Westminster politics as club politics. I always thought that was a very exaggerated account of Westminster politics. If you got into the position of having a series of coalitions arising during a fixed-term Parliament, without a straightforward appeal to the electorate, that would be club politics of the worst possible kind. At the very least, this Bill needs to be amended to remove the 14-day clause on the vote of confidence because that allows the possibility of a constant renewal of a coalition to occur, which I just do not think that the British people will accept.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton
My Lords, I shall be very brief because most points have already been made. I start by echoing what has been said by way of welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The number of noble Lords who have told anecdotes about his past implies that he will feel very much at home here, as I am sure will be the case.
I acknowledge, as one or two noble Lords have done, that the Labour Party policy in its manifesto was in favour of a four-year fixed-term Parliament. That is not a policy that has ever excited me, but to suggest that because of that specific manifesto commitment we should now support this entirely different Bill is, to my mind, total nonsense. My starting point is quite simple: any proposal to change the British constitution, as this Bill does, should be coherent, should have public support, should be subject to wide consultation and, as far as possible, should be based on consensus. The onus should be on those who are proposing change to prove that those conditions have been met and that what is proposed is an improvement. To my mind, this Bill fails both tests. As my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer proved, it is constitutional change for party-political convenience because neither side in the coalition trusts the other and they need what he described as glue to bind them together. That is a pretty sorry state of affairs and certainly not one of high constitutional principle.
In opening the debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that the political system needs to be reinvigorated. With due respect, I do not think that this Bill will achieve that. I do not know about the Minister’s former constituents when he was in another place, but I served there for a good long time and no one ever indicated that they would or would not vote for me because they were in any way concerned about fixed-term Parliaments. I do not think that the mass of the electorate is demanding this kind of change.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has been welcomed as the Minister leading for the Government on this Bill. I endorse that welcome. As we saw with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, it is true that he is considered to be the user-friendly Minister for the Government on these matters and he stepped in when others had exhausted any goodwill that they had. I hope that he retains that reputation, but to do so it is important that he listens to the genuine concerns about this Bill that have been expressed on all sides of the House, not just from these Benches. The concern is genuine and I am afraid that the letter mentioned by my noble friend Lord Anderson, which the noble and learned Lord sent implying endorsement by the Select Committee, was not a reassuring start. I hope that he will be reasonable and listen to these concerns so that we can have a very constructive Committee stage.
Briefly, my concerns are twofold: one is about the content of the Bill and the other is about the context in which the Bill is being introduced. I object to fixed five-year Parliaments. I was somewhat surprised at the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, earlier when he said that anything other than a five-year Parliament could not achieve anything. I thought back to the 1966-1970 Government and the Open University, which is a glaring example of a fantastic achievement and, although I disagreed with many of their policies, I do not think that many people would say that the 1979-1983 Thatcher Government did not have, in their own way, a great number of achievements.
People say that the term has to be of five years so that we can have more achievements, but why? The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said that it has to be five years because it would save money for political parties. On that basis, why not make it six or seven years? What is so magical about five years? The point in the Constitution Committee’s report, about how many elections we would have had had there been five-year terms since the war, was a very telling one. We need to maintain contact with the electorate as much as possible.
My main very serious concern—and here I follow the noble Lord, Lord Plant—is about the mechanisms and complications that arise from making a vote of confidence more complex. I will leave aside for the moment the concerns expressed by the Clerk of the Commons—though, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out earlier, these are things that we might have to come back to because there could be difficulties. I did not find the Minister very convincing in his earlier comments. For example, the Minister did not give a very satisfactory answer to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about the use of the 14-day mechanism. I am still not very sure whether this 14-day mechanism is supposed to be a cooling-off or hotting-up period. As a former Chief Whip, I perhaps should not have enjoyed the relish with which my noble friend spoke about how a Government might use those 14 days. However, clearly, Members opposite had had the same thoughts. Are we to have 14 days so that Government Ministers can offer jobs to rebels or inducements or threats or whatever? The possibilities of buying off an opposition in your own party or doing deals with others are certainly there. A lot could be achieved in 14 days. It is not a good idea, and I hope that it will not remain in the Bill.
