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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
1. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
6. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
9. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
Through the Health and Social Care Bill, we will give local authorities the powers and resources they need to improve the health and well-being of their local populations and to improve the health of the poorest fastest. To support planning by local authorities, I will later this year announce shadow allocations for 2012-13 for the local ring-fenced public health budget.
Steve Rotheram
Will the Secretary of State explain whether reforms outlined in the public health White Paper “Healthy lives, Healthy people” allow for a new formula for public health spending that sufficiently compensates deprived areas that have higher health needs, such as Liverpool?
Mr Lansley
Yes, it is certainly our intention that that should happen. The consultation on the structure of the health premium, which does not close until 31 March, is specifically designed to secure responses so that we can design the health premium to support local authorities in delivering the greatest increment in health improvement among those populations that currently have the poorest health. We will also continue to get advice from the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation so that that is technically supported by the best advice.
Luciana Berger
Will the Secretary of State give us more detail on how local authorities will be incentivised to innovate in public health, given that hospitals rather than councils will benefit financially from better public health?
Mr Lansley
In the first instance, local authorities have the direct incentive that they represent the people who elect them and so will want to use the public health resources available to them to deliver the best possible public health services to their local population. The intention of our proposals, which has been very strongly supported, not least by the British Medical Association, the Faculty of Public Health, the Local Government Association and others, is to put public health resources alongside the range of responsibilities of local authorities which will have the greatest impact on the overall determinants of health: education, employment, housing, environment, transport and the like.
Nick Smith
Will the Secretary of State assure us that the forthcoming tobacco plan will be both comprehensive and targeted to ensure that smoking rates are reduced? Will he promote what works, such as the use of smokers group help sessions, which the Public Accounts Committee found to be very effective, and will he limit the recruitment of new smokers by banning tobacco displays in shops?
Mr Lansley
In the public health White Paper, which was just mentioned, the Government committed to publish a tobacco control plan, and we will present that to the House shortly.
Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
A public health function which is funded by the Department of Health is carried out by the charity Marie Stopes. The last accounts available for this registered charity are from 2009 and, upon inquiry, it appears that no further accounts will be available for scrutiny until October 2011. Does the Secretary of State think that that is transparent? Is it good enough?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. As a registered charity, Marie Stopes is of course under an obligation to follow the rules and guidelines established by the Charity Commission on such matters. To that extent, these are not directly matters for me.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
On international women’s day, what assurances can the Secretary of State give about the protection of reproductive and sexual services within the new framework?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will know that through the plans set out in the Health and Social Care Bill the commissioning of those services will be the responsibility respectively of the NHS commissioning board and local authorities. Through local authorities, and as part of our public health responsibilities, we will be looking to promote good sexual health and high-quality support for people who need assistance with reproduction.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has referred to the ring-fencing of the money that is going to be given to local authorities. Will he advise the House how long he expects that ring-fencing to last? Is it until such time as local authorities can be trusted to spend the money on public health?
Mr Lansley
The purpose of the ring-fencing is not to force local authorities to spend money on public health that they would not otherwise spend, but to be very clear that that NHS money is in the hands of local authorities to deliver health gain. We want that transparency, and we want to link those resources directly to the achievement of the public health outcomes that we set out in draft in our consultation on the public health outcomes framework. As there is that separate intention to deliver overall public health outcomes, linked to the local health improvement plans, we wanted to be clear that those resources would be deployed for that purpose. But local authorities will have very wide discretion about how they deliver those services locally to secure that health gain.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that the public could be forgiven for worrying that things will get worse, rather than better, in relation to public health? That is true of his health reforms across the piece, partly because, as we know, some local authorities are already cutting public expenditure given the budget cuts that they have to make, but also because of the difficulty in effectively ring-fencing the new funds that will be given to local authorities in due course.
Mr Lansley
In the first instance, I am not sure how the hon. Lady can argue that there is a difficulty with ring-fencing public health budgets, as they are not and will not be formally in the hands of local authorities until 2013-14. Clearly, there are no such practical issues at the moment. Further, she should have reflected the simple fact that we are already working between the NHS and local authorities to deliver much greater co-ordination in health, public health and social care. For example, this financial year, because we made savings in the Department of Health’s budget, we were able to provide, through primary care trusts, £162 million extra for the purpose of delivering improvements in social care in local authorities. Local authorities are having to deal with substantial reductions in their formula grant and some reductions in their spending power, but the NHS and social care are getting a substantial increase in support, both from the formula grant of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and specifically through the NHS.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
2. What steps he plans to take to reduce cancer mortality rates in deprived communities.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
“Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer” sets out our plans to reduce mortality rates by tackling preventable incidence and improving survival rates for those diagnosed with cancer. As we make it clear in the strategy, we cannot deliver the reductions without a focus on poorer socio-economic groups.
Chris Leslie
I wonder whether the Minister has seen the statistic that 70% of people with cancer can lose half their income during the course of their disease. Obviously, those who are least well-off will be hit the most. Would it not be best therefore for the Government to heed the warning from Macmillan Cancer Support and others that the Welfare Reform Bill proposal to end abruptly the eligibility for employment support allowance after 12 months is both unfair and arbitrary, particularly for those who have the fewest resources, as they try to recover from cancer?
Paul Burstow
That sounds more like a Second Reading speech on the Welfare Reform Bill than a Health oral question; but of course, we listen carefully to what Macmillan says. We work closely with it on many aspects of our cancer strategy, but it is also important to bear in mind that we need to ensure that people who are suffering from cancer receive the benefits to which they are entitled in a timely fashion, and we are working on that with colleagues from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Mr Speaker, you might remember in the last Parliament that a young constituent of mine—a five-year-old boy—had neuroblastoma and that his likelihood of surviving that rare cancer was very small, but thanks to the intervention of Ann Keen in the last Parliament and working together, I am pleased to say that it has just been announced that that little boy is clear of cancer. Will the Minister comment on whether, as I hope, it will not be so difficult in this Parliament to get treatment for such cases?
Paul Burstow
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I share his satisfaction and pleasure at the successful treatment that his constituent’s son received. Certainly, on cancer survival rates and cancer outcomes, we need to make sure not just that we are delivering for the most typical cancers, but that we have good processes that ensure early diagnosis of all cancers.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
3. What recent representations he has received on his proposed reforms of the NHS.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
11. What recent representations he has received on his proposed reforms of the NHS.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
The Government received more than 6,000 responses to the White Paper consultations. As a result, we have significantly strengthened both our approach to implementation and our proposals in the Health and Social Care Bill. We continue to engage widely across the health sector on our modernisation plans.
Mr Hepburn
Is not it only a Tory Government who can bring a system into the NHS whereby doctors get paid more for giving less treatment to their patients? What does the Minister have to say to the chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, who described the plans for the quality premium as “appallingly unethical”?
Tony Lloyd
The Minister will know that a concern about the Government’s health policies is the increased role for the private sector. He will also be aware that at the Christie hospital in Manchester 150 jobs have been transferred from the NHS to the private contractor on that site. Will he give the people of the north-west an absolute guarantee that we will not have twin-track cancer treatment at Christie’s and that there will not be a fast track for the private patient and a slow track for those on the national health?
Mr Burns
I can categorically give that assurance to the hon. Gentleman, because there is no two-track system. Where the private sector may provide care, it is to help to raise standards. I imagine he would agree with that, because he fought the general election on this manifesto commitment:
“Patients requiring elective care will have the right…to choose from any provider who meets NHS standards of quality at”
the NHS level.
Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how many representations the Government have received arguing the case in favour of the PCTs in the structure that we inherited at last year’s general election? If, as I suspect, the answer to that question is not very many, is that not because there was a shared commitment between this Government and the previous Government to introduce genuine clinical engagement to the commissioning process?
Mr Burns
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. I can go a little further and say that, to the best of my knowledge, we received no representations to keep the PCTs. He is right when he talks about what the previous Government were seeking to do, and we want commissioning to go to the local level—to GP commissioners, who have the best knowledge of the needs of their patients. The fact that we have so many pathfinders shows that GPs are signing up voluntarily, with enthusiasm, to take part in the scheme.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
A consultation is under way on the reconfiguration of children’s heart surgery units. Last week, a number of colleagues from both sides of the House met a number of parents who are campaigning to keep the unit at Leeds general infirmary. Will my right hon. Friend confirm when he will announce his preferred option and what processes will be gone through to reach that decision?
Mr Burns
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who was present at last Thursday’s Adjournment debate. He will know that the proposals, the options put together and the consultation, which we have just begun, have been organised at arm’s length from Ministers by the joint committee of PCTs. As I said on Thursday, I trust that he will forgive me if I say that it would be totally inappropriate for me to comment, because that might be seen as trying to influence or prejudge the ultimate outcome.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Before the election, the Secretary of State went up and down the country promising that his NHS reforms would save local A and E and maternity services, but on 1 March, during consideration in Committee of the Health and Social Care Bill, when I asked the Minister whether London’s A and E departments would be on the safe list of designated services that will not close, he said that
“I suspect the answer is that no…it will not be a designated service…there is a significant number of A and E services in London. There would not be a need to designate them”.––[Official Report, Health and Social Care Public Bill Committee, 1 March 2011; c. 349.]
Will the Minister now give the House a clear and simple answer to a simple question: will every London A and E remain open under this Government—yes or no?
Mr Burns
Mr Speaker, if you had had the opportunity to read the exchange in Committee, you would understand that the hon. Lady’s question is not factually correct. She asked me figuratively what would happen in an urban area as compared with a rural area, and as I explained three times during further interventions from her, my answer was illustrative, not definitive, because that would have been premature. She is trying to scaremonger—causing fear with something that she knows is inherently not true.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
4. What recent steps his Department has taken to reduce the incidence of MRSA and clostridium difficile in hospitals.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
This Government have made it clear that the NHS must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to health care-associated infections. We reinforced this in the “NHS Operating Framework 2011-12”, requiring the NHS to prioritise delivery of the MRSA and the new C. difficile objectives. In 2009-10 C. difficile infections decreased by 29% and MRSA decreased by 35% on the previous year.
Andrew Rosindell
I thank the Minister for his reply, but will he tell me specifically what action the Government are taking to deal with MRSA and C. diff, particularly in the Queen’s hospital in Romford and throughout the Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust? Will he assure the House that any such case will be made public by the hospital trust and not kept quiet?
Mr Burns
I can assure my hon. Friend that the performance at his trust on health care-associated infections is unacceptable. We have set demanding objectives for reducing both those infections. In 2011-12, his trust’s MRSA objective requires a reduction of 58%, one of the highest reductions in the country. Its C. difficile objective requires it to deliver a 24% reduction. The consequence of non-achievement is an option to withhold part of the contract payments, and I can categorically assure my hon. Friend that there is no question of keeping this information or developments secret. We require weekly publication of figures.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
As the Secretary of State knows, the north Cumbrian health economy is in crisis. GP commissioning is providing £30 million less for acute hospital services in north Cumbria this year than it did last year. This has resulted in the trust being unable to seek foundation trust status, and it is seeking a merger which minutes leaked to me by consultants say could lead to the closure of the West Cumberland hospital. Will the Secretary of State meet me as a matter of urgency so that we can collectively find how we can get the hospital out of that hole? Will he also consider a delay to foundation trust status to give the hospital trust more time to get back on its feet?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Minister of State. My sense is that the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) is seeking a meeting. The Minister is perfectly at liberty to say more if he wishes, or if he does not think it is worth it, he does not have to do so.
Mr Speaker
Wise owl is the kindest description that the hon. Gentleman has ever offered of me. I shall take it that he means it. It’s the best I’ll get.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
5. What recent progress he has made on the introduction of GP commissioning consortia.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
Last week I announced the third wave of general practice-led pathfinder consortia. I am sure my hon. Friend will be delighted that the Nuneaton and Bedworth pathfinder was announced as part of that. There are now 177 groups of GP practices covering in total 35 million people across England, piloting the future general practice-led commissioning arrangements. I expect further coverage in the coming months. Pathfinders are playing an increasing role in commissioning care for patients, so more and more people will benefit from clinical leadership in planning their care.
Mr Lansley
Yes, I can. Consortia will be able to reinvest any savings they make from their commissioning budgets for patients into improving patient care and health outcomes for patients for whom they are responsible. We have also proposed that consortia should receive a quality premium based on the outcomes achieved for patients, similar at a consortium level to the quality and outcomes framework for individual practices. That will incentivise the consortium as a whole to deliver improving outcomes for patients.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Some Government Members have supported the Government’s proposals for GP consortia because they believe that hospitals in their constituencies will be protected from closure, but yesterday’s leaked letter from the Foundation Trust Network to the Department of Health proves them wrong. It warns that financial stress is threatening the organisational survival of some foundation trusts. Now that they know that their hospitals are in danger, will the Secretary of State tell us all which faceless bureaucrats will be closing our hospitals and what extra powers, if any, local communities will have to stop them?
Mr Lansley
That will be the leak that took place when the head of the Foundation Trust Network gave it to the BBC.
The hon. Lady might not be very experienced in these matters, but she will know that at this time of year, in anticipation of the new financial year, hospitals tell their local primary care trusts how much money they would like to have, but that is not the same as the amount of money available in the whole system. That is part of the contract negotiations. She should also know that the necessity to deliver efficiency savings and redesign clinical services will mean that hospitals need to deliver 4% efficiency gains year on year, right across the NHS.
Mr Lansley
It will not be 6.5%, because things need to change so that efficiencies can be achieved within hospitals. That much is absolutely clear, and we have been clear about that. It does not threaten the future of hospitals, but incentivises to improve the design of clinical services and improve care for patients, providing more accessible care in the right place and at the right time.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
7. What steps his Department is taking to improve outcomes for cancer patients.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to improve NHS cancer services.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
13. What steps he is taking to improve NHS cancer services.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
14. What steps he is taking to improve NHS cancer services.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
17. What steps he is taking to improve NHS cancer services.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
We published our cancer strategy in January, which set out a range of actions to improve cancer outcomes and cancer services. We set out our plans to improve earlier diagnosis, access to screening, treatment and patient experience of care.
Stephen Phillips
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. He and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be aware of the concerns expressed by a number of GPs across the country, including in my constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham, about the pace of reform in the NHS. What assurances can he give the House that GP consortia will continue to have access to the expertise they need to commission effective cancer services?
Paul Burstow
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that question, because part of that pace is, of course, due to the fact that a substantial part of the country is now covered by pathfinder GP consortia, many of which are actively engaging with their colleagues in cancer networks and developing the expertise and experience that will be essential in taking forward their commissioning responsibilities. We have already made it clear that funding will be available in the coming year for the commissioning networks for cancer and that after that it will be a matter for the NHS commissioning board.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Cancer specialists at Peterborough City hospital tell me that they are prevented from prescribing drugs to needy patients, even after accreditation by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, as a result of the necessity for further approval by their local primary care trusts. Will the Minister undertake to tackle that bureaucratic delay, as it is having a significant impact on clinical outcomes in my constituency?
Paul Burstow
There are several aspects to my hon. Friend’s question. One is that we need to see much more commissioning for outcomes in cancer services. We must also ensure that full advantage is taken of the cancer drugs fund. I would be happy to look at any specific details of the case he has mentioned if he cares to write to me.
Jessica Lee
Does my hon. Friend agree that an important part of improving cancer care in this country is supporting the excellent palliative and respite care wards, such as Oakwell ward in Ilkeston community hospital in my constituency? It would be remiss of me, as the daughter of a nurse, not also to ask him to pay tribute to the nursing staff who work in that important area.
Paul Burstow
First, I will take the opportunity to pay that tribute to the excellent and hard work of clinicians in providing invaluable support to people affected by cancer. My hon. Friend is also right to refer to the importance of respite care for families. As part of the end-of-life strategy that the Government are taking forward, we are looking to improve palliative care services and inquiring into the possibility of a per-patient funding mechanism to cover the costs of these services.
Rehman Chishti
Given the Minister’s commitment to improving patient experience, and the significant learnings from the national cancer patient survey, will he ensure that from now on the survey will be conducted annually?
Paul Burstow
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to that survey, which has produced invaluable data. More than 65,000 patients took part in the 2010 survey, and it is proving to be an invaluable tool in enabling trusts and commissioners to identify areas where there is scope for improvement locally. The cancer strategy that we published in January commits us to repeating such a patient experience survey, and we are exploring the options at the moment.
Steve Baker
What is the Government’s policy in relation to those charities that provide indispensable services to cancer patients and their families? I have in mind, in particular, Macmillan and Marie Curie.
Paul Burstow
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to describe the contribution of Macmillan, other cancer charities and, indeed, charities in the health sector more generally as indispensable. I recently had the pleasure of visiting Macmillan’s headquarters, where I did an online chat with a number of cancer sufferers and their families and saw the helplines and other support services that it provides. In our cancer strategy, we are very clear that such charities have an invaluable role to play.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Plymouth and neighbouring Cornwall, a former objective 1 area, suffer from enormous deprivation. Will the Minister therefore do all he can to ensure that those communities benefit from Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust’s much hoped-for CyberKnife technology, and that its benefits for cancer patients are felt not just in London, but more widely in other regions?
Paul Burstow
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, and she is absolutely right: that technology is invaluable. We want to ensure that it is available to the patients, and the tariff structures need to ensure that it is properly supported. She is right also that issues of equality in the service are key, and that is why we have maintained this Government’s commitment to supporting the NHS constitution and its commitment to promote equality in the system.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
What assessments has the Minister made of the work of academics, such as Robert Putnam, who claim that one of the biggest influences on health outcomes and recovery is social cohesion within a neighbourhood, friendship groups and families? If the Minister has made an assessment, is he putting forward any policies that will help to expand that area?
Paul Burstow
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Indeed, the importance of family and social networks is a key component of the vision for social care, which we set out in November. Importantly, social care can support those networks through support for family carers.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
Queen Elizabeth hospital in my constituency provides excellent cancer care for the people not just of Birmingham, but of the west midlands. Following a freedom of information request by Unison, it has become clear that the hospital faces a 17%—or £22.5 million—cut in its funding from primary care trusts. How can the Minister say that cancer care will not be compromised if we have cuts on that scale?
Paul Burstow
First, there has been a 3% average increase in the funding that is available to PCTs, and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in answer to an earlier question, we are currently in that process of negotiation between hospital trusts and PCTs. It remains to be seen where the final figures will settle, but the money is in the system: the Government are committed to putting £10.7 billion extra in the system—something that the Labour party actually opposed.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
As someone whose mother died of cancer, no one needs to tell me how important cancer is within the NHS, but it is noticeable that nine out of 13 questions asked by Conservative Members are about cancer; it seems to be the only part of the NHS which the Government are happy to talk about. But cancer cannot be taken in isolation from the rest of the NHS, when there is a massive reorganisation costing billions of pounds which only one in four GPs thinks will actually improve the service. How can that possibly involve doing the best for cancer patients?
Paul Burstow
Again, I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is trying to re-run the Second Reading of, in this case, the Health and Social Care Bill, but in fact this Government are committed to seeing improvements across the board. That is why in the NHS outcomes framework we do not just talk about cancer, we identify other areas as well. If hon. Members table the questions, I am certainly happy to answer them.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is fond of making unfavourable comparisons between European and UK health outcomes, but recent research shows that we are doing much better than the picture he portrays. Independent research has borne that out. Concerns have also been raised about the impact of his NHS reorganisation on cancer networks. Sarah Woolnough of Cancer Research UK says:
“One of our concerns is to ensure that we do not lose the expertise that we have been developing.”––[Official Report, Health and Social Care Public Bill Committee, 10 February 2011; c. 116, Q227.]
Under this Government, however, patients are already waiting longer than six weeks for diagnostic tests, many of which are for cancer. In fact, the numbers have doubled, and that is according to the Department’s own figures. Can I ask the Minister why?
Paul Burstow
On the hon. Gentleman’s last point, the first thing to say is that average waiting times have gone down, but beyond that, he is right to identify the need to achieve earlier diagnosis. That is one of the reasons performance in this country on cancer survival has not been as good in comparison with other European countries. That is why, in the outcomes strategy that we published in January, we made it clear that we would put in an extra £450 million over the next four years to fund the additional diagnostic procedures directly available to GPs so that they can make those tests available to their patients.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
8. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the number of care home beds available in the north-east over the comprehensive spending review period.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
Local councils are responsible for ensuring that there is sufficient residential care provision to meet the needs of their populations. I understand from the Care Quality Commission that the number of care home places in the north-east has risen substantially and steadily in recent years.
Chi Onwurah
A recent report from Bupa predicts a shortfall of 100,000 in the provision of care home beds nationally because of the cuts and because of our ageing population. That will obviously impact on hospital beds. How will the Minister prevent that from impacting on health care in the north-east if he is not going to ring-fence the social care budget?
Paul Burstow
First, let me re-emphasise that we know, on the basis of independent assessments that have been carried out, that across England there is a surplus of 50,000 care home places. As regards the provision of care home places and the funding of social care, we have committed to an extra £2 billion going into the system by 2014, half through local government and half directly via the NHS, to ensure that social care services receive support; and just this year, an extra £162 million will go to local authorities to support them in their social care activities.
Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)
12. What progress he is making in reducing mixed-sex accommodation in the NHS.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
Mixed-sex accommodation breaches patients’ privacy and decency. The number of breaches is now coming down, but there are still far too many. That is why, from April, hospitals will be fined £250 for every breach of mixed-sex accommodation. That money will be reinvested back into patient care.
Lorraine Fullbrook
I welcome the Government’s move to increase accountability to patients by publishing all occurrences of a patient being placed in mixed-sex accommodation. Does my hon. Friend agree that this move, with the prospect of hospitals being fined £250 per patient placed in mixed-sex accommodation, shows that this Government are tackling a problem that the previous Government claimed was impossible to solve?
Anne Milton
We are taking this extremely seriously. I should point out to my hon. Friend that there should be no exceptions to providing high-quality care, which includes high standards of respect for people’s privacy and dignity. We need robust information and the monthly publication of the breach figures, which will tell the public what is going on and allow the NHS to make progress. The previous Government dragged their feet on this issue with a complex system that was neither transparent nor effective.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
15. What steps he plans to take to reduce the incidence of tuberculosis.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
We expect NHS organisations and their partners to ensure early detection, treatment completion and co-ordinated action to prevent and control TB. The Department and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have published supporting guidance. We are also continuing to support the charity TB Alert to raise public and professional awareness of TB.
Michael Connarty
I think the House should be concerned that in an excellent presentation back in September, it was explained that only 61% of people in London complete treatment for tuberculosis, that the incidence of tuberculosis in the UK is behind only the levels in Spain and Portugal, and that there were over 400,000 cases in the European Union in 2009. The London report that came out said that we had to invest in the service to provide a TB board for London and probably spread that to other big cities, where most of the people who have TB were not born in the UK.
Anne Milton
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The World Health Organisation threshold for high instance is defined as 40 cases per 100,000. Of the 19 relevant primary care trusts in this country, 16 are in London. There is no doubt that this is a complex problem. In the past two decades, the increase in instances has come from people who were not born in this country. We are doing a number of things. The Home Office is reviewing the effectiveness of screening, and is running a pilot of pre-entry TB screening in areas of countries where there is a high instance. The problem is that it is not always detectable when people enter this country.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Tuberculosis is a key health issue for those in the London borough of Hounslow. What more does my hon. Friend feel we can do to build public awareness and to ensure early diagnosis?
Anne Milton
My hon. Friend is right. NHS London will continue to fund the TB find-and-treat outreach programme for the homeless and other vulnerable groups, which includes the use of mobile X-ray units. The Department will continue to provide money to support TB Alert, which builds capacity in the voluntary sector and raises awareness.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
16. What estimate he has made of the average amount of time per week GPs will allocate to the administration of commissioning consortia under his proposals for NHS reform.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
We anticipate that GPs will focus on the aspects of commissioning that will benefit most from their clinical expertise and understanding of patients’ needs. Only a minority of clinicians will play a hands-on, executive role in consortia. Moreover, they will be able to secure support services to assist with their administrative and commissioning duties.
Alex Cunningham
At present, GPs are able to spend only about eight or nine minutes on average with each patient. How can the Secretary of State expect GPs to be meaningfully engaged in commissioning when, unlike him, they are putting patients first?
Mr Burns
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State actually understands the situation. It is not true that doctors see patients for only eight minutes; GPs see their patients for the length of time that they feel they should see them. The concept that GPs will have their time taken away from looking after patients to do commissioning is not right, because GPs will employ commissioners with expertise to work with them and do the commissioning for them, so that they can get on with looking after their patients.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
With regard to the admin load of GPs, the Government correctly want to have better integration of health and social care. Why, therefore, are they creating GP consortia that are less coterminous with local authority boundaries than the existing primary care trusts? How will that help to deliver a better integrated health and social care system?
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
When, oh when, will the Minister listen to the country, get his sticky mitts off the health service and stop meddling with our hospitals and doctors?
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
18. What assessment he has made of the effect on survival rates of his Department’s cancer strategy.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
We published “Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer” on 12 January. It sets out a range of actions to improve cancer outcomes, including diagnosing cancer earlier, helping people to live healthier lives to reduce preventable cancers, screening more people, introducing new screening programmes, and ensuring that all patients have access to the best possible treatment, care and support. Through those approaches, we aim to save at least an additional 5,000 lives every year by 2014-15. We will publish annual reports to measure progress on implementation of the strategy.
Greg Hands
Does my hon. Friend agree that the establishment of the cancer drugs fund will help the UK to raise its cancer survival rate from among the worst in Europe to potentially one of the very best? [Interruption.]
Paul Burstow
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to that, and it is interesting that a number of Opposition Members are saying that they do not see it as making any contribution whatever to the quality and extension of life. Yes, the funds that the Government provided very early on will be available to ensure that people get access to drugs that have hitherto not been available to them.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has indicated several times that diagnosing cancer earlier is the solution to the difficulties that we face. What is he going to do to bring that about?
Paul Burstow
Just a few weeks ago we started a pilot of a national advertising campaign on bowel cancer, with the key message being that people should never feel embarrassed about talking about their poos, so that they get the diagnosis that they need at the earliest opportunity. We are ensuring that such messages get across, even in the Chamber today. We are taking steps to raise awareness so that people get earlier diagnoses.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
My responsibility is to lead the NHS in delivering improved health outcomes in England, to lead a public health service that improves the health of the nation and reduces health inequalities and to lead the reform of adult social care, which supports and protects vulnerable people.
Stephen Mosley
Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men, with a quarter of a million men currently affected and one man dying every hour. This month is prostate cancer awareness month. What action is my right hon. Friend taking to help raise awareness of prostate cancer?
Mr Lansley
As the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), has set out in previous answers, our cancer outcome strategy commits more than £450 million a year over the spending review period to achieving earlier diagnosis of cancer, including access for GPs in the community to diagnostic tests such as non-obstetric ultrasound. At the heart of the strategy is the need to improve awareness and early diagnosis of all cancers, and we are working with the prostate cancer advisory group to help men who do not have symptoms to make decisions about whether to have a prostate-specific antigen test.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
The Prime Minister promised to protect the NHS. What does the Health Secretary say to the people who are not getting the hip, knee and cataract operations that they need, and to the patients who are now having to wait longer for tests and treatment?
Mr Lansley
I will say three things. First, we did protect the NHS, contrary to the recommendations of the Opposition, who said that we should cut the NHS budget. Next year, primary care trusts across England will receive an average increase of 3% in cash. I went to Wales at the weekend, to Cardiff. The people of Wales are seeing a Labour-led Assembly Government cutting their NHS budget in real terms. That was what the Opposition recommended we should do, and we are not doing it.
Secondly, the number of hip and knee replacement operations went up in 2010 compared with 2009—the Patients Association figures were wrong about that. Thirdly, waiting times are stable, as we have set out, and the latest figures show that the average waiting time for diagnostic tests has gone down.
John Healey
The Secretary of State is a man in denial. What does he say to the chief executive of the Patients Association, who has said:
“It is a disgrace that patients are being denied access to surgical procedures that they would have had if they had needed them a year ago”?
What the Government are doing on the NHS is making things worse, not better. The Secretary of State is axing Labour’s patient guarantee on waiting times, he is breaking the promise of a real rise in NHS funding, he is wasting £2 billion on the Government’s top-down reorganisation and he is forcing market competition into all parts of the NHS. Does he not see that the NHS is rapidly becoming the Prime Minister’s biggest broken promise?
Mr Lansley
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman and the House exactly what we are doing. We are increasing the budget for the NHS by £10.7 billion over the next four years, contrary to what the Opposition told us they would do and what a Labour-led Assembly Government in Wales are doing. They are cutting the NHS budget in real terms.
Let me take one example. The number of hip operations in the first half of this financial year was 41,863, whereas in the previous period it was 39,114, and waiting times are stable, so the right hon. Gentleman’s assertion simply is not true. We are delivering an improving quality of care.
Let me give the right hon. Gentleman another example. As the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), said, not only are waiting times stable but infections are going down, with a reduction of 29% in C. diff rates and 35% in MRSA rates in our hospitals. Safer, higher-quality care—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am very grateful, but from now on we do need briefer answers—[Interruption.] No, we need briefer answers, because I want to accommodate Back-Bench Members. It is about them that I am concerned.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
T2. I believe that the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes would be gesture politics of the worst kind, that it would have no basis in evidence and that it would simply be a triumph for the nanny state—and an absurd one at that. Given that, does the Secretary of State believe that I am still a Conservative, and if so, is he?
Mr Lansley
I am happy to believe that we are both Conservatives. The coalition Government made a commitment in our public health White Paper to publishing a tobacco control plan. We will do so shortly, and the purpose will be very clear: to secure a further reduction in the number of people smoking, and as a consequence, a reduction in avoidable deaths and disease.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
T4. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of epilepsy helplines in helping to save NHS costs? I have constituents who are able to live happy and fulfilled lives by talking with epilepsy specialist nurses on the phone rather than going into hospital, but unfortunately, it seems as if that service is under threat from the University hospital of North Staffordshire. What is Government policy, and will he look at the situation in north Staffordshire?
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that telephone services of the sort he describes play an invaluable role in giving people support. Again, we are at that point in the year when there are budget arguments between PCTs and hospitals, to which he refers. If he supplies me with further details on this case, I will happily write to him.
Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
T3. The Secretary of State has visited Milton Keynes, so he will be well aware of the historical problems at the maternity unit there and, following the intervention of his Department, of the positive outcomes that have been achieved with one-to-one supervision for all mothers. I am convinced that the increased training of midwives has contributed to those outcomes, but may I press him to reassure the House that that level of training will continue?
Mr Lansley
Yes, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and I share his wish for continuing improvement in the maternity services at Milton Keynes hospital. I can tell him and the House that we are delivering on our commitment to improve maternity services, which is at the heart of that wish. The number of midwifery training places commissioned for next year—2011-12—will be no less than this year, sustaining a record number of midwives in training. That will be on top of an increase between May and November 2010—after the coalition Government came in—of 296 additional midwives employed in the NHS.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
T6. Following on from the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) on the £2 billion that the Secretary of State is using for his top-down reorganisation, does the Minister feel that that kind of money, which was not mentioned in the Conservative manifesto, would be better spent on health care and on building new hospitals?
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
May I tell the hon. Gentleman that his figures are wrong? The cost of the modernisation of the NHS is £1.4 billion by 2012-13. That will be recouped in savings that by the end of this Parliament will be £1.7 billion a year, every year till the end of the decade, of which every single penny will be reinvested in front-line services and for patients.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
T5. A new primary care hospital opened in Redcar at the end of 2009. So far, the endoscopy unit and the two operating theatres are completely unused, and a state-of-the-art hydrotherapy pool has hardly been used. Will the Minister meet me to discuss that commissioning failure and to see how we can bring those facilities into use for the local community?
Mr Burns
I understand that the PCT will continue to work with health care providers to develop existing and future services at Redcar primary care hospital, and to promote the availability of services, but I would be more than delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that issue.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
T7. Every 23 minutes, someone in the UK is diagnosed with a blood cancer disorder—that is 23,600 people per year, including many children. Survival often depends on a donor match. Today until 6 pm, the Anthony Nolan trust has a stand in Portcullis House, where people can get more information, and where those under 40 can register. Will the Minister join me in promoting the donor register and in encouraging MPs and staff to visit the stand?
Paul Burstow
I think that more than one of us wanted to do just that, because the Anthony Nolan trust does a fantastic job. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise awareness of it, and all hon. Members should take the opportunity to visit its stand today.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
T8. Witham town council and my constituents are deeply concerned about the lack of local medical facilities serving our town. Will the Secretary of State reassure my constituents that under the new commissioning arrangements medical provision in our town will be able to expand?
Mr Lansley
I can give my hon. Friend the reassurance that in future her local general practices—together in a commissioning consortium—and their other health care professionals, meeting with the health and wellbeing board in the local authority, will be able to bring democratic accountability in order to ensure that they have in her town and surrounding area the necessary services, based on a strategic assessment of need in their area.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
T9. The NHS in north-west London is facing a £1 billion shortfall in funding over the spending period. Is the Secretary of State surprised, therefore, that yesterday’s NHS Confederation survey of managers found that just 13% of managers thought that supporting GP commissioning was the highest priority, compared with 63% who thought that the cash crisis was the highest priority? Is it not the case that financial pressures are dictating the NHS reform agenda, rather than the other way around?
Mr Lansley
I remind the hon. Lady again that next year we are increasing NHS resources in real terms. There will be a 3% increase across England in resources for primary care trusts, and as she will know, PCT managers in London are being brought together into PCT groupings. I do not understand the survey. They have a responsibility both to improve clinical commissioning by supporting their GP groups, which are coming together across London to do this, and to ensure strong financial control.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
How can the Secretary of State ensure that HIV and sexual health services receive sufficient local political attention?
Mr Lansley
Local attention, through the public health responsibilities that currently lie with PCTs, but which in future will lie with local authorities, is a means by which we can improve health and the health of some of the groups most at risk of HIV. We have a number of pilot schemes that my hon. Friend might know about and that we are currently assessing, which have looked at opportunistic HIV screening for the many people who are currently undiagnosed with HIV. That is encouraging, and we might well be able to follow up on it.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
T10. Given that the chief medical officer does not have a background in public health, and despite the existence of Public Health England, should the Secretary of State not ensure that there is a public health expert on the national commissioning board, because that is where all the power lies?
Mr Lansley
I am surprised, because the hon. Lady is on the Select Committee on Health and should know that responsibility for public health will lie both with Public Health England, inside the Department of Health, and with local authorities. The NHS commissioning board will have a responsibility for prevention, but the population health responsibility will lie with Public Health England, and I have absolute confidence that Dame Sally Davies, the newly appointed chief medical officer, will be a leader in public health delivery, through Public Health England.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
I represent a constituency with a young and highly mobile population. Younger women are very much over-represented among those who do not respond to routine invitations to screenings. Will Ministers promote the increasing use of mobile communications in inviting women to routine screening services?
Paul Burstow
That is certainly one way in which we can improve access, and it is one of many that we outlined in the improving cancer outcomes strategy that we published in January.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Given that the Prime Minister has ordered his new communications director to order a shake-up of the health team because he is worried that they are losing the argument on the Government’s health upheaval, would it not save us all a lot of trouble if the Secretary of State admitted, not least to the Prime Minister, that it is not the public relations that is the problem, but the policy?
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Gentleman should not believe what he reads in the newspapers.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
The cancer drugs fund is available only for pharmaceutical drugs, but can it be used for wider support services, such as healers, aromatherapists, those using therapeutic touch and other such practitioners?
Mr Lansley
We are finalising the design of the future cancer drugs fund from April, and we will publish shortly. The interim cancer drugs fund is designed to support new effective medicines, based on clinical panels’ assessments of the needs of individual patients.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Today is international women’s day, so let me pass on the good wishes of the women of Darlington to the Secretary of State.
Mrs Chapman
Indeed. However, what does the Secretary of State have to say to those women when they are angry and concerned at the proposal from the County Durham and Darlington foundation trust to move their maternity services from Darlington to Durham, 20 miles away?
Mr Lansley
I would be grateful if the hon. Lady conveyed my very best wishes to the women of Darlington on international women’s day and said to them that I know from my visits to the north-east that a general practice-led commissioning pathfinder consortium has come together in their area. It is with that consortium and their local authority that they should look at which services they think should be provided in their area, and they will have the power to make that happen.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
What plans does my right hon. Friend have to increase the number of single rooms in the NHS? Increasing their number will help to tackle mixed-sex accommodation, and increase privacy and dignity in end-of-life care.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. As was said earlier, privacy and dignity are central to all the care that we provide in the health service. Mixed-sex accommodation was not tackled by the previous Government; we are determined to tackle it now, and providing single rooms is part of that. Privacy and dignity must be maintained at all times.
Higham Hopper Bus Service
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Mrs Hale, from Higham Ferrers, is a doughty lady, and she is campaigning to keep the Higham Hopper bus service.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire and surrounding areas,
Sheweth that there is a considerable and ongoing need for the Higham Hopper bus service; that this is a vital mode of transport for the elderly and people with mobility problems; and that it is of the greatest importance that this bus service continues to provide transport for residents in Higham Ferrers and the surrounding areas.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to request that Northamptonshire county council, in conjunction with East Northamptonshire District Council and Higham Ferrers parish council, explores ways in which the Higham Hopper bus service can continue to operate.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P000893]
Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I should like to present a petition on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy campaign. It has been signed by nearly 1,200 people who are opposed to the proposed changes to disability living allowance.
The petition states:
The Petition of supporters of Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and others,
Declares that the Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) helps to meet the higher costs of accessible public transport (where available), or makes an individual eligible for an adapted vehicle through the Motability scheme; that without DLA mobility component, thousands of adults of all ages with severe disabilities who are supported by the state to live in residential care will be unable to retain voluntary employment or simply to visit family and friends; that many families with children attending residential schools will not be able to fund their own adapted vehicle, and as residential schools only provide transport for the start and end of term, with no extra provision for weekends or holidays, disabled children may end up stuck as prisoners in their own home during school holidays, unable to take part in leisure activities, or even attend essential hospital appointments; and that the decision to cut this vital benefit for children in residential schools and adults in residential care will deny thousands of disabled people the chance to live full and independent lives.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government not to cut the Disability Living Allowance Mobility Component for people living in residential care—including children attending residential schools.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000894]
Refurbishment of Hillbourne School, Poole
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I should like to thank Poole borough council, and Councillors Judy Butt, John Rampton and Les Burden, for taking up this petition.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the Borough of Poole,
Declares that Hillbourne School in Creekmoor Ward is in urgent need of refurbishment.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons asks the Department for Education to make the school the highest priority for resources as they become available.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000895]
Regulation of Bus Services (Leeds)
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I would like to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Leeds and supporters of the Fairer Fares campaign convened by Leeds campaigner Stuart Long, and the Leeds student bus campaign organised by Leeds university union.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Leeds and supporters of the Fairer Fares Campaign,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that there is a need for Leeds to have a regulated bus service that provides a regular service for the community, with an honest fare that is not just for profit; and notes that such a bus service must provide an improved customer service that helps the people of Leeds in their day to day lives.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to regulate the bus service in Leeds and to ensure that the service is honest and reliable.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000896]
New Member
Points of Order
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today the Government have published their draft carbon plan, which we all welcome. There is a commitment in the plan to reviewing feed-in tariffs for microgeneration in 2012-13, as originally set out by the previous Government. However, in just the past few weeks the Government have announced that a fast-track review of those solar feed-in tariffs is to take place by this July. Thousands of jobs in this country are dependent on the certainty and clarity of knowing what will happen with the feed-in tariff review and when it will happen. Today’s document is co-signed not only by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but by the deputy leader of the coalition and the Prime Minister himself. Have you had a request, Mr Speaker, for any Government spokesman or the Prime Minister to come and clarify whether the review will take place now or in 2012-13, so that we can end the uncertainty that is jeopardising thousands upon thousands of jobs?