However, on the other hand, when you think of the source of this idea, as was mentioned earlier, maybe 14 days is simply designed as a mechanism for one partner in a coalition to try to persuade a different partner to enter a new coalition and form an entirely different kind of majority in the Commons without an election. Either way, the deal would be done without any reference to the electorate whatsoever, which is the case with any coalition. If the alternative is the simple and obvious one of a general election, I am a long way from accepting the 14-day concept. When MPs vote on a vote of confidence—and I am one of a relatively small number of people who have done that—they know that they are voting for or against a general election. It is as simple as that. My noble friend Lord Grocott was there on that very significant night in 1979—as I was—when there was a vote of confidence. This is my main concern with the Bill. There are many others that will need clarification.
I have one specific question for the Minister that I hope he can clarify. Provision in Clause 1(5) says that the Prime Minister can make an order for a general election to be brought forward or delayed by two months —the so-called foot and mouth provision. I can understand why, if there is a foot and mouth outbreak, as in 2001, an election might be delayed. What are the circumstances, however, in which a crisis can be anticipated so that the election has to be brought forward two months? If you can anticipate in February that you will have to have an election in March, is it a crisis? I hope this question can be answered and my mind set at rest.
There are many other small points. As the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, asked, why May? What he did not mention is that, if the election is in May, there is always the problem of juggling the scrutiny of the Budget provisions in the other place because the Budget is traditionally in April. I could ask why Thursday and not the weekend, but that is not the point that we are discussing now.
My other concern about this Bill is with what is happening to the whole area of constitutional reform. The Constitution Select Committee said very politely:
“We are concerned that the constitutional relationship between the provisions of this Bill and the Government's other proposals for constitutional reform have not been adequately thought through”.
That is a wonderfully calm understatement. We have already had some legislation with a high degree of controversy because of a lack of consultation. Indeed, the committee, in its fantastic report, pointed out the possibilities of the difficulties with a five-year boundary and a five-year Parliament and them being out sync. It is a recipe for chaos.
My real problem is that we are seeing a whole ragbag of proposals from this Government, with AV brought forward with a referendum, legislation reducing the number of seats of another place and talk of recall of MPs and changing rules on parliamentary privilege as well as changes to voter registration, elected police chiefs and Lords reform, not to mention the decision to have a two-year parliamentary Session, which has a whole range of implications. What we have is a disparate range of piecemeal, ill-thought-through ideas. It is just like a series of bad schoolboy essays being put forward. My noble friend takes issue with the word “schoolboy”, but I think that those making these decisions will well understand the kind of essay that I am talking about.
If the Government want to make changes to the British constitution in so many different and fundamental ways, they should take a step back. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, wants a codified constitution. I do not think that I do—but if we are going to have change, we must have coherent change. To do that, you need to take a step back and have a royal commission and you need to have debates on terms of reference. You cannot rush through significant constitutional proposals in this way and expect to get things right. The law of unintended consequences will come in here, and we will see great difficulties arising in future.
Finally, it was interesting that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, in describing the role of this House, mentioned the phrase “guardianship of the constitution”. It is a phrase that has echoed around this Chamber this evening, and many people realise their responsibility in that respect. I hope that this House lives up to that billing on this legislation and, indeed, on any other constitutional changes that this Government bring forward.
Lord Bach
My Lords, here we are again, less than two weeks have passed and here we are, debating another constitutional Bill, claimed by the Government to make a long-term constitutional change based on principle, thought through, properly considered, well researched and thoroughly argued in another place, but which in reality—as nearly everyone acknowledges—is a short-term measure, with its driving force the political necessity of the coalition and its need, given the desperate lack of confidence between its parties, to ensure that it survives until at least May 2015. In other words, it is a short-term political fix masquerading as serious constitutional reform. Of what other Bill—I ask rhetorically of course, but I may give a clue—what other Act of Parliament does that remind noble Lords?
In these circumstances, it is perhaps not too surprising that the Bill is so deficient in so many ways. From the choice of five-year terms to the lack of any clarity on the issue of confidence Motions, the Bill looks what it is—a ridiculously hurried, unconsulted-on piece of rushed legislation, whose consequences, if it were passed unamended, might well be dire for our constitution. Surely our duty, as a revising House, is clear; we must do all we can to improve the Bill, to build up consensus around the House that says that the Bill in its present state is deeply unsatisfactory. The least the House can expect—and here I really am looking at the Minister—is that the Government remain open-minded to sensible changes. Not just Ministers in this House—I am sure they are open-minded to sensible changes—I mean the Government as a whole.
Having set out the Opposition Front Bench’s view, let me say, in case I should be accused of being a trifle negative, that the Second Reading has given rise to an excellent debate. It would have been surprising, given the expertise, experience and indeed wisdom of noble Lords who have spoken, if the debate had not been good. There have been some very powerful speeches on all sides of the House; it would be quite invidious to pick out any in particular. However, I do want to say that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was very impressive indeed. For those of us who have not heard him speak before, either in another place or elsewhere, it was a breath of fresh air to hear what he had to say. The House very much appreciated the way in which he said it and looks forward to hearing a lot from him in the months and years to come.
A whole number of issues have been raised but there are three I wish to concentrate on. The first is whether the practical effect of the Bill as drafted would be seriously to circumscribe a Prime Minister’s powers or whether the Bill allows, frankly, for a coach and horses to be driven through the principle of a fixed-term Parliament. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton and others too have dealt effectively with this issue. Having listened to nearly 30 speeches, no noble Lord has been brave enough to attempt any serious criticism of my noble and learned friend’s analysis of the Bill in this regard. It is sad but true that any consideration of how Prime Ministers are likely to act in the future should start from a fairly cynical viewpoint. If legislation allows Prime Ministers to behave badly then I am afraid to say that there will be occasions when they do behave badly. Mr Harper in Canada is no worse or better in that respect. As the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, said, any Act of Parliament based on this Bill would inevitably be stretched as far as it could be and then perhaps—and here I am speaking rather than the noble Lord—a little bit further too if the survival of a particular Prime Minister was in question.
Secondly, there is the issue of four or five years. That is a very significant issue, not a minor one, which goes to the heart of the Bill. We do not think that the Government have ever really even begun to explain why five years is to be preferred. The consensus, not universal of course, is that four years is to be preferred. I accept that the Liberal Democrat Benches have been loyal to a man and that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and also perhaps, on occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, have been in support of the Bill. No other Conservative was actually very supportive at all. Both Select Committees, in our House and in the other place, came out in favour of four years. Academic opinion seems overwhelmingly in favour of four years, yet the Government say five.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked us, the Labour Opposition, to adhere to the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. Perhaps he should ask his colleagues why they are not adhering to their commitment to four-year fixed Parliaments. We all know about the Liberal Democrat policy paper of 2007 in favour of a four-year fixed Parliament. Even more telling was David Howarth’s Private Member’s Bill, whose Second Reading was heard on 16 May 2008 in another place. That Bill was a model of brevity and simplicity: the kind of Bill that my noble friend Lady Gould was talking about when she complained about the complexity of this Bill.
From that Bill—remember, this was a 2007-08 Bill—it said, at Clause 1(1):
“The next general election shall take place on 7th May 2009”.
Clause 1(2) said:
“Each subsequent general election shall take place on the first Thursday in May in the fourth year after the previous general election”.
That is pretty simple and clear. When the Bill was published in December 2007, who supported David Howarth? It is a stellar list. It has Westminster glitterati of the highest order, who would grace any Oscar shortlist. Let me remind the House who supported that proposition by supporting that Bill in print. First, there was David Heath, now the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons. There were two who are now Cabinet Ministers: the right honourable Chris Huhne and the right honourable Danny Alexander both put their signatures to that Bill. There were two who are now junior Ministers, as I understand it, Ms Featherstone and Mr Burstow. Then there was the Colin Firth of the list, the Oscar winner himself who is now the Deputy Prime Minister, the right honourable Nick Clegg.
All those Members of another place put their name to a Bill that was clearly stating four-year fixed Parliaments. I pose the question: what has changed all their minds so that within three years they are voting for a five-year period, attacking a four-year period and arguing strongly for the five years. Not just one but all of them seem to have changed their minds simultaneously. Is it some sort of Pauline conversion on the road to Whitehall?
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord is having his bit of fun. I think he has come to the end of it now. It is of course a matter of whether noble Lords think four years or five years is fundamental or not. I understand that they do. Will the noble Lord now answer the basic question that the noble Lord asked: do he and his party still support the principle of fixed-term Parliaments?