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the question is that sadly I have not. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his intention to raise this matter; however, it does not constitute a point of order on which I can rule. There will be—and I think he knows there will be—other opportunities to pursue the matter in other ways, and I have a suspicion that he will use them.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, I asked the Foreign Secretary to investigate the circumstances in which my constituent, Jennifer Currie, and her children had left Libya, and the fact that my caseworker had had to make many of the arrangements for them to do so. The Foreign Secretary stated that the Government did not accept my description of the lack of support received from the Foreign Office. The family has confirmed to me today that the Foreign Office initially declined to help Jennifer and her children, and then told the family to book and pay for their flights. Mr Speaker, what advice can you give to my constituent and me to enable us to ensure that the Foreign Secretary justifies his claim about what happened in Libya, given the different versions of events and the real danger that she and her children faced?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his intention to raise this matter. Naturally, I recall the exchange that took place in the Chamber between him and the Minister yesterday. What he has said today will have been heard, or will be heard, by those on the Treasury Bench and by the Ministers directly responsible for this matter, but it is not a matter upon which I can rule. There is an argument here, and the hon. Gentleman has put his view of the events, and his verdict on the sequence of events, very clearly on the record. He can approach the Table Office and pursue the matter through questioning, if he wishes, or he can write to the Minister further to pursue the matter on behalf of his constituents, if he chooses.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to apologise for misleading the House yesterday, make a correction and clarify a position. During our debate on the Scotland Bill yesterday, I outlined the importance of having overnight counting, as many of us were exceedingly excited as we watched the result of the Barnsley by-election come in on Friday morning and found that the Liberals had not retained second place. We learned that they had not come third or fourth, and that they had in fact come sixth. My error was to say that the only reason the Liberals had come sixth was that the Scottish nationalists had not stood, and that, had they done so, the Liberals would have come seventh. In fact, my error was in not correctly pointing out that, had the Welsh nationalists or indeed the Democratic Unionist party stood, the Liberals might very well have come ninth. I was going to make the same point about the Social Democratic and Labour party, but that would be taking it too far.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, to whom I always listen with interest and respect. However, I have to say that that effort, though a nice try, was some hundreds of miles away from being a point of order. I think that we will leave it there.
Charitable Healthcare Providers (Value Added Tax Relief)
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for charitable healthcare providers taking on new responsibilities from the National Health Service to be able to recover value added tax on the same non-business supplies as the NHS in respect of those responsibilities; and for connected purposes.
I am delighted to have secured strong cross-party support for this Bill. This demonstrates how important the issue is, and how serious the House is about the crucial role that charities play, alongside the public and private sectors, in our society. Estimates suggest that the total spend by primary care trusts on outsourcing to third-party service providers is approximately £80 billion per annum. A significant proportion of those services will be delivered by the charity sector, and that proportion will increase in the coming years as the big society and public service reform agendas increase.
Health care charities such as hospices have a strong history of building relations with local communities and the Government in order to provide care for people who are nearing the end of their lives. This applies to independent hospices and larger hospice providers such as Marie Curie Cancer Care and Sue Ryder Care.
At this point, I must commend the work of Lindsey Lodge, the independent hospice that serves local people in the Scunthorpe constituency, which I am proud to represent. It provides a wide range of services for people living with life-limiting conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. More than 300 volunteers from the local community donate their time and skills to support the work of the hospice and many more make voluntary financial contributions.
It will cost Lindsey Lodge hospice almost £2 million to provide its services this year. Two thirds will come directly from the local community through fundraising, legacies and donations. This funding picture is typical of the majority of hospices, with varying proportions of voluntary funds required. Charities such as the Lindsey Lodge hospice do not operate within a vacuum, but within their community context in partnership with local government, health and other agencies. Those partnerships are what create the climate for success. On average, adult charitable hospices receive 32% in statutory funding and they provide 80% of palliative in-patient beds in the UK. The passage of this Bill would show that the Government are serious about recognising the importance of such charitable services.
In a recent written question, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) drew attention to the fact that, unlike the NHS or his local council, Manorlands, the Sue Ryder hospice in his constituency, cannot reclaim the VAT it has paid on non-business supplies. He rightly called on the Prime Minister to create a level playing field for health care charities. Under current legislation, the NHS is able to recover value added tax on non-business supplies, yet the charity sector is not.
In the rhetoric of the big society, the Government appear optimistic, encouraging the voluntary and community sector to take a larger role in society through the delivery of public services. This offers opportunity for new types of service delivery, building on the best that already exists, but we must not expect charitable agencies to do this for free or effectively to subsidise the Government from charitable donations. Figures produced by Sue Ryder Care suggest that for every £10 million spent by the NHS on outsourcing to the third sector, the additional cost burden will be in the region of £400,000. That burden will need to be absorbed by the charity.
I am sure all hon. Members will join me in applauding the contribution charities make to their communities. Under current rules, if services are transferred from the NHS to charities, their VAT bills will increase. This provides a VAT dividend to the Treasury from charities at the point of transfer, which is surely not fair.
Currently, when services are transferred from the NHS into the charitable sector, allowances for irrecoverable VAT are not made in the contract. This finds the charity in the perverse situation of having to cover VAT costs with charitable donations. Any efficiency savings finance the VAT gap first before benefiting patients and their local community. A recent example can be seen in the transfer of services from an NHS hospice to the charity, Sue Ryder, in West Berkshire. Services are due to begin transferring to the charity on 1 April.
The transfer will result in streamlined palliative and end-of-life care services for all those living in the area. The hospice will work alongside Sue Ryder’s existing hospice to provide integrated services. Figures produced for Sue Ryder show that the transfer will add 4% to the cost of delivering the services as a result of the different VAT recovery for the NHS and charities.
Sue Ryder projects efficiency savings of £0.3 million in the first year, yet these efficiencies will not all be invested in improvements in service delivery. Half the savings will be swallowed up by the Treasury as a result of the new VAT burden placed on the charity, which did not apply to the NHS as a provider. If efficiency savings are not realised, charitable funds will need to be used to plug the gap.
As the economy stagnates or contracts and consumer confidence falls, there is a very real danger that charities will be hit by decreasing donations and cuts in local government and national Government grants. Now is not the time to punish those forward-thinking charities that are willing to expand their services into new, innovative areas, formerly delivered by the NHS.
It is, of course, unrealistic to ask the Treasury to write a blank cheque and allow all charities providing NHS services to recover VAT, but it is realistic to look forward and level the future playing field. The proposals in the Bill will not cost the Government any more than the costs that are currently in the system. If the Government are serious about this aspect of big society thinking, they should welcome these proposals, supported as they are by Members in all parts of the House. Transfers of services to the charitable sector should not bring a tax dividend to the Treasury, but should bring an innovation and investment dividend to patients and their local communities.
The Government should stop the problem from worsening by allowing charities to which services are transferred in future to recover the same VAT on non-business supplies as the NHS. The proposals in the Bill are fiscally neutral. On Shrove Tuesday of all days, they represent an opportunity for the Government to give something up for the wider good and not just for Lent. In his Daily Telegraph article on 20 February, the Prime Minister said that the Government
“will still have a crucial role to play”
in
“ensuring fair funding”.
I am therefore sure that he will want to examine this funding anomaly.
The way in which the Government should address the anomaly is to amend section 41 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 to put charities and the NHS on a level playing field, or to consider a form of compensation scheme for those taking on NHS services. That would create a level playing field in VAT between charities and the NHS. As things stand, the Treasury is set to make money from charities that choose to take on public services. Sue Ryder has called that
“an unintended consequence of the ‘big society’ and public service reform agendas”.
At present, I am inclined to agree. It is effectively a tax on the transfer of services from the NHS to the charitable sector. I urge the Government to address this inconsistency and thereby avoid the risk that charities and the public will start to view it more cynically.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Nic Dakin, Stuart Andrew, Mr Kevin Barron, Chris Evans, Julie Hilling, Kris Hopkins, Martin Horwood, Greg Mulholland, Paul Murphy, Andrew Percy, Bob Russell and Jim Shannon present the Bill.
Nick Dakin accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June and to be printed (Bill 159).
European Union Bill
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
I had intended to call the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) to move the new clause, but it can be moved by another of its supporters. I call Mr James Clappison.
New Clause 1
Provision of documentation under Part 1
‘(1) A statement laid before Parliament under section 5 of this Act shall be accompanied with all relevant documentation on the treaty or decision concerned, including all amendments sponsored by Ministers and other member states during negotiation of the treaty or decision.
(2) All decisions which as a result of any of sections 6 to 10 of this Act require approval by referendum or Act or resolution shall be accompanied with all relevant documentation on the decision concerned, including all amendments sponsored by Ministers and other member states during negotiation of the decision.’.—(Mr Clappison.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. As another Member who willingly put his name to the new clause, I am delighted to do so.
Members who are familiar with the Second Reading debate and the proceedings in Committee will know that clause 5 is about a statement that must be laid before the House within two months of the conclusion of any of the treaty changes covered by the Bill, as part of the process whereby a referendum takes place. It covers treaty changes in both the ordinary revision procedure—the one with which we are all familiar, involving a convention followed by the full panoply of treaty change and agreement between the nations—and the simplified revision procedure that was introduced by article 48(6) of the treaty of Lisbon, which makes it much easier for the parties to the European Union to bring about treaty change. Under that article, all they need to do is reach an agreement within the Council and then put it to the member states, and unanimity is required for that. It is generally regarded as a measure that speeds up treaty change.
New clause 1 would require much more information to be included in the statement, or to be provided with it. When my friend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) drafted the new clause, she may well have had in mind what took place during this House’s proceedings on the treaty of Lisbon, and I certainly had that in mind when I signed it. The then Government advocated all the measures in the treaty of Lisbon to the House—and to the country—but it was revealed during the debate that at the Convention that led to the drafting of the constitutional treaty which later became the Lisbon treaty, they had opposed a number of key proposals.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend also conscious of the fact that the Conservative party was, for the first time since 1972, united on that issue, and that it voted consistently against every provision that was worth voting against in the Lisbon treaty, yet subsequently accepted it?
Mr Clappison
Yes—and not only that, because my hon. Friend is being characteristically modest, as some of the warnings about the consequences that would flow from the treaty of Lisbon have proved right in the short time that has elapsed since its introduction. I am thinking in particular of the warnings that were given about what I regard as the unfortunate influence of the European External Action Service and the EU’s new Foreign Minister, Baroness Ashton, which has not entirely served the interests of this country.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The new clause is excellent. I like the idea that Ministers would have to report that they tried to get an improvement but they lost. Is it also proposed that some of the arguments should be made available, because it would be much more interesting if we knew how badly they had lost?
Mr Clappison
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Too often decisions are made behind closed doors, certainly in the Council. They are made in a remote and unaccountable way, and members of the public in this country simply do not have the information that they should have to be able to evaluate the decisions taken in their name.
During our debates on the Lisbon treaty, it was striking that time after time we had to remind members of the then Government of what they had said in the Convention about the measures that they were now putting before the House. I cannot remember whether they had opposed the establishment of the EU External Action Service and the EU Foreign Minister—I would not have blamed them if they had—but it emerged on a number of occasions in the debates in the House that Ministers had previously opposed what they were now proposing. That came to light only through the assiduous work of the then Conservative Front-Bench Members, and I pay tribute to them, as well as to colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood).
The new clause would remedy this problem, as the fullest possible information would be placed before the House, with the statement, so we would know exactly what had taken place, and whether the Government really agreed with what was being proposed or whether they had lost the arguments and been outvoted. In short, we would know whether we were being called upon to do something with which our democratically elected Government did not agree.
Mr Clappison
I give way to the Liberal Democrat Member who, of course, supported the Lisbon treaty on many occasions during its passage through this House.
Martin Horwood
Absolutely—and a referendum on it.
The hon. Gentleman is speaking as if the new clause related to the situation after the negotiations have been completed, but what it actually says is
“during negotiation of the treaty or decision.”
I attended a negotiating skills course some years ago, and I was always advised not to give away my negotiating position during the course of the negotiation. Would not the new clause destroy the British Government’s negotiating position? Is that its intention?
Mr Clappison
No, because the British Government are representing the British people and the British people should know what is being negotiated on their behalf. This is not a private company trying to make a profit; it is democratically elected Ministers acting on behalf of the people. May I slightly correct the hon. Gentleman? I do not know whether he was in the House at the time, but I certainly recall this, because I was sitting directly behind the Liberal Democrats. That party supported an in/out referendum on the European Union, but it did not support a referendum on the Lisbon treaty itself. I remember that debate taking place. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I recall that although the Liberal Democrats got very agitated about having an in/out referendum, they were not exactly full-hearted in supporting a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.
Mr Clappison
I will give way again to the hon. Gentleman, who has a very honourable record of supporting further European integration.
Martin Horwood
I will correct the hon. Gentleman, as he is wrong. I voted for both an in/out referendum and a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.
Mr Clappison
I stand corrected. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues voted both for and against an in/out referendum, or whether they voted both for and against having a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. I do remember, because it would be hard to forget this, that one of his colleagues was excluded from the Chamber because he got into such a terrible temper about not being able to have an in/out referendum. I am not sure how many of his colleagues supported the amendment that we dealt with several evenings ago proposing an in/out referendum; the Hansard record will doubtless show the number.
The fullest possible information should be available to this House and to the British people so that we know what is really going on. One of the fundamental problems of the European Union is the feeling of disillusionment that people have about its lack of accountability. We do not know what is taking place and being done in our name. The EU is remote and decisions are taken behind closed doors. Some arrangements are entered into beforehand in an entirely private way, with decisions not even being taken at the meetings themselves, but often being taken behind closed doors. We need more information about such matters.
Mr Cash
Even as we speak, a gigantic deal is being done in Europe. It is called the “competitiveness package”. It took me an urgent question—thanks to you, Mr Speaker—to elicit the truth about what was going on in European economic governance. What my hon. Friend says is absolutely right: a tradition of deceit lies behind all this, and it goes right across the whole of Europe.
Mr Clappison
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he has done the House a service. It was entirely due to him that the contents of the Van Rompuy report, as they affected this country, which they clearly did, were revealed to this House. We look forward to having a fuller debate on those in due course. We want a fuller debate on many other issues, but when a treaty change comes before this House and is the subject of a statement under clause 5 we need to have all the information. We need to have everything out in the open so that we can have a full and well-informed debate.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
By way of explanation, Mr Speaker, I think I have fallen victim to my usual habit of reading newspapers from back to front. I apologise for not having been here at the start of the debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for introducing the new clause.
I need to explain the antecedents of the thinking behind the new clause. When I was a Minister I attended meetings of the Council of Ministers, and I knew that it was perfectly impossible for any national Parliament to find out even whether their Minister was there to vote, let alone whether they had made any particular representations. I am sure that I am not the only Minister—people on both sides of the House must have done this—who performed the most amazing U-turns on policy when doing a Council of Ministers stint. I am talking about little notes along the lines of, “The United Kingdom no longer supports amendment 58”—and that was all that was ever said about the matter. There is nothing wrong with that; we do that in politics. But in this House, if the Government perform a U-turn, someone at some stage has to stand at that Dispatch Box and say, “We’ve changed our minds.” They have to give reasons for doing so, and on occasions those are perfectly acceptable. This is the one thing that is completely missing in our dealings with the European Union.
Post-Lisbon, we have made some advances in the information provided for the European Parliament. Although I welcome those provisions, I would challenge even hon. Members to close their eyes and tell me, hand on heart, that they can name all the MEPs who represent their region. I bet that they could not do that; I could not name them all myself. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) says that he does not even know all the MPs for Birmingham. Fortunately, I could tell him all their names, even in alphabetical order.
Mr Redwood
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I can remember visiting EU Councils as a Minister and discovering that the Council of Ministers often met as a legislature. It was about to enact extremely important laws affecting all our countries, and all that the others and I said was entirely secret and did not have to be shared with the public. That is an absolute disgrace: we need much more transparency.
Ms Stuart
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I negotiated the opt-out for the junior doctors working time directive back in 1999, and in a sense we knew on the negotiating basis all the problems that would happen in the NHS that the UK Government saw coming. We also knew that the directive would not actually hit us until about 2008-09. Now it is here, and everyone here is entitled to say, “We didn’t see it coming.” In fact, on one level we did see it coming.
It is also important for the House to consider the fact that, during the discussions on the Convention on the Future of Europe, I was in the very unusual position of being a negotiating partner at Government level, and also representing the House. Therefore, provided that I used a legal adviser from the House, I could be given the legal advice that was given to the previous Administration.
We should consider the nature and length of debates in the European Union. I deliberately chose the working time directive for junior doctors as an example, because it started in 1992 and started to have legislative impact on this country 10 years later, and only now are we beginning to find out its full effect.
We have now moved from Conservative to Labour to Conservative, and within our Government machinery—[Hon. Members: “Coalition.”] It is okay—the Liberal Democrats came sixth in Barnsley, so there is a ray of hope. Given the veil that falls between one Administration and the next, which hides the accumulated knowledge that could allow parliamentary scrutiny, there must be a mechanism that transcends individual Administrations, which would give the House access to the information that has been given to Ministers. Although new clause 1 is limited, it is nevertheless an important wedge representing that principle.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I understand that the hon. Lady is suggesting not necessarily publishing everything for everyone on this country’s negotiating position, but perhaps listening to Parliament. Am I right in thinking that a similar system exists in Denmark?
Ms Stuart
Yes and no. I would caution against using the Danish principle, because it mandates Ministers bindingly. No one needs to talk to them when they are sitting round the negotiating table in Brussels, because they know what they will say. They do a head count and say, “The Danes say x.” The hon. Gentleman is right to refer to not publishing all the information, because too much information is also a weapon: people can be drowned in information, and they cannot see the wood for the trees.
The advice given to Ministers should be made public to Parliament, so that Parliament can decide whether it wishes to pursue something. More importantly, that would allow information to move from one Administration to the next, and Parliament could develop the collective memory of responsibility and decision making that is essential in our dealings with the European Union.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
We are having an important debate, and the first thing to do is find our national interest in the context of that debate. Otherwise, we will head into treacherous waters. For me, the national interest is to ensure that the Government are able to promote our interests in the best possible way in dealings with our EU partners. Anything less would risk undermining our prospects of promoting the best solutions for Britain in the EU.
I understand some of the reasons why the new clause has been introduced. For example, I see why Members of the European Parliament might be interested in hearing more about the position of the British Government—under the co-determination procedure, they have an interest in knowing more—but we are not Members of the European Parliament; we are Members of this Parliament, and we should be concerned about the accountability of the Government to this Parliament. We have no real interest in giving information to a Parliament that happens to have representation from all the nation states that we would be negotiating with. That is a bad reason for promoting the new clause, and if it was to be further advanced in the House, I would repeat that argument.
There might well be another reason, and I have thought about this myself. The previous speaker, the hon. Member for—
Neil Carmichael
Excellent, a beautiful place. The hon. Lady might well think that the transparency of the Commission is important—indeed, the transparency of the Council of Ministers—and I have certainly thought about this long and hard. I understand why people would wish there to be more transparency in both those organisations. After all, they make decisions that are important to us, but the new clause tackles the issue in the wrong way because it would undermine the Government’s capacity to negotiate. That is what we have to underline.
When the Government enter negotiations with other nation states about the future of Europe, they must do so with the knowledge that they may or may not enter into alliances with various Governments, and that those alliances may change during the negotiations.
Mr Redwood
I think my hon. Friend is misreading the new clause. It would mean that, when all the negotiation was done and we knew the final outcome, we would also know whether our Ministers had won or lost. What is wrong with that? How dare he be so undemocratic?
Neil Carmichael
Because it is important to bear in mind the next negotiation and not think only about the one we have just had. That is obvious, because alliances can fluctuate and relationships are important. I do not think my right hon. Friend would say the same thing about any negotiation on a treaty outside Europe, and certainly not, for example, about NATO.
Ms Gisela Stuart
The hon. Gentleman is fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the negotiations. One thing that British Ministers are famous for is the fact that, by the time they go into negotiations, they have reached agreement across Whitehall. Quite often that does not allow us to play a poker game. There is a formed body of opinion that represents the British view, and, after the negotiations, we, as a House, have the right to know.
Neil Carmichael
I would prefer to take the line that it is much more important to consider the outcome. Certainly, the House should be testing the Minister on that outcome and should be able to hold that Minister fully to account for it, but explaining how we got there would be a dangerous route to take.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way? Does he—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have not given way at all. I just want to help the hon. Gentleman to get it right, and I am sure that he will use the correct parliamentary language.
Mr Binley
I am most grateful for your help and advice again, Mr Speaker. The House is also about the people we represent. If it is right and proper that they should have full knowledge of what their Government are doing, does the argument that my hon. Friend is making not deny them that right too?
Neil Carmichael
I certainly think it is important for people to know how decisions are made, but it is equally important to ensure that we have the quality of decisions that are best for Britain and that we do not box ourselves in for the future. Many of the decisions made in Departments are not necessarily things that the public need to know before those decisions are implemented and discussed in the House.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous in giving way. The idea of keeping those decisions secret is the reverse of what the Prime Minister wants. In his speech of 26 May 2009, the Prime Minister argued strongly for transparency so that people would know how the Government negotiated. Is my hon. Friend opposing the Prime Minister?
Neil Carmichael
Certainly not. The Prime Minister is right to seek transparency wherever it is appropriate and possible. That is a good characteristic of the coalition Government and I welcome it. I can see huge opportunities for more transparency, wherever appropriate. I think the Prime Minister also wants to be sure that his position representing this country or the position of his Ministers representing this country in the Council of Ministers enables them to negotiate, form the appropriate alliances with necessary nation states and deal with matters properly, with the guarantee that trust and understanding are possible. Otherwise we will find that we as a nation state are not respected by our partners. We must be respected on our terms—that is, for promoting our national interest and making sure that what we want to do is achievable.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from, and equally, I understand the new clause. The reality is that after any Council meeting, 26 other countries run to their national press to say exactly what the British negotiating position was and what we might have given away. Within about 24 hours, anybody out there can see most of the negotiations that have taken place. I am sure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) will understand this point. If we are going for transparency—if the detail of the negotiations is going to be out there anyway—surely it would be easier for the British Government to come back, lay their cards on the table and say how they played their hand.
Neil Carmichael
The role of Ministers in interpreting each other’s decisions and talking to the press later is different from formally disclosing key positions. I do not spend a huge amount of time reading the newspapers, certainly not those produced by Mr Murdoch. I would much prefer the House to test Ministers on the outcomes and make sure that the integrity of the decisions was protected and that the capacity of our Ministers to act independently in the interests of this nation state was upheld. That is why the clause is not helpful.
I understand the motives, as I said at the beginning of my remarks. I can see why people want to have more information about the European Parliament and more transparency in relation to the Commission. It is not a clear structure at the best of times. I can see why more transparency should be required of the Council of Ministers, but the clause is not the right mechanism. The critical issue, as we discussed last time, is to make sure that this House can test Ministers thoroughly and properly at each and every opportunity.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he has done so with charm and good grace and been very generous indeed. He has said a number of times how important it is for the House to hold Ministers to account. How can the House hold Ministers to account if Members do not understand precisely what has been discussed, which then comes before the House? He undermines his own argument, does he not?
Neil Carmichael
No, I do not. The real way of holding Ministers to account is to examine the quality of the decision that has been made and the impact that that decision will have on this country. It would be far better to look at the decision and its implications and understand the reasons for it than to worry too much about why it was made and by whom. That is the key. Too often in this country, we tend to examine the entrails rather than the direction of travel and the implications of the decision that we are supposed to be implementing.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I have one concrete example for the hon. Gentleman: the way we deal with the art market and the extra tax on it. Britain currently has an opt-out, but it is coming up for renewal, which could completely undermine Christie’s and the art market in this country. At what level in this House does he think he will debate the ministerial decision on that?
Neil Carmichael
You make a very good point. I am sure that the Minister, if he is involved in that negotiation, has taken heed of what you have said.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am always delighted to be told that I have made a good point when I have done so, and even when I have not, but in this case I have not. The hon. Lady might have done.
Neil Carmichael
Many apologies, Mr Speaker—it is a long time since I have had quite so many interventions. The key thing here is the quality of the decision. If a Minister came along and tried to defend a decision that this House was unhappy about, this House should say so. That is the right approach.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Michael Connarty
May I suggest a much simpler piece of logic to explain why the new clause would probably not be helpful? If the hon. Gentleman has ever attended a European Committee, whose members are supplied with a large volume of documentation that they are supposed to read before debating the issue and taking a position when voting, he will realise that most do not read it. The more information that is supplied on European matters, the more paper that is provided, which will not be read.
Neil Carmichael
That is a really good point to end on. The hon. Member for—
Neil Carmichael
Right. [Laughter.] That is longer than Stroud.
That is an important point to end on, because I do not think that everyone does read everything they should, and we have come across that in the past. The European Scrutiny Committee is under the excellent chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for— [Hon Members: “Stone.”]—for Stone (Mr Cash), but one of the things I noted before becoming a Member was that scrutiny of European measures, if carried out at all, was not thorough. I have done some research and found that decisions have literally been nodded through, which is characteristic of these kinds of issues. It is far better for this House to consider the outcomes seriously, because it is the outcomes that matter. That has always been the case in decision making. Sometimes the process that we use needs to be scrutinised because the outcome is not so good, and clearly we might want to test that.
We should never undermine the capacity of a British Minister to represent our interests and make adjustments to his or her position while in negotiations with other nation states. I repeat that if we were having this discussion about the United Nations or NATO, for example, I do not think we would be talking in these terms, because we understand the value of empowering Ministers to make decisions on our behalf and report back with outcomes that are to our liking.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
I follow very much in the footsteps of the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) by highlighting two very worrying developments in our discussions in this House on Europe that have taken place since the coalition was formed: the abolition of the twice-yearly debates on Europe and the decision of the Foreign Affairs Committee no longer to go to the country holding the EU presidency to examine its plans.
Mr MacShane
I am such a fan of the hon. Gentleman’s work on human trafficking that I feel I must give way, but I will try not to take many interventions, for obvious reasons.
Mr MacShane
I am grateful that the poor fish thrown into the sea will now have their flippers flipped in the House of Commons.
I want our Government and our House regularly to debate Europe, but the plain fact is that it is the decision of this Government—this coalition—not so to do. The Foreign Affairs Committee, with its coalition majority, is also abolishing its regular trip to the European Union nation that holds the presidency.
Mr Redwood
Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed that we are debating Europe all day today, and that we have had quite a lot of days on this Bill?
Mr MacShane
Yes, and I well remember the right hon. Gentleman in the even longer debates—going through the night—on the treaty of Amsterdam saying that signing it would mean the abolition of Britain. When there is a new Bill, we have debates, and we have had many debates and some good discussions on this one.
Mr MacShane
Can I make just a wee bit of progress? [Interruption.] Well, I will give way to one of my favourite ex-MEPs. How can I resist?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I am not sure whether I should take that as a compliment. Has the right hon. Gentleman had a chance to read the written ministerial statement about this subject that was issued during our previous five days of debate? It included what, in coalition terms, would probably be deemed a full and comprehensive offer to the House about how we might scrutinise justice and home affairs matters. We should examine that offer in much closer detail today, and perhaps we will later on.
Mr MacShane
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he brings to the House considerable knowledge of how the European Parliament does its business. That is exactly the way in which the European Parliament carries out its scrutiny. Perhaps we should learn from him; perhaps he and I should set up a small committee to go to Strasbourg —for him to return there—to see what we might learn.
In essence, the hon. Member for Stroud is quite right: this is the WikiLeaks amendment. It would abolish the need for WikiLeaks, because the process of Government decision-making would be published. I would love to see that for something infinitely more important to my constituents—the thinking, advice and documents that have led to the promulgation of the NHS Bill or, in two or three weeks’ time, that lead to the Budget. I expect, however, that I would find very little support on the Government side of the House and absolutely none from the Opposition Front Bencher waiting for his turn to speak for the idea that we do government better if we allow Mr Julian Assange to publish every document and every communication that goes into a Minister’s box.
I can confirm exactly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) made about how negotiations can and do take place. I recall once trying to protect the steelworkers of Britain from a proposal, which the then Labour Government supported, to allow the import of steel—a derogation of the then EU trade rules—from a dodgy supplier in Egypt which I knew to be linked to the army and was, in my view, a wholly corrupt organisation. I could not quite work out why we were so keen to allow the deal to go through, which would have damaged steelworkers’ jobs and production in this country and, if the steel were re-exported, those in the rest of Europe, too.
I could not, however, convince any civil servants. At one stage, I had 27 of them, including two knights of the realm, grouped around me, telling me, “Minister, you have to give way.” I put down my little foot and said, “No, I am elected. That is what I am paid to do.” Then, they went out and got the Secretary of State for Business and Industry to phone me, and at that stage either I resigned on the spot or accepted a superior order.
Mr MacShane
No, I did not resign, simply because I work in a team. When the hon. Gentleman graces the Front Bench, as I hope and I am sure he soon will, he will have to learn that there is something called teamwork, and that until he becomes Prime Minister he will take rather than give orders.
I am not sure that it would have been any particular help to have published all my animadversions immediately afterwards, although I told my steelworker community friends privately what had happened. Frankly, one cannot do business in that way. I am not even sure whether, constitutionally or legally, suggestions made before a decision is taken can then go fully into the public domain if they belong to other people. I think we may find, legally, that there are certain rules on what is the property of other states. We do not publish every communication with the United States, France, or any country, for good and sensible international legal reasons.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
The process in Europe is legislative. When this House legislates, the debates are published, regardless of the ultimate decision, so that the British people know how the debate has been formed in the legislature. As the Commission, Council and Parliament of Europe are legislatures, the information should likewise be public.
Mr MacShane
We can enter into a political science or constitutional debate on the nature of decision making in the EU—which, I remind right hon. and hon. Members, spends only 1% of Europe’s gross national income—but the plain fact is that the Commissioners are appointed and it is the Council of Ministers that takes decisions, as mandated by its member countries. It is no more a legislature than it is a legislative process when one goes to negotiate a treaty on the law of the sea or on new environmental rules.
Mr MacShane
There is a curious alliance between two distinguished former Members of the European Parliament—my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—in saying that perhaps this House can learn from the European Parliament. Other right hon. and hon. Members might care to look at that.
The European Union will be taking very big decisions on Friday, when there are two special meetings of the Council, the first of which—
Mr Cash
The right hon. Gentleman, in some dispute with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), suggested that decisions taken by the Council of Ministers were not legislative acts. Can he think of anything that is more of a legislative act than when, by a majority vote, the decision that is taken is binding upon this House without our having any opportunity to intervene?
Mr MacShane
Yes. In my constituency, which is a very strong manufacturing one, the acts of the World Trade Organisation have far more impact, and we do not consider the WTO to be a legislative body.
On Friday, there will be two highly important meetings of the European Council, the first of which will discuss Libya. I am a supporter of much of the robust line that the Prime Minister has taken since he came back from his trip to the middle east. It will be interesting to see whether the Government publish all the details of the propositions that they are putting up for that debate and decision, or whether they offer a referendum lock to the people of Britain on any future military intervention in Libya, as proposed in certain other areas under the Bill.
Once that meeting is over—I sincerely wish the Prime Minister and his team well; I hope that the whole House does, because Libya will continue to occupy our minds and worries for many months ahead—the British Prime Minister will be asked to leave the room. That is because the next set of decisions that will be taken, on economic governance and the euro, will exclude Britain, even though they will impact on us, as the Council will discuss how to react to the new Irish Government’s position in wanting a serious rewriting of the agreement that the previous Government had reached. It may discuss the European Parliament’s call for a ban on naked short selling, which the German Government have already introduced in Germany and which is very unpopular in the City. Britain will not even be there, because it is excluded from that part of the Council. The notion that we will learn about decisions made in Europe if Britain publishes its documents is nonsense, because unless all 26 other members states do the same, we are left in ignorance on the ebb and flow of discussions.
Mr MacShane
If I may, I will continue, because I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have a good chance to speak shortly.
Charlie Elphicke
The right hon. Gentleman is giving an interesting depiction of matters in the Council of Ministers. Will he tell the House whether Governments such as the UK Government formally table amendments for discussion, or whether the process is more informal, with things written down at the end?
Mr MacShane
It is a mixture of both. First, one listens to the positions of all 27 member states, then one says things like, “Look, that’s not going to fly for us. We suggest you drop it. Here are our ideas.” Proposals go backwards and forwards between the Council secretariat and the Commission secretariat, and they come back here for discussion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) rightly said. Whitehall has a very effective co-ordination operation. As a result, the finest civil servants in the land meet very early every morning—sensibly that is usually done without any gabby politicians present—and over a large English breakfast, on the eighth floor of some Hilton or Hyatt in Brussels, they hammer out a position and work out where every other country will be to maximise what Britain wants. Very often, we are the demandeurs who want to achieve a policy change in the European Union which requires skilled diplomatic negotiation. I say respectfully that the notion that all that can be minuted and published is not realistic.
Mr Cash
On a point of information, I just wanted to put it to the right hon. Gentleman that the European conclusions of 4 February, to which he referred in the context of the eurozone and the other member states, specifically state:
“Non-euro members will be invited to participate in the coordination.”
They also state that it will be guaranteed that
“the Heads of State or government of the interested non-euro area Member States are duly involved in the process.”
I therefore do not think he was quite right to suggest that we would not be involved, because the conclusions state specifically that we will be. However, the whole system is completely crazy.
Mr MacShane
We will see what happens on Friday. I am concerned, as all hon. Members ought to be, that because we are not in the euro—for perfectly good reasons—Britain is not as fully involved as the other deciders in many areas of decision making. We will leave that to be revealed in Friday’s meeting and future discussions.
I am very attracted to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). We can now, in the House of Commons, announce the new Connarty law: there is a precise ratio whereby the more paper provided on any European decision, the less real discussion and debate there is thereon. I hope that he will agree that that new Connarty law should be enshrined as an official part of how we do business in Europe.
I remember that for the constitutional Convention, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston valiantly represented the House of Commons, the then Foreign Secretary and myself set up a special Select Committee and published everything. We had regular meetings for the sake of accountability, but not a single Opposition Front Bencher ever came to them and they were often inquorate. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was valiantly present at every meeting, but his party leadership was absent. Again, that reflects the Connarty law—the more opportunity and information right hon. and hon. Members are given on Europe, the less inclined they are to take it up and debate it.
Michael Connarty
I think that what I said was that the more paperwork that is provided, the less it is read. Information can and should be given, and Ministers do not give it often enough from the Dispatch Box or in evidence. They try to hide information. It is paperwork that frightens people, not information.
Mr MacShane
I am very happy to have that minor revision to the Connarty law—the more paper people are given on the European Union, the less it is read, debated and discussed.
Stephen Phillips
The right hon. Gentleman’s argument seems to illustrate what is wrong with the new clause, which is that there is no definition of “relevant”. It is therefore entirely unclear whether vast volumes of documentation would be produced were it to form part of the Bill. That is my real objection to the new clause. Does he agree, and is that an aspect of the Connarty conjecture, as I shall call it—or perhaps the Connarty-MacShane law, as it now turns out to be?
Mr MacShane
Yes, “relevant” is a difficult adjective to define. There is an even more difficult adjective in the Bill, which states that only a matter that the Minister judges to involve “significant” sharing of sovereignty should be brought back to the House for debate and a possible referendum. I put it to Members that no British Government or Minister would sign a treaty that they would then bring back to the House of Commons and offer for referendum. It would be a dereliction of duty. I have every confidence in the excellent occupant of the post of Minister for Europe, and his duty is to negotiate the best for Britain. If a treaty is not good enough for Britain, he should not sign it. We should effectively veto it there and then rather than have the nonsense and rigmarole in the Bill, whereby a treaty would be brought back to the House, we would have endless debate about what was and was not significant, and then it would be put to a referendum.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who has been extraordinarily generous in taking interventions.
I raised with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) the situation in Denmark, and she said, “Their negotiating position was known. We knew what they were doing.” Is not a potential concern about the new clause the fact that our negotiating position could be known? Does it harm Denmark in practice that its position is known?
Mr MacShane
The Danish Parliament is very different. The last time there was a majority Government in Denmark was 1909. Actually, perhaps that will not be such an unusual thing even for our own legislature in the years to come—let us wait and see how this century unfolds, especially if the people are so foolish as to adopt that ludicrous alternative vote nonsense. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] It is so easy to get that reaction.
The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on a good question: do we, as a House, take the European Union seriously enough? Do we have the mechanisms and structures to involve ourselves fully in EU debates and decision making? The Danish Parliament has an all-party Committee—although we should remember that the Danish Government are always a coalition—to which Ministers must report, and it is a much smaller operation. I would like this House to set up permanent Standing Committees to survey different areas of EU policy and legislation. Our Select Committees could have permanent Sub-Committees to track EU decisions that would otherwise be off the rota. Those Sub-Committees could travel around Europe, and not necessarily just to Strasbourg and Brussels—I keep insisting that decisions on Europe are taken in Rome, Paris, Warsaw and elsewhere, and not comprehensively and uniquely in the two European Parliament buildings.
I should like us to debate Council meetings after they have taken place rather than before—I made my maiden speech in a pre-Council debate and have taken part in many more.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
To take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), I am a great advocate of transparency, which is crucial. The problem is that the Bill proposes unilateral transparency. We are not in the business of declaring that we are for unilateral disarmament before negotiations. Will the Minister ensure that although we need to make progress on transparency, we need to do so across Europe, and not just in respect of our negotiating team, which might feel hampered in making the key decisions that matter so much to my constituents?
Mr MacShane
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. Aneurin Bevan famously said apropos of unilateral nuclear disarmament that we should not send a Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber. Now and then at the more tedious European Council meetings, someone coming in naked might have cheered everyone up, but she is right to insist that Britain cannot unilaterally reveal itself in its wondrous glory, naked to the rest of the world, while 26 other members are smuttily enjoying the sight while keeping their own crown jewels well and truly hidden.
Laura Sandys
The hon. Gentleman is perhaps taking the analogy a bit too far.
Mr MacShane
I was tempted to do so, but I shall resist.
My frustration, after 17 years in the House, is that we still do not know how to discuss the EU. We are still frightened of going to the national capitals of Europe. Much of the information that the Bill calls for can be found if hon. Members are prepared to take the time to meet opposite numbers of all parties—the European debaters and deciders in the Bundestag, the Assemblée Nationale or wherever. Hon. Members could also easily find things out from civil servants in Brussels. Most of the information is available if they are prepared to take the time to find it.
Our own negotiating functionaries, to whose extraordinary qualities I pay tribute, would be quite happy to discuss with Committees of this House what they do, but we have reduced European matters to adversarial, in-or-out, horrors-of-Brussels debates and all the drivel that one can read in the Daily Mail and similar papers, instead of accepting that we are in the EU and, as the Prime Minister has made very clear, that we are not leaving. The EU will come forward with new proposals, some of which will be tricky and some of which we will advance, and it would be much better if we could have a mature dialogue with other national parliamentarians. There are 9,700 national parliamentarians and 700 MEPs. We overreact to what the latter say, and ignore the need to connect to the national Parliaments and parliamentarians of Europe to debate decisions.
That would mean a revolution in how we do business. Frankly, the Labour Government failed miserably in improving the quality of oversight and debate on EU decision making. I could publish some of the papers I wrote—if they are not locked away under some 30-year rule—to call for some of the measures that we are discussing. I wish the Minister and his team well in changing how we do EU business. The new clause is not the way forward, and I hope the motion is withdrawn after the debate, but it represents, and is a symptom of, a deep malaise in our nation and of the distrust of Europe that many people feel. I understand that fully, but I insist that parliamentarians can put it right. Hurling insults at the EU will never achieve that.
Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The Bill is titled the “European Union Bill”, and is a legislative measure by this Parliament in respect of the government of this country. It seems to me that what Denmark does is what Denmark does, and what others do, they do. There is nothing unreasonable in the new clause, other than perhaps in respect of the question reasonably raised about the definition of “relevant”. However, I think that everyone in the debate understands the gist of this rather important new clause.
We forget who we are. It was a struggle to get accountable government—that is what this is about: accountable government. It is an odd quirk of the British constitution that we seek accountability at certain levels. Some of us have been here a long time and will remember the triumph of Sir John Major over Maastricht. If I recall correctly, he came back saying that he had won “game, set and match”. As was rightly pointed out by several Members, that is the normal formula of most leaders of EU countries, who all protest that they have secured some golden objective, the consequences of which we only find out some years later. I emphasise that the struggle for accountable government was not easily won. In fact, the House used to sit in secret, and it was a criminal offence to reveal the force and arguments that took place. We did not know, therefore, whether the man who protested he was our friend was indeed our friend, and we did not know whether the person pointed out as the enemy was indeed our enemy. To the benefit of this country, that went. An essential ingredient of our constitution, therefore, is the concept of accountability, but we cannot have accountability if we do not know how the Government act and what they say.
Today’s most relevant observation—I thought it was important, and I hope that the House thinks so too—was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He said that many of the decisions coming from the EU are legislative decisions. Imagine that the House sat in secret discussing legislative decisions, and that none of us could be held to account—it is rather like the coalition agreement, is it not?—for the outcome of the decisions. No one is held accountable. That would end democracy in this country as we understand it. It is a difficult enough task to hold Governments to account: time goes by, and the exigencies and pressures of other issues get rammed in.
We are facing a huge constitutional change that has taken place over the past 30 years, and the decisions now made within the EU structure are profound and affect all our lives. One of the promoters of the new clause, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), gave a very good example—the working time directive for junior doctors. It had enormous consequences, and the House would have been better placed to agitate and put pressure on Ministers who proclaimed that they were fighting for Britain all the way and were winning game, set and match. However, the consequences of that decision are now being felt throughout our national health service.
Mr Shepherd
I am reluctant to, but as the travails of the right hon. Gentleman are so explicit, I will.
Mr MacShane
The working time decision was taken in 1994. I experienced two constituency cases involving horrible deaths because of overworked doctors who were obliged to do long hours at the weekend who, to put it crudely, made slight mistakes with a zero, so I welcomed that decision. However, those provisions were there from 1994. They could have been put into operation and introduced slowly, but we pretended that that was not going to happen. The decision was made, but nothing was secret.
Mr Shepherd
I have just heard another inaccuracy from the right hon. Gentleman, just as previously he was corrected on a matter of fact regarding the invitation of those not in the eurozone to be present at meetings affecting what are profound matters. I shall therefore take with slight caution some of the arguments that he has advanced.
I should declare an interest: I am a parliamentary vice-chairman of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. What is noticeable is that Europe is notoriously remiss in this area. It is proclaimed that work is being done on freedom of information, yet in many ways the bureaucracy in Europe is one of the most secretive organisations of them all.
Mr Shepherd
This is the record on Europe that most of us will recall; it is not the fantasy of some, who see Europe as an object of almost theological insistence.
Mr Shepherd
No, I will not give way. The right hon. Gentleman spent nearly 30 minutes repeating the—
Mr Shepherd
Indeed, and I took an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman, if he remembers. However, I have listened to the argument, and it is the same argument that he makes most of the time. Although repetition does inform one, it sometimes becomes like a woodpecker on the brain. [Interruption.] No, no, I am going to be fair. This is an important new clause. Our constitutional arrangements require Ministers to be accountable to this House, and the new clause would give us a better understanding of what is happening to our future and our constitutional arrangements.
The European Union set up a body—indeed, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston sat on it—to bring the citizens of Europe closer to the institutions and nature of the European Union. I have watched, as have all Members of this House, the disengagement of those citizens—certainly in this country, but also in many others, right across Europe—which is becoming very severe indeed. We have only to look at Ireland, which has done everything that was required of it and is now in an horrendous state, so I do not need the right hon. Gentleman, the former Minister for Europe, to say that this is wonderful. It is not; we expect accountable Government.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
We are quite rightly focusing this debate on the workings of the European Union, but some right hon. and hon. Members seem to be establishing a principle that must surely apply to all international treaty organisations that the UK signs up to, whether on environmental, legislative or defence matters in international law. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he wants exactly the same transparency in all negotiations in every treaty organisation of which the UK is a part? Surely that would be consistent.
Mr Shepherd
I do not accept the argument, because there are very few international agreements that apply in a directly legislative way in this country. Therefore, on a great range of matters we have to put things through this House; therefore, they are governed by the processes of this House. Normally they are nodded through, that is true. None the less, there is accountability to this House, and there are the Ponsonby rules and all that—if they amount to as much as I would like them to amount to. I would therefore urge the House to support the view that we should know exactly what is happening. I do not want to hear “Game, set and match”; I want to hear where we stand in these matters. I want our Front Bench to be quite candid about this matter, which lies at the heart of this European Union Bill, as amended. I was sent a press release, or whatever it was, to advise me as to the merits of the Bill. Well, I will make my own judgment on that, as will other Members who do not follow the Whip as closely as I do. I hope that we will have enough belief in ourselves—because this applies to us, to the British Government—to introduce a proper process in which Ministers will be candid and bring forth exactly what happens in these meetings.
The words
“including all amendments sponsored by Ministers and other member states during negotiation of the treaty or decision”
particularly excite me. Clearly that proposal would not apply at the time of the meetings but to afterwards, when we would come to understand the character of those who are making the law.
Mr Clappison
Would it not be very strange indeed if Ministers were to try to keep secret the amendments that they had tabled during such negotiations? Is not this something that people should subsequently know?
Mr Shepherd
I believe so, because there is a matter of the most profound trust involved. When Ministers speak at the Dispatch Box, we trust that they are telling the truth. That is one of the rules and we must hold them to it—[Interruption.] No, that is a convention of the House. Ministers have fallen when they have lied at the Dispatch Box.
Mr Shepherd
As I understand it, the European Union purports to be a country now. That change of title happened following Maastricht. We became citizens of the Union, also under Maastricht. Those issues were fiercely fought over. The question of whether Her Majesty the Queen was a citizen of Europe arose on the Front Benches here. We asked those questions and they were debated. The Bill was passed, but it was, as Labour Members will recall, a damned close-run thing—on one amendment in particular.
Mr Cash
The very amendment paper that my hon. Friend is holding in his hand demonstrates the amendments that have been tabled and that are available to everyone who cares to look at them. On the basis that the Council of Ministers is a legislative body, does he not agree that, if we have to receive its legislation and are then allowed to table amendments to it, we should be entitled to see the amendments that have been tabled during the preceding process?
Mr Shepherd
That is the argument, and I am glad that it was so briskly conveyed. On that note, I urge the House to support the new clause.
Michael Connarty
I hope not to delay the House for too long. I am actually a signatory to this new clause, but I hope that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) will withdraw it. It was an attempt to ask for a process in which information should be provided to make sense of any proposal under section 4, which is mentioned in clause 5 on statements to the House. The truth is that there is a problem with the understanding of, and interest in, the decisions made in the European Council, which are then enacted by this Parliament and which affect the citizens, businesses and communities that we represent.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) is always keen for us to be more informed, but I am not sure that the new clause would achieve that. Listening to the debate, I have become more and more convinced that more and more documentation does not mean more and more information. We need to look carefully at how the House treats the process involved. There are, I think, six members and one former member of the European Scrutiny Committee here today, and we tend to take a lot of interest in these matters, but there is not the same breadth of understanding, information gathering or discussion of European matters in the generality of the House.
Much can be explained by changes in the structure of how Parliament deals with European issues. We used to have European Standing Committees, with specific designations as A, B and C, specific remits and a fixed membership of 13 each, and they debated every single issue that came from the European Council about which the European Scrutiny Committee was not happy. What happens now is that a randomised group of people chosen by the Committee of Selection turn up now and then and the Committees have no sense of a specific remit. They are still foolishly called A, B and C as if they still have specific remits, but when a Minister brings forward provisions to change our position and bring in new law on the basis of a directive, regulation or other proposal from the European Commission, very few people understand what that Minister is doing.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I am attracted by the hon. Gentleman’s argument about the need for a change in the way this House deals with European policy. Is not the logic of his argument, however, that we need to go back to an earlier stage, whereby we as legislators should be involved, pre-negotiations and pre-discussions, in thematic debates and policy statements so that we can make some input to the Commission and the institutions of Europe? Does he accept that?
Michael Connarty
I not only accept it; I fully endorse and applaud it. There is a work programme that comes forward from the European Commission, and it is debated in Westminster Hall, but very few people turn up: that is the reality. We have tried to engage a number of Select Committees by referring to them matters of interest to the European Scrutiny Committee, which continues to be chaired ably by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). We are trying to engage Select Committees in those issues so that the European Scrutiny Committee and then the House could be advised of any European matters of substance that should be considered.
We could therefore change aspects of the apparatus we use before reaching the point to which the new clause refers, where a Minister is recommending a referendum. When this clause is triggered, the Government will have decided that they want to do whatever it is the referendum has been called to consider. It will be a referendum on a Government proposal, perhaps for a new treaty or a new decision that will change our relationship with Europe.
Let me finish by providing one example. We took a decision a long time ago—it was probably agreed across the Chamber because it was politically sensitive for us not to opt into all of the Amsterdam treaty—whereby we did not become members of the Schengen group of countries. That group is effectively all the European Union countries apart from us. Frontex, the new border police, is now trying to throw a ring around Europe and it is going to be heavily pressurised by migration from other parts of the world—particularly from Africa, and perhaps very quickly from north Africa. We are not a member of Frontex because we are not a Schengen country. We sit on the board—Frontex has been quite nice to us, even though we did not sign up to it—so we asked whether any of our officers engaged in a Frontex operation could have the same protection from prosecution as other Frontex officers. We are told “No, because you are not a member of the Schengen group.” The train is leaving the station very quickly to protect the rest of Europe, and the United Kingdom is running at the back waving a little flag saying “Can we join? But we do not want to be full members.”
We ought to be fully informed of the consequences of decisions such as that. I am not talking about those who are, for reasons of prejudice, Eurosceptic and against doing things on an EU basis, in the belief that they can somehow be done on a bilateral basis with 26 other countries. If we had been fully informed, we would have concluded that membership of Frontex was important enough for us to take the step of joining the Schengen countries and being a real part of Europe.
Although such information and debate would be extremely useful, that will not be made possible by the new clause, and I therefore hope that it will be withdrawn. However, we need to make those changes in the Chamber if our constituents are to understand that we know what we are talking about in Europe, and that we are acting on the basis of analysis and proper information rather than prejudice.
Charlie Elphicke
It is a privilege to follow the extraordinarily interesting and thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). The debate on the new clause has been largely underpinned by a dislike and distrust of the European Union and its works, and I share that distrust. Many Members feel that an organisation that spends vast swathes of our money and imposes massive increases in our budget contributions in return for no obvious value, at a time of great downturn across the continent, is not an organisation that is in touch with this country—or any other country. They do not trust an organisation that feels so remote from the electors of this country and every other country in the European Union. Even in Germany, an increasing number of people are finding the European Union and its works troubling.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman says that he attaches no obvious value to the European Union. Does he exclude from that the EU’s important contribution to world climate change and trade negotiations? Does he exclude the European arrest warrant, which enables us to fight terrorism across international borders? Surely those things have some value.
Charlie Elphicke
They could all have been achieved by nation states. Obviously we welcome the ability to do some things on a wider and more agreed basis, but we do not want the spider’s web of intrusion into our national lives and the lives of member states that we have seen in the European Union. That is why many Members object to it and say, “We don’t trust anything that happens there.” Every time there is a treaty negotiation the spider’s web creeps further out, more of our money is sucked in, and more of our national vitality is taken away from us and planted in Brussels.
I am merely recording the sentiments that, in my view, underlie the new clause. It is felt that we have been shut out of the process, and that we do not have a say. For the last 20 or 30 years, the Governments of all the member states in Europe have been saying that they have secured great deals in Europe, but the general public in countries throughout the European Union have a sense that they have, to some extent, been sold down the river.
The new clause is underpinned by questions such as, “What are the amendments that you are moving? What are the discussions that you are having? What really happened behind those closed doors?” I understand that view, but although I share the deep concern that has been expressed about our involvement, and future involvement, in the European Union, I am not sure that the new clause represents the right way in which to deal with it. There is a balance to be achieved, given the inevitable tension between transparency and the need for negotiations. I am a massive fan of transparency, because I want to know how the European Union spends our money, and I want government that is accountable to our people. Dare I say it, I want government of the people, by the people, for the people. On the other hand, we must take part in negotiations, and we must ensure that our negotiating position does not blow up in our faces.
Many examples can be given. The Cabinet meets in secret, and we do not learn what happened until some years later; the NATO councils and some of the United Nations councils meet in secret as well. Traditionally, relations between member states tend not to be published on a case-by-case basis. I have listened with interest to the argument being put that the Council of Ministers is not an executive organisation but a legislature. That is a technical, semantic argument about what is really a negotiation between Governments of member states—it is an intergovernmental negotiation.
I have grave misgivings about giving away our negotiating position and telling other nations, which we want to squeeze for a better deal, where our top and bottom lines are in that negotiation process. I make that point because I must tell the House, with regret, that I used to be a law firm partner—I was a poacher before I turned gamekeeper—and in that time I would negotiate for my clients against the lawyer on the other side of the table who was representing their client. I did not want to tell them what I was going to concede; I did not want them to have an idea of what I and my client might, and might not, give away in future negotiations. I did not want to reveal where the lines of debate were or when I would say, “No further,” because if I had I would not have got the best deal. Just as in those times I wanted to get the best deal for my clients, in these times I want to get the best deal for my clients, who are now the people of Dover, and the nation as a whole.
Stephen Phillips
Actually, my hon. Friend is a gamekeeper turned poacher. He is making a compelling argument about not giving away our negotiating position to other EU member states. The difficulty here, however, is to do with the use of the word “relevant” in the new clause. Does that mean that under this clause we would disclose information that would not already have been known to other nation states? In that case I can see the point of his argument. However, if it means something different, it may not have that effect. Does he have any grip on what the word “relevant” means here, and does this problem not underline why the new clause should not be added to the Bill?
Charlie Elphicke
I completely agree, and I was about to turn to that argument.
The new clause is important in prompting a debate that should be had—and might previously have been had—about the relationship between this House and the Executive in respect of our negotiations in Europe. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) nods from a sedentary position. This is a very important point, which goes to the heart of things, and it is why I asked about the situation in Denmark. I did so not in order to trip her up but because I was genuinely interested and knew that, as she is an expert on European matters, including the Council of Ministers, she would have experience to share on that subject.
The phrase “relevant documentation” in the new clause is not, of course, defined; it could mean anything or nothing. That is a technical deficiency, therefore. I also think that there is a technical deficiency in the phrase, “amendments sponsored”. I asked the former Europe Minister, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), how amendments are dealt with in Europe: is an amendment tabled and moved, or is there a nice bit of Euro chit-chat and then everyone comes to an agreement at the end? The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston can correct me if I am wrong, but my impression is that it is a bit of a mishmash of everything, and out of the sausage machine of discussion comes a new piece of Euro-legislation, freshly approved with the mark of Europe stamped on it.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I fear the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Austro-Hungarian empire would have called the process “durchwurschteln” as it is a sort of sausage machine. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having such a good grasp of what goes on even though he has never been inside any of those negotiating rooms in Europe. The key problem is that the practice and the theory are so far from what we think they are. That is why I thought it was so important to try to open the door on what goes on, and it also highlights why it is important to keep asking questions about how these things work.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Lady, and I am humbled by her kind words and great generosity. An important issue of transparency is involved here. We want negotiations to go on; we do not want to have everything picked over later, to risk our negotiating position in future and to risk our relationship with other member states. They might not want some of their information put into the public domain.
I want discussion to be full and frank. Why is that? I do not know how anybody else feels, but I remember that this country went through a phase of “sofa government”, when there were no minutes, no notes and no discussion. Not everybody thinks that that was a high point of our national life. Some people think that it was a particular low point because little deals got cut on sofas, in corridors and far away from anyone taking any minutes. That is the risk when we say, “Let us know what goes on behind closed doors.” Funnily enough, this sort of thing will not go on behind closed doors; it will go on in closed corridors and on sofas. I worry about that, because it is a real concern.
Charlie Elphicke
That is exactly the argument that I seek to put. There is massive distrust of the European Union in this House, and massive suspicion that Ministers—of all parties—go to Brussels and sell us down the river without our knowing what goes on. Meanwhile, our electors give us a good kicking about why this, that and the other happened, and we cannot really explain why it happened and what our role in it was. So there is an accountability deficit.
Denmark has an open process, whereby its Folketing’s European affairs committee meets in public and agrees a mandate system, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston told us. It says, “This is your up line and this is your down line. Go off to Europe and negotiate.” The process is public so, as she beautifully put it, people do not need to worry about Denmark because they know where it stands. People count it in or count it out, and negotiate with everyone else. I suspect that Denmark is left out of negotiations because people say, “We don’t need to cut a deal with those guys.”
Ms Stuart
The difference is that although Finland mandates, the mandate can still be negotiated with its Parliament, whereas the Danes are mandated and the Ministers cannot change their minds. They are therefore at the meeting simply to say what their Parliament has told them. The Finnish system is better because it still allows for mandating movement.
Charlie Elphicke
Beautifully put, as ever, by the hon. Lady, who describes the problem exactly. The Danes’ mandate becomes an open negotiating position and they lose their ability to be flexible and to push other member states in the give and take that sits at the heart of true business or governmental negotiations.
Finland, like Denmark, does involve its national legislature, but the difference is that in Finland this is done in private. The Finnish grand committee meets in private, away from the cameras and the spotlight, so it can have that important discussion.
I do not know what other Members think, but I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has some good points to make. He makes them with great passion and often at great length, and he is well informed. He passes the Linlithgow test, because he reads all those boring papers, whereas all the rest of us put our heads in our hands and then flip through them quickly to pick out the main points. My hon. Friend actually reads this stuff—I do not know how he does it, but he does—so he is able to have a substantial and serious discussion about the issues. I put it to the Minister—I hope that he will respond in due course—that we need a mechanism, perhaps a Committee system, whereby those hon. Members who are interested, even obsessed, with the European Union can represent the House’s interests and hold discussions in private, as the Finnish grand committee does, before a negotiation happens.
The Intelligence and Security Committee knows what goes on, and therefore builds in some democratic accountability, but it does not blab to everyone exactly what our spies are up to around the world and what our security interests are. If it were possible to have a mechanism similar to the grand committee system in Finland, so that Parliament could be involved, perhaps there would be a greater sense of trust and a greater sense not only that we have the essential transparency, but that we do not send our Ministers in to bat in Brussels with—as I think a former Prime Minister put it—one arm tied behind their backs, so that they cannot negotiate in this country’s fullest interests.
Mr Buckland
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case in relation to Finland. Does he not agree that the system in Sweden, which is quite similar to that in Finland, would provide a useful way forward? Such a committee could meet, usually in closed session, and give a mandate to the Minister. The Minister would have discretion to depart from that mandate, but the position would be clearly defined before the Minister went to the Council. That has all the attractions of the systems that my hon. Friend has been ably advocating.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I do not think that it is for me, as a Back Bencher, to find the detailed solution, but those who are senior in the House, such as Front Benchers, should consider the other models of accountability used in Europe. They should consider the fact that we want accountability and transparency, without prejudicing the United Kingdom’s negotiating position in the discussions that are held in European Councils. So long as we have to put up with being a member of the European Union—or, indeed, are enthused by that fact—we need to negotiate well and get the best possible deal for this country.
Martin Horwood
I originally intended to speak in support of the comments made earlier in the debate by my Gloucestershire neighbour, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), but I found myself in a surprising degree of agreement with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who gave a learned analysis of the implications of the new clause, as opposed to its intent.
As described by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and others, the intention is to create more transparency and openness—that is obviously a good thing, which we would all support—but somewhere in the drafting of the new clause it has become a little confused, or perhaps awkward, in the attempt to bring it within the scope of the Bill.
The effect of the new clause would be to reveal a great deal of documentation, but after the decision had been taken. The decision to which the statement under clause 5 related would have already happened. Although much of the documentation would be relevant in the sense that it related to that decision, it might not prove to be very pertinent to the decision. Much of it might be advice, even legal advice, that was ultimately rejected. So it would not have materially affected the decision under consideration. What really mattered would be the outcome, and the proposals that the British Government were putting to Parliament and, perhaps even in a referendum, to the people of this country. We could discuss that without the benefit of all the paperwork that had been discarded earlier in the process.
The second problem with the new clause is that a lot of what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said was about trying to add transparency to the process at European level—to the Commission’s decision-making processes and the debate in the Council of Ministers. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) compared that to the former secrecy of debates in this Chamber, but the new clause would not reveal the debate that took place at European level. It would reveal only the background paperwork, which would be rather like getting a House of Commons briefing, but with no copy of Hansard to follow.
The new clause would not bring great openness or transparency to European processes. The only transparency that it would provide would be on the British negotiating position. Then we would start to have a problem, because although that would be revealed after the event, the nature of the advice, especially the legal advice, could have profound implications for future negotiations. If we revealed all that documentation, that would clearly impact on the position of British Ministers in subsequent negotiations. It would almost certainly impact on the advice, especially legal advice, that officials felt able to give to Ministers, because they would know that it was not private advice, but would become public in due course. Clearly, that would put British Ministers at a disadvantage relative to other Ministers in the European Council. It would undermine the British interest and thereby achieve, presumably, the reverse of what the new clause intends. It would, in a real sense, send British Ministers naked into the Council of Ministers. In some cases, that is a very sobering thought indeed.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
Has not the Liberal position traditionally been to want British Ministers to go naked into the conference chamber of the EU? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that his and his colleagues’ Europhile tendencies contributed towards the Liberals’ stunning success in coming sixth in the Barnsley by-election?
Martin Horwood
I am not sure that we have a party policy on nakedness in general—although I shall certainly consult my colleagues on that.
I shall not detain the House long, but it seems clear that the new clause would result in the undermining of the British interest in terms of ministerial participation in negotiations. There may be measures that should be introduced to add more transparency and openness to the EU at Commission level, and certainly at Council of Ministers level, and I am sure that I, and Liberal Democrat Euro MPs and Members of this Parliament, would be sympathetic to them. There may even be methods that we should explore similar to the Finnish model about which we have heard so much. Those would also be greeted with a lot of sympathy, but the new clause would not deliver any of those things, so I am afraid that hon. Members should throw it out.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) reminded us that the purpose of the new clause is to deal with the manifest lack of trust that the public have in the negotiation, on behalf of the British public, of grave constitutional issues in the European Council and elsewhere. The new clause would itself introduce a considerable constitutional change, and I hope that hon. Members will allow me to say that I would find that not a necessarily unhappy change, but a change none the less. That is the fact that, heretofore, Ministers of the Crown negotiated and treated on behalf of the British people and of the Crown, and Parliament, if it saw fit, studied the results of that treaty after the event.
That is not necessarily a good way for Ministers to discuss the nation’s interests in the councils of the world, but it is the situation as it stands. I would suggest, therefore, that if we are to see a change to that protocol—as was, to a degree, anticipated by the previous Government in their discussions on the royal prerogative—it may be appropriate to consider in the round the other international bodies and instruments to which we are party, and not just our relationship with the EU.
Hon. Members have rightly said that the EU is of considerable concern to many of our constituents. It is, but so are our World Trade Organisation negotiations. The EU has not yet created a riot on the streets outside Parliament—not yet, at least—yet a few years ago we had the anti-globalisation riots, which arose directly out of our negotiations in the WTO.
Mr Davidson
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our constituents generally take European matters much more seriously than almost any other international matter? Proof of that is the fact that in the Barnsley by-election, the UK Independence party managed to beat the Conservatives. What does that say about public confidence in the Conservatives’ position on Europe?
Ben Gummer
The hon. Gentleman has made a powerful point, but the public often have interests beyond the European Union. So far they have created a riot on trade issues. I happen not to agree with what the rioters were doing or with their motives, but the matter raises extreme passion among our constituents. Members know perfectly well that we are regularly written to by people who are concerned about globalisation and world trade rules. Our negotiations in the Security Council are another case in point. We as a nation are currently discussing Libya, a matter of considerable concern to our constituents. Perhaps we could have an understanding of the Government’s negotiating position on that, so that we might study and better understand what the Government plan to do.
Our constituents have considerable concerns about security matters with the United States, Commonwealth allies and other partners. I have been written to far more often about our security co-operation arrangements with other nations than about the European Union. Here, too, it might be appropriate for the House to have some sort of structure, such as that proposed by my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), whereby we see what the Government propose, in anticipation of their negotiating.
In the matter of declaring war, the House had a cursory and temporary assessment of the merits of conducting war against Iraq. It is shameful that even the papers relating to that cannot be released to the Iraq inquiry so that we might see the decision-making moments that happened in that most extraordinary and important decision that the House and the Government have taken in the past decade.
Although I support the broad thrust of the new clause, it would be more appropriate to consider all the international organs and bodies on which we sit, and to do so on the basis of a much wider consideration of the constitutional powers that our Ministers wield when they are negotiating and treating on our behalf.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
I think my hon. Friend is making a strong case for a full and wide review of the royal prerogative. Is that what he is arguing for?
Ben Gummer
My right hon. Friend has expressed that with much greater concision than I have managed, and embarrassed me in the process.
There is so much concision in the new clause that it is difficult to understand precisely what the proposers are getting at. It says that the papers relating to the negotiations should be released
“during negotiation of the treaty or decision.”
One of the proposers, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), related the negotiation of the European working time directive and the fact that it took from 1992 to 1999 to make that decision. At which point during that long negotiation would the papers relating to it be released to the House? If released after the negotiation had been concluded in 1999, would they have helped to understand the Government’s position in 1992?
Ms Gisela Stuart
The release of the papers would indeed have helped. The subsequent interpretation of the working time directive and the detail of how it should operate by the Court of Justice would have made it clear that none of the Governments involved in the original negotiations had intended certain interpretations to be made. That would have strengthened the House’s hand in saying, “No, that’s not what was intended, even by our Ministers.”
Ben Gummer
The hon. Lady has clarified that beautifully. It argues for wider consideration of such issues in the kind of structure anticipated by my hon. Friends and the process in Finland that she described.
There is a broader transparency that the House enjoys, which is to put to the electorate a manifesto at the time of elections. In the past 10 years a party has put forward a manifesto proposing a referendum on the European constitution, lately called the Lisbon treaty, yet that referendum was never granted. The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that such mendacity cannot be repeated. I therefore propose that the new clause be advanced at a later stage and on a wider basis, but I support the broader purposes of the Bill.
Laura Sandys
Does my hon. Friend agree that taking that proposal forward and evolving it over the next couple of years and months must be done on a multilateral basis, not a unilateral UK basis?
Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend makes an important point, because it is patently obvious how difficult it is for the United States, our ally, to negotiate at the moment, following the unilateral release of its documents to the world’s media, which was not its choice. If this is to be done, clearly it must be on a multilateral basis, especially with our key allies in the Commonwealth and the United States, as well as those in Europe.
I support the main aims of the Bill. I am greatly attracted to the thrust of the new clause, but I suspect that it would have more power and greater reach if it were advanced at a different stage and on a wider basis.
Mr Buckland
I want to make a few brief remarks about what is, on the face of it, a very laudable new clause. It is proposed by a number of Members whose reputations for seeking more openness in the transactions of government precede them. However, I hesitate to support it for several reasons, many of which have been ably outlined by other Members during the debate. In an intervention, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) really got to the heart of one problem with the terminology used in the new clause, particularly the word “relevant”, which is used in subsections (1) and (2).
Mr Buckland
I disagree, because I think that the term used in the Bill in relation to significance is very well couched. It has been explained very carefully and is backed up by a careful and clear text. There is a list in the Bill of the particular aspects that will trigger a referendum. I am afraid that I do not think that our points about those two words are analogous.
The word “relevant”, which I am focusing on, causes lawyers and all those with an interest in the law much difficulty in a wide range of issues. For example, an application for relevant documentation made before a criminal trial can cause much debate and argument on precisely what the term means. Frankly, I can see the same thing happening with the new clause and the issue going before the courts. In other words, I can see a judicial review of a particular laying of documentation by a Minister as part of the process, which again would make juridicable those issues that are properly dealt with by this House. I do not think that that is the intention of the Members who tabled the new clause, but it would be an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence of the use of that terminology, because what is relevant to one person will not be relevant to another. I can see a long and exhaustive list of documents being laid before the House and yet more requests being made for further documentation, which will then have to be ruled on by a court. Those would be regrettable consequences that none of us wants to see.
Another main problem with this rather wide-ranging new clause is the fact that not all the documents would be in the possession or ownership of the UK Government. It is clear from the phrasing of the new clause that many of the documents will have been drafted by either EU officials or other member states. Therefore, they are not under the ownership or control of the UK Government; they are what we call third-party documents.
The new clause would therefore have a great impact on the position of other member states and the institutions of the European Union. As we have heard, from my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) in particular, other member states have their own procedures and ways of dealing with pre-negotiation positions, and many are dealt with in secret. Are we to say that this House has a right to interfere directly with the procedures of other member states?
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), in his eloquent speech, said that what is for the Danes is a matter for them, but I am afraid that the new clause would drive a coach and horses through that, because what is for the Danes would no longer be a matter for them; it would become a matter for us. In effect, we would decide to disclose documentation that they, under their procedures, did not want formally disclosed, and that would have a consequence for our relations with other member states in the context of freedom of information.
Such a decision would also have a consequence for existing regulations on access to EU documents. The current regulations, to which this country is a signatory, provide rights of access to documents held by EU institutions, and with the consent of those institutions the documents can then be disclosed to the public. The new clause would override and potentially conflict with that rule, and that is a problem—a practical difficulty—which makes questionable the fundamental deliverability of the aims of the proposed change. We cannot legislate in a vacuum, and we cannot ignore the rules of other member states or the rules and regulations to which we are a signatory.
Ironically, in an attempt to assert the power of this House to scrutinise negotiation and legislation, we risk interfering directly with the domestic arrangements of other member states, and I am absolutely sure that many who have spoken in today’s debate, who always speak so eloquently about the rights of nation states in the European Union, would not want that to happen.
I yield to no one in my fervent belief in transparency and openness. I believe fundamentally that some of the previous Government’s conduct was a negation of democracy, and, if the European Union is to be sustained as an institution that is worthy of the trust and support of not just its members but its peoples, much more must be done to increase that transparency.
Finally, I also believe fundamentally that we have to be realistic and strike a balance between the interests of openness and the interests of efficient and effective negotiation. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover, in his speech—
Mr Buckland
His excellent speech; I am happy to be corrected. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover made an important and helpful analogy between the negotiations that he as a lawyer would conduct on behalf of his clients and the work of Ministers representing this country in the Council of Ministers and in other European institutions. He quite rightly said that it would be—I paraphrase somewhat—rather absurd for him to be forced to reveal to his opponents his entire menu of options during a negotiation.
I adopt that analogy but take it one stage further: it would be even more absurd for my hon. Friend, as a lawyer justifying his decision to his clients, then to be forced to disclose not only the documents that he generated as a result of his negotiation, but the documents generated by his opponents. That would potentially prejudice not only his position but that of another party to the negotiations. Indeed, I am sure that he took part in negotiations with more than one party.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
This has been a genuinely interesting debate which—somewhat unusually for European debates, dare I say it—has developed in a way that I did not altogether anticipate. We started by discussing a new clause dealing with transparency and public and parliamentary access to information concerning European negotiations, but as the debate continued it developed along the broader theme of the adequacy or inadequacy of our current arrangements for the scrutiny of decisions taken by successive Governments of the United Kingdom on behalf of Parliament and people within the institutions of the European Union. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate.
The key choice that has to be borne in mind in considering the proposition put forward in the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) concerns the most effective balance between, on one hand, appropriate access to information that provides the flexibility to allow citizens and other interested parties to see documents that contributed to policy making and, on the other hand, the need to preserve a space for candid, confidential discussion, deliberation and negotiation to ensure the best possible outcome in the interests of our country. I have sympathy for many of the arguments—certainly the motivations—of the hon. Members who tabled the new clause, but I do not think that it would deliver the right balance. I will make my arguments in more detail in due course, but I hope that at the end of the debate they will not press the motion to a Division.
I want to start by addressing some of the broader issues that have been raised. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said that we needed to know when and how Ministers voted. Of course, one of the changes introduced by Lisbon is that we have new rules for the workings of the Council, including not only a public record but a public broadcast of the final deliberations at a Council session on legislative dossiers. At that point, it is apparent how each member state has voted, if indeed there is a formal division, and the arguments or the statement of position that the Minister or other representative of a member state chooses to put forward are also be made public. I have sat through a number of those public sessions over the past 10 months. I do not think that they will ever command a mass audience on a Saturday evening. I am not aware that they have ever been broadcast as part of the regular prime-time news bulletins in this country or any other member state.
The new clause and many of the contributions to the debate have tried to get at how Parliament, on behalf of the public, can hold Ministers to account more effectively, not just for that final, often rather formal, process of taking a decision on live TV, but for how the negotiating position of the United Kingdom is shaped in the numerous bilateral contacts and contacts with European institutions that are undertaken by Ministers and officials, sometimes over many months. A number of ideas have been suggested. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) said that we need to look at the matter in the context not only of the EU, but of our participation in other international institutions and considering the use of royal prerogative powers more generally.
It is interesting that no hon. Member has mentioned the House of Lords, which has distinct and different scrutiny arrangements. There is a question for parliamentarians at both ends of this building as to what methods of scrutiny experience teaches us work best and most effectively. If Government and Parliament are to agree on new scrutiny arrangements, the position of both Houses will have to be taken into account.
Mr Cash
I am sure that the Minister would not want to misrepresent the differences between the two Scrutiny Committees. I know he is aware that the House of Lords has more generalised debates, whereas under our Standing Orders, our debates relate to particular legislative documents. To align the two might be a bit of a mistake.
Mr Lidington
That would be a matter for debate. I have heard dissatisfaction with the current scrutiny arrangements and a wish to explore the alternatives from several Members from all parts of the House this afternoon. At the moment, we have a model in the House of Commons and a model in the House of Lords. This business is done in various ways in other member states. Such a debate would take all those approaches into account.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) talked more generally about how we could improve our scrutiny arrangements. It seems to me that we need to keep the distinction between Parliament and Executive clearly in mind. Parliament’s role is to hold Ministers to account for their decisions, not to take on the role of the Minister. There is a strong case for saying to Parliament—perhaps I should be more cautious and say suggesting to Parliament—that rather than drowning parliamentarians in paperwork, about which the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk made a good point, Parliament and its Scrutiny Committees could seek to call Ministers before them, including in advance of Council decisions rather than necessarily waiting for the final version.
Ms Gisela Stuart
Will the Minister say how he thinks the House can overcome the problem of collective memory? In Whitehall, there is collective memory within the Administration, and if there is a change of Government, it is handed from one Administration to the next. Parliament has overcome the problem through successive Select Committees. However, if the knowledge is not in Parliament, once an Administration are gone it has no access.
Mr Lidington
When speaking on behalf of the Government, I must be careful not to presume to represent a collective Government position that does not yet exist, nor to pre-empt the views of parliamentarians from all parts of the House on the most appropriate method of scrutiny.
Mr Cash
The Minister is moving away from the proposals put forward by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) into a much deeper question, and I know that he is taking this opportunity to do so. As Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, I ask him to consider also that because the decisions made by the Council of Ministers are of a legislative character and are binding on Parliament through section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972, it is incumbent on him to consider the idea—in fact, to implement it—that Parliament may decide to vote against proposals that have been cultivated by the Government and to reject provisions that have been decided in the Council of Ministers. Perhaps the Minister can throw that point into the pool of his considerations.
Mr Lidington
That is clearly already possible under our system if a European measure comes forward that requires primary or secondary legislation to transpose it into the law of the United Kingdom. It is up to the Government of the day, of whichever party or parties it is composed, to retain the confidence of Parliament and to persuade a majority in Parliament to endorse their preferred approach.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston challenged me on the question of collective memory. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk said that he regretted the switch from European Standing Committees with fixed memberships to European Committees with shifting memberships. I spent my first Parliament, among other things, doing duty on European Standing Committee A. There is no doubt that I learned a great deal by virtue of that continuity, not least through the example of the late and great Gwyneth Dunwoody on how to hold Ministers to account. She used to deliver a master class in reading the documents in advance and picking out the weaknesses in the Government’s argument.
Michael Connarty
I could share many happy memories of that lady turning up in Standing Committees of which she was not a member and holding Ministers to account because of her interest in the subject. Cross-border health care, for example, although not her speciality, was a cause célèbre for her.
I compliment the previous Government and the present Government for continuing to send draft Council conclusions to the European Scrutiny Committee. That is what a lot of Members, such as the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), have been talking about—actually seeing the proposals that are before the Council before they are discussed in the Council. The difficulty is that they are “limité” documents and are therefore semi-confidential. If there was a method that allowed a Committee or group of people in Parliament to have that responsibility—as is done in Denmark and Finland—and to interrogate the Minister on those documents, it would be a great step forward.
Mr Lidington
That is certainly an interesting suggestion. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his compliment. We intend to continue the practice of supplying “limité” documents whenever appropriate.
There is sometimes an issue about where the boundary of responsibility should lie between the European Scrutiny Committee and the various departmental Select Committees. If I have one reflection to offer from my experience in the 10 months that I have held my responsibilities, it is that parliamentary debate on this country’s engagement with the EU tends to take place in a metaphorical annexe. It is as though Parliament had constructed a separate, padded building, where the equivalent of the teenagers with their drum kits could get up to what they wanted. There is a serious question to be asked about whether our arrangements do justice to the fact that the European decision-making and legislative process should now be regarded as part of the mainstream of politics in the UK, rather than as something that can be relegated to an annexe.
Mr Cash
I would very much welcome the idea of having, for example, European questions in the House. I have many proposals that would make the system more efficient. I remind my right hon. Friend of the current Home Secretary’s pamphlet, which recommended not only that European Committees should have their proceedings properly advertised, but that if, for example, 150 Members decided that they wanted to have the matter in question debated on the Floor of the House, there should be a free vote on a motion to overturn a decision taken in the Council of Ministers, whether or not the Government had approved the provision there. Some of us would be more interested in the results of a vote than in a mere discussion.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Can we bring the debate back, please, to new clause 1?
Mr Lidington
I will try to bring this part of my speech to a conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, by saying that this has been an interesting discussion of the broader themes involved. We have heard allusions to various Scandinavian models of European scrutiny.
Mr David
Before the Minister finally moves on, I point out that I have been thinking long and hard about what to buy the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for Christmas, and now I am going to buy him a drum kit.
I welcome the tone and content of the Minister’s comments about having more scrutiny in the House. May I suggest to him that we really need to reinstate the twice-yearly debate about Europe before the Council meetings? Before he responds that that is an issue for the Backbench Business Committee, I once again implore him to ensure that Government time is provided for those debates.