Lord Bach
I will of course be more than happy to answer the noble Lord’s question. I was waiting for it. We have not changed our position on the Front Bench since the last election—an election, I remind the House, that we lost. We support fixed-term Parliaments. Thus we are doubly disappointed by this disaster of a Bill, which has been rushed through with no proper consultation—no real consultation at all—and thus got so many vital, important things entirely wrong. First, on five years instead of four and, secondly, on the no-confidence safety valve, as it is called. That is drafted in a completely unsatisfactory way. It is unclear and, indeed, may turn out to protect the power of a Prime Minister so that there is no point at all in a fixed-term Parliament in any event. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s query.
Lord Grocott
I wonder whether my noble friend will give way for what I hope he will think is a helpful suggestion. Although he is quite right in describing the Labour Party’s current position in the aftermath of a general election commitment, any prudent party, when it has lost a general election, looks again at the policies that were in the document that it put to the electorate. I strongly suggest that that would be a good move and that it might result in our deciding that the commitment to a fixed-term Parliament was not the election winner that some might have thought it was.
Lord Bach
My noble friend is certainly right in one regard; it was not an election winner. On the other hand, I understand that the main opposition party is quite rightly considering all its policies, bearing in mind that it is in opposition and is likely to be in opposition for a little while longer.
I had not quite finished my fun, so perhaps I should not have given way to the noble Lord opposite so quickly. I hope that it will not be ungallant to suggest that this simultaneous change of mind might have something to do with the aftermath of the 2010 general election and the need to have a short-term arrangement that has the best chance of sticking for five years. If that is what was intended, fair enough. Political parties are absolutely entitled to come together on whatever terms they like, but why is there a need to cover up this short-term political necessity with a Bill that will change our constitution for ever? Let me be fair. At least those distinguished Members of Parliament took a little time to change their minds, unlike the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister, who, as we have heard during the debate, suggested right in the middle of the election campaign that, far from fixed-term Parliaments, when a new Prime Minister took office there should be legislation insisting on a fresh general election within six months. I ask what has made him change his mind.
On this issue, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and, in my view, our Constitution Committee, got it right. The noble Lord talked about the biorhythms of our national politics. I think I understood what he meant, even if the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, did not. He said that five years does not capture it, and he seems to have got that precisely right. Our Constitution Committee dealt very thoroughly with this issue at paragraphs 62 and 63 of its report, from which I shall quote:
“Whilst acknowledging the case made by the Deputy Prime Minister for a five year term, nonetheless the majority of the Committee consider that a four year term should be adopted for any fixed-term Parliamentary arrangement at Westminster. In the view of the majority, the shift from a five year maximum to a five year norm would be inconsistent with the Government’s stated aim of making the legislature more accountable, inconsistent with existing constitutional practice and inconsistent with the practice of the devolved institutions and the clear majority of international legislatures”.
I say to that: game, set and match. The response so far to the Constitution Committee report is, by any test, very weak. To set out as part of that response a number of countries that have a five-year maximum is hardly the point.
My final point—and I am sorry that I have gone on for so long—is that many of the problems could have been solved if the Government had not rushed this legislation. It is such an obvious point and it has been made by many noble Lords, but it is worth repeating. At least, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, with the AV Bill, whatever we may have thought of it, the importance of 5 May—at least to the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition—gave some excuse and reason for rushing that legislation. In this Bill, what is the hurry? What is the rush? What is the excuse for having no consultation, no pre-legislative scrutiny, no Green or White Papers?
I hope that the noble and learned Lord will spend a little time explaining why it is necessary for this Bill to go through Parliament without any outside consultation. We are told that when the next piece of constitutional legislation comes along—the Lords reform Bill—there will be pre-legislative scrutiny and the full works will be brought out, and quite right, too, but if for that, why not for this? I could mention the large number of noble Lords who have raised this point in one way or another during the debate.
In Chapter 5 of its report, our Constitution Committee absolutely slaughtered, if I may use the expression, the Government’s arguments for this legislation. Of course, it did so in parliamentary language and absolutely appropriately. If noble Lords think I am being high minded about this, I am not. I was the Minister who received our Constitution Committee’s report on the CRaG Bill, and only that Bill got a worse press than this one from our very much respected Constitution Committee, so I sympathise with the noble and learned Lord. I know what it is like after such a Second Reading when the whole world—apart, of course, from the Liberal Democrats—has been against you. I know what it is like, but the Constitution Committee has been absolutely clear and I do not want to allow the agony to continue by quoting from the report. The Minister and others on the Front Bench know exactly what it says.