Mr Lidington
I know that the hon. Gentleman has at least been consistent in pushing that line, but I have to remind him that his party, when it was in office, and all other parties, agreed unanimously to changes to our procedures and the organisation of parliamentary time that explicitly gave responsibility for those biannual debates on European matters to the Backbench Business Committee rather than the Government.
We have heard this afternoon about the importance of decisions in the EU to everybody in the country, and it would be a good expression of Parliament’s understanding of that point if Back Benchers of all parties put pressure on the Backbench Business Committee to make a debate on Europe a priority, instead of debates on the other matters that the Committee has chosen in response to Back Benchers’ demands. Back Benchers’ priorities should be debated in Back-Bench time, and I believe that most of us present this evening would like the Committee to feel that a debate on Europe was what Back Benchers wanted. I hope the hon. Gentleman will persuade his colleagues of that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sure that we want to deal with new clause 1, and I am sure the Minister recognises that he is drifting away from the subject. He has been tempted all over the place, but I am sure he will want to deal with what is before us.
Mr Lidington
I simply remind all hon. Members who want to take forward these wider arguments that I said in my written ministerial statement on scrutiny on 20 January, which referred mostly to justice and home affairs, that the Government would
“review the arrangements for engagement on EU issues in consultation with Parliament.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 52WS.]
I invite them to take advantage of that opportunity.
I turn to the detail of new clause 1, which causes me concern because it would result in the United Kingdom having a substantially different policy with regard to information on EU decision making from that on domestic policy making. It would also represent a substantial impediment to the UK’s ability to negotiate effectively in an intergovernmental conference, in the European Council and in the Council of Ministers. As a number of Members have said, it could have a negative impact on our relationship with other member states and the EU institutions, and more generally on the process of good policy making and legislation.
The negative effect on our ability to negotiate at the Council of Ministers concerns me most. First, action to comply with the statutory duty that the new clause would impose on Ministers could reveal sensitive information about the UK’s long-term negotiating approach in a number of areas. I do not believe it is sufficient protection to say that the negotiations would be complete or substantially complete by the time the documents were made available, because it is very rare that negotiating positions taken in respect of one piece of legislation do not have a read-across to positions on other matters that will probably still be live dossiers when that legislation has been agreed to.
Secondly, complying with the new clause would mean that our tactics in negotiations would have to take into account the duty to make negotiating positions on proposed amendments public at a later stage. For example, there are occasions on which we try to persuade other member states to propose, or take the lead on, particular amendments so that we can concentrate our time and energy on different amendments that perhaps have less widespread support. If a Minister knew that he might be criticised if it became public that he had not sponsored a particular amendment, that would constrain our negotiating tactics and weaken our negotiating strategies.
I quite understand that the proponents of the new clause might want to see how a decision is made at EU level and the details of what part the UK has played in that process, but I do not want any Ministers of any Government who are fighting for Britain’s interest in future discussions and negotiations to be doing so with one hand tied behind their back. It is absolutely essential to our national interest that Ministers can negotiate effectively on behalf of our country.
As a number of Members have said, including my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), the new clause would also have implications for information that we have on record about the positions of other member states. There is even a risk that its requirements could put us in conflict with existing European legislation. As a member state of the EU, we are party to the terms of the access to documents regulation, article 5 of which requires that when any member state intends to disclose a document originating from one of the EU institutions, it must consult that institution before public disclosure. If, under the new clause, we had to release a text submitted at a Council working group that included proposed amendments from each member state, and the agreement of the Council as a whole had not been sought or obtained, we could potentially be at risk of infraction proceedings and ultimately a fine. As the new clause is drafted, it is quite possible that our obligations as an EU member state could be at odds with the statutory duty that the new clause would create.
Mr Lidington
The remedy that my hon. Friend seeks can be obtained by Committees and the House being energetic in holding Ministers to account for the positions that they take and for the way in which they agree to whatever compromise is eventually negotiated.
Importantly, the proposed new clause does not specify in any way to what “relevant documentation” refers. That came up earlier in the debate. It is not clear, for example, whether “relevant documentation” covers so-called non-papers submitted by member states, which are intended to be “without prejudice” contributions to discussions. Does it include Council working group documents that give the position in summary of each and every member state on a particular issue? There could easily be widely diverging views on what comprises “relevant documentation”.
That lack of clarity could also cause confusion in relation to UK documents. Reference was made during the debate to whether legal advice given to the Government would be required to be made available under the terms of the proposed new clause. If so, that would clearly undermine the principle of legal professional privilege, the significance of which the Information Commissioner has generally recognised in the context of the Freedom of Information Act. Governments need to receive free and frank legal advice without fearing that it must be drafted in a form that is suitable for later public consumption.
Hon. Members may argue that we should try to use the current renegotiation of the access to documents regulation to implement the provisions of proposed new clause 1, but that measure would take us a long way beyond what would be acceptable in terms of releasing documents that are used at EU level for deliberations and decision making. The positions of other member states in respect of the documents that they make available to their Parliaments and public vary dramatically. Domestic regulations in several states lay out specific criteria on which documents can and cannot be released. Such criteria often allow for a great deal of discretion for Ministers or their officials, or impose strict limitations on the type and origin of documents to be released.
In some member states, the approach is to accept the general principle that as much documentation as possible should be released, with the only limitations being the prevention of harm, with harm often being defined in terms of personal, legal or economic impact.
Mr Lidington
I look forward to visiting my hon. Friend and seeing the framed Hansard extract of my argument. I could return the compliment by wallpapering one of my rooms with the Hansard report of one of his speeches.
Hon. Members referred to a number of EU member states in the debate. Denmark was cited more than once as the prime example of an open country, but the documents that the Danish Government must provide to the European Affairs Committee of the Folketing do not include the positions of other member states or amendments that they have proposed, and nor are the Danish Government required to provide documents that have been prepared for their internal use, such as inter-ministerial correspondence. Even in Denmark, the right of access is subject to limitations when protection of, for example, public financial interests is essential.
Mr Clappison
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the care and attention that he has taken in answering this debate and for the manner in which he has done so. I am sure that it has been of great assistance to the House, and I will now be going to the Library to seek out a copy of the European Union access to documents regulations—I certainly would not want to fall foul of them, given what we have been told this afternoon.
My right hon. Friend has approached the debate in the spirit of the new clause. I am sure that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), in drafting the new clause, did not think that it was the finished article. It was a plea for greater transparency, and I hope that it has been taken as such. Despite possible problems with, for example, the phrase “relevant documentation”, what that might include, and what implications might flow from it, I hope at least that on the question of amendments proposed by a Government during treaty negotiations and treaty changes—that is what new clause 1 deals with—whether through the ordinary procedure or the new simplified revision procedure, members of the public and the House will be told what amendments are being, and have been, proposed by the Government, so that we, and members of the public, can judge, in due course, the strength of the Government’s position on what they ultimately recommend. We should be told whether a Government have been consistent in the amendments that they proposed and in what they subsequently recommend.
I will give one example. I was struggling earlier to think of one, although I know that there are a lot of them. During negotiations on the Lisbon treaty, Ministers in the then Government came to the House and advocated a certain clause or course of action, but it was discovered that during the negotiations on the Convention they had advocated exactly the opposite. One prime example was the creation of the European “foreign ministry” itself—the European External Action Service. During the debate, I have helpfully been told by the House of Commons Library that the then
“government’s amendments in the Convention to articles 1-27, III-197.1 describe the term ‘Foreign Minister’ as ‘unacceptable’ arguing that ‘he/she should have no ministry’. The government preferred the term ‘EU external representative’.”
Well we have our external representative—or rather, our High Representative—but perhaps that phrase conceals the fact that she is in reality a Foreign Minister, and the office was originally intend as such. We also have a European “foreign ministry” in the form of the EEAS, even though the then Government did not want it. They then had to come before the House, having apparently lost on that amendment, and argue from the Dispatch Box in favour of the creation of an external action service. The Minister will well remember, as I do, that on that occasion, Conservative Members opposed its creation. In the light of developments since, and what the public have come to learn and think about the EEAS and its conduct, I am not sure that our arguments against it have been entirely disproved. But there we are. That is one example.
The new clause was a plea for transparency. However, I know that there are important matters still to come before the House, and I do not want to delay them by pressing the new clause to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Parliament Act 1911 in relation to sections 1 to 7
‘(1) The Parliament Act 1911 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 2(1), after “five years” there is inserted “or a Bill amending or repealing sections 1 to 7 of the European Union Act 2011”.’.—(Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The purpose of new clause 2 is to exempt most of the Bill from the functioning of the Parliament Act 1911. That would mean that were a Government to attempt to repeal it, they would have to do so with the consent of the House of Lords, without being able to re-present it a year later and get it into law regardless. The new clause would give the same protection to the rights of the British people to vote in a referendum on European matters as exists concerning the length of a Parliament.
It is one of the ironies of our constitutional system that the unelected Chamber has since 1911 been the final guardian of the democratic rights of the British people. Since 1911, it has been impossible to lengthen a Parliament without the willing consent of the House of Lords. It is the one part of the Parliament Act that the House of Commons cannot simply override. The last extension of a Parliament came, I think, in 1944, as a final extension—until the war had been completed—of the wartime Parliament. That principle clearly applies to referendum Bills, which relate to a right of the British people to exercise their democratic choice that should not be taken away from them lightly, and should be as protected as anything within the constitution can be.
It is worth mentioning—I hope that the Minister will be interested in this point—that one criticism has been made of the Bill by people who otherwise are sympathetic to it. It is that an incoming Government who wanted to push through the euro, or whatever, could simply repeal this legislation and go ahead with what they wanted to do anyway. Quite rightly, no Act of a Parliament can bind its successors, but the Bill contains no protection at all against a Government who do not want to follow it. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to protect the rights of the British people from further Europeanisation, it would be extremely sensible to exempt it from the Parliament Act in order to strengthen it. That would remove the one criticism made by people who are otherwise well disposed to the Bill. It would make it a stronger Bill, and one more settled in our constitutional situation. I think that many of us would like to see that.
An important constitutional development is noted in volume 1 of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee’s 10th report. It is a constitutional development that should concern the House, and on which the House should use its powers to set its seal, as it sees fit. It is essentially the Lord Justice Laws doctrine that came out of the metric martyrs case. He said:
“In the present state of its maturity the common law has come to recognise that there exist rights which should properly be classified as constitutional or fundamental…And from this a further insight follows. We should recognise a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament: as it were “ordinary” and “constitutional” statutes. The two categories must be distinguished on a principled basis.”
Lord Justice Laws went on to set out his definition of a constitutional statute as opposed to an ordinary statute. In the Bills we pass, however, there is no such difference. It is a distinction thought up by the courts, particularly to exempt the European Communities Act 1972 from implied repeal. As a matter of the most urgent constitutional principle, if there are to be two types of Act, it ought to be this House and the House of Lords who decide and determine that, not the judges. The judges are there to determine what we have said and rule on it, not to say that a new type—a whole new category—of law has been created. It seems to me that one of the ways the House could get a round that is to make it clear when we think that a Bill requires particular and special protection. Fortunately—because, as some hon. Members may know, I am a great believer in tradition—we have a precedent for that in the Parliament Act, which allows the House of Lords to be overruled on everything, with the exception of a removal of a democratic right. The parallel with the Bill is exact: it is a protection dealing with a constitutional situation developed by the Lord Justice Laws doctrine.
Martin Horwood
With the hon. Gentleman’s combination of eloquence, erudition and traditionalism, he is well on the way to becoming a national treasure already. However, surely he would admit that he is really making a much better case for a written British constitution making such a distinction, rather than for giving extended powers to the unelected Chamber as the guardian of democracy. That seems quite quirky, even by his standards.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I am afraid that he entirely misses the point. In framing the new clause I have been working within the confines of our unwritten constitution, using the elements and protections that are already there, and extending them to the Bill. I absolutely accept that it is an irony of our constitution, as it already exists, that the protection against a Parliament lengthening its own life is an unelected Chamber a few yards down the way. However, that is the situation in our constitution, and it is one that has been enormously effective for 100 years.
Charlie Elphicke
Does my hon. Friend not agree that his argument would have more force and credibility if the sunlight of democracy shone over the other end of this building?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
If my hon. Friend were to reread the Parliament Act 1911, he would see that it was introduced as an interim measure until the other place was reformed and until such time as the basis for selecting its Members had been changed. Again, therefore, I would say that my new clause is completely sympathetic with the unreformed House of Lords, and as the 1911 Act itself says, it would be part of a bigger reform of the balance of powers between the two Houses if the House of Lords were to be reformed.
I do not wish to take up much time with my new clause. It proposes an extremely simple, straightforward amendment: it serves the single purpose of making the Bill a little bit stronger, it uses a device already extant in our constitution, and it preserves and protects the rights of the British people to have a referendum against something potentially malign.
Michael Connarty
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose speeches I always read, if not always hear. He is very erudite and thoughtful in what he proposes, but today he seems to be saying that this Bill should be raised to a higher level than all the others passed by this House, apart from the European Communities Act 1972, which was given that status, which he opposes, by the courts. He is trying to put this Bill on a par with that Act, and although he does not like the process whereby the courts allocate that status, he says that it should also be allocated to this Bill, by this place.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman has half got what I have been saying and has half misconstrued it. I do not think it right that laws passed by Parliament should be put on a different level based on what judges think of them retrospectively. I do not think that that is a democratic way of deciding which law is important and which is unimportant. One may think that the judges will always get it right, but what if they decided that the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 was amazingly important and this Bill was not, so that the 1991 Act could not be impliedly repealed, but one giving people a vote in a referendum could be? What I am saying is that it is better for us to take this power upon ourselves and say, “Okay, this is an important Act. We’re going to put that in, and say that it is exempt from the Parliament Act 1911.”
The hon. Gentleman asked a good question, which is: why start with this particular Bill? The reasons for starting with this Bill are, first, that the judgment putting the 1972 Act on to a higher plane is relatively recent, and secondly, that I was elected to Parliament only last May and have therefore not had the opportunity before to propose such a measure on a major constitutional Bill, other than the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. The reasons for starting with this Bill are because of that judgment, and because I am now in a position to do this. It would have been a good thing to do earlier, on other constitutional Bills, including on devolution to Scotland.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I am always impressed by the hon. Gentleman’s displays of legal knowledge, but surely his whole point is spurious. The judges’ argument is irrelevant and wrong: there is no distinction between some laws passed by Parliament and others. We cannot say that some are constitutional and others are not. That distinction does not exist: they are all of equal standing. The point that he is trying to make is also irrelevant, because he is appealing to a constitution that does not exist. Essentially, the British constitution is what Governments can get away with, and they get away with it in this place.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I so wish that the hon. Gentleman, who is a most distinguished Eurosceptic, were right, but unfortunately the judges have taken that power to themselves. I return to what Lord Justice Laws said in his judgment on the metric martyrs case:
“Ordinary statutes may be impliedly repealed. Constitutional statutes may not.”
The judges have set up for themselves two different types of Act. It seems to me that we should claim that power back for the democratically elected Chamber of Parliament, and say that when we think an Act is of significant constitutional importance, what we will do is not entrench it—that is against the spirit of our constitution—but give it a modest protection by saying that it can be repealed only with the full consent of both Houses. The great advantage of that, for those of us who remember what happened prior to 1911, is that it would require a Government to win a general election—to go back to the people—before they could get something through the House of Lords, if the House of Lords said no. That happened in 1911, with the reforms to the House of Lords, and in 1832, with the Great Reform Bill. That provision has been an historic and traditional way of protecting our democratic rights—one that, oddly, involves the undemocratic Chamber—and that is why I think it would improve the standing of this Bill. It would protect the democratic rights of the British people and deal with the constitutional situation as it is—as the judges have developed it—rather than the constitutional system as the hon. Gentleman and I might wish it to be.
Charlie Elphicke
It is not only an incredible privilege and honour to listen to the superb eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), but an even greater privilege and honour to follow him. Nevertheless, on this occasion I do not follow him in the sense of agreeing with the new clause that he is propounding. I put it to him in an intervention that it was ironic that he was seeking to use the unelected Chamber as the guardian of the people’s democracy. His answer was, “Well, look at the preamble to the 1911 Act.” I was reminded of the dictum of St Augustine of Hippo, who, as I am sure he knows only too well, said, “Make me pure, Lord—but not yet.”
Charlie Elphicke
In one moment.
I do not think that it is an excuse to say that because the House of Lords is partly reformed, we can give it a role as the guardian of our democracy pending the completion of that reform. Given that we have been racing towards the reform set out in the preamble to the 1911 Act for 100 years, it may take another 100 years to complete it—and given the way things carry on in this place, I suspect that we will indeed be waiting for 100 years to come.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, but I just wonder whether he thinks the House of Lords has done a bad job since 1911 in the one area in which it is exempt from the 1911 Act—that is, in defending the right of the British people to have an election at least every five years?
Charlie Elphicke
I do not decry the role of the House of Lords, the excellence of their lordships, the work that they do, their courage or the passion with which they advance their cases. Indeed, it is often said that the debates held in their lordships’ House are far more informed, considered, interesting and informative than our debates in this House. Having been in this place and not that place, I cannot compare the two. Nevertheless, it is a dangerous principle to say, “Let’s include a provision in the Parliament Act to say that the House of Lords should be not only the guardian of five-year Parliaments but the guardian of this Bill, to protect it from being altered.”
I would have much more faith in the proposal if reform of the House of Lords had been completed—something that I hope will come to pass. One of the problems that I have with the House of Lords is not the people in it or their mental ability—many of them are excellent people and their mental ability is far superior to mine—but my concern that they do not hold a democratic mandate. It is an important principle that where we have representatives in our legislature, they should have a mandate from the people. I guess it is because I am a Lincolnian politician—I believe in government for the people, by the people, of the people—that I believe that the sunshine of democracy should permeate our entire legislature, and not just this House. I admit to some radicalism in my thinking on such matters, but I believe it is important that all our politicians should be elected and have a democratic mandate.
Mr Cash
Will my hon. Friend turn his mind to this radical thought? If the House of Lords were to become an elected Chamber, it would not make the slightest bit of difference in respect of the argument that he is presenting, because the Parliament Act would remain on the statute book. The argument that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) has put forward would also apply to an elected House. The question, in a nutshell, is one of judicial supremacy, which is why I strongly support what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has been saying.
Charlie Elphicke
I take the view that this will be an important Act. It will introduce a referendum lock to ensure that we do not get dragged further into the European Union without consulting the British people. Inevitably, because Parliament is sovereign, it would be able to unravel the Act, to repeal it and to take away the people’s right to have a say in a referendum. That is the right of Parliament, but I do not agree with the argument for entrenching it to the same extent as the Parliament Act, as is suggested in the new clause. The Parliament Act is an entrenchment of our basic right not to have our democracy stolen from us. I would not place this legislation on that same lofty plane. It is important that Acts of Parliament should be able to be changed or repealed by a sovereign Parliament. The political issue is that any person or party that repeals an Act such as this will reap the whirlwind from the electorate. I am happy that we are able to pass and repeal Acts, and that the electorate should have the final say at an election, at which point they can condemn any such behaviour. I shall now give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley).
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Can we conduct the debate through the Chair, please?
Michael Connarty
First, may I compliment the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on the eloquence both of the construction of his new clause and of his delivery in arguing for it? I believe that the new clause is flawed. He suggested that the evidence that we had received—he kept referring to Lord Justice Laws’ ruling—was correct, but we received evidence from many other people that it was incorrect. It was suggested that we could not establish two tiers of laws just because a judge decided to make a remark in court, and that all laws, including the European Communities Act 1972, stand the same and can have implied amendment and repeal.
If Parliament decided to pass a law here that was contrary to a ruling, directive or regulation of the European Union, it would still stand as a law. The dilemma would then be whether the European Court of Justice would have the right to overrule that decision or whether we would press on our courts our decision in the new Act, which would cause a judgment to be called for in the European Court. If no one called for such a judgment on an Act that we had passed contrary to a regulation or directive of the European Union, it would continue to apply. It would not be knocked down, and no penalties would be imposed on the UK, unless someone called for the European Court of Justice to make a judgment on that new Act. So it was nonsense to suggest that in 1972 we had suddenly created an Act that was incapable of implied repeal or amendment.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The evidence that we received focused on the “notwithstanding” approach—that is, that one could not accidentally repeal, or move, an Act that was contrary to the 1972 Act; one would have to do it explicitly. That is different from most other Acts of Parliament that can impliedly be repealed. This is where we come back to Lord Justice Laws’ judgment, which has been de facto accepted.
Michael Connarty
Just to remind everyone who reads these tomes, the 1972 Act embodied a decision by this Parliament that laws, directives and regulations drawn up by the European Union should take primacy over an Act covering the same area passed by this Parliament. It was our decision to use our sovereignty to give that primacy as part of the deal of going into the European Union.
My understanding of the evidence is that if we passed an Act that did not contain a “notwithstanding” clause or set out to be a deliberate challenge, and that simply put in place a law that we wished to have, it would have to be challenged and taken to the European Court of Justice before it created any conflict. So the question is: do we accept that that was right and that the judges have the right to do that?
I suggest that if the hon. Member for North East Somerset genuinely wishes to see that change, he should not apply to the good offices of the 1911 Parliament Act. I agree with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) that it is wrong that we should appeal to an undemocratic institution. I believe that we should look to a justice Act of some kind to determine that judges cannot make such a ruling or decide that there are two kinds of laws in this country. Some people think that the European Union takes up a lot of time, but I think that the more important laws are those that will determine what is going to happen to people’s pensions in this country or to their employment rights. I hope that the hon. Member for North East Somerset will come back to the House with a justice proposal, which I would be happy to support, saying that the courts cannot make a ruling that overrules the right of this democratic Chamber to decide the law of this land.
Austin Mitchell
I am trying to follow the argument, but, being a European argument, it is very difficult to follow. Surely the situation is that if we pass a law that negates the implementation of a European Union law in this country, our courts would have to accept the European Union law rather than ours. We could not pass such a law unless we specifically exempted it from the European Communities Act 1972.
Michael Connarty
My hon. Friend’s point is correct, but that is not what we are talking about. He describes a situation in which this or any Government decided to challenge the original decision. A law could be passed that would continue to run contrary to European Union law; I believe that that is happening in many countries. We and the Norwegians are the most obsessed with trying to get everything right in terms of fitting in with European directives. A challenge could be made, however, and we would then have to decide whether it was right for us to negotiate a change in the relationship or to abandon our law and accept the ruling of the European Union. At the moment, that does not happen.
My main point is that we in this democratically elected Chamber can overturn these decisions at any time if we have the will to do so. We are not bound by them for ever. Like any other law, we will be able to challenge this legislation in this Chamber, which is why I do not believe that we have to go through the rather tortuous, although eloquently described, process of applying an amendment to the Parliament Act 1911.
On the ability of the Lords to protect us from changes to our democracy, they have not protected us from this shabby coalition, which is proposing a law that would guarantee that the coalition would run for five years—a proposal that I spoke against in the first debate in this place after the election—unless the shabby minority part of that shabby coalition, the Liberal Democrats, decide to pull it down, because no other person in this place could do that. If the Lords could protect us from that, I might have more confidence in the 1911 Act.
Mr Cash
I should like to endorse the general thrust of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), although I must qualify that slightly by saying that I do not take the view that there is a difference between different types of statute. However, that does not make a material difference to the thrust of his argument, which is that we must at all costs preserve the right of this House ultimately to make the decisions. Indeed, in the 1870s—it might have been earlier—the statesman John Bright put forward the proposition that led to the Parliament Act 1911, some 30 years before it was implemented, precisely because he did not believe in privilege, in aristocracy or in the House of Lords as it was then constituted.
The reality is that we can achieve the objectives by adopting the new clause without necessarily accepting that the House of Lords could not become an elected body if that were the view of this House in due course. I do not accept the proposition put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) because so long as we have a second Chamber, the House of Lords will be the House of Lords—irrespective of whether it is elected.
The question of constitutional statutes has been introduced as a notion, but it is not intrinsic to the argument. What is essential is to ensure that we do not allow the Supreme Court to adjudicate over and above the decisions taken by our Parliament. That is the key issue. Some futile commentators—and, if I may say so, some Members of this House—mislead themselves from time to time by suggesting that sovereignty is not such an important issue. The reason for its importance is very simple: we Members are elected to make decisions, and all the other issues, such as dealing with burdens on business and so forth, stem from that. That explains my view of the European Union, which is that, where necessary, the sovereign Parliament should override through the “notwithstanding” formula to which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset rightly referred and which I have employed on a number of occasions when I have been supported by Conservative Front-Bench Members—for example, when we were in opposition and with respect to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, and on other occasions.
What we need to insist on above all—it cropped up in the previous debate—is that this House on behalf of the electorate represents the democratic process whereby we are voted in to make decisions. We must insist on that at the expense of judicial supremacy. Even though I am the first to say that it is for the courts to interpret legislation, it is not for them to make it. That is the fundamental point. I thoroughly endorse both the sentiments and the wording of the new clause.
Mr Lidington
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg),who I know takes a strong interest in these important constitutional issues—and he is right to do so. Our short debate has allowed him and other hon. Members to seek a means to entrench the Bill once it reaches the statute book, and to protect it from future attempts at repeal. At the same time, the new clause has been drafted in such a way as to permit my hon. Friend the opportunity to raise broader constitutional questions about the ultimate authority to take decisions and whether that should lie with Parliament or with the judiciary. My hon. Friend cited in particular the leading judgment of Lord Justice Laws, which has been quoted on many occasions during our proceedings on theBill.
I am afraid, however, that although I agree with much of the sentiment that underpins the new clause, I cannot support the new clause for reasons that I shall shortly provide. Let me first explain a little about the Government’s interpretation of the new clause and its effect. It would introduce a new category of Bill, which could not be passed under the procedure provided by section 2 of the Parliament Act 1911.
As all hon. Members will be aware, section 2 of the Parliament Act 1911 makes provision under which most public Bills can be enacted ultimately without the approval of the House of Lords. There are, however, two exceptions to the general rule. The first relates to money Bills, which have their own procedure under section 1 of the Parliament Act. The second exception is for what that Act terms
“a Bill containing any provision to extend the maximum duration of Parliament beyond five years”.
Under the new clause, there would be a third exception: namely, any Bill that sought to amend or repeal what would be provided for in sections 1 to 7 of the European Union Act 2011, which this Bill will become if Parliament agrees to its passing. In practice, this would mean that the legislation could not be either repealed or amended in respect of those sections without the express consent of the House of Lords.
I hope it goes without saying that I fully support the political intention of the new clause to help to ensure that the Act remains on the statute book for a long time to come. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on Second Reading, the Government believe that the Bill should become
“part of the accepted constitutional framework of this country”.—[Official Report, 7 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 197.]
It is right to point out, however, that the Parliament Act 1911 has been amended only once, in 1949. Since then, Parliament has not considered it appropriate to single out any other pieces of legislation—for example, the Acts of Parliament passed to provide for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 or, indeed, the European Communities Act 1972—for similar special status. Even enthusiastic supporters of the Bill would find it difficult to argue that this piece of legislation should be singled out in this particular way, which is denied to other items of legislation that might generally be accepted to have important constitutional significance.
Mr Cash
Even if my right hon. Friend were right in his general assertions about elements of the Bill, the implications of clause 18, as the European Scrutiny Committee report made clear, puts it into a very special category. Despite our attempts to amend that clause, which were sadly and tragically defeated, the fact remains that clause 18 makes a very significant change to this country’s constitutional arrangements. For that reason, the Bill should indeed be put into a different category.
Mr Lidington
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for acknowledging the importance of clause 18. We had a full day’s debate on that clause at the start of our Committee proceedings, but I rather think that you would warn me, Mr Hoyle, against recapitulating that debate this evening. It is hard to imagine why a future Parliament would choose to repeal this Act, thereby abolishing the referendum lock and the enhanced control and scrutiny that the Bill provides for Parliament and the British people. It would incur a high political cost for any Government who brought forward such a measure and, indeed, for individual Members of Parliament who were prepared to walk through the Lobbies in its support.
It is an important part of this Government’s commitment to rebuilding trust with the British people to make clear what the future arrangements should be. Although it is always possible that a future Government will decide to act differently, I find it hard to imagine that any such future Government would be able to defend taking away from the British people the right to have their say about further changes to the European treaties.
I have further concerns about the impact of the new clause on the long-standing relationship between this House and the House of Lords. It would alter the relationship by expanding the relative powers of the House of Lords. It has never been part of the Government’s intentions for this Bill that it should be used to alter that relationship.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, not only for giving way but for taking the new clause so seriously, but I must say to him that the Bill does not really extend the powers of the House of Lords and is not a new category of Act. Both it and the existing protection under the 1911 Act refer exclusively to the voting rights of the British people, which is why I think that they are exactly the same.
Mr Lidington
I hear my hon. Friend’s argument, but I could quite easily construct another argument. We have enacted other pieces of legislation in recent decades which are of great constitutional significance, which touch on the franchise—for example, the decision by, I believe, the Heath Government to lower the voting age from 21 to 18—and which could have been deemed to fall into a comparable category and to deserve equivalent protection.
This evening my hon. Friend is making a second attempt to persuade Parliament of the case for his proposal. A short while ago, he tabled an amendment to the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill that was very similar to this new clause. Indeed, it may have been identically worded. At the time the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), expressed a view to which the Government and I subscribe. The rules governing the relationship between this House and the other place, as laid down in section 2 of the 1911 Act, have been in place for some time, and we do not intend to start changing that relationship.
I suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that the political problem and the constitutional challenge that he has identified in the House of Lords judgment, namely the evolution within the jurisprudence of the United Kingdom courts of the idea of a distinct category of constitutional statutes which have a special status and which, in particular, cannot be impliedly repealed, should perhaps be addressed in the context of a more general proposal for constitutional reform. As my hon. Friend knows, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister is considering the issue of possible reforms of the House of Lords. The best course may be for my hon. Friend to make representations to the Deputy Prime Minister as he considers what is the right way in which to proceed.
During one of the debates on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, my hon. Friend said:
“Our constitution should be safeguarded and preserved; it is not something that should be treated lightly or in an airy-fairy fashion”.—[Official Report, 18 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 708.]
I strongly agree with the sentiment that he expressed. That is why it is so important for the House to scrutinise thoroughly the issues raised by his proposal, and that is why I have considered it so carefully.
I welcome the scrutiny that the proposal has undergone, both this evening and during consideration of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. However, for the reasons I have given, I do not accept that the new clause is an appropriate way for us to achieve our shared intention. Following the debate on my hon. Friend’s similar amendment to the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, he withdrew the amendment. I sincerely hope that, having heard my arguments this evening, he will be prepared to withdraw his new clause.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 3
Decisions subject to special referral procedure in TFEU
‘(1) A Minister of the Crown may not permit the United Kingdom’s participation in the final adoption of a decision to which this subsection applies unless subsection (3) or (4) is complied with in relation to the draft decision.
(2) The decisions to which subsection (1) applies are—
(a) a decision under the provision of Article 48 of TFEU that permits the adoption of legislative acts in the field of social security;
(b) a decision under the provision of Article 82(2) of TFEU that permits the adoption of directives establishing minimum rules in criminal procedure, unless the decision falls under section 9(4);
(c) a decision under the provision of Article 83(1) of TFEU that permits the adoption of directives establishing minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offences and sanctions, unless the decision falls under section 9(4);
(d) a decision under the provision of Article 83(2) of TFEU that permits the adoption of directives establishing minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offences and sanctions.
(3) This subsection is complied with if—
(a) a draft decision is before the Council,
(b) in each House of Parliament a Minister of the Crown moves a motion that the House does not believe the United Kingdom should request the referral of a specified draft decision to the European Council under the provision of Article 48 of TFEU, Article 82(3) of TFEU or Article 83(3) of TFEU, as the case may be, providing for such a request, and
(c) each House agrees to the motion without amendment.
(4) This subsection is complied with if—
(a) a draft decision is before the European Council,
(b) in each House of Parliament a Minister of the Crown moves a motion that the House approves Her Majesty’s Government’s intention to support the referral of a specified draft decision back to the Council, and
(c) each House agrees to the motion without amendment.’.—(Chris Heaton-Harris.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 4—Certain decisions under Article 312 of TFEU requiring approval by Act and by referendum—
‘(1) A Minister of the Crown may not vote in favour of or otherwise support a decision to which this subsection applies unless—
(a) the draft decision is approved by Act of Parliament, and
(b) the referendum condition is met.
(2) The referendum condition is that set out in section 3(2), with references to a decision being read for the purposes of subsection (1) as references to a draft decision.
(3) Subject to subsection (6), subsection (1) applies to a decision under Article 312(2) of TFEU to adopt a regulation laying down the first multiannual financial framework of the European Union for the period following 2013, where that multiannual financial framework would include—
(a) an initial annual ceiling on total EU payment appropriations that was higher than the ceiling on total EU payment appropriations for 2013 in the multiannual financial framework covering 2013, taking account of an adjustment of the 2013 ceiling for inflation,
(b) subsequent annual ceilings on total EU payment appropriations, some or all of which increased from the previous year, or could increase from the previous year without revision of the multiannual financial framework through the procedure laid down in Article 312(2) of TFEU, by more than an adjustment for inflation,
(c) an initial annual ceiling on total EU commitment appropriations that was not lower than the ceiling on total EU commitment appropriations for 2013 in the multiannual financial framework covering 2013, taking account of an adjustment of the 2013 ceiling for inflation, or
(d) subsequent annual ceilings on total EU commitment appropriations, some or all of which were at least as high as the previous year’s ceiling adjusted for inflation, or could be at least as high as the previous year’s ceiling adjusted for inflation without revision of the multiannual financial framework through the procedure laid down in Article 312(2) of TFEU.
(4) For the purposes of subsection (3), the only relevant adjustments for inflation are those used by the EU for the figures involved.
(5) Subject to subsection (6), subsection (1) also applies to a decision under Article 312(2) of TFEU to adopt a regulation revising the first multiannual financial framework of the European Union for the period following 2013, where that regulation would cause the multiannual financial framework to include provision identified in subsection (3) when the framework had not done so before.
(6) Inclusion of provision to enable EU payment or commitment appropriations to be reallocated between the annual ceilings of the same type of appropriation in a multiannual financial framework does not of itself cause a regulation laying down or revising a multiannual financial framework to fall under subsection (1).’.
New clause 5—Certain decisions under Article 311 of TFEU—
‘(1) A Minister of the Crown may not confirm the approval by the United Kingdom of a decision to which this subsection applies unless—
(a) the decision is approved by Act of Parliament, and
(b) the referendum condition or the exemption condition is met.
(2) Subsection (1) applies to a decision under the third paragraph of Article 311 of TFEU to adopt a decision laying down provisions relating to the system of own resources of the European Union, where the decision adopted contains provision for payment to the EU as own resources, without the need for a further decision under the third paragraph of Article 311 of TFEU, of some or all of the revenues from a tax or other levy on natural or non-State legal persons that is established or which may be established by EU law (including by that decision).
(3) The referendum condition is that set out in section 3(2).
(4) Subject to subsection (5), the exemption condition is that the Act providing for the approval of the decision states that—
(a) under the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the European Union in force at that time, revenues from the tax or other levy referred to in subsection (2), or from a tax or other levy that is very similar and which is established or may be established by EU law, are already paid in whole or part to the EU as own resources or may be paid in whole or part to the EU as own resources without a further decision under the third paragraph of Article 311 of TFEU, and
(b) the adopted decision to which the decision relates does not contain provision that is likely to require or allow a significant increase in the amount or proportion of revenue obtained in the United Kingdom in any one year from the tax or other levy referred to in subsection (2) that is or may be paid to the EU as own resources, compared to that required or allowed by the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the European Union in force at that time.
(5) Where a statement as per subsection 4(a) is made that revenues from a very similar tax or other levy to the tax or other levy referred to in subsection (2) are or may already be paid in whole or part to the EU as own resources, the statement for the purposes of subsection 4(b) may state that the adopted decision to which the decision relates does not contain provision that is likely to require or allow to be paid to the EU as own resources an amount or proportion of revenue obtained in the United Kingdom in any one year from the tax or other levy referred to in subsection (2) that is significantly greater than the amount or proportion of revenue obtained in the United Kingdom in any one year from the very similar tax or other levy required or allowed to be paid to the EU as own resources by the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the European Union in force at that time.’.
Amendment 1, page 4, line 8, clause 4, at end insert
‘except where any such provision substantially affects all or any of the political, economic, fiscal, social or constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and other Member States of the European Union.’.
Amendment 6, page 4, line 43, clause 6, at end insert—
‘(2A) A Minister of the Crown may not confirm the approval by the United Kingdom of a decision under the provision of Article 218(8) of TFEU for the accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in accordance with Article 6(2) of TEU unless—
(a) the decision is approved by Act of Parliament, and
(b) the referendum condition is met.’.
Amendment 8, page 6, line 21, clause 7, after ‘Union’, insert
‘, unless the decision falls under section (Certain decisions under Article 311 of TFEU)’.
Amendment 7, page 6, line 39, at end add—
‘(da) a decision under Article 312(2) of TFEU to adopt a regulation laying down or revising the multiannual financial framework of the European Union, unless the decision falls under section (Certain decisions under Article 312 of TFEU requiring approval by Act and by referendum).’.
Amendment 4, page 8, line 22, clause 9, at end insert—
‘(4A) For decisions under a provision falling within either paragraph (b) or (c) of subsection (2) that are subject to qualified majority voting, otherwise supporting a decision includes, for the purposes of subsection (4), permitting the United Kingdom’s participation in the final adoption of a decision.’.
Government amendment 3.
Amendment 5, page 9, line 3, clause 10, leave out subsection (2).
Chris Heaton-Harris
I should begin by apologising to the House for being so keen to table a number of new clauses and amendments at this late stage. It is not as if there is anything better going on in my life. It is not that Arsenal are playing Barcelona tonight, and I could have been watching that. Actually, as a referee I do not like Arsenal that much, but I could have been refereeing the football game between the Press Lobby against the Crown Prosecution Service—and I have a family, and there is a dinner that I could have gone too.
However, I did want to point out to the Minister that there are some fairly big gaps in the Bill, which came to my notice rather later than they should have. New clause 3 concerns the emergency brake, especially in the context of criminal justice matters. New clause 4 concerns the post-2013 financial framework. New clause 5 concerns own resources decisions and EU taxes. I have also tabled a range of complementary amendments.
New clause 3 deserves some explanation. Certain European laws proposed under the treaty on the functioning of the European Union are subject to the emergency brake procedure. Such proposals are adopted by qualified majority voting in the Council, and relate to social security and procedural and substantive criminal law. When an EU law on social security is proposed under article 48 of the TFEU, a member state can declare that the proposal
“would affect important aspects of its social security system, including its scope, cost or financial structure, or would affect the financial balance of that system”,
and, having done so, can request that the proposal be referred to the European Council. The proposal is then so referred, and the Council suspends its consideration of the measure.
When an EU law on procedural or substantive criminal law is proposed under article 82(2) or article 83 and a member state considers that the proposal
“would affect fundamental aspects of its criminal justice system”,
that member state may request that the proposal be referred to the European Council. The proposal is then so referred, and the Council suspends its consideration of the measure. A member state’s ability to stop the adoption of a proposal subject to qualified majority voting in that way is known as the emergency brake.
After the proposal has been referred to the European Council, the Council may refer the proposal back to the other Council, which then resumes consideration of the measure, taking decisions by qualified majority voting. However, there must be a consensus in the European Council for the proposal to be referred back. That means that any member state can block the proposal. Under United Kingdom law, the decision on whether to invoke the emergency brake lies solely with the Government. Parliament cannot insist that this happen, and the Bill, alas, will not change that. In contrast, the German Parliament can oblige the German Government to press the emergency brake on any of those matters. New clause 3 would cover all EU proposals subject to the emergency brake except for the proposals that would fall under clause 9(4) of the Bill. It would, however, require the final draft of the proposals to go before both Houses of Parliament, either of which could require that the emergency brake be pressed.
Back in January, in response to a letter that I had sent dealing with various aspects of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe wrote to me that there was nothing to prevent a member state from pressing the emergency brake repeatedly on a proposal. That means that, should Parliament remain dissatisfied with the proposal after it has been referred to the Council by the European Council following a use of the emergency brake, Parliament could insist that the brake be pressed again.
Subsection (4) of new clause 3 is intended to accommodate the possible scenario in which the European Council seeks to come to a consensus on a final draft of the proposal, which would be referred back to the Council for formal adoption straight away. It seems to make sense that the Government should be able to ask Parliament at that point whether the final proposal is acceptable, rather than the Government’s simply agreeing to refer it back to the Council and not insisting that the emergency brake be triggered.
I have been discussing new clause 4 with the Minister’s officials, and have been told that its provisions are probably covered in the Bill. A handful of proposals subject to the emergency brake would appear to be covered by clause 9(4). I would appreciate the Minister’s confirming that, at the end of a convoluted process—during which the British Government might know that a proposal under QMV is to be adopted so they do not vote for it or abstain, but vote against—we in this Parliament could still have our foot firmly on the emergency brake.
Steve Baker
I admire my hon. Friend’s tenacity, but I am only a simple engineer, so may I confirm that he has said that this House is unable to assert its sovereignty in relation to criminal justice?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I was not asserting that, although we have given away lots of justice and home affairs powers, and I do not think many Members or many of the British people fully appreciate how much we have potentially given away. This is an important point. Although the Bill has many problems, the referendum lock would ensure that we do not go down such a route in respect of the European public prosecutor and other matters to do with the criminal justice system. The measure I am talking about came in under the Lisbon treaty. No country has pressed the emergency brake yet. I would like to think that the Government would trust Parliament sufficiently for Parliament to have its foot on that brake, rather than for the Government alone to have their foot on it.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I find the hon. Gentleman’s arguments very persuasive. At least we, as well as Germany, could stand up and be counted. If it is good enough for the Germans, it should be good enough for us. I would like such a provision very much indeed, but is not the worry for our Government in particular that our Parliament is especially likely to exercise that power over Ministers going to the European Council? Is not their concern that we might actually exercise our right to put our foot on the brake?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Quite possibly, but that is the essence of democracy, and one of the reasons we were put here in the first place is to keep check if not on what our own Government are doing, at least on what institutions to which we are giving powers might be doing with them. I would like the Minister to reiterate the comments I have heard from his officials about the emergency brake and new clause 4 possibly not being needed.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
Why has my hon. Friend chosen to put a veto in the hands of the other place? I can understand why the matter might be subject to a vote of this House, but why also to a vote in the other place?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Well, that sounded better to me when I was writing it down. It seemed perfectly logical for this to be a matter for both Houses, and the other place does scrutinise European matters, as we have discussed. It has a depth of expertise on European matters, although it might be completely wrong in its conclusions.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The House of Lords has an absolute veto on statutory instruments and many other things. It is only legislation introduced in the House of Commons on which the Lords does not have a veto. It would therefore have been illogical to have excluded it.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I could not have put it better myself.
Moving swiftly on, new clause 4 addresses the post-2013 financial framework. We are about to enter into very important negotiations about how much money we give to the European institutions over the next financial framework—that for 2014 to 2020. We have had many assurances from the Government that they will seek a very tough settlement, and I thought it would be wise to encapsulate in a new clause this Parliament’s view of a tough settlement. I thought it might be a good idea to spell out the situation if we do not get a freeze on the amount of money we are spending per year in that financial framework at EU level—or indeed a cut, which I hope we might be angling for. I wanted to make it clear that if we failed miserably in our negotiations and had to accept—perhaps for reasons of diplomacy, as I am unsure whether we would have to accept this as we have a veto on these matters—a rise in the amount of money that could be spent in that financial framework, that would also become part of the Bill. In fact, I would like that to be put to a referendum so that people can vote on whether we should give a lot more money to institutions that we do not completely trust. That is the main purpose of new clause 4. I hope its being moved will give the Minister another chance to state on the record exactly what our position will be going into negotiations on the financial framework post-2013.
Steve Baker
(Wycombe) (Con): Does my hon. Friend not agree, however, that the fact of the situation in which we find ourselves is that the British people have no say about their EU budget contribution?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Well, they do have a say through the Government they elect, and the Government do negotiate these things in the multi-annual packages. As I said in a debate on a previous new clause, this is one way of making sure that if the Government decided it was practical for us to have a rise in the amount of money being spent in the European institutions, the people would have a say on how much it would be. I accept that own resources is covered in some ways in the Bill, but I thought I would phrase the new clause in such a way that it would give the Minister a chance to tell the House exactly what the British Government’s views are on matters of taxation coming in at the European level. My new clause would at least introduce the principle of referendums on own resources decisions bringing about substantial changes in EU taxation, and require future Governments to go through a more exacting process to agree to such changes, which would expend significant political capital if they were proposing something clearly out of line with what the British people want.
The new clauses address the crux of the debate, which is the scrutiny of European matters. We in this place do not do scrutiny half as well as we should. On Third Reading, I hope to speak about how we might improve scrutiny and what the Government should do.
Michael Connarty
I want to speak briefly in support of new clauses 3, 4 and 5. They get to the meat of the discussion we should have been having with the Government before they introduced this silly Bill. It is silly because it is never likely to be used, as there are so many ways that a Government Minister of any political complexion who wishes to continue with the European project can get measures through Parliament, such as by saying that they are insignificant or that it is not necessary to have an Act of Parliament. Therefore, I do not think that the Bill’s measures will be used a great deal. It is based on the premise that the Government want to put in place the measures they introduce, and presumably a Government of any complexion will know that they need a majority in the House in order to introduce any measure that they might decide is significant enough to be dealt with by a referendum or an Act of Parliament.
In reality, therefore, the Bill is a bit of a public relations exercise. But the new clauses are not. They would address the things that are wrong at the moment with the process of dealing with the emergency brake. It should be in place and it should be used properly in a way that gives a Government a chance to speak on behalf of their Parliament and their people in the Council in a fundamental way. New clauses 3 and 4 are very attractive, because would give teeth and meat—a bit of beef—to a Bill that lacks that completely. The Bill is a list of things which might be on the mind of the body politic and perhaps the anti-European press, but it does not have any substance. The new clauses have substance, as they lay out clearly how the brake should be used.
There is absolutely no doubt that new clause 5 is necessary. It deals with a tax and we should have had a similar clause, somewhere along the line, on the giving away of our social security rights. It is clear that people who come to this country to work see social security as an extra payment that does not come out of the pocket of their employer. When someone leaves their family back in Poland, where they still have their house, to come to this country to work, they get all the benefits required under our social security legislation—tax credits, child tax credits and so on—which they often send back home. They also often end up with a council house, because they then bring their family to this country and live in overcrowded conditions, and they leave their house back there being paid for by the British taxpayer. All those things might have been examined seriously if we had had a provision such as new clause 5 to deal with how social security would transfer.
Clearly the own resources arrangement is a tax and will be about creating a European tax as a substitute for VAT. I have been at conferences and seminars called by the Commission in other countries to press that point heavily, and thank goodness Treasury officials were there to argue hard against such an arrangement. We might say that it was one of the three red lines, because we said that tax was a red line that would not be crossed. However, the own resources debate will clearly be pressed again and again by the Commission, which will try to convince us that the proposed arrangement is not a breach of one of those red lines. New clause 5 would put up a nice barrier that we would have to cross purposefully and decisively if we wanted to move away from that red line. I commend the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) for his tenacity, even at this late stage, in tabling well thought-out new clauses. I do not think that they come from a Eurosceptic, anti-European view; they would just be common sense and make good legislation.
Mr Cash
I wish to speak about my amendment 1, because it is important not only in principle, but in practice as we move forward on the negotiations taking place on two main issues. The first is European economic governance as a whole and the other is the, as yet, unformulated competitiveness package, which is coming up in the lift and being promoted vigorously in some other parts of the European Union.
The issue turns on the Bill’s proposal for the circumstances in which a treaty or an article 48(6) decision attracts a referendum. Under clause 4(4)(b), we would not have a referendum where
“the making of any provision that applies only to member States other than the United Kingdom”
came into play. It might sound obvious that we would not want to have a referendum if it did not affect us but, unfortunately, that rather innocuous wording raises a substantial and profound problem.
I remember Chancellor Kohl talking in the 1990s about the need to move forward with a two-tier Europe and he used the analogy of a convoy. The Minister for Europe is doubtless aware of what is coming up in the lift, but he should also be very worried about it because it is one of the greatest and most serious problems that we face. Many people, including distinguished commentators from the Financial Times and other newspapers, take an interest in these matters and get to the root of what is going on in Europe at the moment. Rather than merely having a convoy of ships travelling at different speeds with the slowest eventually being required to catch up—that was Chancellor Kohl’s analogy—these proposals on European economic governance are the equivalent of having an aircraft carrier of the eurozone and a rowing boat of the other member states that are left behind.
I do not believe for one minute that we should be in any way trapped or lured—to use the Prime Minister’s words—into engaging in the kind of European economic governance proposals that apply to the eurozone or to the competitiveness package on their own merits. Given the record of the European Union, neither has worked, is likely to work or will work. But there is a danger in our acquiescing in allowing the other member states to go ahead by participating in the given procedure, be it the ordinary legislative procedure, the special procedure, the special purposes vehicle or something that arises by virtue of a treaty. The key test is whether it
“substantially affects all or any of the political, economic, fiscal, social or constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and other Member States of the European Union.”
That is how my amendment 1 puts it.
If something falls into that category, as I firmly believe these proposals do, it clearly affects our fundamental relationship with the European Union in such a way as to require a referendum. We went through the arguments about the constitutional treaty and all that followed from it, and we went through the subsequent arguments about the Lisbon treaty and insisted on a referendum on it, because these things affected this fundamental relationship. I am talking about the Conservative party, rather than the coalition, which is quite a different thing. The basis on which we presented our argument for a referendum was that the treaty was creating a fundamental difference in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
I cannot think of anything more likely to demonstrate that fundamental difference than the implementation of these procedures, irrespective of the legal niceties of defining the transfer of powers or competences—I could argue that there is, but that is not the issue I am raising. I am saying that the key question is the substance of what is being done, not merely the choice of specific words employed—not in the Bill, but merely in the coalition agreement—about the transfer of powers or competences. I defy anybody to find the words in the Bill which say that wherever there is a transfer of power or competence there will be a referendum. That is not what the Bill says; it chooses a list of circumstances, specifically but not generically, where a referendum will be required. That is a fatal flaw in the Bill, but the real problem is the substance of what is being decided in a given treaty or article 48(6) arrangement. To my mind, the creation of a two-tier Europe, with the United Kingdom bound into it by acquiescence, puts us at risk because it creates the aircraft carrier of Europe and we are left in the rowing boat.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
I admit that, for the first time, I find myself mystified by my hon. Friend’s arguments. Surely, the point about the Lisbon treaty was that it altered the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union in a most disadvantageous way for the United Kingdom. In the situation that he describes, where the Eurocrat nations are heading off at jet speed to unite themselves, I am quite content to be in the rowing boat, and I would prefer it if the rowing boat were being paddled very fast in the other direction. I cannot understand why we would need a referendum in those circumstances.
Mr Cash
The answer is that my hon. Friend completely misunderstands the nature of the European Union. That is the problem in a nutshell. I am afraid that she does not understand—I have to put this to her very bluntly—that the creation of a two-tier Europe on such disadvantageous terms would be very damaging to us. If, however, an association of nation states were to decide to go in one direction, while we retained our independence and did not acquiesce in treaty or other procedural arrangements that bound us into that association, I would be content, but that is not what is happening.
What is happening is that we are being actively required to become and are acquiescing in becoming part of a new treaty arrangement that affects us all—all member states as a whole—but they get their solidarity and concentration of power with the new arrangements that they enter into; we are left within the legal framework, subject to the European Court of Justice and all that goes with it, without being party in practice to the arrangements that they devise. That is why the social and employment legislation, the fiscal arrangements and all the rest of it will have a disadvantageous effect on us if they proceed with those arrangements.
My right hon. Friend the Minister may say that the proposed arrangements will be purely intergovernmental. We had a bit of a discussion about that in the debate on an earlier proposal, but that is a far too simplistic way to put it because, as I pointed out in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), the proposals of the European conclusions of 4 February specifically state:
“Building on the new economic governance framework, Heads of State or government will take further steps”—
I now refer to an answer that I received from the Financial Secretary, who put a lot of emphasis on this—
“to achieve a new quality of economic policy coordination in the euro area to improve competitiveness”.
So they are creating a new kind of co-ordinated arrangement. It continues:
“without undermining the single market.”
I believe that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was very insistent on including those words, so that the proposals would not put us at a disadvantage. My argument is that, whether or not those words are included, they will do so.
The proposals then go on to say—this is all part of the manner in which the system is being devised, which I regard as extremely dangerous and implausible—
“Non-euro members will be invited to participate in the coordination.”
It then says in respect of the President of the European Commission:
“He will ensure that the Heads of State or government of the interested, non-euro area Member States are duly involved in the process.”
In other words, the appearance is given, contrary to what the right hon. Member for Rotherham said—that we would not be party to those arrangements—that in practice this is a perfect example of the two-tier system in operation. It requires some careful analysis, but it does us no favours whatsoever.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman is putting the searchlight on a very important and difficult issue. It is vital that this matter is highlighted. To continue the aircraft carrier analogy, if we are in the rowing boat, the trouble is that we are not able to row in a different direction; we are inevitably carried along in the wake even though we may be in a different place. That has happened in the past, and it is likely to happen in the future.
Mr Cash
Indeed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) pointed out, the aircraft carrier is owned by the Germans and the French. That is all part of the problem.
Let us come to the crunch: the reality is that the creation of a German or Franco-German dominated Europe lies at the heart of this. That has been one of the major concerns that has permeated the Government’s thinking for a very long time, right back to when I was advancing similar arguments about the Maastricht treaty. In fact, it was one of the reasons why I took such exception to the treaty, not only because it created European Government, but because, as I said in several books and pamphlets at the time, it was creating a German Europe as well. We need not engage in shock, horror anxiety about that, but it is part of a new dimension that will now have a significant and very damaging effect on the United Kingdom. For that reason, we should not acquiesce in these proposals; we should do everything to defeat them.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
I give due credence to the hon. Gentleman for all his knowledge on the issue, but can he think of an historical precedent where the citizens of one country have had referendum rights over a treaty to which their country is not a party?
Mr Cash
That is a very interesting question. Conversely, there have been three referendums—one in Denmark, one in France and another in Ireland—that would have an impact on us and people voted against, but the process of European integration carried on notwithstanding those results. In fact, to use an analogy, we got the rough end because, although the referendums went the way that some of us wanted, they made no difference and integration carried on anyway.
We need to understand perhaps that these proposals are, in fact, extremely dangerous. I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Minister will argue that, although we are being denied a referendum, the proposal will require approval by the United Kingdom Parliament in due course. The essence of my case is that it will have such a profound impact on the United Kingdom, by creating a two-tier Europe, that a referendum would be required because it involves a fundamental change in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
I should like to say many other things about the proposal—perhaps I will have an opportunity to do so on Third Reading—but I have described its essence. This is a very dangerous move towards a German Europe, or a Franco-German Europe—it does not matter which way we look at it—and it is a fundamental strategic mistake. I see the Foreign Secretary, sitting on the Front Bench. He has bought this argument. I warned him before the general election that we should not enter this landscape. I am glad that he nods his head, because I was explicit about that at the time.
Finally, I recall the words of Thomas Mann who proposed what I still believe to be one of the great questions of our time, as yet unresolved, but probably resolved by these proposals of a two-tier Europe along the lines of Chancellor Kohl’s analogy of a convoy, and ask, “What will it be—a European Germany or a German Europe?”
Mr Lidington
We are confronted with a cornucopia of amendments and new clauses covering a number of important but disparate subjects. I shall try, in the time available to me, to do justice to them, but I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the House in advance should I not have time adequately to deal with each new clause and amendment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) tabled new clause 3, which is grouped with amendment 4. As he said, the new clause deals with the “emergency brake” procedures in the EU treaties. It is important to note that we cannot equate the emergency brake procedure with a treaty change or with the exercise of a ratchet clause, because those relate, rather, to controls on the exercise or use of existing competences to adopt European secondary legislation such as directives or regulations in the areas concerned. His new clause would enhance parliamentary control over the use of some existing EU competences. Subsections (3) and (4) would add a requirement for a motion to be passed by both Houses before the UK could decide not to invoke the emergency brakes that can be applied to proposals for measures under all four treaty provisions specified in the new clause, and also before Britain could put an end to the emergency brake procedure by agreeing in the European Council to refer the issue back to the Council to continue with negotiations under the ordinary legislative procedure.
As my hon. Friend said, it is our view that, even were the European Council to refer a matter back to the Council to continue negotiations, member states would still be free to pull the emergency brake again if they saw fit. As consensus is required on emergency brakes, and if parliamentary approval were not granted, the result would be that the UK was effectively able to block EU decision making in those areas, although in respect of certain measures, as he will understand, other member states could have recourse to use of the enhanced co-operation procedures without the UK’s participation where that was permitted under the treaties.
Kelvin Hopkins
I followed the case made by the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) fairly carefully, and I understood it to mean that the new clause would give parliamentary backing of or control over Ministers when they go to the Council. Would that not strengthen the position of Parliament relative to the EU and put a bit of stiffening in Ministers when they go to negotiate?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman has the right intentions, but the new clause would not achieve quite the purpose that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry intend. It would have some unintended and unwanted consequences as well. Let me explain why I consider that to be the case.
As I said at the outset, any proposals under the four treaty articles covered by the new clause would not constitute a transfer of power or competence from the UK to the EU, because the EU’s ability to act in those ways is already provided for by the treaties. Those decisions are not what the Government consider to be ratchet clauses, so we do not believe that such measures should, as a matter of policy, be subject to the controls provided for within the measure.
Furthermore, proposals for EU secondary legislation under articles 82(2) and 83 fall within the scope of our opt-in to title V under protocol 21 to the Lisbon treaty. We have already undertaken to review the procedures for parliamentary scrutiny of the use of the opt-in to ensure that Parliament has an increased say. I spelled that out, in outline, in my written ministerial statement of 20 January.
For the future, we have made it clear in clause 9 that the use of the ratchet clauses in some of those articles should ensure that any British participation in such measures by virtue of our opt-in should be preceded by the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and that our agreement to the final measures proposed should be preceded by parliamentary approval by Act of Parliament. We believe that that represents a significant step forward in enhancing the controls of the House on those justice and home affairs ratchet clauses while maintaining the same proportionate and sustainable approach that we have sought to take with all other parts of the Bill.
Mr Lidington
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry.
Another example of the lack of flexibility in new clause 4 relates to the variation in payments from year to year. The December letter left some scope for real variation in payments over the next financial perspective, provided that payments over the whole period were frozen in real terms. The new clause would prevent any payments variations, but such variations are a natural consequence of how the financial framework works. For example, a commitment of €100 in 2005 might lead to a payment of €20 in 2006 and €80 in 2007. That is because commitments made in one year do not translate into uniform payments over subsequent years.
We want to cut wasteful EU spending, not just to reduce the overall size of the EU budget, but to free up some resources to improve the value for money that we and other member states get from European Union spending, and to support activities such as boosting economic growth and competitiveness. We would like to see work done on improving the way in which the EU budget supports economic growth and competitiveness via the Europe 2020 strategy, subject to judicious selection of the most appropriate policy instruments. We want the EU budget to enhance security, via an active role for the EU as a global player. This could mean increases in spending under those headings, but we would insist on those being counterbalanced by reductions under other headings, all within our overall objective of restricting any increase in the EU budget to inflation.
Paradoxically, the new clause might force a referendum on the next financial framework exactly because we had successfully achieved our reform agenda within the constraints of a very tight limit on the size of the budget overall.
New clause 4 and the associated amendment 7 would hamper our objectives of driving down the overall EU budget and improving the value for money that it provides. I therefore urge my hon. Friends to withdraw those amendments.
New clause 5 is about taxes. The measures proposed in the new clause address matters that already fall within European Union competence.
Mr Lidington
We debated that issue at some length in Committee. My position and that of the Government remain that it is the sovereign right of member states to decide to agree treaties which affect them. What we are concerned about in the United Kingdom is defending the right of the British people to have a lock on anything that transfers powers away from this place to European Union institutions, and not to interfere with what other Governments decide independently that they wish to do.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Does the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) wish to move his amendment formally?
Mr Cash
I will not move the amendment, but I do not agree with what the Minister has just said.
The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83E).
Clause 10
Parliamentary control of certain decisions not requiring approval by Act
Amendment made: 3, page 9, line 2, at end insert—
‘(1A) A Minister of the Crown may not vote in favour of or otherwise support a decision to which this subsection applies unless Parliamentary approval has been given in accordance with this section.
(1B) Subsection (1A) applies to a decision under Article 48(7) of TEU which in relation to a provision of TFEU applies the ordinary legislative procedure in place of a special legislative procedure not requiring the Council to act unanimously.’—(Mr Lidington.)
Third Reading
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I begin by thanking the many hon. Members who have participated in the very extensive debates on the Bill, with five full days in Committee, comprising more than 30 hours of this House’s time. So many Members have spoken—more than 90 in total—that it would take most of the two hours available for Third Reading to pay tribute to them all. I am delighted that the Bill has stimulated such interest.
Invidious as it is to single out any Member—I apologise to those I do not mention—I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and the European Scrutiny Committee. Whether or not we were surprised that he did not move his amendment just now, we were certainly not surprised that he did not agree with what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe has just said. I thank my hon. Friend and his Committee for their two very comprehensive reports on the Bill. The Government do not take the same view as the Committee on all the points they have raised, but the Committee has fulfilled its vital role commendably. The whole House has benefited from my hon. Friend’s knowledge and his long-held and principled approach to these matters.
On the Opposition Front Bench, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), a shadow Foreign Office Minister, impressed the whole House with her first speech from the Dispatch Box, which is no easy thing to do. She showed herself to be one of the Leader of the Opposition’s new generation with a bright future. As I understand it, his “new generation” is a sufficiently elastic term to encompass the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), the shadow Minister for Europe, as well—[Interruption.] Indeed, the squeezed middle—another elastic and not exactly defined term. Perhaps both terms are suited to him. Once again, he has shown the House his great eloquence.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) spoke with great verve and passion. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who is in his place, brought to the debate his usual rigour and deeply held belief in parliamentary accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) has spoken with all the zeal for democracy that we associate with him. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) has demonstrated great fluency and articulacy in the debates, including earlier this evening. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) for the legal focus he has brought to the debates.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for the intelligence and thoughtfulness he has brought to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) gave us the benefit of his considered and always thoroughly reasoned opinions. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) showed the House his enormous skill in debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) made the debates more enjoyable for everyone, not least with his unquenchable sense of mischief. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made very carefully thought-through contributions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) gave the House the benefit of his great clarity of mind.
My hon. Friends the Members for Witham (Priti Patel) and for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) have all spoken well in these debates. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), for Wycombe (Steve Baker), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), whose rigorous scrutiny has helped us materially to improve the Bill as it has gone through Committee.
From another party, my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) very ably represented their party and powerfully made the case for the Bill from a slightly different perspective from that of some of my colleagues.
On the Opposition side, I want to thank the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), without whose sharp wit no debate on Europe would be complete, although evidently we are having to do without it this evening, so perhaps the debate is incomplete. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who is in her place, as always brought her great experience and independence of mind to bear. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) reminded us that she is a sincere tribune of democracy. Truly, no debate on these matters would be complete without the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), as I well remember from the previous Parliament. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) left us in no doubt about his view of the Bill. The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane)—it is a pity he is not here—fulfilled his proper role admirably, which is to denounce the Bill in such fierce terms as to convince everyone else of its great merits. He has done us an enormous service by doing so regularly.
Lastly, I must thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe who has led the debates in Committee with great authority and absolute command of the language and detail of the treaties and of the Bill. I and the rest of the Government are very grateful for the superb work he has done. I should also put on the record my gratitude for the outstanding work done by officials in the Foreign Office in putting together this legislation.
The Bill represents the most significant and radical overhaul of how the most important decisions in the European Union can be made by the United Kingdom—decisions on changes to the EU treaties—since the European Communities Act 1972. It is an overhaul that is as profoundly needed as it is overdue. It marks a real shift in power from Ministers to Parliament and from both Ministers and Parliament to voters themselves.
The last 13 years of Labour Government saw the old approach tested to destruction. Four major treaties were signed. One was blocked by referendums in other countries. A referendum was promised in this country but denied and a treaty was taken through Parliament with no basis in any party’s manifesto. After those 13 years, the EU’s reach and power has grown and grown, but its standing with the British people has fallen at the same time.
For any democrat, that must be a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs. Whether one approves of everything in all these treaties, which is a respectable position but not mine, or believes, as I do, that the EU now has considerable powers that would far better be matters for national Parliaments and Governments, we cannot go on like this. The EU’s future developments must be put under proper democratic control. That is an absolute necessity from any point of view on the EU if disenchantment with it is not to grow yet worse.
Mr Cash
It will not be the first time that my right hon. Friend has found I am not taken in by flattery. The real question is the one to which I referred a few moments ago when he was in the Chamber, which relates to the landscape of the European Union, increased Europeanisation as it affects this country and the manner in which the predominance of other countries is clearly moving further and further upstream. Does he really believe that the Bill will make any substantial difference to that question, particularly if we go down the route of a two-tier Europe?
Mr Hague
The Bill does make a material difference. It does not address the whole question my hon. Friend raises, because there are many different dimensions to it, but it is an important measure. In any future negotiations about the EU, British Ministers will be in the European Council saying very clearly that, under a vast range of provisions set out in the Bill, proposals that may be put to them in the European Council would require a referendum in the UK. That does change the negotiating position in Europe and the freedom of manoeuvre of British Governments, and it means that Governments have to be very alert to that point—not just British Governments, but all the Governments of the European Union. I can tell my hon. Friend that when I explain that point to them, as I already do, it makes a considerable impact on them.
My view is that the European Union has great achievements to its name: the single market; the enlargement of its membership, which has done so much to strengthen the spread of freedom and democracy in Europe; and the effective use of European nations’ collective weight in the world, which remains of high importance to our values and interests, as we have seen on sanctions and on Iran and hope to see in response to events in north Africa.
There are great challenges for the nations of Europe, in growth and global competitiveness, where action in the European Union on widening further markets in services, energy and the digital economy could do much to help to lift our economic prospects, but all that will be ever more overshadowed if the EU’s treaties change yet again to enlarge its powers still further without popular consent. That is the point that the Bill addresses.
Mr Redwood
I am all in favour of that democratic consent, but there is about to be a very substantial strengthening of power over economic governance for euroland, and, although we will be opted out of the most severe penalty, many of us believe that the measure will have a very big impact over the years on this country. Why cannot we have a vote on that crucial new treaty?
Mr Hague
It is already very clear, from our discussions on that treaty, that it will not have the effect on the United Kingdom which my right hon. Friend fears. There is no provision for it to do so; indeed, it is very clear that it should not do so. If any change were to be made to the arrangements of the European Union which imposed significant new sanctions or obligations on the United Kingdom, then of course a referendum would arise under the provisions of the Bill. That again will have to be remembered when all such provisions and changes are discussed within the European Union in the future.
It is one of our core beliefs in this coalition Government that power should not be hoarded by Ministers and officials in Whitehall, but be shared more widely with Parliament and people. That is wholly at one with the development of modern society. People increasingly want and expect to make decisions for themselves, not to have them taken for them by the Government. This Government believe that that desire and expectation are shaping our society for the better, so we are opening up public services to more choice, giving professionals more responsibility and devolving power in the Localism Bill.
The Bill before us is driven by our belief in giving power to people. Indeed, the lack of referendums on transfers of areas of power from Britain to the EU has become glaringly illogical, given the many issues on which the previous Government did institute referendums. We have had referendums on devolution and, locally, on whether towns and cities, from London to Hartlepool, should have directly elected mayors. The logic of all those referendums is the same: they are decisions on whether to change who holds power and how that power may be used. No decision can be more eminently qualified than one that could move an area of policy from the responsibility of this House to the responsibility to the European Union.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I want to take the Foreign Secretary back to when he said that he wished to share power. Does he also wish to share power in the European Union with UK citizens who apply for high-level jobs in it? The latest statistics show that British applicants make up less than 5%, because they are not competent in a second language. The Germans and French take something like 20% of the jobs, so could we share that power also with our workers and upwards?
Mr Hague
Yes, very much indeed. In fact, there was quite a lot of criticism of the External Action Service from other countries, because so many British people have gone into its senior ranks recently, but the hon. Lady makes an important point, which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and I have been addressing since the new Government took office—that far fewer British people have gone into the European institutions in recent years.
The previous Government ended the European fast stream programme for civil servants, and it has now been started again. We hold events in the Foreign Office for universities, to point out that there are careers in the European institutions, so that in future a bigger intake of people working in those institutions will come from the United Kingdom and understand the culture and issues here. This Government are addressing that point, whereas the Government whom she supported rather dismally failed. I am therefore very grateful to her for raising that issue.
This Bill rightly gives Parliament far more control over decisions that had previously been a matter for Ministers alone or that Parliament had only limited ability to scrutinise and deliberate on. By directing Ministers when a referendum must be held and by setting such conditions in law, the Bill also transfers power directly to the people. I am a passionate supporter of the rights and role of Parliament, but there are issues where it is right that power should be exercised directly by the people.
We can all recall manifesto promises that have been broken, and we all know that new circumstances can arise that are not covered by a manifesto. That was the very thin excuse that the Labour party came up with for not holding a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Indeed, when voters must exercise their judgment on the whole of a manifesto, crucial questions of who should hold power can be lost in the broader argument. Although in most matters future Governments and Parliament can reverse the decisions of their predecessors, in the case of the European Union that can be very difficult indeed. The British people want the right to decide whether the European Union should be given new powers over areas of policy. They deserve that right, and our democracy will be healthier and the European Union more legitimate if they get it. That is the democratic case for this Bill.
Indeed, the case for the Bill is so strong that the House did not divide on Second Reading, and the Opposition, in their amendment to that Second Reading, accepted the soundness of the principle of referendums on significant constitutional changes. It is good that there is consensus on the extension of our democracy. Unfortunately, the Opposition Front-Bench team also took the position of willing the end but not the means, by proposing a rather nebulous committee to decide whether any treaty change was significant. According to that position, it would be debatable not only whether the preservation of our national veto or the retention of national vetoes over foreign policy were significant enough for a referendum, but whether joining the euro was significant enough for a referendum. That of course became a rather risible argument.
The fact that the Bill sets down in detail the criteria for when a referendum should be held was also objected to, but we make no apology for its detail. It ensures that the referendum lock that the Bill gives the voters is real. The complexity of the European treaties themselves makes any other approach ineffective. The alternative—some kind of broad test of whether there should be a referendum—would create legal uncertainty and leave far too much to ministerial discretion. Our purpose in drafting the Bill was to reduce ministerial discretion to the barest minimum. The answer to the distrust from which the European Union now suffers in this country is not to leave power in the hands of the Government, but to give it to the people.
A third objection was that the Bill will make it harder to negotiate in the EU, or that it sends the wrong signals. I argue, as I just have, that it will make it easier to negotiate in the EU. It is usually best to be wary of vague arguments invoking signals, and that is certainly true in this case. The signal that the Bill sends is that, in future, Britain’s conduct of EU business will be placed on a surer democratic foundation, and that is a good one. The Bill makes it no harder to negotiate, but it does mean that on all kinds of treaty changes the Government must be able to convince Parliament of the merits of their case, and, in the case of treaty changes that transfer power, convince the British people themselves.
That brings me to the fourth objection that I have heard to the Bill—that the referendum lock will make many kinds of desirable changes impossible because the British people will vote them down. That is surely the weakest argument of all—that the British people cannot and should not be trusted, and that arguments for increasing the EU’s powers are so unconvincing that the British people can never be persuaded of them. Although I believe that we have come to the point where the problem is not that the EU has too little say over too few areas of policy but quite the reverse, I say to those who have such concerns, “Have the courage of your convictions.” If a future Government thought it right to abolish national vetoes over foreign policy, for example, let them convince the voters of the merits of doing so. If that cannot be done, that is democracy at work.
The Bill sets out the process for handling any future treaty changes. The coalition Government have made a firm commitment that we will not agree to any transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels for the duration of this Parliament, but, as experience has shown, voters should not simply have to rely on politicians’ promises on such matters. If Parliament approves the Bill, any future treaty change that transfers powers from Britain to the EU will be agreed to only with the consent of the British people.
Many other matters have been gone over in detail, including important debates on the sovereignty clause, so I will not go through everything again. Some of my hon. Friends were concerned that references to the common law in the explanatory notes implied that the Government were forming a judgment on the origins of parliamentary sovereignty. That is not the case. For the avoidance of doubt, I reiterate that the purpose of clause 18 is to make clear and to put beyond speculation the basis on which directly effective and applicable EU law takes effect in the domestic legal order of the United Kingdom, and to negate the risk that EU law could be held to have an autonomous status independent of the will of Parliament through its Acts.
A number of Government amendments have been made to the Bill in Committee and on Report to ensure that it comprehensively fulfils its overall original intent and that the law on parliamentary ratification of treaties is wholly consistent and coherent. Hon. Members’ detailed consideration of the Bill exposed some areas where improvements could be made, and we are grateful to them for that work. First, the amendments make it absolutely clear that a referendum would be required in all cases before the UK could join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office or extend its powers, whether the decision was taken before or after that office had been set up by other member states or before or after the powers had been extended.
Secondly, the amendments ensure that any proposed treaty change that sought to give up any national veto in respect of the common foreign and security policy provisions in the treaty on the European Union, whether under the ordinary revision procedure, under the simplified revision procedure or through the use of an existing ratchet clause, would require the consent of the British people in a referendum. Thirdly, they ensure, with the passing of the relevant amendment a few moments ago, that Parliament will have to vote in favour of any move from the special legislative procedure to the ordinary legislative procedure in relation to eight articles of the treaty that are already subject to qualified majority voting.
The first Government amendment tabled on the second day in Committee amends clause 5 to ensure that the proposed eurozone treaty change is subject to the full rigours of this Bill for its ratification. That treaty change is due to be agreed later this month. Because the Bill is unlikely to be law by the end of May, we have amended it so that the clock starts ticking for the two-month period for the Government statement upon Royal Assent to the Bill rather than on the day when the treaty change is signed.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Will the Foreign Secretary use the opportunity of the eurozone’s needing our agreement to its permanent stability pact to require, in return, some repatriation of powers to this country, particularly in limiting the application of the working time directive, which is part of the coalition agreement?
Mr Hague
The eurozone treaty change is in the interests of the United Kingdom; let us be clear about that. Therefore, no one should think that it is in our interests to block that treaty change as it is currently proposed. Although we are not members of the euro—my position on the euro is very long-held and well known; I hope that we will never be members—its stability is very important for our own economic situation and economic future. It is therefore unlikely to be in our national interest, or to be effective, to try to block the treaty change to put forward the change that my hon. Friend proposes, particularly as other nations could, if necessary, make such changes outside the European treaties to get round such a block. However, he is right to raise concerns about the working time directive—an issue to which we will have to return.
This Bill deals with the most important EU decisions of all—those on treaty change. However, we believe that there is room for further improvement of parliamentary scrutiny and control over EU decisions, and that is particularly true of justice and home affairs opt-in decisions. It had become clear to us, and to many others in this House—my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere, in particular, has raised this—that the established system was inadequate. Therefore, two months ago, my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, with the support of the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary, announced a package of measures to strengthen parliamentary control so that there will have to be a vote in both Houses before the Government can decide by 2014 whether to opt in en masse to the existing EU criminal justice and policing measures adopted under the former third pillar. There is now also a minimum requirement for a written statement to Parliament on all opt-in decisions on new EU measures in justice and home affairs. In the case of strong parliamentary interest in a proposed decision to opt in, under the Bill there will be a debate and vote in both Houses on the Government’s recommended approach.[Official Report, 18 March 2011, Vol. 525, c. 9MC.]
There are a number of practical issues to resolve, so the Government are committed to consulting the business managers, the European Scrutiny Committee in the Commons, the Lords European Union Committee and the Justice and Home Affairs Committees on how these arrangements will work in practice, including the criteria for when a debate should be held in Government time and how we deal with periods of recess. Discussions on these issues are continuing, and we will report on their conclusions in due course. We are also committed to enhancing parliamentary scrutiny of other EU issues beyond the area of justice and home affairs, and the Minister for Europe has already been in contact with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and the Chairman of the Lords EU Committee to take this work forward.
This Bill is not a panacea for all the problems of the European Union, but it does deal with the biggest challenge that it poses to our democracy: that its development should be linked to popular consent. The Bill does not just provide a referendum lock on any future treaty change that transfers powers: it provides a framework for greater parliamentary control over many important decisions, including those which need to be taken shortly to help deal with the eurozone crisis. It lays down that the transfer of power or competence cannot be agreed by a British Government without first obtaining the consent of the British people. It is a major change that strengthens our democracy by giving new powers to Parliament and voters. As such, it can and should be welcomed by everyone, whatever their view of the European Union, and I therefore hope that this House will give it its Third Reading tonight.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
As is customary, I join the Foreign Secretary in paying generous tribute to previous speakers in today’s debate and in the debates on the Bill in Committee of the Whole House. Throughout these debates, there have been sustained contributions from a whole range of Members, and I will accept the challenge of trying to identify just a small number of them given the very many who have spoken. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) have demonstrated their depth of knowledge on these complex but important issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) and the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is not in his place this evening, have shown that rhetorical flourishes are not the domain of any one party but can be brought to opposing sides of this debate.
I also echo the Foreign Secretary in paying generous tribute to both Front-Bench teams, both of whom have been well briefed for these debates, as the immense red folder opposite powerfully attests. Alas, for the time being it is the only thing on that side of the Chamber that is red, with the possible exception of the Deputy Leader of the House’s socks, but I hope that that will change in time.
On the Third Reading of Bills, it is customary to thank the departmental officials who have toiled in support of their ministerial masters. Some in the Foreign Office deal with great affairs of state, while some see service in troubled lands. A chosen few are dispatched to represent our country to our firm allies in the great capitals of the world. The seven officials who have been obliged to work full-time on this particular piece of legislation therefore deserve our heartfelt sympathy and support.
Not everything in the Bill is bad, although nothing in it is particularly good. It has been described variously as a piece of “legislative PR”, a “show Bill”, a “missed opportunity”, as having clauses that are “entirely bogus”, and of involving “contemplating our navels”. Those remarks, of course, all came from Conservative Members, apparently in support of their Government’s proposals. The measures in part 2 to ensure that Britain is fully represented in the European Parliament are of course necessary, as are some of the changes to the way in which this House scrutinises European decisions, such as those in clauses 9 and 10. There is growing consensus in almost all member states of the European Union that national Parliaments need to play a bigger role in scrutinising its decisions.
During the Foreign Secretary’s first period of trying to appease Conservative Eurosceptics, he tried to move the euro debate off referendums and into the mainstream of a general election campaign. As I am sure he will recollect, this Bill comes 3,572 days after he told us that there were just 12 days left to save the pound. He does not yet seem to have learned his lesson. The Conservative party has called for a referendum on every treaty since it was last in office. Its last manifesto pledged to repatriate the European competences contained in those treaties back to the United Kingdom. Now Ministers appear content with the situation as it stands and offer this 18-clause Bill instead.