I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will agree that our Select Committee criticised the Bill in a powerful and fundamental way. It did not believe, first of all, that the case for fixed-term Parliaments had been made. It did not believe that the case for five years rather than four had been made, and it severely criticised the Government for not taking time to consult and think more about the Bill. It is a pretty comprehensive attack, and the response, which I know the House was grateful to receive before Second Reading, is laughable. The letter from the Minister was well meant, but it was making the very best of a pretty bad job.
I end by asking the Minister what the Government’s serious answers are to the criticisms made by the Select Committee and many noble Lords around the House today. Why the urgency for the Bill? Surely what should happen now is that the Government should take the Bill away, consult on it and come back with a proper and suitable Bill for our consideration. Surely our constitution is vital enough not to be the plaything of temporary politicians who are just a little too eager to get power and much, much too eager to keep it.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I join those who have indicated that this has been a very good debate. The House has had the benefit of the experience of many people, from academia and from the other place, who have taken part in votes of confidence—or no confidence—in times past. I certainly wish to join many of your Lordships who have expressed their congratulations to my noble friend Lord Cormack on a notable and distinguished maiden speech. He said that he had been in favour in principle in fixed-term Parliaments for some time. I think that I would describe his speech as that of a critical friend. I served in the other place with my noble friend, I think on a sub-committee of the Administration and Accommodation Committee, which he chaired. Perhaps its most significant task when I was on it was to identify those who would appear in the painting of the House of Commons in session in about 1985 or 1986. That chairmanship was just part of the contribution which my noble friend gave to the other place, not only a concern for its fabric, but a concern for, and a passionate commitment to, its workings. That is the experience that he brings to this place and we look forward to his contributions in the future.
Congratulations are also in order to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. Although he said that he was a former Whip, I understand that he has recently been appointed to the Whips’ Bench opposite and I congratulate him on that very rapid rise, which no doubt reflects his abilities as a Whip. That is meant to be a compliment.
We have heard a variety of views, from those who are opposed in principle to this, through to those who are very supportive of it and to those who are supportive of it, but want to see things done in different ways. There are those who have indicated that they do not wish any change whatever. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated a level of satisfaction with a constitution that he did not think needed changing. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe expressed the view that he was getting somewhat sceptical about constitutional change, but I am grateful to a number of my noble friends who indicated their support in principle. My noble friend Lady Stowell indicated that it was not necessarily a silver bullet, but nevertheless was an important contribution to try to revitalise our political system.
My noble friend Lord Dobbs had a slightly interesting, but very practical, explanation as to why he supported this, not least in terms of party finance. That may not seem the most obvious reason why one would support it, but for those of us who think back to the debates we had on the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill, the point was made on more than one occasion that political parties oil the wheel of democracy and my noble friend made an important point. Certainly, under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, there is a regulation of national campaign spending for 12 months before the actual date of poll. Therefore, it is probably preferable that the parties can have a fixed idea of when that is likely to be, rather than have to guess.
This is important because it lends that stability. It particularly lends stability, as my noble friend Lord Marks said, on occasions when there is a coalition Government. It allows Governments and Parliaments to plan for the long term. I take issue with those who say that it does not give the Prime Minister an advantage. Our late colleague Lord Holme of Cheltenham, who chaired the Constitution Select Committee with distinction at one point, asked as long ago as 1991, in words which my noble friend quoted, what people would think about,
“a race in which the Prime Minister is allowed to approach it with his running shoes in one hand and his starting pistol in the other”.—[Official Report, 22/ 5/1991; col. 245.]
The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, although opposed to what is happening and sceptical about the arguments about the Prime Minister, also made the point about the Prime Minister being able to use Dissolution as a threat. It is not only about occasions when Dissolution has been sought by a Prime Minister, it is often about occasions when it was not sought, but was there nevertheless.
I disagree with those who think that this is a shift to the Executive. I believe that neutralising the threat that the Prime Minister has to hang Dissolution over his Back-Benchers may indeed strengthen Back-Benchers, rather than weaken them. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, and my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, took the view that the Bill does not do what I claim it does; namely, that we believe it should transfer power from the Executive to Parliament.