The principle of having a codified set of rules on when a referendum should take place on major issues, as is attempted in schedule 1, is reasonable enough, even if it seems somewhat extraneous. We will see how far such a power is applied in practice. For all the talk of legislative and referendum locks, which we have heard again from the Foreign Secretary this evening, the Bill cannot get away from the simple fact that each successive Parliament in the United Kingdom is sovereign. If a new treaty is signed or a new distribution of powers is decided on, Ministers will have to bring a Bill before Parliament, just as before. At that point, it would be straightforward for them to amend part 1 of this Bill and remove any of the requirements. They could also legislate for a referendum, or choose a new constitutional innovation that we cannot foresee. It will be for the Parliament of the day to make that decision. Rather than a legislative lock, the Bill actually seems to be the constitutional application of the latest theory much-loved by the Prime Minister: the nudge theory. I suppose that for Government Members, it is worth a little more than the cast-iron guarantee that the Prime Minister offered before the election.
Mr Redwood
On reflection, does the right hon. Gentleman think that it would have been better if the British public had had a vote on Nice, Amsterdam or Lisbon, because they might have felt a bit happier about the European Union if they had been properly consulted?
Mr Alexander
I find myself in sympathy with the Conservative position at the times of those treaties. The Conservatives were not convinced by the case for a referendum, and neither was I. It rather reflects the changing disposition of those on the Conservative Front Bench that, as I recollect, the Foreign Secretary was a fierce advocate of the avoidance of a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. At least on that, we are at one.
The real guard is the precedent established by political consensus that, for example, no party will join the euro without a referendum. No party pledged to ratify the proposed European constitution without a referendum. There was no consensus on Lisbon. Labour and Liberal Democrat Members did not believe that a referendum was needed, but Conservative Members did, and the Conservative leader did until he suddenly realised that he might be in government in just over a year’s time and did not fancy spending the first two years as Prime Minister obsessing over European renegotiations.
Charlie Elphicke
I hate to intrude on the right hon. Gentleman’s reworking of history, but to describe the Lisbon treaty as nothing to do with the European constitution is a travesty of the truth and of what actually happened. Does he accept that he should regret not following through with a referendum on that matter?
Mr Alexander
I do not wish to intrude on private grief, but I sense that that question would be better directed towards his new-found colleagues in the coalition, who clearly do not share his view. If he was to achieve consensus on his side of the House, he might have a better chance of achieving it across the whole House.
The muddle in that part of the Bill is as nothing compared with clause 18—the so-called supremacy clause. That was meant to be the red meat, but the more erudite Government Members simply are not biting. The hon. Member for Stone called it a “mouse of a Bill” when referring to this point. Those Members know that this is Britain’s first foray into what can safely be described as decorative legislation. It demeans this House to assert that it is sovereign when the fact is not seriously questioned. What we have seen in the middle east and north Africa in recent weeks should be a salutary reminder to us all that Parliaments and states derive their sovereignty from the people they serve. This Parliament will be no more or less sovereign because of the superfluous clause 18.
The question that we are all left asking is, “What is the rush?” The Government say that they have no intention of passing any powers to Europe for the next four years, so part 1 of the Bill will not be used, and clause 18 has already been shown to be superfluous. However, the Bill has been brought before the House for Third Reading before the Localism Bill, the Health and Social Care Bill, the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill and the Welfare Reform Bill—before any of the legislation that is supposed to define the very purpose of the coalition Government.
If the Bill is not just a legislative attempt to distract the Conservative right, I am afraid I can think of only one possible explanation. The week before last, the Deputy Prime Minister was reportedly shocked to discover that he was briefly in charge of the Government. The only real purpose for the Bill that I can adduce is that it is designed to guard against an eventuality such as this: the Prime Minister abroad on a trade mission, the Foreign Secretary about to head to Washington for important discussions and the Chancellor in Klosters, with the Deputy Prime Minister seeing an awful Liberal Democrat election result and deciding to make a dash for the history books by joining the euro before any of them manage to get back to the country. I tell Conservative Members who are slightly concerned by that scenario that in reality they need not worry; the mere fact of the Deputy Prime Minister’s support is probably a bigger barrier to Britain joining the euro than any referendum lock contemplated in the House.
We are content for the Bill to proceed to the House of Lords for further scrutiny, particularly of clauses 3 to 6. However, what it reveals about the Government is probably of more import than its true legislative effect. Dramatic, epoch-making events are taking place in the middle east as we gather here this evening. In Libya, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers have not exactly covered themselves in glory, and the root of the problem appears to be their failure to co-ordinate either within Government or among our allies. May I respectfully suggest that the Bill is distracting Ministers from what should be their overriding focus at this time?
In February, the Foreign Secretary said that the cost of simply drawing up the Bill had already run to £200,000. We are left wondering not only how much the final bill will be but whether it is really the best use of the Foreign Office’s resources when it is having to make significant efficiencies. Of course, the bill for this Bill has not yet ended, because the Government have ignored amendments tabled by the Opposition and are leaving judicial review, rather than Parliament, to determine in the final instance whether there should be referendums. We do not know how often judicial reviews will be called or a decision will be reversed, but we do know that what has been called the William Cash memorial Bill could equally be called a fiscal stimulus for any legal practice specialising in judicial reviews.
The Conservatives’ monomania about Europe in opposition was an eccentricity, and the further they sank in the polls, the grander their rhetoric became. I confess, for that reason alone, to occasionally having cheered them on. However, they are in government now and the time has come to put away the party preoccupations that kept them going in the dark days of general election defeats. Now their job is to run the country and develop a foreign policy worthy of the name. Now is not the time for legislation designed to appease their own Back Benchers.
I have enjoyed both versions of the Foreign Secretary that have been seen in the House in the past decade—the baseball-capped, 14-pint-a-night young Conservative with extraordinary rhetorical skills, and the rather more world-weary, scholarly voice of experience in a Cabinet that all too often lacks it. There is a lot for Opposition Members to admire in both those characters, but surely to be a strong Foreign Secretary he needs to decide whether the Bill really fits with the seriousness needed from a British Foreign Secretary at a time of global economic and political turmoil. His 2001 persona would surely have loved the Bill, but I and many others had hoped that he would take that fact as a warning rather than an endorsement.
The Foreign Secretary has my support in putting pressure on the Gaddafi regime in Libya in the coming days, and the Minister for Europe has my support when he speaks out against human rights abuses in Belarus, as he did at the weekend. In seeking the right reforms in Brussels, they have not merely my support but my sympathy. I just wish that they would get on with those vital tasks instead of wasting so much of the people’s time with a Bill that satisfies few and achieves so little.
Mr Cash
I am fascinated by the line that the Opposition are taking. I am not impressed, if I may say so, by the line being taken by the coalition Government. It is difficult to resist the idea that a referendum is necessary in certain circumstances, so I rather anticipate that there will not a Division this evening, since the Bill is associated with what is really no more than the unlikely event of a referendum being called in respect of any of the provisions contained in it. The circumstances and the facts that we have had the opportunity to examine in the course of proceedings on the Bill, and indeed the trend, as I said in my earlier speech, of the UK being drawn in to the legal framework of a two-tier Europe but actually being neutered at the same time, increase the necessity of a proper referendum—an in-or-out referendum—so that the British people can decide whether they want to be Europeanised or absorbed, like ectoplasm, into the strange new world being created, over which we have increasingly little influence, let alone control.
This is, fundamentally, about a democratic deficit. I do not believe that the Bill will make any substantial difference to the landscape to which I referred in my previous remarks to the Foreign Secretary. A strategic mistake is being made in respect of Europe. Europe is failing. There is incredibly high unemployment in other member states: Spain’s youth unemployment, for example, is 43%. Very serious damage is being done by burdens on business—50% of all our economic regulation comes from the EU—and there is a failure to provide oxygen for the small business community in this country. The Bill does not, in my opinion, make any difference to those matters.
We have faced for some time now an economic crisis in Europe, but none of the measures—including the 2020 strategy, which will be no more successful than the Lisbon agenda, which had to be abandoned—will make any substantial difference to the mistakes and distortions associated with the European Union as it now is which continue to affect the United Kingdom. We need to renegotiate the treaties, and the Bill will not change that fact.
At the beginning of our debates on the Bill, the European Scrutiny Committee proposed to have a proper investigation into it. I am sorry that the Foreign Secretary did not feel that he could attend, but I am glad that the Minister for Europe came to see us, albeit somewhat late in the day. The Committee gave careful consideration to the Bill, but it is not evident that the Government paid very much attention to what has been described in many quarters as one of the best Scrutiny Committee reports produced in recent years. I am afraid that they have substantially ducked the issue.
I shall address a number of the points as they cropped up. Much play was made of the idea that the Bill would reaffirm the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, but when I tabled a motion to that effect the entire Conservative party, with some honourable exceptions, voted against it, which struck me as somewhat bizarre and extremely dangerous.
The European Scrutiny Committee report, which took evidence from many of this country’s pre-eminent constitutional experts, came to certain very clear conclusions. First, we noted:
“Clause 18 did not address the competing primacies of EU and national law”,
which is a matter of grave concern, and that on the evidence we received, clause 18 was “not needed”. We also concluded, on the evidence that we received, that
“If Parliament wills it may legislate to override the European Communities Act 1972 or the EU Treaties by repealing them, amending them or any provisions in them, or by clearly and expressly legislating inconsistently with them in respect of EU legislation or generally.”
That is a very important statement from the European Scrutiny Committee, because for many years it was asserted that, owing to the nature of the European Communities Act and the treaties on which it is based, with their amendments and their additions, it would not be possible for Parliament to legislate “notwithstanding the European Communities Act”. There was a movement towards the assumption—it was a dangerous habit of thinking and attitude of mind—that somehow we were locked into a situation that would never allow the United Kingdom to reassert its sovereignty in respect of European legislation.
For reasons that I have given, including the burdens on businesses, which are costing about 4% of gross domestic product, and the fact that since 1999 as much as £128 billion—it might be more now—has been lost to the British economy through over-regulation, we have to deal with these questions. That is the flipside of the idea of having a referendum on any further transfer of competences or powers. We have to deal with the existing European Union, not any future EU or any future extension of powers or competences. That is something for the future; we have to deal with the EU as it is now, and it is doing great damage, in many respects, to the UK’s national interests.
Mr Redwood
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who as always is doing a great job on this issue. Will he agree that the legislation would be much more convincing if the very huge transfers of power now taking place—the power to regulate all our financial and banking services, the power in criminal justice and, soon, economic governance powers—were to be the subject of a referendum as a result of the Bill?
Mr Cash
Indeed, it would. For example, the fact that the City of London and its jurisdiction has legally been transferred to the EU is an indictment of the trends in the wrong direction. The landscape is changing in the wrong direction. With respect to the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and other Ministers, I say that these matters need to be very carefully reviewed. All is not lost; the Bill is now going off to the House of Lords, and as I said earlier this evening, I hope that over the next few months serious consideration will be given to the impact of the European proposals on the competitiveness package, and the encroachments of European economic governance. I hope that these matters will be tackled. We need to ensure that we not only deal with future referendums, which we have been told will not happen until the next Parliament anyway—that is some years away—but tackle the crisis and the danger that we should be addressing now.
I trust that the House will not mind me mentioning that today I published a new note—perhaps I might even call it a pamphlet—entitled “Saving the British economy for the British people”. It sets out the history of the stabilisation mechanism and how it has drawn us into a dangerous situation regarding bail-outs. However, I will not go down that route now, because I want to return to what the European Scrutiny Committee said about the Bill. We concluded that
“if the legislative supremacy of Parliament is under threat, it is from judicial”
supremacy. That is the problem. It is a British constitutional problem, not only one of the assertions of the European Court of Justice; it is an internal domestic constitutional question, as Professor Tomkins made clear in his superb evidence. We said that:
“we attach weight to the warnings expressed by Professor Tomkins if the Government maintains clause 18 in the EU Bill.”
He spoke of the Bill overall as going
“out of its way to invite litigation”.
That is precisely the direction in which we do not want things to go. We need to be certain that the sovereignty of Parliament is a matter for Parliament and the people, not the judiciary or the Supreme Court, particularly in the light of the trend shown in assertions by the likes of Lord Steyn, Lady Hale and Lord Hope of Craighead, all of which we looked at in detail in the evidence that we received and the judgments reached when we concluded our review of that evidence.
Furthermore, we concluded:
“Clause 18 is not a sovereignty clause in the manner claimed by the Government, and the whole premise on which it has been included in the Bill is, in our view, exaggerated.”
We were also concerned about the manner in which the explanatory notes had been devised. We debated the matter at length, concluding:
“The Explanatory Notes present as fact what the evidence we have received tells us is disputed, viewed from any perspective.”
In other words, we were deeply dissatisfied with the way in which the explanatory notes dwelt on the idea of the common law principle. Indeed, I moved an amendment to clause 18 in an attempt to remove it from the framework of judicial interpretation, but that amendment too was defeated by the Government. In fact, I would say—I say this with respect to the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe—that despite the soft words that the Foreign Secretary offered at the beginning of this debate, he knows well enough that we will not be put off or seduced by any flattery; we are interested in the arguments and the facts.
The European Scrutiny Committee analysed this Bill and found it wanting in many different ways. The other thing to say about clause 18 is this:
“The real point is whether a government can, in law, make it difficult for a future Parliament to amend or repeal the legislation it has passed”—
in a word, the point that the shadow Foreign Secretary made just now. We concluded firmly that
“in our view it cannot. Our conclusion therefore is straightforward—that an Act of Parliament applies until it is repealed.”
Sovereignty is not an arcane, theoretical or abstract question; it is, as I said in opening the inquiry, about the vast array of activities and functions that have been conferred on the authority of the European Union by the Lisbon treaty—a treaty that was passed by the previous Government but has since been adopted by our Government, despite the fact that we opposed its passage through the House tooth and nail when in opposition—and how they affect the daily lives of the people and businesses of this country in such a wide variety of ways, making it essential that we reassert the right of Parliament to override those provisions if they are deemed not to be in our national interest.
There is no presumption that merely because of the European Communities Act 1972 we have to accept as a matter of compulsion whatever is served up to us by the European Union. If it is not in our national interest, we must repudiate it. I see the Minister for Europe shaking his head. He knows that this is an important question, but he disagrees with me on it. I do not hold that against him; I simply say that he is wrong. There are those who will continue to argue that there is no way in which we can override European legislation, but no way will those of us who take the view that we do change our minds. We put the national interest first, and if what is being done under European Union proposals is not in the national interest, we will have to override it.
There are many aspects of the Bill, including the whole problem of the creation of a two-tier Europe and the extent to which a referendum is being denied to us under clause 4, that will cause grave difficulties for us over the next few months as we deal with the question of the eurozone and the countries that are not part of it. I regard this as a matter on which we will be judged as time goes on. On the exceptions, including clause 4, that preclude a referendum on matters that will dramatically affect the United Kingdom—such as a two-tier Europe or an accession treaty—the Committee concluded:
“the exceptions…have been drafted to allow the Government to support certain EU policies, such as strengthening of the eurozone, including through harmonisation of economic, fiscal and social measures if necessary…or enlargement, without triggering the referendum lock.”
The reality is that we will need a referendum if the creation of a two-tier Europe affects the United Kingdom in the way that we anticipate. If we are so affected, and we are put at a grave disadvantage, the responsibility will lie with the Government for refusing to allow a referendum. We are not only moving towards a situation in which the creation of a new kind of Europe is in prospect; we are on the brink of it. That landscape will not be an attractive one unless we move down the route of an association of nation states. The Foreign Secretary knows perfectly well that the arrangements in the Bill do not deal with the present. They deal only with the future, but we are confronted as I speak with the present danger of a European system that does not serve our national interest. We must meet that challenge, and meet it now.
Mr Clappison
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on his speech this evening, and on his robust reaffirmation of parliamentary sovereignty and national democracy, which was very welcome to those of us on this side of the House, at least. I also thank him for the interest that he has taken in parliamentary scrutiny of opt-in decisions in the important areas of freedom, security and justice, and the attempt by the European Union to seize for itself the power to fashion our criminal law in this country.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe on the way in which he has taken the trouble to respond to all these debates. He has done so patiently and thoroughly, and shown great expertise. He has had a considerable amount of research behind him, and I think that the whole House is grateful to him for the exemplary way in which he has taken the Bill through the Committee of the whole House.
I also congratulate the hon. Members for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and for Caerphilly (Mr David) on their contributions to these debates, which have been very good humoured, and very effective in their own way. I congratulate, too, the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), on his speech this evening and for the foresight that he apparently possesses. He seems to have an ability to see into the future. Little did we know when we began our Second Reading debate on 7 December—or before that, when we promised these measures in our manifesto—that the right hon. Gentleman would have foreseen the problems in the middle east before anyone else did. He also deserves to win some sort of prize for stringing together unrelated issues in order to exploit them for maximum political advantage. That bodes well for his career in opposition, if not for the credibility of his policies or particularly for the credibility of his party’s position on Europe.
Let me sound a note of caution to my hon. Friends. On one or two occasions and again this evening, some have suggested that the Bill and the referendum locks will stop all transfer of power to Europe. That is not the case, so we need to continue to be vigilant about the transfers of power to Europe that can take place notwithstanding this Bill.
The Bill requires a referendum for a transfer of competence to Europe and in certain other specified instances, as well as for a movement from unanimity to qualified majority voting. However, my right hon. and hon. Friends will be aware that in a succession of treaties from Britain’s first membership of Europe onwards—including particularly the important treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon—we have already transferred a whole list of competences to the EU. That includes not just exclusive competences where only the EU can act, but shared competences where if the EU chooses to act it can extinguish national competence in the same area and in supported competences. As I say, the list is very long and it is backed by the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which has shown its ingenuity in extending that jurisdiction, and by the appetite for power of the European Commission.
Each time the EU chooses to act, to exercise power in respect of one of those many areas of important competences that it already possesses and to make policy, it extinguishes our ability to make policy at a national level in this Parliament. Each time it chooses to make law, to bring in a regulation or to put in place a directive for states to interpret, it is putting in place a law that takes precedence over our national law—and the European Court of Justice will see to it that in any case of conflict, European law takes precedence over our national law.
Notwithstanding the Bill’s provisions, there is considerable scope for the European Union and its institutions to take more power from this House, from our country and from our electors. We can already see important examples coming along. I thus urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to express the same degree of determination to ensure national self-determination and parliamentary sovereignty when we get to the occasions that we know lie before us in the not-too-distant—in fact, the immediate—future, particularly in respect of freedom, security and justice, where we have already agreed to certain opt-ins for one or two important provisions. We know that the EU has a big programme in these areas and that many more of them are coming along.
I gently remind my right hon. and hon. Friends that we promised in our manifesto that we would seek to repatriate powers to this country and certainly not give additional powers to the EU. The valuable opt-out that we enjoy should be mentioned. It was a red line for the previous Labour Government, although created under pressure from Conservative Members, so we need to be very careful as a party that we go no further than Tony Blair and the previous Labour Government were prepared to go in providing the EU with an opportunity to make the criminal law of this country. I believe that criminal law belongs to a nation state: individual electors should be able to have their democratic say about it, as should their Members of Parliament.
I urge my right hon. Friends to be equally vigilant in the important area of economic governance. We know that there is an agenda and we will look very carefully at it in the future. We have seen reports in the press—apparently well-founded reports—that the European Union is, through the exercise of its trade policy, seeking to interfere with our immigration policy through the granting of visas as part of trade negotiations. That too would constitute a transfer of power to the European Union. The ability to determine who should be admitted to this country as an economic immigrant does not belong to the European Union; it belongs to a nation state. We should make that determination, in accordance with our needs and with the promises we have made to the electorate on the important subject of immigration.
I take heart from what has been said this evening by my right hon. Friends the Ministers about that and about the many other issues that will no doubt go to the European Union. We know that the EU, particularly the Commission, is a beast that is hungry for power and is never satisfied, or at least has not been satisfied so far in its history. Each time we have placed a safeguard in the way to save ourselves from it, the EU has found a way around that safeguard and dismantled it.
Let us hope that things will be different in this instance, but I say to my right hon. Friends that they must be robust in the face of the EU’s demands. As well as the provisions in the Bill, we need Foreign Secretaries and other Ministers who will go to Europe, be prepared to say no and stand up for our national interests—and our supreme national interest is to preserve the ability to decide our own futures and preserve the sovereignty of our Parliament, which has been fought over, has taken so many years to establish, and is so grounded in our history.
I urge my right hon. Friends to do that and I believe that they will, for I have great confidence in them. Certainly, if they do, they will find solid support among Government Members who will back them every inch of the way when they go to Europe and say that this country is not prepared to abandon its opt-out and choose to opt in, is not prepared to submit itself voluntarily to economic governance by the European Union, and is not prepared to abdicate from its proud democracy and grant further powers to the European Union.
I said that my right hon. Friends would have the support at least of Government Members, but they should also bear in mind that the patience and credulity of the British public have been tested to breaking point by the European Union. People in this country are aware of the promises that have been made about the transfer of power to Europe, and if they find that yet more power has been transferred to the European Union, their patience will be tested beyond that breaking point. The grave disillusionment that they undeniably feel with the EU, which expresses itself in so many ways—for example, in their disenchantment with its lack of accountability—will then extend to the politicians and leaders who are perceived to have given away yet more powers to it.
However, I am confident that that will not arise. Let me say in particular to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary—to whom the country owes a great debt of gratitude for the principled stand that he has taken over the euro and many other issues—that he will have the full support of Government Members if he complements the Bill’s provisions by going to Europe and seeing through the robust words that he has uttered this evening. He will deserve all our support if he does that, as I am sure that he will.
Kelvin Hopkins
The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) made a fine speech, and I agreed with every word of it. Let me too congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who chairs the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member. Several other members of the Committee have contributed to this and earlier debates, and I think that all its members, on both sides of the House, do an excellent job.
I support the Bill to an extent, but I will become a true believer only when the first referendum takes place under it. I look forward to voting in that referendum, whatever its subject. Indeed, I think that any referendum on the European Union would be welcomed not just by me but by the British people. They have long wanted to express a view.
Throughout the European Union, the Euro-barometer—the measure of support for the EU—has been sinking for years. Its level is particularly low in Germany at present. Only yesterday, The Times reported that there was a serious possibility that the agreement on a scheme to bail out the weaker euro members in view of their present difficulties would fail because the German electorate are very hostile to the idea that Germany should effectively bail out other countries that may eventually include Portugal, Spain and who knows where else, as well as Ireland and Greece. That would cause serious problems for Angela Merkel in Germany. It is not all over yet.
I think we were very wise to stay out of the euro, and, like the Foreign Secretary, I do not believe we should ever join it. Indeed, I think there is now a serious possibility that the euro will be progressively dismantled—I will not say that it will collapse—and that we will return to something like the Deutschmark zone and other single currencies. Countries could then adjust their currencies according to their own needs and be able to choose their own fiscal and monetary policies. That is how economies will work together. There will be shock absorbers between economies, which is the way it should be. The arrangements in the post-war settlement worked extremely well. When countries had their own currencies, they had stable currencies relative to other currencies, but they also had the ultimate possibility of devaluation or revaluation, as necessary. Each country chose its own monetary and fiscal policies. That is not just about democracy; it is about making the world economy work better.
Many other Committee members have spoken. I had the pleasure of being a signatory to a number of amendments that were supported by Members on both sides of the House. On one or two occasions, I had the opportunity to vote for these amendments. Interestingly, I voted for amendments that were against a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government, but I was regarded as rebelling. My local newspaper said I was a rebel because I had voted against a Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government, which is very strange.
We have heard some witty and very worthy, clever and excellent speeches from both sides of the House, which I welcome, but I think that behind all these clever speeches there is still a desire among the upper echelons of the political class to retain real power in the EU within that political class and prevent it from being put in the hands of the electorates. In many EU countries, the Eurosceptics have been stripped of all positions. Indeed, in respect of my own party, the previous Government introduced under Tony Blair a list system of proportional representation. That enabled the party to strip out all Eurosceptics from the European parliamentary party and to make sure that all European Members were onside with the EU. It also lost us scores of seats, but that was a minor sacrifice compared with the importance to previous leaders of making sure that all the Members of the European Parliament in our party were on the side of the EU. Unfortunately, it also enabled certain extreme parties to get seats in the European Parliament. I put it to both Front-Bench teams that we should return to a single-Member seat, first-past-the-post electoral system for the EU. I look forward to that day, and I hope that we will achieve it.
Some Members talked about the possibility of other opt-outs. I would like to think that at some point a member state—perhaps Britain—might choose to opt out of something of which they are currently a member. I suggest as a starting point giving notice that in five years—or whenever—we will opt out of the common fisheries policy and restore our control over British fisheries, and thereby restore the fishing stocks and stop the nonsense of discards.
There are so many things we could say about the EU, but the fundamental point is that the people of Britain and of all member states want a greater say in what happens to the EU. I do not think they like the euro, and I do not think they like the sense of being controlled by a bureaucratic regime in Brussels. They want to have democratic control through their member states. That way, we can have better relations between those member states, because then we will feel free to be friendly with other states as we will have control of our own country and will not be controlled by anybody else. Coming together on a voluntary basis as a friendly, comradely association of member states is the future for Europe that I think would be overwhelmingly preferred by the millions of people of all the European nations.
I am happy to support the Bill, but I would like it to be stronger.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I, too, thank the Minister for Europe for being so precise in many of his answers to the questions that we have raised. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for asking more awkward questions than I would ever dare, and the Labour Front Benchers for adding to the debate, although they did so only partially because they just sat there really. However, I did welcome the contribution made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds). It was probably the most coherent of the lot, so I congratulate her.
The shadow Foreign Secretary’s remarks about the Government taking their eye off the ball when it should have been concentrating on these important matters were slightly unfair, especially as they came from someone who, when in a slightly more junior job on the Government Benches, was known in European circles for going missing, not all the time, but on one particular occasion. He was being called to speak in the European Parliament by President Borrell when he unfortunately stepped out to take a very important phone call and left just an empty chair next to a startled UK official. President Borrell did not know who the then Minister for Europe was or what he looked like—he had been told he was a young precocious man who was raring to go—and so, thinking that the UK official was the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), he called him to speak. In the end, a cross and flustered Minister rushed into the Strasbourg plenary session to catcalls, boos, whistles and derogatory laughter—and that was after he gave his speech. It is the way his Government handled these European issues that makes this European Union Bill all the more important.
Just about everyone who has spoken has taken on board and asked the Minister for more clarification about one surprisingly consensual part of this Bill. That is the general dissatisfaction with the way we scrutinise EU legislation in this place. We talk about this quite a lot, but a written ministerial statement made a number of vague proposals. I know it was an invitation for this House to do more, but will the Minister say what he would expect this House to do to take him up on this offer? Does it involve the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee writing a letter to him, forming a team with ministerial officials and taking this matter forward? Everybody in this place wants to do the job of scrutinising European legislation better and we would like to know exactly what the slightly vague couple of sentences in the written ministerial statement actually mean.
The Bill now goes down the Corridor and the strange noises we hear in the background are those of tombs opening and biographies being dusted down by the great and the good of the former diplomatic service, who intend to remind everybody of how everything was so much better when they were left to operate behind closed doors with few checks or balances and how those bloomin’ elected people, of all political persuasions, down the other end of the Corridor are wrong because they always try to react to public opinion. I would like to think that one of the strongest arguments for this Bill is the fact that we are dragging all this out into the open and binding the hands of Ministers when they go into negotiations in Europe, although not as much as I would like. The noise that is coming in opposition to the Bill only strengthens the Minister’s hands in getting this through.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I wish to raise just a few points, but I first wish to welcome the Bill and the introduction of the referendum lock. I congratulate the Minister for Europe on the way in which he has addressed many of the concerns raised during the passage of the Bill, particularly as regards my amendments and new clauses. I thank him for his perseverance with me and my arguments. He has given some strong commitments on transparency in the EU, on improving cost-benefit analysis, and on having better impact assessments and more EU legislation held to account in this Parliament. He has also rightly given us warm words on ending the era of Departments gold-plating directives and legislation from Europe, as well as on the long overdue one in, one out rule for European regulations.
The Bill will safeguard against some European power grabs—which is of course more than important, long overdue and welcome—but, alas, not them all. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said earlier, the Bill is not a panacea for all the EU’s ills, but it is clearly a step in the right direction. There are areas where the EU already exercises competence, as laid down in the Lisbon treaty, and where it can secure more powers from Britain, without the need for any safeguard in Parliament or by triggering the referendum lock in the Bill. The Bill does not deal with those matters, but I continue to urge the Government to do everything possible to prevent British interests from being undermined in that way. I would press the Government to work towards repatriating powers from Europe to this country, to protect our sovereignty and to renegotiate our financial contributions and the colossal sums of money that we hand over every year to the EU.
Finally, as we know, the Bill deals with the EU, but as we have seen with prisoner votes recently, this country’s ability to make its own laws is being undermined by another European body: the Council of Europe and its Strasbourg-based institutions, with their increasing desire to exert control over our country and to undermine Parliament and British democracy, and the regular issuing of diktats that the European Court of Human Rights considers but that escape parliamentary scrutiny. I therefore briefly urge the Minister and the Foreign Secretary to consider introducing a similar package of measures and reforms to improve the democratic accountability of those institutions and to ensure that British laws, as we have heard throughout the passage of the Bill, are made in Britain by the British, and that we effectively put the national interest first.
Mr Bone
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who, as usual, made a powerful speech and, of course, mentioned the colossal amount of money that we give to the European Union for redistribution. In other words, it is rather like foreign aid, except perhaps that it is not used for the best purpose. Under the last five years of the Labour Government, £19.8 billion net was given to the European Union. Unfortunately, under the first five years of the coalition Government, the figure will be twice that amount, and she made a powerful point.
Earlier today, I visited Lancaster House for international women’s day and the launch of the fund for groups that want to help the victims of human trafficking. It was brought to my attention by Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, who is a United Nations special representative and co-ordinator for combating trafficking in human beings, that such things do not stop at the European Union; they go much further and cross borders.
When we started to debate the Bill many weeks ago, my hopes were raised that we would discuss much wider issues than we got round to discussing. Tonight, of course, we have heard a lot of powerful speeches. I must praise our Front-Bench team. Obviously, whenever I listen to the Foreign Secretary, I am always convinced by his arguments, even when he is totally wrong. Again, I was convinced tonight. When the shadow Secretary of State spoke, he absolutely convinced me that the Government were totally correct.
The shadow Secretary of State did not say—I should have liked to intervene to ask him—whether, when the Bill becomes law and if Labour Members ever came to power again, they would actually honour it. Of course, we are now talking about fixed-term Parliaments, so it is quite possible that Labour Members will be sitting on the Government Benches without a general election, but the right hon. Gentleman did not answer and avoided saying whether they would support the referendum lock.
Obviously, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has for years led the battle for sense in the European Union. Now that he is Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, we seem to be getting a lot more European business in the House. That is to be wholly welcomed, at least by myself. He told us about his pamphlet, which, I understand, is for sale in all good bookshops, but he did not tell us one thing: how many euros it costs.
As usual, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) made the most powerful of speeches with which I agreed entirely. That brings me on to the Minister for Europe, who has been in his usual great humour and on top of everything. He has been an absolutely wonderful No. 2, and it is obvious that when the reshuffle comes, perhaps on 6 May, he will be promoted to a Cabinet role. The obvious answer for the new Minister for Europe is my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere. May I put in that bid?
The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who spoke from the Opposition Benches, was wonderful. He made his normal pro-European speech, which was against the EU. It is a great shame that all the Members on that side of the House do not share his views.
Recently, I was in Portugal on human trafficking business. I learned a lot about the EU there and was able to discuss the European Union Bill with the person sat next to me at dinner, who was a communist. I found that the Portuguese Communist party and I have a lot in common—we both want to come out of the EU.
Mr Buckland
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) meant that he was on all-party parliamentary business on human trafficking in Portugal, and I am more than happy to set the record straight on his behalf, as he has been not only my colleague, but my very good friend, for many years, including when I was fighting elections in south Wales and attracting record numbers of votes cast against me. At one time, I had an unofficial competition on that with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who himself had been a valiant by-election candidate in another part of the country. I think I won that contest.
In that context, I was very attracted by the speech made by the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who reminded us that, at one time, there used to be such a thing as socialist MEPs representing the British Labour party. I remember standing against one in 1994 who beat me by an Olympian margin, but whom I distinctly recall saying in a public meeting, when asked about the four freedoms, with which we are all familiar as underpinning the treaty of Rome, that he disagreed with every one of them. His approach was rather more of the school of Joseph Stalin than that of Jean Monnet. I am almost nostalgic for those days, and I am sure that there are Labour Members who share that nostalgia.
To come fully up to date, this has been a thought-provoking debate not only on Third Reading but in Committee and on Report. In particular, during consideration on Report today, we had an interesting and important debate about how the House will deal with issues relating to the EU. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) asked one of the most important questions of Ministers: how are we, together, to develop a proper system by which we not only scrutinise European proposals and legislation but behave more proactively? In other words, how do we initiate thematic debates about the future of the EU, whether that be on issues such as enlargement, external trade or the environment? We could take our pick.
It is time for a far more proactive approach to be taken. Far too often, we have simply reacted to the proposals emanating from the European Commission. Like all good democrats, a lot of us have a problem with the concept of a civil service that initiates policy. That has fundamentally over the years vexed many British parliamentarians, who are used to a system of a civil service that enacts policy initiated by elected politicians—although between 1997 and 2010 that line was sadly blurred. That is the fundamental dilemma that has faced many of us over the years when we have wrestled with the issue of the EU.
I was amused by the contribution made by the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), the shadow Foreign Secretary. After 13 years in which the locusts ate on Europe, it takes a lot of chutzpah to stand up and lecture the Conservative party and this Government on their approach to the EU. We had a 13-year vacuum—policy inertia, confusion and chaos—which was another chapter in the history of a political party whose stance on Europe has veered from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous. I may still be a fairly young person, but I remember facing a Labour party not so many years ago that advocated withdrawal from the European Union.
The proper debate on Europe has in the main, with a few honourable exceptions in the Opposition, remained fairly and squarely within the confines of the Conservative party. I make no apology at all for the fact that at times the debate has become heated—some would say acrimonious—and difficult for the Conservative party, but in 2011 perhaps it is time for us to stand back, take stock and accept the fact that with that debate comes creative energy. I like to see the Bill as another example of that energy.
The Bill is by no means an end. It is a mere stage, but an important stage which reflects the fact that the era of professional diplomats making decisions in closed rooms has gone, as it should have done. Now is the time for a reconnection between politicians and the public. What better way to do that than via the mechanism of referendums? The Bill makes that important concession and makes it in a careful and considered way.
I have always been somebody who can be described as positive about our membership of the European Union. I make no apology for that. I made the same point on Second Reading. I have been convinced for many years about the economic and political case for our active and leading membership of that institution. I am, however, deeply sceptical about moves towards further European integration when it comes to the criminal law, for example, jurisprudential issues or the encroachment of the judiciary on matters that are properly the province of this place and of politics.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is right when he reiterates in his eloquent way the point about judicial encroachment. He is right to say that that is not a problem peculiar to the institutions of Europe. It cuts right across the balance of power domestically. The decision of the previous Government to create a Supreme Court, which was a regrettable and mistaken decision, reinforces the creation of two cultures—a culture of judicial interference and judicial we-know-bestness, as opposed to a culture of political control and power exercised by democratic representatives of the people.
Nobody in the House can safely say that we are out of the woods on that issue. It is one of the defining issues of our times. It was wise of Ministers to accept the fact that there are aspects of the Bill that will be subject to judicial review. The Bill is no exception to a general rule that whatever Bill the House and the other place pass, we are increasingly at the mercy of applications for judicial review. That is not something that we will be able to resolve tonight, but from tonight we will be able to move forward to the new approach to the development of policy on Europe that all of us in the House want to see—an openness from Ministers at the Dispatch Box, a frankness in assessing the importance of decisions made by the Council of Ministers, and a real partnership between those of us who sit on the Back Benches as legislators and those who sit on the Front Bench as our representatives in the Councils of Europe.
I will end on this note: there is a salutary lesson from history about the dangers of Executives being too far removed from the will of the legislature on matters of foreign policy. Let us remember what happened to President Wilson when he came back from the Paris peace conference as the leader of the political world about to take a brave new stride into the League of Nations, only to find that his legislature was not with him. At a stroke, American foreign policy was changed. There needs to be a careful interlink between the will of the House and what our Ministers do in the Councils of Europe, which is why I support the Bill as an important step forward in that process.
Mr Speaker
Order. The winding-up speeches will begin at 9.45 pm. I am keen to accommodate two further speeches before then, if humanly possible.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for Europe; if the debates have confirmed only one thing in my mind, it is that he and I are poles apart. For me and many of my constituents, it has been sad to watch a once-proud sovereign nation hand over more and more powers to Europe. This federal beast grows bigger by the day, and those it does not seduce it consumes. I have a warning for our party at the ballot box: unless we take a tough stance on Europe, we will pay dearly at the next general election.
Labour promised us a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and reneged on that promise. We have inherited a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation which we hope the Bill will somehow mitigate. I welcome the opportunity to call a referendum on any proposed EU treaty or treaty change that transfers more powers to the EU, but I have grave reservations about whether those measures will prove effective.
It is important to remind the House that five new powers have already been transferred: a European Action Service has been created; the European arrest warrant has been extended; EU regulations have been imposed on the City; EU oversight on our national budget has been agreed to; and our contribution to the EU budget has been increased, despite our objection. As I understand it, the Bill would not have prevented any of those transfers of power.
Even the significant clause 18 is under siege from various legal interpretations. Some highly respected Members of this House do not believe that it will safeguard our sovereignty, and I agree with them. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for all the work he does to stand up for the national interest. It is not a bit of fish or meat for the Eurosceptics, as the Opposition claim. The truth is that it is done in the national interest.
Every day there is further evidence of Europe’s creeping influence on our laws, liberties and livelihoods. This week alone, anti-discrimination legislation has been interpreted in the most extraordinary way by the European Court of Justice, which has ruled that insurance companies may no longer differentiate between men and women. In calculating pension annuities, the Court has decreed that payouts must be the same, despite evidence that women live longer—I think I understand why. Similarly, women will face higher driver insurance premiums, although statistics prove that they are involved in fewer accidents than men. Both rulings are imposed on us by a foreign court and by judges who are unaccountable and unelected. Surely it is time for this country to stand up for itself.
If any referendum should be held, it should be the one that we were promised. We all know what the outcome would be. Then, and only then, would the lion that once was this country roar again. Once more, we would be in charge of our economy, our laws, our rights, our borders and immigration, to name but a few matters. I shall be voting with the Government tonight if the Bill is pressed to a vote, because it is better than nothing. I remain deeply sceptical that it is nothing more than a fig leaf, but frankly, a fig leaf is perhaps better than running around, vulnerable, in the buff.
Mr Redwood
I, like my right hon. and hon. Friends, welcome the two aims of this legislation. The first, to hold a referendum on any future transfer of power, is vital to try to secure some democratic legitimacy for what might happen next. The second, to assert that this House and Parliament in general is sovereign, even over European law, is excellent, but I hope that Ministers will take away from this debate the great sense of unease among many colleagues, who feel that the Bill does not deliver what Ministers say it intends to.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) just said, we face a large transfer of powers in all sorts of areas at the moment—in criminal justice, in City and business regulation, in the External Action Service and, soon, in economic governance. Any one of those areas would deserve a referendum, but the whole lot together would make a good package for testing out the Government’s new enthusiasm for democracy and the debating skills of the Opposition, who say that that is exactly what the British public want. What is stopping them, other than fear and the belief that, perhaps, the British public would not vote for such measures after all?