I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, acknowledged that it was the Prime Minister giving up a prerogative that he has had the power to exercise for many years. I certainly agree with my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising that the objective must be to shift power from the Executive to Parliament. That is why I believe the Bill helps. This is a Bill that gives Parliament, not the Prime Minister or the Executive, the opportunity to decide when there should be an early general election. That is because of the flexibility, which I will come back to. No longer will the Executive be able to use the threat of a Dissolution against Parliament or their own Back-Benchers.
It is worth remembering that there have quite properly been references to the report of our own Constitution Select Committee. I also remind the House that the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee of the other place, in its report on the Bill, said:
“It is questionable whether a Prime Minister should be able to use his position in government to give him and his party an electoral advantage by choosing to hold the next general election to a schedule that best suits him. We therefore acknowledge the principle behind the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill”.
My noble friend Lord Norton asked about public demand. I am the first to say that it is not the question that comes up first at hustings. I am sure it was not the issue that lost the Labour Party the election last May. However, as the Constitution Select Committee report points out, the issue has been on the constitutional reform agenda for the past 20 years. The report refers to a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research in 1991; a commitment in the Labour Party manifesto in 1992; Private Members’ Bills, which have been referred to, in 2001 and 2008; Liberal Democrat policy documents; and the Liberal Democrat manifestos of 1992 and 1997. As my noble friend Lady Stowell indicated, an opinion poll from 2009—at the height of the expenses scandal—showed considerable public support for the idea of a fixed-term Parliament. As far back as 1998, Professor Blackburn, giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place, gave an argument as to why a fixed-term Parliament should be an issue that the committee might look at. He said:
“But if I could finally select just one reform of election law which does carry popular backing and probably also substantial parliamentary support. This is our system of General Election timing which is an extremely important matter in electioneering terms and which clearly operates to the advantage of the government of the day … The trick is to avoid those times when you are unpopular so far as you can. I believe this Committee”—
that is, the Home Affairs Select Committee—
“should examine the case for fixed intervals between general elections”.
I listened to and take on board the criticisms regarding the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny. As I think I indicated when we dealt with the previous Bill, it is very difficult to have pre-legislative scrutiny of a Bill in a first Session. Noble Lords will remember that the original proposal was to have a binding resolution. That was not proceeded with. It was suggested by some of those who have contributed to the debate that it was questionable whether it would be binding. I certainly do not accept the view that was put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong and Lord Elystan-Morgan, that the simplest thing would be for the Prime Minister to make a declaration. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, then qualified that by saying, “unless in exceptional circumstances we could not go on to 7 May 2015”. That is the point. It would continue the possible uncertainty. One of the reasons for legislating is to make it clear that that would be the position: there will be an election on 7 May 2015, unless the trigger mechanisms come into play.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am trying to cover quite a lot of ground. I hope that I can do justice to the many important contributions that were made during the debate.
I welcome the fact that the Constitution Committee will look at the process for constitutional reform. It occurred to me that if a Parliament could not do much in the way of legislation in its first Session—it is not just constitutional Bills that call for pre-legislative scrutiny—there would not be much time to do much business at all, particularly since a four-year fixed term of Parliament has also been advocated. There will always be that tension as regards legislation that is introduced in the first year of a Parliament. We look forward to the Constitution Committee’s report on the process that it will recommend for constitutional legislation.
I had not anticipated my noble friend Lord Dobbs asking why the election should be held in May as opposed to June or October. The simple answer is that the most recent elections have been held in May, with the exception of the 2001 election when the foot and mouth epidemic occurred. There is always a difficulty with finding other times that do not clash with traditional holiday periods. However, my noble friend has posed an important challenge and we want to reflect on it. I also note that the annual canvass to update the electoral register takes place in October in Great Britain, so that may not be an appropriate time to place yet a further burden on electoral registration officers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked whether there could be an extension of the two months beyond the extension. The answer to that is no. My noble friend Lord Rennard asked about primary legislation in this context. I believe that it is appropriate to introduce the relevant measure by order as the latter would have to be passed by both Houses. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, asked what we anticipate might happen. I have asked myself that question. I am not sure that I have an answer but I think that one could anticipate receiving a lot of criticism if one was seen to be making provision for the Government to extend their life, not to shorten it. I have no doubt that if we did not have this measure something would happen that no one could have foreseen and we would wish that we had had it. In the case of the Scottish Parliament, the Presiding Officer has the power to vary the election date by one month either way and I think that in the case of the National Assembly for Wales, the Secretary of State has the power to vary the date by a short period either way—although I cannot remember exactly by how much. The measure that we are discussing has been informed by those practices.
My noble friend Lord Norton asked why Clause 2(2)(a) refers to “a motion” whereas Clause 2(2)(b) refers to “any motion”. I think that “any motion” was chosen because it is followed by,
“expressing confidence in any Government”.
It is clearly a drafting preference. We think that “any motion” or “a motion” would have the same effect. I shall certainly contemplate that matter further, but I think that it is a drafting preference rather than having any significant constitutional importance.
The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, referred to resetting the clock. If there has been an election and a Government have been returned with a substantial majority and a mandate, they should have the opportunity to see that through for a full term. If the clock was not reset, the electorate might find it odd if, having returned a Government with a significant majority, they were then asked some 12 months later to vote again.
I have noted the points made about parliamentary privilege, which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, raised, as did my noble friend Lord Cormack. I am sure that we will want to look at that issue in Committee but I certainly share the analysis of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, that the provisions here would ensure that the courts would not interfere in what we believe is very much the space of Parliament.
The key issue is whether Parliaments should last for four or five years. As my noble friend Lord Rennard indicated, there is no absolutely right or wrong answer in that regard—it is a judgment. I indicated that the longer period allows the electorate to make its judgment—my noble friend Lord Marks commented on this—on the policies of a Government as they are seen to be working out in detail over time. I also believe that it allows a Government and Parliament longer to plan their activities. I cannot accept the argument that inevitably the situation has arisen under our present system whereby the fifth year has tended to be a bit of a lame-duck year and that that would necessarily follow if we had fixed-term Parliaments. As has been pointed out by a number of contributors, the fifth year has tended to be a lame-duck year because the Government in office did not think that they could win by cutting and running after four years. Therefore, it has been against a background where they have probably been at a disadvantage anyway.
The point was made by my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart and by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, and I think indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—although I think he was arguing this point in the context of arguing against a five-year term—that the final year, even though it would not be under the same sort of handicap as perhaps 1976-77 or 2009-10, nevertheless would be under a handicap. Even under a fixed-term Parliament, there would be the looming shadow of the forthcoming election. The last year is not as effective a year as the earlier years of a Parliament. That is why I believe that it would be the same in the fourth year of a four-year fixed-term Parliament or the fifth year of a five-year fixed-term Parliament. A four-year fixed-term Parliament therefore would only really allow three years for the Government to put a substantial part of their programme through. I have no doubt whatsoever we will come back to this.
I also just want to say one point. I cannot wholly accept that under a five-year term accountability disappears in the fifth year. I think those of us who have fought elections and have been elected know only too well as the election comes up accountability is a very, very strong thing indeed. When one is about to go and face one’s constituents accountability is very effective.
Another key issue, to which I am sure we will return in later stages of the Bill, is the mechanism. I absolutely endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said about there being a spectrum from total flexibility, which you might say we have got at the moment with an end point, a maximum turn with total flexibility and on to rigidity. I do not think that anyone was arguing in this debate for total rigidity. There is a consensus among supporters of the fixed-term Parliament over there being some degree of flexibility; if there is a political imperative or the Government completely fail there must be a mechanism for triggering an election. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said that the Constitution Committee broadly endorsed the two mechanisms for triggering an election set out in the Bill but I have listened to the concerns that have been raised. A number of historic examples have been given but it is always difficult to say what would have happened in the past under a future system. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, acknowledged this. Edward Heath in 1974 obviously wanted a dissolution. The Opposition would have agreed and they would have got the two-thirds majority for an election. Likewise, the position in 1924 was also raised by, I think, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon in an intervention on my opening speech.