I am also worried about the assertion of the parliamentary sovereignty clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has probed and tested it, and there are legal dangers on the route that we are now taking. Sovereignty is something that we have for a period if we are prepared to use it, but it is also possible to let it slip away or to lose it, and we cannot make this Parliament sovereign by a single clause in a piece of legislation. It means nothing. This Parliament will be sovereign again only if it wishes to be; this Parliament will be sovereign again only if it has some political will; this Parliament will be sovereign again only on the day it says to the European Union, “We disagree with you on this. You will not give us what we want by negotiation, so we are going to legislate for ourselves.” Ministers should not pretend that this Bill has resolved the problem.
Let us take the issue of fish. I have heard Ministers, from all parties that have been in government, say to the House that they, like me, thoroughly disagree with the discard policy, think that it is wrong and intend to negotiate a better answer. No better answer has been negotiated. We gave the European Union 20 years’ warning. Why do we not simply legislate now to take ourselves out of the common fisheries policy and show that this Parliament is sovereign and works in the interests of the British people and a great British industry.
Mr Redwood
That’s great; I am very glad that I have the support, from a sedentary position, of Labour’s Back Benchers.
If this Parliament is never prepared to legislate against the views and wishes of the European Union, people will rightly conclude that the European Union is now sovereign. I mentioned in earlier debates on this legislation that the Crown remained sovereign for a long time in our country, and that Parliament whittled its powers away. There is no precise date on which people all agree that the Crown ceased to be sovereign and that Parliament replaced it, but the situation illustrates that, if we make too many concessions, make too many mistakes and grant too many powers on lease, one day we will not be able to get those powers back. The Crown discovered that it had given away too many powers and lost too many battles, and perhaps power finally resolved to Parliament on the day when they murdered—or killed—the King. That was a fairly definitive act, but it took place after a long series of battles and struggles when power had been ebbing away from the monarchy—and the monarchy was invited back.
I want no such violence in resolving the issue with the European Union, but I do want some political strength and some political substance. Surely, the European Union now does so many things that rile the British people that we should take matters into our own hands.
As my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench will always want to be diplomatic and to negotiate, I give them this final thought in the few minutes that I am allowed. The Germans, for their own reasons, think that they need a treaty change to accommodate the bail-out activities and the huge increase in economic governance powers that they intend to take over the other member states of euroland. They need our signature on that, even though we are not a member state of euroland.
I do not believe for one moment that we will be exempted from many of the requirements for information and common policy formation and negotiated solutions, even if we are opted out for the time being from the power of the fine. We will be dragged into the situation. I wish the Government would not only say, “We have no intention of being dragged into it and seek clearer language,” but to confirm that, say, “As proof of good faith, we want economic powers back.” The latest language from the Government suggests that we are going to keep control over the main elements of our taxation system, not our taxation system as a whole—a red line that the previous Government always said that they had attempted to preserve. We can see the drift in economic powers and economic governance.
The British Government must stand up for British interests. They will have no better chance than the new treaty that is about to be negotiated—so please, Government, use it, don’t lose it.
Mr David
As we come to the end of this Third Reading debate, it is worth reflecting on the impact that the Bill has had on Britain’s standing in Europe and the world. With unemployment rising and living standards falling, and with people the length and breadth of Britain concerned about the health service and the education of their children, this Government have placed before Parliament a Bill that is monumentally irrelevant to the needs of this country.
Although there are parts of the Bill that Labour Members support, I believe that we have demonstrated that large sections of it are ill conceived, ill thought out and contradictory. While the Government have singularly failed, and did not even try, to address the issues that are at the forefront of the minds of the British people, they have succeeded in sending a clear message to our partners in Europe—that this Government do not have a coherent European policy. Where we should have consistency and vision, we see inconsistency and ambiguity. Instead of promoting our national interest in the European Union with vigour and determination, we see a Government ignoring the reality of the modern world—a Government who look in on themselves and see bilateralism as a simplistic alternative to the multilateral engagement that is vital in a fast-changing world.
Such an approach is determined not by what is in Britain’s national interest but by political expediency that places above all else the maintenance of an unholy coalition of pro-European Liberal Democrats and Conservative Eurosceptics. However, as the seven days of debate on this Bill have demonstrated, the Eurosceptics have recognised that this Bill is a ham-fisted attempt to placate them—and if that has been the intention, it has clearly failed. I disagree with many of the arguments of the Eurosceptics, but I recognise their honesty and tenacity. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for his work and that of his Committee, the European Scrutiny Committee. Without their hard work and the excellent documents that they have produced, the debates in this House would have been nowhere near as good as they were.
If the Government have failed to buy off the hon. Member for Stone and his colleagues, they have failed, equally, to convince prominent Liberal Democrats that their anti-European tone is more apparent than real. Only this morning, I received a copy of a letter sent by a federalist Liberal Democrat MEP who is a former leader of the Lib Dems in the European Parliament—Mr Andrew Duff. Mr Duff has written to the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, proposing a new treaty provision. It is interesting to see what he has written. I quote from his letter:
“Dear Jerzy…As you will be well aware, the British Parliament is about to enact a law which will install and entrench referendums as part of the UK’s national ratification process for all important amendments of the European Union treaties…That being the case, I believe the time has come to lighten somewhat the European Union’s procedure for treaty revision…I propose that”
the European
“Parliament launches an initiative…so that all future treaty revisions will enter into force once they have been ratified by four fifths of the States.”
This means that Mr Duff wants to abolish the need for unanimity among member states and is quite happy for treaty changes to be imposed on the British people and the British Parliament. If anything shows how the Bill has exposed the fault lines in this hapless coalition, it is that absolutely ridiculous letter from the Liberal Democrat, Andrew Duff.
To be serious, one of the most worrying consequences of the Bill is that it seriously questions Britain’s full participation in the European Union. Nowhere has that been more keenly demonstrated than in the comments of the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom. Just a few weeks ago, Ambassador Susman stated that the United States valued the special relationship between the US and Britain. However, he thought that it was also vital for Britain to play a strong role within the EU. Because of the negativity caused by the Bill, Mr Susman felt that it was necessary for the UK to rule out withdrawal from the EU. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has done that. The United States recognises, even if this Government do not, that Britain’s influence in the world requires it to be an active participant in the EU.
After consideration in this House, the Bill will go to the other place. I sincerely believe that it will be scrutinised in detail, and that its fundamental flaws will be not only criticised, but corrected. As it stands, the Bill will lead to a questioning of our parliamentary democracy, a weakening of Britain’s role in the world, and a diminution of our influence in the EU. The British people deserve better, and I hope—indeed, I am confident—that the other place will bring about the much-needed change.
Mr Lidington
I thank all Members who have taken part not merely in today’s debate, but during the seven days of debate that we have devoted to the European Union Bill. I also pay tribute to the team of officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They have worked tirelessly for very long hours, frequently at weekends, to ensure that the Foreign Secretary and I have been briefed, and that our responses to the debates have taken account of the various and detailed points raised by individual Members from all parts of the House. Our officials have demonstrated a commitment to impartial public service in the best traditions of the British civil service.
As the Foreign Secretary said, we owe a debt of gratitude to all who have played their part in the comprehensive examination of the Bill. Why the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) ever dreamed that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) could be bought off, I cannot imagine. Having worked as a colleague of my hon. Friend for nearly 19 years, and having had dealings with him even before I entered the House, I am in no doubt whatsoever about his principle, tenacity and utter rectitude in refusing to be bought off by any Minister of any Government while he has served in this House.
The debates on the Bill have enabled us to identify, in large part through the assiduous work of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), areas where there were gaps in the Bill’s realisation of policy intent, and have allowed us to bring forward amendments. The debates have also provided an occasion for the House to reflect more broadly on issues of parliamentary scrutiny. My hon. Friend asked me a very direct question. The Government are in the initial stages of considering what sort of arrangements we wish to pursue. Although I have met my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee in the Lords, I have yet to meet the Chairs of the Select Committees on Justice and on Home Affairs, who clearly have an interest in the justice and home affairs measures that are coming forward under Title V.
I believe that it is for Parliament to determine how it collectively wishes to pursue the issue. It may be that other Select Committees, such as the Liaison Committee or the Backbench Business Committee, wish to take views or seek opportunities to debate the matter more broadly. I make no presumption as to what the outcome will be, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone told me sternly that Parliament would not be told by the Government what scrutiny it should carry out, and that it would come forward with its own thoughts and opinions. I look forward to a vigorous and constructive debate about the shape of future scrutiny arrangements.
The Bill represents an important advance, not least because all parties represented in the House support the principle of it. None voted against it on Second Reading, and even the Labour party now accepts, in the words of its amendment to the Second Reading motion, that
“the principle of referendums on significant constitutional and monetary changes is appropriate”.
That is a real breakthrough, a belated recognition by the Opposition that for too long, major decisions on Europe’s future have been taken without the consent of the British people—the very mischief that the Bill addresses and seeks to put right.
As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said a short while ago, the Bill does not address, and is not intended to address, every problem and challenge to do with the UK’s relationship with the European Union. We take as our starting point the distribution of competences laid down by the treaties, an approach that does not go as far as a number of my hon. Friends would like. However, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) that we will indeed be vigilant in examining the proposals coming forward from the European Commission or other member states in respect of the competences that the EU already has.
The Bill embodies three fundamental principles: that the British people, and they alone, should have the final say on whether new competences or powers should be transferred from this place to the European Union; that Government should be more accountable to both Parliament and the British people for the decisions that we take in Europe on behalf of the UK; and that Parliament should have more say over treaty changes and the use of ratchet clauses.
There are plenty of things that are wrong with the EU and plenty of flaws in it, and we have heard a lot about them during the debates on the Bill, but I believe that there are also many things that we can and should do together with our partners in the EU to secure the greater prosperity and security of this country and the continent of which we form part. That is why the Government believe it is in the interests of the UK to be active and activist within Europe, and that we need to engage effectively and energetically with our European partners to secure common objectives.
If that is to succeed, however, we have to address the disconnection that exists between the British people and the way in which decisions are taken on their behalf in Europe. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Caerphilly suggested, I find sympathy from European counterparts to whom I talk privately, because they are aware that public disaffection is felt in many other member states, not just here. The Bill, which is intended to remedy that disconnection between the public and the EU, is an essential requirement of the EU’s democratic legitimacy in this country. By passing it, we can start to rebuild public trust by returning greater power to the British people, from whom it derives. That is what the Bill does, and that is why I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
Petitions
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Mrs Hale, from Higham Ferrers, is a doughty lady, and she is campaigning to keep the Higham Hopper bus service.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire and surrounding areas,
Sheweth that there is a considerable and ongoing need for the Higham Hopper bus service; that this is a vital mode of transport for the elderly and people with mobility problems; and that it is of the greatest importance that this bus service continues to provide transport for residents in Higham Ferrers and the surrounding areas.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to request that Northamptonshire county council, in conjunction with East Northamptonshire District Council and Higham Ferrers parish council, explores ways in which the Higham Hopper bus service can continue to operate.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P000893]
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
I should like to present a petition on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy campaign. It has been signed by nearly 1,200 people who are opposed to the proposed changes to disability living allowance.
The petition states:
The Petition of supporters of Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and others,
Declares that the Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) helps to meet the higher costs of accessible public transport (where available), or makes an individual eligible for an adapted vehicle through the Motability scheme; that without DLA mobility component, thousands of adults of all ages with severe disabilities who are supported by the state to live in residential care will be unable to retain voluntary employment or simply to visit family and friends; that many families with children attending residential schools will not be able to fund their own adapted vehicle, and as residential schools only provide transport for the start and end of term, with no extra provision for weekends or holidays, disabled children may end up stuck as prisoners in their own home during school holidays, unable to take part in leisure activities, or even attend essential hospital appointments; and that the decision to cut this vital benefit for children in residential schools and adults in residential care will deny thousands of disabled people the chance to live full and independent lives.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government not to cut the Disability Living Allowance Mobility Component for people living in residential care—including children attending residential schools.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000894]
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I should like to thank Poole borough council, and Councillors Judy Butt, John Rampton and Les Burden, for taking up this petition.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the Borough of Poole,
Declares that Hillbourne School in Creekmoor Ward is in urgent need of refurbishment.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons asks the Department for Education to make the school the highest priority for resources as they become available.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000895]
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I would like to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Leeds and supporters of the Fairer Fares campaign convened by Leeds campaigner Stuart Long, and the Leeds student bus campaign organised by Leeds university union.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Leeds and supporters of the Fairer Fares Campaign,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that there is a need for Leeds to have a regulated bus service that provides a regular service for the community, with an honest fare that is not just for profit; and notes that such a bus service must provide an improved customer service that helps the people of Leeds in their day to day lives.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to regulate the bus service in Leeds and to ensure that the service is honest and reliable.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000896]
Humanitarian Disasters
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Speaker, I am grateful to you for selecting this subject for debate, and to have not only the Minister who will respond to the debate but the Secretary of State in the Chamber.
The number of people affected by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, cyclones, famines and so on, is set to increase hugely over the coming years. Crucially, the international community’s ability to respond needs to continue to improve too. I sought this debate because I worry that the trend is in the wrong direction. Oxfam, in its evidence to the Minister’s humanitarian response review, noted that the international humanitarian system risks no longer being a cohesive global system, and that its effectiveness is at risk just when it should be increasing. It called for renewed political leadership by the UK and other major donors to ensure adequate UN humanitarian leadership. World Vision has also highlighted the need for stronger humanitarian leadership.
Britain is one of the many nations that contribute to UN appeals responding to disasters, but it is one of a far smaller number of nations genuinely interested in driving reform across the UN development and humanitarian system and willing to put in the hard yards in international forums to champion that reform. I recognise that the Government have not yet completed their humanitarian emergency response review. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will feel able to provide a full response, and I ask him directly what he and his Department are doing to ensure that the UN can lead the immediate humanitarian response to natural disasters effectively.
How often have Ministers initiated discussions with EU colleagues, the US and other countries on the UN’s ability to respond to disasters? I have no doubt that there is plenty of contact when a disaster strikes, but it is between times that leadership from Department for International Development Ministers—and, indeed, Ministers from across the Government—continues to be required. Essentially, there are five issues of continuing concern involved in how the UN leads the international humanitarian system: funding, personnel, co-ordination, reporting and disaster risk reduction. In the medium and longer term, there is also a second group of issues associated with how the broader UN development system responds to the challenge of development after the immediate humanitarian response phase of a disaster is over.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman share my frustration, and that of the general public, over the Haiti disaster? Clearly the general public wanted something done, the money was gathered and the UN responded, yet a year or 15 months later, the work that we expected to see in Haiti has not been done. Does he share that frustration with me and others in the Chamber?
Mr Thomas
There are many reasons why the international community has not met the scale of the task in Haiti. Certainly, there were issues with the UN’s response, which demonstrated the continuing need for reform, but Haiti’s long-term poverty and instability have also been factors.
Nevertheless, what happened in Haiti is one reason why approximately 263 million people were devastated by natural disasters in 2010—110 million more than in the year of the tsunami. Experts predict that by 2015, some 375 million people will be affected as climate change increases the risk of natural disasters, the vast majority of them living on less than $1 a day. Many will also be affected by conflict, but although the needs of people affected by conflict and the agencies involved in responding can both be similar, in this debate I want to focus on purely natural disasters.
I am an unashamed fan of the amazing British development NGOs that respond to disasters. I have had many times the honour and privilege of seeing or hearing about the courage, compassion and skill of those working for CAFOD––the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development—Oxfam, Save the Children, Islamic Relief, ActionAid, Christian Aid or one of the many, many other NGOs in responding to disasters. However, it is the UN that has to lead the international response to major disasters, and it is on the UN’s capacity to provide leadership that I want to focus.
The expansion of the Central Emergency Response Fund to allow the UN to release funds and enable its agencies to react to disasters more quickly has been an undoubted success over the past five years, helping to improve the UN’s leadership in major disasters and, crucially, in the under-reported and forgotten humanitarian crises that no longer attract media attention, if they ever did. My concern about CERF now is how well it is funded. At the end of last year there were reports that CERF—the UN’s primary fund—was facing a $100 million shortfall. At the replenishment conference in December—I gently point out that no Minister attended it, which was unusual and disappointing—only $358 million was raised. Indeed, I was struck by the continuing poor contribution by key nations in the UN family, and in particular by how little the US and France contributed to support the UN’s ability to respond.
In 2010 Britain contributed some $60 million to the Central Emergency Response Fund and $113 million collectively to the three UN humanitarian leadership funds. That compares with the US, which gave only $10 million—just over £6 million—to CERF, and the French, who gave a combined total of just $7.4 million: that is less than £5 million. In better times, when the contributions of other nations were higher and CERF was expanding, that was not such a problem, but with aid levels under threat—albeit not in this country—now is surely the time for the richest nations to continue to meet their responsibilities to those funds. Interestingly, Valerie Amos, Britain’s most senior UN diplomat and head of the UN’s disaster response agency, said in New York as recently as 21 January:
“we…need to broaden the coalition of Member States who support multilateral humanitarian action, and we need to bring more partners into our existing response mechanisms”.
What discussions has the Minister or his departmental colleagues had, or are they planning, with their US and French counterparts on funding for the UN’s humanitarian funds?
The next issue is about people. Leading the response to a disaster requires remarkable leadership, and the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinators are the unsung heroes of the international community. They are often required to be personally brave, and they need a capacity for punishing hours, day after day with little rest, and an ability to negotiate and co-ordinate with country Governments, donors and aid agencies, and often the military and myriad other bodies. The UN’s humanitarian co-ordinators are, as it were, the Florence Nightingales of the international community; they are also, however, too few in number. I hope that the Minister will say what action the Department for International Development is taking to help the UN find and support a wider pool of people from which to draw humanitarian co-ordinators.
Also crucial are those who lead the work to provide each part of the humanitarian effort—the effort to provide shelter, water supplies, medical assistance, and so on—and specifically those UN agencies that have accepted responsibility for each of those tasks and that have struggled on occasion to find the right person, appropriately trained and able to be deployed at a moment’s notice, to be that agency’s leadership on the ground when a disaster strikes. So I ask the Minister what continuing discussions he is having with agencies with cluster leadership responsibilities about the availability of sufficient senior staff who can be deployed at a moment’s notice.
The single biggest factor in getting agencies and non-governmental organisations to work together, to co-ordinate effectively and to ensure that all the key humanitarian needs are addressed is the availability of funding. Common humanitarian funds in-country have helped to drive better co-ordination in a number of situations. Sudan is an example. Will the Minister tell me how those funds are continuing to be rolled out? What is his assessment of their effectiveness?
Disaster risk reduction and the development of local in-country ability to respond to disasters is also essential. As Save the Children has noted, the contrast between the impact of the Christchurch earthquake and the Haiti quake is instructive. It is not impossible to predict where there might be a risk of big natural disasters occurring, and UN agencies need to help to build the ability of countries and communities to put in place measures such as tsunami early-warning systems and better building regulations, to ensure that such events lead to less damage and fewer lives being lost. Indeed, the Disasters Emergency Committee has just noted the need to prepare for the—sadly inevitable—next big urban disasters. That point is linked to the question that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has just asked me. Again, I ask the Minister what action he is taking to promote disaster risk reduction efforts by the individual developing countries in which we continue to have an aid programme and by the UN agencies that we are continuing to fund.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
In my experience, the United Kingdom has done extremely well in providing humanitarian aid; it is entirely supportive. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we are not pulling our weight, and should be doing considerably more?
Mr Thomas
I share the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of where we are—or certainly of where we have been. My point is that, with the shortfall in funding for the crucial UN humanitarian funds, we need to step up our efforts to persuade other countries to share our interest in and responsibility for the UN humanitarian system.
Linked to the hon. Gentleman’s point, may I ask the Minister how he and his Department are encouraging debate about the issues that take centre stage in these discussions? Is an annual international forum being planned to bring Ministers together from across the globe to discuss how humanitarian issues are being—and, indeed, have been—handled? Such gatherings exist for officials, but is there one planned for Ministers? Ultimately, it is ministerial energy that shifts, or does not shift, the international system’s gears.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
I spent the recess in New Zealand working with the Parliament there, and I was there when the earthquake struck in Christchurch. The New Zealand people were incredibly grateful for the immediate response not only from our own country but from such countries as Singapore, Australia, Japan and, of course, America. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the UN effort, but does he agree that there is already a co-ordinated response that kicks in when many such humanitarian disasters occur?
Mr Thomas
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s words and his interest in the New Zealand situation, but I do not share his analysis of the general situation in many developing countries. I emphasise the contrast between New Zealand and elsewhere. The lessons from Haiti are quite instructive in that regard, because New Zealand had far more advanced contingency planning and systems in place, notwithstanding the challenges that still exist. It is for that reason that we need the UN, and the international humanitarian system that it leads, to continue to be effective and, given the increase in need that we are likely to see in the coming years, to continue to reform so that it can improve its work still further.
I return to the issue of the international forum. If the Minister does not have a plan to establish such a forum for ministerial discussions, will he at least ensure that this is a topic for an EU Development Ministers meeting? The Disasters Emergency Committee, that excellent co-ordinating body of non-governmental organisations in the UK, has just published a lessons learned document from the Haiti disaster. I gently suggest that such work needs to be considered and replicated in an international setting at a ministerial level meeting.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. One concern of many people is that when money is donated to help countries, there is an administrative angle to it. How much of that money actually gets through to the people? Is it effectively sucked up in the administration so that the money does not go where people want it to go?
Mr Thomas
A lot of the money pledged to the UN does get through to the sharp end, but that does not mean that there is no scope for improving the savings that can be found across the UN system.
The second broad issue I want quickly to raise is the reform of the UN development system and how UN agencies can be supported to step up their longer-term response to natural disasters. The Government need to champion a joined-up UN response and to celebrate the One UN reform programme that is helping in some countries to ensure that the sheer plethora of UN agencies’ funds, programmes and commissions add up to more than the sum of their parts. Again, leadership money and co-ordination are fundamental, so I ask the Minister what support he is giving through his Department to help to widen the pool of experience of dedicated UN resident co-ordinators able to lead that collective, co-ordinated UN development response. What resources are the Government putting in to One UN funds that force agencies to work together to deliver the prioritised response that countries need?
In our more financially difficult times, and given what the hon. Member for Strangford asked, what action is the Minister taking to encourage the UN to drive savings? For example, does every UN agency continue to need its own procurement or human resources function, as savings could be reinvested in the front line of the development and humanitarian effort?
Lastly, the World Bank is a distinct and different part of the UN family, but it is part of that family, too. It could do more, more quickly, to help countries to plan their response to disasters and could certainly do more to help disaster risk reduction work and assist countries to pre-plan their response to a disaster. The World Bank remains, however, far too Washington-focused. More of its staff with more devolved power need to be based in the developing countries that they are seeking to help. I would welcome hearing whether the Minister shares that view.
The UN is a remarkable group of organisations with remarkable people in key parts of the humanitarian and development systems doing a very important job and doing it well, but to be ready for the challenges of rising numbers of people being affected by natural disasters, it needs to continue to reform. It will do so only with the help of constructive and critical friends such as the UK. The UK, in turn, will be that consistent and constructively critical friend only if Ministers continue to take a profound and abiding interest in the two issues of UN humanitarian system and UN development system reform. I recognise that the Minister must reach his own judgment on the different elements of those reform agendas, but I hope he is interested enough to want to reach such a judgment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)
I thank the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) for raising this very important and timely issue. He has ministerial experience in the Department on which he has been able to build relevant knowledge. He is right to say that, in 2010, 263 million people were devastated by natural disasters—110 million more, as he said, than by the tsunami of 2004. Experts predict that the number of floods, famines and other climate-related disasters could increase to affect 375 million people every year by 2015.
Meeting global humanitarian need is a top priority for the UK coalition Government, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development set in train an independent review of the UK Government’s response to rapid onset emergencies, so we can learn how to do this better.
May I take the opportunity to touch on the current hot spot? We are, of course, responding to the humanitarian situation in Libya and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was only last week at the Tunisian border, where he witnessed the complex situation first hand. He vowed that the UK would do everything possible to give the stranded shelter and to get them home as quickly as possible. It will come as no surprise to the hon. Gentleman that DFID was one of the first donors on the ground, responding quickly by placing experts on the borders to assess the situation. We immediately sent 38,000 blankets and 1,400 tents from DFID’s stores to provide shelter for 10,000 people.
It was quickly established that at that point the situation on the borders was a logistical emergency rather than a humanitarian crisis. We sent chartered flights to take the returning migrant workers home, and yesterday the last of those flights was returning more than 500 Bangladeshis. We have also returned more than 6,000 Egyptians. That, along with the logistics experts that we have deployed to the airport, has significantly relieved the situation on the Tunisian border.
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, however, the United Kingdom cannot address these grave issues alone. We must work as part of an international system. I was pleased to note yesterday that Baroness Amos, the United Nations emergency relief co-ordinator, had launched a flash appeal for Libya. It sets out the immediate needs of the affected population, and provides the all-important framework that donors and humanitarian agencies need in order to co-ordinate their efforts. It will also help to ensure that our international support always targets those who are most in need with the most appropriate support, doing no harm and respecting people’s dignity.
As I said earlier, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has set up an independent humanitarian emergency response review, and my noble Friend Lord Ashdown will provide his assessment of it in the coming weeks. The review will consider how the United Kingdom can improve its effectiveness and prepare for the challenges of the 21st century. The hon. Gentleman himself said that he did not expect me to anticipate its outcome, but I can put on record that its recommendations will involve seven key lines of inquiry. They relate to the impact of UK humanitarian assistance; what an effective humanitarian response from the UK should look like; how the UK should support partners to deliver an effective response—a crucial point raised by the hon. Gentleman; how the UK can be an effective member of the international response community—another point that he raised; and how the UK should address the issue of accountability in humanitarian response. The review will also recommend an assessment of DFID’s humanitarian policy, and urge the UK to ensure that the Department is “fit for purpose” in the context of 21st-century humanitarian challenges. I hope that the House will have an opportunity to debate the review’s findings when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is able to set out his recommendations for future UK policy and action.
In view of the priority that we place on improving the effectiveness of the international system, the Secretary of State also commissioned a multilateral aid review. A statement on the review was made in the House on 1 March, so I need not go into the details, but it is worth noting that it showed most—although not all—humanitarian agencies to be good performers providing good value for money. The reviews have identified key priorities for reform. We want to work with the agencies to ensure that the international response becomes better and the hard-pressed UK taxpayer receives value for money for every UK pound that is spent.
The reaction around the world since the announcement of the reviews from many Governments, donors and partners alike, and indeed from various international agencies—non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, analysts and commentators—has been one of great interest in the process in which the international development team has been involved, not least in regard to the multilateral aid review. I hope that—partly in response to the hon. Gentleman’s encouragement—the review will be seen as both a template and a pathfinder, and that the process will be taken up not just by individual countries but by the United Nations itself and its various agencies at all levels. We will try to ensure that that happens.
Notwithstanding earlier observations by a couple of Members about recent disasters in Haiti and Pakistan, I thought it might be helpful if, rather than dwelling on those disasters, I mentioned some of the lessons that have been learned. It is important that the innovations that can be brought to bear be understood. The Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has established itself as pivotal in leading and co-ordinating the humanitarian response. It has strengthened the system of humanitarian co-ordinators in-country and the establishment of the UN cluster approach, as well as ensuring that humanitarian needs are met through joint assessments and that the finances are available to resource humanitarian action, all of which are crucial components of our modern toolkit.
Mr Thomas
At the same time as the Minister’s Department was releasing details of its funding for the CERF conference, which I welcome, it briefed that CERF faced a shortfall of $100 million for the current financial year. Will the Minister therefore write to the US and France asking them to contribute more funds to CERF?
Mr O'Brien
I was about to come on to CERF, but may I first make sure that I confirm the point that through the appeals process not only are we becoming better at preventing the duplication of effort and improving value for money from a response, but we are much more focused on the evidence-based and results-based management that will help to improve that further? The UK is pressing this point on almost a daily basis, and various contacts and discussions have taken place.
When in opposition, we fully supported the establishment of CERF when that was introduced by the hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the then Secretary of State. It was an innovation that improved UN country leadership and co-ordination, and resulted in a more timely and equitable humanitarian response according to needs. Since it was set up, the UK has been one of its top donors, and it recently did well in the multilateral aid review. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has authorised a doubling of the UK’s support to CERF, announcing in December a £40 million pledge to this year’s appeal for funds to it. We are recognised as leading by example, and I am very pleased that CERF is already swiftly providing financial support to the people of Libya.
To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, a considerable number of meetings are taking place with our various US opposite numbers and the French. I noted what he said about an annual international forum. That seems to me to be too infrequent. There is also the question whether there should be a similar forum for the EU. Rather than a set-piece meeting, there are frequent ongoing meetings. Indeed, I was in Paris on Thursday and took the opportunity to raise these points through a series of bilaterals.
It is important to recognise that we need not just to reduce the risks associated with disasters when they happen, but to have much better co-ordination on identifying and preventing risks before they happen, while also recognising the general unpredictability. Working through the bilateral aid review, and therefore now the country programmes, that type of resilience and preparation has been put in place, and it is, I think, fair to call into evidence what we have already done in the preparations in respect of southern Sudan.
While, as ever, there will be calls for a total review of the international system, we already have enough evidence and experience to know broadly what the problems are. The lessons from Pakistan and Haiti led to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declaring improved response to major crises as one of the top eight UN priorities for 2011. Through international forums and the EU, we are having a series of discussions intended not only to back up what the UN may be discussing, but to make sure that on those bilateral and regional bases there is a continuing set of discussions and a focus that will ensure that we not only learn lessons but construct our ability to respond most effectively. The new mechanisms established five years ago are starting to result in improved responses, but they need to continue to improve, particularly in terms of leadership.
Mr O'Brien
I am running out of time I am afraid, but I will give way at the end of my speech if there is a moment left.
While talking of leadership, I want to highlight the UK Government’s appreciation of, and support for, the vital role being played by Baroness Amos. She has brought fresh thinking, determination and passion to humanitarian response, which is improving the effectiveness of the international system.
Lastly, I wish to highlight the fact that the current traditional international system alone cannot be the only response to humanitarian disasters, and it is crucial to bring both emerging powers and the private sector on board. The UK will continue to learn and to be at the forefront of good humanitarian donorship. I believe that I have half a minute left, so perhaps I can give way now.
Bob Stewart
One of the real problems I see is not just in UN leadership, but the co-ordination of the other non-governmental organisations in the field. Presumably, the Minister is looking at that too.
Mr O'Brien
Unquestionably we are looking at all the various actors and players—NGOs, civil society organisations and, above all, the agencies, which are ultimately the big donors that have the muscle to bring this to bear—and international co-ordination is crucial. I know that the direction that will be given to us by Lord Ashdown’s review will only serve to continue to keep the United Kingdom at the forefront.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Television: Licensing
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Greg Mulholland
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many people in Leeds North West constituency have been prosecuted for not having a television licence in the last 12 months.
[Official Report, 11 October 2010, Vol. 516, c. 153W.]
Letter of correction from Mr Crispin Blunt:
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) on 11 October 2010. The answer overstated by 80 the number of persons proceeded against for television licence evasion in the West Yorkshire police force area for 2008.
The full answer given was as follows:
Mr Blunt
The number of persons proceeded against at magistrates courts for the offence of television licence evasion under the Communications Act 2003, in the West Yorkshire police force area for 2008 (latest available), was 6,652. Figures are not available at constituency level so police force area level data have been provided in lieu.
The statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences the principal offence is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
Data for 2009 will be published on 21 October 2010. The publication date for 2010 figures has not been finalised but will be announced on the UK National Statistics release calendar.
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Blunt
The number of persons proceeded against at magistrates courts for the offence of television licence evasion under the Communications Act 2003, in the West Yorkshire police force area for 2008 (latest available), was 6,572, Figures are not available at constituency level so police force area level data have been provided in lieu.
The statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences the principal offence is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
Data for 2009 will be published on 21 October 2010. The publication date for 2010 figures has not been finalised but will be announced on the UK National Statistics release calendar.
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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.
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Young Offenders
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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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
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and it is a great honour to speak about this important issue. This debate is informed by my visit during recess week to Barton Moss secure children’s home and Hindley young offenders institution. I pay full tribute to their work and to the obvious dedication and humanity of all the staff whom I met in both institutions. The Prison Reform Trust has also been invaluable in helping me think through what I intend to say.
It is fair to say that in few areas of public policy is the research more voluminous, more detailed or more comprehensive than in youth justice. There is always one more report to be read, one more document to be studied in detail or one more set of figures. I welcome the fact that the coalition Government and the Opposition have stressed their commitment to the principle of early intervention during the foundation years from nought to five, but I am concerned that a cohort of young people out there are already on the conveyor belt to crime, as it has been termed.
In preparing for this debate, I was pleased to reread the pamphlet issued in 2002 by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) that first set out the idea of a conveyor belt to crime. I was working in the Conservative research department when it was published, and it is a useful reminder that those were not the wilderness years we often felt them to be at the time. The pamphlet indicated to me that the conveyor belt does not stop at age five but runs right through to age 17.
Although much good work is being done on early intervention and preventing children from stepping on to the conveyor belt to crime, we must recognise that there is a significant policy challenge in what is almost a lost generation—those aged between four and 17 who may already be on that conveyor belt and who have already missed the benefits of Sure Start, family nurse partnerships and other initiatives. It was stressed to me at Barton Moss secure children’s home that the four to 10 age group is particularly important for policy makers to grapple with. We concentrate on the foundation years and the 15 to 18 age group, but a great deal does not always happen in between. I urge Government and think tanks to address the four to 10 age group.
Whenever we discuss criminal justice, we must ask big questions. What is the criminal justice system for? What is the relative balance between punishment and rehabilitation? Crucially, where is the victim in all this? Although it is tempting to embark on a great philosophical exploration of criminal justice, I will focus on a slightly narrower field of play, starting from shorter sentences.
I was struck when one of the professionals whom I met the week before last said to me, “Well, if they are in for eight weeks, at least we can sort out their teeth.” That might seem a slightly odd thing to say—surely the purpose of incarceration is not to address issues of oral hygiene—but the point is much more fundamental. Many of the people who enter the youth justice system have had chaotic lifestyles; many have never seen a dentist or engaged with health services; and many have dropped out of the education system. Even a short sentence can offer a brief opportunity to address some of those underlying problems.
It might be argued that many in the youth justice system have experienced a perfect storm. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 76% of those in the criminal justice system have an absent father, 51% come from deprived households, 39% have appeared on the child protection register, 28% have witnessed domestic violence, 14% have a parent with a physical, mental health or learning disability, 48% have been excluded from school, 31% engage in substance use, 20% engage in self-harm, 17% have a formal mental health diagnosis and 11% have attempted suicide.
I read out that litany not merely to emphasise the relative disadvantage faced by those in the youth justice system but to make a more fundamental and frightening point. The structure of our youth justice system seems to make it more likely that the most troubled in our society will be given custodial sentences, because their needs are thought to be far too complex to be dealt with in the community.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he share my concern that some young people suffering from Asperger’s syndrome do not necessarily get the treatment and diagnosis that they need, but are simply put down as mischievous, badly behaved troublemakers?
Paul Maynard
My hon. Friend anticipates much of my speech. We certainly lack a fundamental ability to assess the needs of young offenders when they enter the youth justice system and determine how best to address those needs. They therefore end up in the secure estate without having been assessed properly, because the tools are not present in the system, which is a great worry that I shall discuss later. The conveyor belt appears to be constructed almost to minimise effective exit points before reaching the secure estate. That should be of great concern, because disadvantaged children face particular problems in both the courts and custody.
It goes without saying that reoffending by juvenile offenders is extremely high. Some 75% of those released from custody and 68% of those given community sentences or other disposals in the community reoffend within a year. Why is that? Undoubtedly, some of them commit crimes and are bad people, but for a significant number, the ineffective screening process and lack of appropriate tools for identifying behavioural and communication difficulties almost set them up to fail.
I welcome, for example, the Minister’s proposed amendments to the Bail Act 1976, which would remove the option of remand for young people who were unlikely to receive a custodial sentence, but I would also welcome an assurance from him that the alternatives will adequately protect vulnerable children. When I visited Barton Moss secure children’s home, I was struck by the fact that many children are remanded there on bail for their own protection and welfare, even though they might not end up receiving a custodial sentence. There must be no presumption against a custodial remand.
Equally, when offenders reach the youth court, they find disadvantage once again. Little is done to screen young offenders for mental illness, learning disability or speech, language and communication difficulties. It is no use imposing a disposal of any sort if the young person cannot comprehend the punishment or interpret what is occurring to them in what can be a very off-putting setting. I admit that I have never visited a youth court, but I can imagine the feelings of a nervous child entering that formal situation, uncertain of the process and of what is occurring.
I welcome the previous Government’s introduction of a witness intermediary scheme to help witnesses with speech and language problems or communication difficulties better to present their case in court, but I must ask why such assistance is not also afforded to defendants suffering from similar problems. Does a child’s impairment increase the possibility of custody, because it makes it more likely that they will fail to comply with a youth rehabilitation order, or because there is a lack of an appropriate youth justice programme that might enable compliance? If so, it is a damning indictment of the system. Is it really the aim of our society that eloquent children should be more able to plead for one last chance?
When children get to custody, they have what is called the Asset form, which is the primary document for interpreting children’s needs. Those forms are critical to the development of appropriate care and sentence plans, but they are structurally flawed, because they fail to identify speech, language and communication difficulties. They impair identification of individual problems and make it harder to address those difficulties during the time in custody, however short or long it may be. The inadequacy of Asset means under-reporting of those problems, and I believe that they are taken insufficiently seriously within public policy circles.
We should recognise that, thanks to Lord Bradley’s report, improvements have been made to the way in which mental health is addressed, but the situation is by no means perfect. Indeed, it is a success only relative to the absolute failure in terms of other needs. The consequences of that failure in screening and appropriate identification are severe. As I have said, we are setting young offenders up to fail, which manifests itself in the rapid increase in the numbers of young offenders who are returned to remand for breach of conditions. For example, someone might be given what is still called an ASBO—an antisocial behaviour order—and told that they cannot enter a particular road. However, their grandmother might live on the other side of that road and, if they cross it to see her and somebody spots them and reports them for it, that is a breach. It might get them sent back to a young offenders institution, but it seems to me to be a technical breach. It might even be that the young person cannot comprehend that to get to their grandmother’s house, they would be breaching an ASBO in the first place. If they do not receive appropriate care and an appropriate sentence plan, and if they have a basic lack of understanding of the process in which they are engaged and are incapable of engaging with the interventions provided for them, we are setting them up to fail.
The story is the same when they get to custody. Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, has said:
“Prisons can offer a short window of opportunity for the majority of young people who end up in custody…That is an opportunity that must not be wasted.”
I am concerned that it is being wasted in some instances. For example, it is critical that children who might have dropped out of the education system and have not acquired the basic skills of literacy and numeracy are re-equipped with them, if they are to fulfil a purposeful life once they are released. However, it is clear from written answers provided to me by the Minister that the number of such young people achieving literacy qualifications dropped from 2,104 in 2006-07 to just 1,350 in 2009-10. Similarly, the number completing numeracy courses dropped from 2,680 in 2006-07 to 1,813 in 2009-10. I doubt that that is simply because of a decrease in the numbers in those institutions. There is clearly something more structural going on, and I would welcome some more information on why it might be occurring.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a good contribution. On his last point, does he recognise—I say this as a former Minister with responsibility for skills and training in prisons—that, although many young people are making progress in our prisons, we were not able to introduce schemes such as Building Schools for the Future in prison greatly to improve facilities? Does he also agree that it is important for young people on short sentences that their integration back into, usually, further education in the community happens in a real way?