In January 1924 the Conservative Government resigned after a defeat on the Queen’s Speech address but that did not trigger a general election. It actually triggered the formation of Ramsay MacDonald’s Administration. The draft Cabinet manual which was published in December last year indicates that at the moment the convention is that the Prime Minister either advises Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament or the Government resign and a new Government from the existing Chamber can be found, as indeed happened in, I think, January 1924.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Am I right in saying that the election took place at the beginning of 1924 and Baldwin’s Government failed to win on the first Queen’s Speech and that is why we moved straight from Stanley Baldwin to Ramsay MacDonald? It would have been impractical to have gone straight to an election at that point.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Indeed, and that was the point that I think the noble and learned Lord raised in his speech. What happens in the first Queen’s Speech after an election? I think unless people are prepared to have election after election after election or the potential for that there would be an opportunity for another Government to be formed. The draft Cabinet manual published for consultation in December last year indicated that too. There would either be a dissolution or another Administration would be formed. It is that dual possibility that the Bill seeks to address.
I listened carefully to those who argued that the wording as to what constitutes a vote of no confidence needs tightening up. In response to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place, the Government indicated a willingness to listen to suggestions on how that might be done. Those suggestions were not forthcoming during the Bill’s progress through the other place. I have certainly thought hard about it and wonder whether trying to be too specific might cause more problems than if one leaves the wording as it is. I know that my noble friend Lord Norton has views on this matter which it will be interesting to hear and explore in Committee. However, one recognises an elephant when one sees it. If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is generally a duck. There is an issue here, but the more I have thought about it, the more I have found that trying to find a solution might cause more problems than leaving it, as it is at the moment, to the Speaker’s discretion. If it is not to be the Speaker, I do not think that it would be appropriate, given what has been said, for a member of the Executive to sign. I do not believe that leaving it as it is would cause the difficulties that have been suggested.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, talked about manipulation. The Constitution Committee indicated that the position is indeed open to abuse, stating:
“We conclude that, if the Bill is passed, it would not be possible to prevent a government using a vote of no confidence to bring about an early election. To do so would be seen by many as an abuse of the Act's provisions and would undermine the fixed-term principle”.
I accept that that is possible, but I believe that it would be identified as an abuse. It would be a matter of politics. As far as I can see, the only way in which one can stop any kind of abuse is to have a rigid scheme, which no one apparently supports. That is why I have difficulty with those who have advocated that we keep things simple and that a simple majority of one in a vote of no confidence should be enough to trigger Dissolution. That would make the position worse in terms of the potential manipulation that the noble and learned Lord suggested could happen under the Bill. It would be even more likely to happen under a Bill which allowed for a simple majority of one in a vote of no confidence. It could be much more readily arranged.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That is not the position, because the Bill provides for a 14-day period following a vote of no confidence in which it could be seen whether another Government could be formed. That is not the same thing as going to the Palace the morning after a vote of confidence on a majority of one. If manipulation is possible under this Bill—unless the fixed terms are rigid, it is impossible to avoid—the opportunity for manipulation under a Dissolution on a simple majority of one is even greater. However, the important point is identified by the Constitution Committee: it would be seen as an abuse. That would be a matter for political debate and political comment and the electorate are the ultimate arbiters.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I said that that was what is envisaged because the proposition with which one has to deal is that the Government of the day with a majority procure a vote of no confidence in themselves—I have in mind the Heath example, where the Opposition do not agree. If that is the position, the Government of the day will also be able to stop anything happening in the following 14 days.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it makes it much more of a process and an abuse of that process would be seen. However, as we indicated in our response to the report of the Constitution Committee, we accept that the scenario described would be possible, but, as the committee pointed out, it would be a clear abuse of the Act’s provisions and we do not believe that that outcome would be likely. Such an abuse has been possible in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh National Assembly—there would be a 28-day period rather than a 14-day period following a vote of no confidence—but it simply has not happened because I think that people recognise the consequences of trying to manipulate a situation to bring that about.
The noble Lord, Lord Bach, helpfully confirmed in his winding-up that the Labour Party is still committed—although not entirely with the support of everyone behind him—to the idea of fixed-term Parliaments, but he objected to the way it might be done. I have no doubt that the Labour Party gave this very careful thought and I am sure that in Committee we will see the benefit of that thought in the kind of the amendments that he tables to address this. It is identified by anyone who supports a fixed term that there has to be an element of flexibility in how you do it.
I conclude by acknowledging, as have my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Dobbs, and many others, including the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in his winding-up, the importance of scrutiny and the important work that we will do at the ensuing stages of this Bill. It is quite clear that there is a lot of meat for the House to get its teeth into. I look forward to engaging with that, and on that note I urge the House to support this Bill and give it a Second Reading.