Paul Maynard
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that contribution, which raises a wider point about who owns the child when they progress through the criminal justice system. One of my concerns is that when someone transfers from their home local authority to the secure estate, their home council effectively washes its hands of them. When they have gone through pupil referral units—or educational diversity, as we call it in Blackpool—and then find themselves in a young offenders institution, it is almost like starting again. They are then released and, yet again, they start again when they are returned to their local authority. Again, there is a lack of cohesion.
I should also like to deal with the issue of the prison escort records of young offenders at young offenders institutions. I have been informed in a letter from the Ministry of Justice that the initial assessment of a prisoner’s language skills is made by the custody manager who completes the escort record, but there has been no national review of the quality or accuracy of those reception language assessments. There is no obvious evidence of the use of a tool that is approved by the professional bodies.
I do not believe that in custodial settings we have enough speech and language therapists. Speech and language intervention at Red Bank secure children’s home reduces the need for physical restraints from two to three times a day to just two times a week, but only 15% of youth offending teams have access to speech and language therapy. I am particularly concerned that the changes to prison health care and the re-assignment to the Department of Health risk worsening prison health care. I am concerned that a primary care trust in which a young offenders institution is located now has to take responsibility for all the young offenders in that institution. It is causing problems in relation to securing funding for the health care within that institution. Will the Minister comment on that and explain why the change has occurred and how he hopes to protect those in young offenders institutions who are in need of specialist health provision that PCTs now appear reluctant to fund?
We need to provide more exits in the community from the so-called conveyor belt. As I have said, I welcome the fact that we are trying to avoid the use of remand. I support the concept of local authorities bearing more of the burden of responsibility for the cost of youth justice in their community—a child from Blackpool does not cease to be a child from Blackpool when he is in Hindley young offenders institution—which was an idea raised by the recent Green Paper. Payment by results is another frequently cited intervention, but I am not sure that it is fully understood yet. I would welcome some reassurance that the schemes on offer are not merely a case of helping the low-hanging fruit first to demonstrate that the process works, but are focusing on those who are hardest to help.
Lord Bradley’s review, which I mentioned earlier, recommended that all youth offending teams have a suitable, qualified mental health worker with responsibility for making appropriate referrals. Child and adolescent mental health services are a particularly malfunctioning part of our health care system. The likelihood of CAMHS taking on a 15 to 17-year-old who presents for the first time with mental health problems is, I am afraid, pretty close to zero. Their view is that they will have to wait to be dealt with by the adult mental health care system. Structurally, that cannot be what is intended by any Government of any political persuasion. A child and adolescent mental health service has the word “adolescent” in it, which surely applies to the 15 to 17 age group.
I should also like to focus on the issue of transitional services for children entering adulthood, a period for which, in my view, there is no real age limit, because young people develop into adults at different ages. The issue will be covered in the forthcoming special educational needs Green Paper, but I hope that, just as early intervention was the public policy fad—if I may call it that—of the past decade, the transition phase will become the fad of the coming decade. It has been sorely neglected, which has had a damaging impact on the quality of public policy in this country.
We also have to consider the impact of arrangements for the release of young offenders. It is not acceptable to just hand them a travel warrant and £46.75 upon their release. I have suggested to the Minister that we increase that sum, because it is not enough. When I market-tested that with the professionals I met, it was not supported as much as I thought it might be. The point was made that, if we give them more money, cash in hand, we cannot control what they spend it on. Those professionals would far rather focus on handing out vouchers to meet the specific needs that those young offenders will face in their first 48 hours or so, rather than a cash payout.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful contribution. Does he agree that one of the most useful things that can be given to young offenders when they leave an institution is somewhere to live, and that ensuring that they have secure accommodation is one of the best ways of ensuring that they do no reoffend?
Paul Maynard
That is perhaps an example of our target culture. We measure the number of young offenders on release who have accommodation available to them, but we do not measure the quality or sustainability of that accommodation. There could be an address to go to, but that might be someone’s sofa. For the purposes of ticking the box, that sofa is regarded as a long-term solution, and I do not believe that it always is.
I would like to touch briefly on the issue of doli incapax, which is the pretentious term for considering the age of criminal responsibility. This is something to which I have given a great deal of thought, because most in the criminal justice system focus on the need to raise the age of criminal responsibility to the age of 14. I have thought closely about this. There is clearly a humanitarian instinct lying at the root of that proposal. My concern is that what we are actually discussing is nomenclature, rather than outcomes. I realised at Barton Moss that many of the children it looks after in that setting—that secure setting behind a locked gate—are not there because they have entered the youth justice system. They are there because their councils have put them there for welfare reasons. If the age of criminal responsibility is 12, and we allow councils’ welfare departments to look after those children, the end result might be no different. I have a severe concern that, by leaving that to a council’s social services welfare department, we will lose the many safeguards that are in the criminal justice system to ensure that the law is adhered to. As we all know, in tragic case after tragic case, social services are becoming more risk-averse in how they treat young people. That well-meaning recommendation might well have perverse consequences and I would argue strongly against it.
It is true that we should celebrate every small progress that is made by a child. Merely attending two consecutive appointments can be a triumph for some. We have to stress, however, that the youth justice system is never the place to try to address all of society’s ills, as tempting as that might be. The youth justice system is perhaps a place that can be used to catch up and to address that which has been overlooked, but we have to start, as a nation, to accept that more must be done in the community. I realise that the Minister is shifting the Youth Justice Board back in-house. I would welcome an assurance from him that youth justice will remain the responsibility of a separate unit, within the Ministry of Justice, dedicated solely to the under-18s. The Youth Justice Board has issued many useful reports that have underlined the inadequacies of various stages of the youth justice process, and it would be a great shame to lose that independent voice. It is still important that, whoever we are and whatever our organisation, we still speak truth unto power. I hope that the civil servants responsible for youth justice do not recoil from speaking truth unto the Minister, where that is required.
Equally, if all exit points from the conveyor belt to crime, which I keep referring to, are bottlenecked around the secure estate, that risks still being a dumping ground for all the children whose problems cannot really be accommodated within society at the moment. In my view, they should be accommodated within society. We should be able to cope with those who have complexity of need. It is a damning indictment of this country that, to address those problems, we have to send children to a secure estate, lock them away from society, and say that society does not want to have to deal with those problems.
I have been appalled by some of the populism I have heard in political debate about criminal justice in this House. It deeply disappoints me. The dignity of the individual is compromised by many of the conditions in the youth justice system. The victim, as well, fails to receive satisfaction. Satisfaction is the crucial word, because punishment has two elements: retribution and satisfaction. Retribution comes in the form of incarceration, which is a deprivation of liberty and freedom. That is where the victim receives recompense for the crimes done to them. Satisfaction, however, is just as important, because satisfaction is where there is recompense for the wider community whose laws have been offended. The key part of satisfaction is that we reduce the likelihood of reoffending—when a young person leaves the youth justice system, they are less likely to reoffend, and more likely to have a purposeful life in the community whose laws they offended in the first place.
If our youth justice system makes it more likely that the most vulnerable receive the harshest punishments, we, as a nation, must examine our consciences. Community solutions, at the appropriate moment, are the way forward. Equally, I recognise that to be done properly, those solutions must be intensive, with the costs up front. They are expensive, and I recognise that, but as the Audit Commission report in 2004 made clear, if only one in 10 of those who went into the youth justice system was catered for properly, the savings for the public purse could be as much as £100 million. We are back to the old argument that early intervention saves money, which requires ambition on the part of Ministers and the bravery to take decisions where the costs are up front, but the benefits are long term. I urge the Minister to continue on his well-meaning path towards trying to improve the youth justice system.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I am grateful, Mr Streeter, for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on a very good and effective summary of the state of youth justice.
I would like to associate myself with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, particularly in relation to the important role that now has to be played by local authorities on this issue. I, too, visited a young offenders institution just a few weeks ago: Feltham in west London. It was my fourth visit to Feltham in the 10 years that I have been the Member of Parliament for Tottenham. I visit constituents there from time to time. That keeps me in touch with them and in touch with some of the most challenging youngsters in my community. Reflecting with prison officers and chaplains, some of whom I have got to know, it is clear that the cohort of young offenders from Tottenham and other areas of north London are now in Feltham for more serious crimes than they were on my previous visit a few years ago, and on my visits before that. The nature of violent crime in particular, and what young people are being sentenced for, is deeply worrying, and is reflected in newspaper headlines about knife crime and other crimes.
The hon. Gentleman touched on some concerns that are really important if we are to address this issue. What happens when a young person leaves an institution such as Feltham? Reflecting on my experience as the Minister with responsibility for skills—and, therefore, offender learning in prison—for two years in the previous Labour Government, I am clear that we were able to improve education in prisons. If serving a sentence of more than six months in our prisons, a prisoner will now take not just level 1 and level 2 numeracy and literacy, but training, hopefully, in a trade that can be taken beyond prison. That is the case now. Lots of young men, in particular, are leaving prison and graduating with certificates to show the skills that they have acquired.
I would like to stress two points. We have not been able to renew and improve education facilities in our prison stock in the way that must be expected in the 21st century. There are jobs and opportunities out there, but if prisons, in partnership with industry, cannot provide the latest technology and training for those young people, whether in respect of construction or cabling for the information technology industry, the skills that they come out with will be virtually worthless when they compete with young people who have not been held at Her Majesty’s pleasure. That is something that we need to address.
A drive to ensure that industry works in partnership with our prisons to renew facilities and to support the provision of facilities in young offenders institutions is necessary. We did not see the kind of private finance initiatives or public-private partnerships that might assist in improving the situation in prisons in the last period. I hope that it is something that we can get to, so that young people receive the kind of training that I saw in Sweden and Finland, which, frankly, have far better results with their young offenders than we do.
Just a few years ago, my Government were able to begin pilots in what we called test bed regions, and I hope that the Minister might be able to comment on their success or progress. They were meant in part to deal with the other problem that is manifest in the system. I feel sorry for the Minister. I worked closely with justice and prisons Ministers in my period, and I know that many of the issues that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys raised lie beyond the door of the justice system, and beyond the door of a skills Minister dealing with education in prisons. If a young person exits but does not quickly get suitable housing, which is very much in the domain of the local authority, that is a disaster, because he will probably end up with the same crew that he was hanging out with before he went inside. If he exits and has to wait two or three weeks to access benefits, that is a bigger disaster. Guess what he will do to find money and resources in the interim period because, frankly, colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions have not been able sufficiently to integrate their systems so that he can quickly get the support that he needs, get on to jobseeker’s allowance and move forward.
Integration with further education and the role of the probation service are also fundamental. It is clear that the public imagination of what probation and probation services should mean is nothing akin to what is happening. A great deal needs to happen to ensure that a responsible adult is alongside the young person when they exit the young offenders institution. That is clearly the role of the probation service, which needs proper resources but also must be subject to proper expectations and accountable to the public. It must work alongside young offenders to ensure that they can continue to develop the skills they acquired in prison when they exit, particularly if they had a short sentence. There must be integration of the course that they were doing in prison with courses at the local further education college. In Britain, there are still too many young people falling through the cracks. They are not able to continue their education or training and access the necessary job.
We need a step change in the attitudes of industry and business to young people who, if they do not succeed in work, will cost the state millions in recidivism. I am afraid that the attitude of employers to employing young people who have a criminal record is still less than positive or wholesome. It is our civic duty to ensure that if someone makes a mistake, they are able to correct it.
I end with the story of a young man who came to see me in my surgery on Friday last week. He saw me in 2003, having committed some crimes in 2001. He had changed his life and wanted to join the Territorial Army. I contacted the TA at that point, but it said, “Sorry. We want to see more sustained progress in this young man’s life before we will take him on.” It is now 2011, and he has come back with his Criminal Records Bureau record showing no criminal activity, and with references from some of his employers over the last period. He has turned his life around and still wants to join the TA, and it is my sincere hope that it will look favourably on him. We need both public and private sector employers to take that kind of attitude to young people.
I am deeply concerned that the kind of cuts that we are seeing in provision for young people could lead to a serious explosion in crime among this important cohort. I say that fully cognisant of the importance of Tottenham and constituencies such as mine in respect of such issues in the past. Cuts to youth services and to provision such as after-school clubs for young people can have a detrimental effect down the road. I represent a constituency where many young people do not have access to gardens. They may live on the 15th floor of a tall tower block and share a bedroom with four, five or six brothers and sisters. They need youth services. They need the state in loco parentis after school and at the weekends. Without that, they are literally on the streets, in front of the television or on the internet.
Working women in my constituency do not get home at 3 o’clock to pick up their children. They are often single mums who need activities after school and at the weekend to keep their kids occupied until they can pick them up after they finish work at half-past 5 or 6 o’clock. Cuts in this area can have a huge and detrimental effect, so I hope that when we speak about youth justice, we recognise that it cuts across nearly every policy area, and that we must do better in Britain in the coming period.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this debate. As I said in an intervention, he has made a thoughtful and meticulously researched contribution—indeed, possibly even a liberal with a small l contribution. His emphasis on early intervention and ensuring that there is proper assessment of learning and communication difficulties among young offenders was a strong point.
I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who made a strong contribution based on his experience as a Minister. I did not disagree with anything that he said, including his last point about the impact of cuts on youth services. We must be cautious about that, because of the potential for significant negative knock-on effects.
I apologise to you, Mr Streeter, and to others, because I must leave early to sit on a Statutory Instrument Committee that is looking at licensing hours in relation to the royal wedding. Clearly, we hope that more people will not join the criminal justice system as a result of extended licensing hours and their drinking longer and harder than they might otherwise have done.
The backdrop to what we are discussing must surely be, to some extent, public perceptions of young people. Members may be familiar with a YouGov poll commissioned by Barnardo’s that was conducted at the end of 2008. It found that nearly half the adults regarded children as increasingly dangerous to each other and to their elders, while 43% feel that
“something has to be done”
to protect society from children and young people. It is a sad indictment against not young people but adults, society and, perhaps, the media that we have arrived at a point where the perception of young people is as negative as that.
The poll goes on to state:
“The British public overestimates, by a factor of four, the amount of crime committed by young people.”
I wonder to what extent that perception affects sentencing policy. If people think that young people are committing four times as much crime as they actually commit, that may be reflected in the sentences that are handed out.
That is the perception, but, interestingly, the number of children in custody has fallen by one third since 2002, from 3,175 to just more than 2,000. That goes against the perceptions that that poll revealed, and may explain to some extent the fall to which the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys referred in terms of young people accessing services. Fewer children are going into the custody system.
That is the backdrop, and I shall now address the issue. A couple of months ago, I organised a sentencing round table. I invited many of the organisations involved in youth justice to come and suggest how to enhance the proposals in the Green Paper and to propose additional measures. They stressed the importance of the emphasis on diversion, discretion and judgment in what happens with children who go into the youth custody system. As an aside to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, I hope that he will stick to his humanitarian instincts and consider why an age of criminal responsibility of 14 might be the appropriate course of action. Indeed, at the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference on Saturday, I shall open a debate on a motion that proposes precisely that.
The organisations had concerns about whether the Green Paper focused enough on custody of young people, and there was a lot of enthusiasm about what is happening to youth custody in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that, and confirm whether the Government are considering that as a way forward. Northern Ireland has far fewer children in the prison estate.
The organisations also focused on the need to address learning difficulties and mental disorders, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said. He rightly drew on the briefing of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists—at least, I am drawing on it—and referred to the asset system, which is the tool designed to assess young people. The concern, as the hon. Gentleman has said, is that it is not designed to identify learning difficulties or communication disabilities. I have a specific question for the Minister. Can that system be looked at to ensure that it is adjusted so that it can do precisely that? As he has said, it is a significant issue. Current evidence shows that 60% of young offenders have such severe communication disabilities that they cannot access prison education programmes. I agree with the right hon. Member for Tottenham that good, strong educational programmes in prisons are key, but they could go further in allowing offenders to obtain qualifications.
When I visited the prison in the Minister’s constituency, the point was made that it is all very well an offender achieving an NVQ level 1, but they need to go further if they are to be competitive in the job market when they come out. Appropriate courses must be available. That prison—Highdown—has a gym, where prisoners like to go, and perhaps they should be able to achieve some qualifications in gym work that they could use when they come out.
The right hon. Member for Tottenham was right to say that employers need to do more, and I am sure that he will be familiar with National Grid’s scheme, which is fantastically successful. It trains prisoners, and its experience is that on release, because they take up a guaranteed job at the end of the training, they are less likely than the general population to offend. That is a real success story, and I wish other employers would emulate it.
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman will recognise that National Grid’s scheme works because the young offenders have often had day release or been out on tagging. Some of the public storm in the tabloids about young people leaving institutions must stop if such schemes are to work.
Tom Brake
That is a significant point, but unfortunately, there is an element of risk. The right hon. Gentleman was a Minister, so he will know that there may be occasions when something happens on day release, but overall the impact is positive. The Government must be willing to accept that there will be some risk, and that there may be some negative publicity if something regrettable happens, but the overall contribution of such schemes is positive, which is what must be borne in mind.
Other matters that were raised at the round table include transition, which is significant. When young people go from the youth estate into the adult estate, it is a huge leap, and that transition must be much smoother. That applies not just to 17-year-olds going into the prison estate, but to 18 to 21-year-olds, because many of them are not able to go into the normal adult estate without additional support.
An issue concerning young adults to which the Minister may wish to respond is that the law is being disregarded and they are mixed up in adult prisons. The law is clear, but I understand that it is not being applied. Another significant point that was made at the round table is the need for early intervention and early investment.
I have some additional proposals that I hope the Minister will consider. The police should be allowed discretion in how they tackle youth offending, perhaps adopting a problem-solving approach rather than unnecessarily arresting young people when they admit responsibility. It should be recognised that the criminal courts are not necessarily the most effective environment in which to deal with children, particularly those under 14 when, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys has said, they often do not have the slightest idea what they are going through in the court system, because it is too complex and completely opaque to them.
We must decriminalise children when they should be treated as victims, such as child prostitutes, and we should protect young people who are criminalised for victimless crimes. I am thinking specifically of consensual sexual acts between those under 16. On restorative justice, I hope that the Minister will respond on the Northern Ireland proposals.
As hon. Members have stressed, it is important to give local authorities responsibility for custody costs, so that there is a clear and strong incentive for them to invest in youth services, as the right hon. Member for Tottenham has said, if they can see a clear correlation, which I am sure that there is, between investment in youth services and a reduction in the number of young offenders going into custody with all the charges and costs associated with that.
This debate has been positive with well thought-through contributions, and I hope that the Minister will respond in kind; I am sure that he will.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I welcome the debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for securing it. The contributions so far have been valuable, and I pay tribute to the previous speakers. I hope that my contribution is as informative and as reasoned as those I have heard. I start by saying that I believe in prison and young offender institutions. I believe that they should be about punishment, but also about rehabilitation, and that applies to children and adults. Many people in the adult penal system are subject to drug and alcohol problems, as well as mental health and education problems.
I want to focus on one area. It has been touched on by my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake): the ability of young people to engage in education programmes while in young offender institutions. Communication disability is prevalent in the youth justice system. We have heard evidence that more than 60% of young offenders have severe communication disabilities and cannot access prison education programmes. Only 5% of those offenders are identified as having a communication disability before entering a young offenders institution. A substantial proportion of children with communication disability experience social and behavioural problems in school, and those difficulties become entrenched over time as they cannot access the curriculum and become increasingly frustrated. Over a third of those children later develop mental health problems. Evidence also shows a strong correlation between poor education skills, particularly literacy skills, and criminal or offending behaviour. Young offenders with communication disability have a higher rate of reoffending once in the criminal justice pathway.
What do we find when we look at some of the money spent on prison education programmes? As has been mentioned, offender treatment programmes are largely language based. Some young people, however, cannot benefit from prison education programmes because their communication disability prevents them from accessing language-based interventions. Money invested in prison education schemes is therefore wasted and would be better spent providing specialist speech and language therapy services to enable that group of young offenders to learn the communication skills needed to contribute positively in society.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys mentioned the Asset form, which I believe should be revised. The current assessment tool is not designed to identify learning difficulties or communication disability. Moreover, it is verbally mediated and therefore inaccessible to most young offenders with a communication disability. The tool fails to identify children and young people with learning difficulties or communication disability. Subsequently, the resources needed to support young offenders with those difficulties are not provided.
What do we find when we look at speech and language therapy services provided in youth justice institutions? Access to rehabilitation and treatment programmes is the key to reducing reoffending—something we all seek. Due to the link between communication disability and subsequent behavioural problems, speech and language therapy intervention with young people reduces the risk of them developing behavioural problems and subsequent offending behaviour. Speech and language therapy intervention allows the offenders to access education and a wider range of rehabilitation programmes, and subsequently they are empowered to change their offending behaviour.
At Her Majesty’s young offender institution at Hindley in Wigan, 97% of the offenders reported an increase in confidence when they were able to access education, and they felt more comfortable asking for help following intervention by a speech and language therapist. Prison staff reported a decrease of 87% in the number of young offenders who received behavioural warnings following speech and language therapy intervention.
Given that communication disability is now recognised as a significant contributory factor towards reoffending, what steps will the Government take to support that group of vulnerable young people? The Asset form is a verbally based assessment that has been shown to be inaccessible for children and young people with learning or communication disabilities. Given that more than 60% of young offenders have communication disabilities, what steps will the Minister ask the Youth Justice Board to take to revise the Asset form? The Youth Justice Board and the Government recently confirmed the need to support young offenders with communication disability. Is the Minister aware that speech and language therapists are being removed from young offenders institutions such as Her Majesty’s young offender institution at Hindley?
Finally, I am sure the Minister has seen the recent report by the Public Accounts Committee, which accepted that 70% of young offenders have communication difficulties and that the current assessment does not give sufficient weight to those issues and problems. The Committee recommended that an explicit assessment of communication difficulties be carried out where difficulties are identified, and that speech and language therapy be considered as part of the sentence programme. That brings me to my original point: I believe in prison and the penal system, but I also believe in the rehabilitation of offenders. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this debate and on an outstanding analysis of the current issues. All hon. Members who have spoken have taken that lead, and I am pleased to see a growing consensus that youth criminality is a result of multiple vulnerabilities and failures in the individual and in society. I share the concern expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) that if the cuts to youth justice funding that we anticipate go ahead on the scale that is promised, we risk not addressing those failures. I will return to that point.
The previous Labour Government had a properly funded, multi-agency approach to youth offending. It included youth offending teams, which have been a real success story; the Youth Justice Board, which uses an evidence-based approach to disseminating best practice; the introduction of alternative disposal orders; and the recognition that intervening early is far better than trying to manage a child who has already become embroiled in criminality.
As a result, the youth justice system of today is radically different from that of the past. During the previous Parliament, the Government’s approach to prevention saw a significant drop in the number of first-time young offenders, from 170,040 in 2005 to 61,387 in our last year in government. Recent statistics show that the number of offences committed by young offenders dropped from 301,860 in 2005 to 198,449 last year—a drop of 35%. In the past two years alone, the under-18 prison population has dropped from 2,932 to 2,045—a drop of 30%. Those remarkable figures are possible only because of the good work of the Youth Justice Board, of YOTs around the country and of those third sector and social enterprise front-line providers that have given so many options and provided valuable data to inform an evidence-driven approach to drive down youth offending. We all want better outcomes for our young people.
Some years ago, I worked as a criminal barrister and represented young offenders. It was clear to me then, as now, that many young offenders are themselves profoundly vulnerable, a point which was made well by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. That is true not only in respect of their immaturity or youth, but because many are disadvantaged socially and educationally and suffer a wide range of impairments and emotional difficulties. Mental health issues are three times as prevalent among children in the youth justice system than in the general population.
Studies over the past few years show that between 40% and 50% of children in the youth justice system have emotional or mental health issues. A study of youth offenders found that 23% had an IQ under 70, and 36% an IQ under 80. As has been mentioned, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists found that 60% of children in the criminal justice system have a communication disability, and of that group, half have poor or very poor communication skills.
Some of those indicators are a result of deprivation, while others are clinical issues that need to be dealt with through appropriate interventions. They are not just drivers of offending or reoffending. The inability to deal with a complex and highly verbal youth justice system has driven many young people to act out, self-harm or worse. There may be a declining number of the most serious incidents and cases of self-harm that lead to death in custody, but each incident is a tragedy and, where it is preventable, we have a duty to act.
Hon. Members have mentioned some of the tools used to identify vulnerabilities found in young people in the criminal justice system. Asset, the Youth Justice Board’s tool for classifying young people and identifying vulnerabilities, has been rightly identified as lacking a suitable mechanism for isolating speech and language deficits. I am pleased, therefore, that when giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in January, the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, John Drew, confirmed that a complete review of Asset is being undertaken to find a way to integrate speech and language components. In 2009, the previous Government commissioned a review of the entire YOT assessment, planning and supervision framework, which has been at work since January 2010.
Reviewing Asset is not the only way in which communication impairment should be taken into account. Two weeks ago, I was in Milton Keynes at the Oakhill secure training centre. Among others, I met Diz Minnitt, the speech and language portfolio holder for the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers and operational manager for the Milton Keynes youth offending team. They are at the forefront of the use of speech and language therapists, and they have an exceptional practice, focusing on prevention. They have halved the number of first-time entrants to the system in the past five years, and they have reduced the need for custodial disposals, far outstripping the national and regional rates of reduction.
There is a great deal of argument about what drives down crime, but I am firmly of the view that dealing with difficulties such as speech and language problems, so that young people can fully engage with deterrence and offender management programmes, is a big component of driving down first-time offending and reoffending. But here we come to the problem—future funding. We know that the Ministry of Justice faces one of the biggest cuts of any Department—23%—but I saw in Children & Young People Now magazine today that John Drew has said that the Youth Justice Board is preparing to distribute 29% less in Government funding to YOTs compared with last year. He is quoted as saying:
“There are a couple of YOTs saying it is going to be exceptionally difficult to maintain a basic YOT…Inevitably it will mean fewer resources on the ground to discharge a range of responses.”
He concludes that
“it will be really difficult to have as much success as we have enjoyed over the last two to three years”.
It is not just YOTs that are affected. Kamini Gadhok, chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, has said:
“News of cuts being made to speech and language therapy services in YOIs”—
young offenders institutions—
“is a deeply disturbing and regressive policy. Communication is an essential skill that is vital for the rehabilitation of offenders.
The delivery of speech and language therapy has been shown to reduce reoffending rates by as much as 50 per cent, which in turn reduces costs to the taxpayer.”
The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys may confirm from his visit to Hindley what I believe is the case there—that the only full-time speech and language therapist post is being scrapped, which is a retrogressive step. The Minister needs to deal with that point when he responds for the Government. We have some excellent schemes throughout the country, but they are under threat. What will the Government do to ensure that they are at least preserved, if not enhanced, over the next few years?
The third sector, social enterprises, YOTs and the secure estate are all under pressure from sharply declining central and local revenues. If there is a massive contraction of youth justice funding, it may lead to a decline in the system’s efficacy, a rise in crime and the failure of schemes that, if fully funded, would probably have succeeded. If a scheme can reduce first-time offending, reduce reoffending, reduce the prison population and reduce our expenditure, should we really be reducing that scheme? That is the lesson from the report published today by the community or custody inquiry, although it does not deal exclusively with youth justice. A very high-powered panel concludes that some of the existing innovative schemes for intensive community punishments as alternatives to custody may be at risk, let alone the expansion in such schemes that the Government wish to see.
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber agree that we do not want more children slipping through the net and being condemned to spiral down within the criminal justice system. Those who have been involved with youth justice for some time will know that we have been here before. I shall quote a passage from Hansard from 18 years ago, almost to the day. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who as Home Secretary was responsible for youth justice then as he is again now as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, was defending himself against an attack by the then hon. Member for Sedgefield, the shadow Home Secretary. Following that, the then hon. Member for Lewisham, East read to him a letter written by a youth worker in Lewisham:
“‘I find it at least ironic and at worst callously indifferent to hear members of the Government and Ministers bemoaning the lack of social responsibility among young people and expressing concerns about juvenile crime, when the consequence of their policies on local government spending is that something as worth while as the Young Lewisham project is forced to close.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 1993; Vol. 220, c. 148.]
I fear that many more letters like that will be written because of the cuts, not just in MOJ funding but in local government funding and in other areas. Although the aims of the justice Green Paper are commendable in many respects, ruthless spending cuts will lead to a diminution of capacity and systemic failures and undermine the very sensible case that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and other right hon. and hon. Members have advocated today. I fear that if those cuts are combined with the cuts referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham in Sure Start, youth clubs and the education maintenance allowance, our most vulnerable young people face a bleak future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Every hon. Member who has spoken since my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) introduced the debate has referred to the quality of his contribution, and I would put myself at the head of that list. In examining a number of concerns in the youth justice area, he has taken a machine gun to all the targets and blasted them away. Even though I have more time to reply to the debate than I would normally expect, there simply is not enough time to reply to all the issues that he has raised. Many of them merit significant debate in themselves. However, I will do my best.
I shall start by immediately addressing the point about funding made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on behalf of the Opposition. I am of course concerned about the possible impact of funding cuts. Every Minister who is responsible for service provision of one sort or another will be concerned about the impact of the expenditure cuts that they have to deliver. I am not alone in that, but if there is one source from whom we will not take a lecture, it is those who presented us with the hideous problem of getting the overall fiscal balance of our country right so that we can get ourselves out of the appalling economic mess that we are in.
That said, I take seriously the cautions that are being offered. In the situation that we are in, we have to think about new ways of delivering services that focus much more effectively on the output that the public services deliver. We are coming out of an era in which those at the centre have been privileged to dictate very carefully, through targets and performance measurements, how people in the public services deliver those services. Now, we need to turn to those people and draw on their expertise and professionalism to deliver the services more efficiently, and they will know that better than anyone else.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys paid tribute to the people whom he saw working in the institutions that he visited, and I shall join him by paying tribute to all the people who operate in the youth justice area for the quality of the work that they do. We know the value of that work. My hon. Friend, in concluding his remarks, drew attention to the report by the National Audit Office that said that the cost to the economy of offending by young people in 1999 amounted to £10 billion. Intervening early in the lives of children at risk and their families, before that behaviour becomes entrenched, can present our best chance to break the cycle of crime.
Youth justice is, of course, a key part of the justice system. The object of the youth justice system is to turn off, or at least turn down, the pipeline into the adult justice system and spare many potential victims of crime. Of course, the logic extends itself. My hon. Friend referred to the work done in 2002 by our right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), who is now the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, in relation to the conveyor belt to crime.
Frankly, early intervention is just a blinding glimpse of common sense. In the debate, there has been a focus on concentrating on four to 10-year-olds rather than teenagers. In paying tribute to the people who work in the youth justice system, we need to acknowledge that turning round a socially excluded, angry and hostile teenager is difficult and, of course, expensive. Those who do such work are doing great work. How much better would it be, however, to do that work with not only four to 10-year-olds, but children who are born in circumstances in which the predictors make it all too clear that a horrifying percentage may end up socially excluded and on their way into the youth justice system? I fully acknowledge that communication issues sit at the heart of much of that, and I will return to that issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys analysed many of the problems with the youth justice system, so let me give a short introduction to the issues. Despite the increased investment in youth justice under the previous Government, there is still a lack of public trust in the system. Members of the public remain concerned about becoming victims of crime. Fewer than half of them have confidence in the ability of the justice system to deal effectively with young people, in particular. Reoffending rates among young offenders who are released from custody are horrifyingly high, with 75% being reconvicted within one year. Tragically, things are not much better for those sentenced to the higher-end community sentences, who have a 68% reoffending rate. Those figures are the worst for any age group in the justice system.
Too little is done to ensure that young people who offend pay their victims and communities back for the harm they have caused, whether directly or indirectly. The system does not incentivise agencies to invest in preventing offending and reoffending or in early intervention. Indeed, the system is set up in such a way that local agencies financially benefit when a young person is taken into custody. All the wrong incentives are in place, and we must address that.
My hon. Friend spoke about secure accommodation. Such accommodation will remain the most appropriate place to deal with a small proportion of young offenders. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) said, there remains a need for custody. There will also still be occasions when remand to custody is appropriate for a young person.
However, it is a rather depressing state of affairs when people in the justice system are taking decisions to remand someone on bail when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said, the issue is the person’s social circumstances. It would surely be better if we moved to a system where the local authority’s social services department dealt with such things. If someone needs to be taken into custody in a secure children’s home for their own protection, the judgment should be reached through the social services system, not the agencies of the justice system.
There are occasions when custodial remand is used inappropriately because of a lack of alternative accommodation. Some 58% of young people remanded in custody are acquitted or receive a community sentence. Some of the funding spent on unnecessary remand could be better used to develop local solutions, which would be more cost-effective in the long term and allow young people to be diverted from a potentially unnecessary period in custody.
We have published our intention to introduce a single remand order for all under-18s. That would simplify the system and make local authorities—gradually and with support—responsible for the full cost of youth remand. That will reverse the current perverse incentive, which benefits local authorities when one of their young people is placed in custody. We also intend to amend the Bail Act 1976 to remove the option of remanding young people who would be unlikely to receive a custodial sentence.
Hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, commented on assessment in the youth justice system. It is important to note that it is not the intention for youth justice assessments to be capable of assessing every possible aspect of young people’s lives. Rather, it is intended that they should provide a baseline and then trigger additional or specialist assessment where required. That means that we are working to ensure that changes are based on the principle of screening for, and alignment with, other assessments, rather than of replacing them. It is also right for professional discretion to sit at the centre of assessment arrangements, so there needs to be the flexibility in the system for that.
I would not say anything as strong as that Asset is inappropriate, but it is outdated and in need of review, and I welcome the support for such a review from the hon. Member for Hammersmith. The clear feedback from practitioners is that although Asset has a lot of good content, the form’s format and associated processes do not make best use of it. On that basis, the Youth Justice Board is looking at the assessment process in the youth justice system and developing a business case for changes to the Asset framework. We accept that more could be done to facilitate high-quality identification and analysis of difficulties in the areas of mental illness, learning disability, speech, language and communication. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon made clear, the assessment of communication difficulties is important.
The proposals for the future framework look to improve identification through a discrete section for gathering information about needs in such areas that is not dependent on the link with offending behaviour. In particular, that includes a specific section on speech and language, which are not covered in the current version of Asset. It is also the intention to improve intervention planning by bringing all activities associated with addressing individual young people’s behaviour into one plan and making referrals to other services more accurate and easier to generate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys referred to the assessment made by custody officers escorting young offenders. I should make it clear that, under the current system, the young offender team sends assessment information to the Youth Justice Board placements department in advance. The department then sends the assessment electronically to the youth offender institution before the young person arrives, so the assessment should be ready and waiting there.
My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of the relationship between youth offending teams and child and adolescent mental health services. Youth offending teams are multi-agency teams and must include a health partner. Primary care trusts have a statutory duty to provide health input to youth offending teams. The future commissioning structure is now being developed, and my officials are working closely with the Department of Health to ensure that there are appropriate arrangements to support an effective relationship between youth offending teams and child and adolescent mental health services and wider health services.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) raised the extremely important issue of communication difficulties. Young people with speech, language and communication needs are over-represented in the youth justice system. We are working to facilitate the early detection of such needs in young people and to equip staff to communicate more effectively with those with speech and language needs. Providers of education in custody have been trained to use the hidden disabilities questionnaire, which identifies a range of learning difficulties, allowing education providers to refer learners to the appropriate support and for further assessments, if necessary.
An anecdote that has been reported to me provides a good illustration of why such provisions are required. A youth offending team worker told of a young person who, when asked in court whether he felt any remorse for his offence, said, “No.” It was only in the taxi on the way back that he asked the youth offending team worker what remorse meant. Plainly, that is not acceptable, and one can well identify what might have happened to that young person’s sentence as a consequence.
We have worked with the Communication Trust to develop “Sentence Trouble”, a guide to help youth justice workers communicate more effectively with young people with communication needs. Some 30,000 copies of the booklet have been distributed across the sector to all youth offending teams, young offenders institutions, secure children’s homes and secure training centres, as well as pupil referral units, magistrates, police, special schools, Connexions services, primary care trusts and speech and language therapists. The booklet is supported by a training programme and a website that features a forum for staff to share information, useful links and resources.
On the education of young offenders, local authorities with Prison Service young offenders institutions in their area are now responsible for securing suitable education and training for young people in custody. Primary legislation on education applies to young people in custody, which means that they have the same entitlement to education as their peers in the community. I am pleased to announce something that may help to answer some of the concerns of the hon. Member for Hammersmith, which is that we shall continue to fund the education support service in the next financial year in Prison Service young offenders institutions. The education support service has an important role in the education of young people, developing the links between Connexions and Jobcentre Plus and helping to give support for resettlement, in the form of referrals, national insurance queries and benefit and debt advice. It also helps to support young people applying for financial assistance for education, and offers information, advice and guidance on careers, helping them to develop their interests and skills, and, hopefully, identifying possible career opportunities.
It is of course the local authority where the young person normally resides that now has a responsibility to promote the fulfilment of the learning potential of the young person while they are in custody, and to share information about the young person’s education and any special needs they may have. By placing more responsibility on local authorities, the legislation aims to ensure greater continuity of learning for young people between custody and community.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) both raised concerns about the number of young people in custody and the rate of provision of literacy and numeracy courses, which appears to be declining. All young people who enter custody who are able to participate are referred to learning and skills provision funded by the Offenders Learning and Skills Service. Of course, all too many young people have other issues, such as substance misuse, that they need to deal with before they can participate meaningfully in learning. Perhaps it is not quite so helpful to look at the number of young people who are learning, while the number of young people in custody continues to fall. Given the significant fall in the number of young people in custody, the numbers do not necessarily read across.
A critical issue is resettlement and making the links so that when people have been in custody they make the transition to the community effectively. Every year hundreds of young people leave custody to create a new life in the community and each faces the challenge of staying out of trouble and integrating back into society. Many of those vulnerable young people have no home, school or job waiting for them. Without the right support, many will reoffend, creating an unproductive and expensive situation for them and wider society. The aim of resettlement is to provide housing, education, training and mentoring for young people to reduce reoffending. That is of course an area in which, frankly, we have not done particularly well.
To address our capability shortage in that respect we need a radical new way of thinking. I hope that payment by results will be the vehicle by which we shall deliver such a step change in service delivery. It is a way in which we can free up professionals, and involve a wider range of partners from the private and voluntary sectors in taking innovative approaches to dealing with offenders. We want agencies to be driven by results, not burdened by targets. That is why we are committed in the coalition agreement to introducing payment by results. We are considering a number of options for how we might do that in the youth sphere. Perhaps it is in resettlement more than in any other area that we can raise our game by incentivising people to do what will work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys raised the issue of discharge grants and discussed the giving of the resettlement grant of £46.75. Of course, young offenders do not receive that grant, which is for adults. It is an instructive point. My hon. Friend said that there was concern about the raising of the amount. In contrast to the adult system, all under-18s are subject to sentence planning, and they have an allocated case manager in the community. The detention and training order is an integrated custody and community sentence. The youth offending team has the lead responsibility for sentence planning. That means that the young person’s accommodation and employment needs should be identified early in the sentence, and coherent plans for the day of release should be put in place. Those could include immediate access to supported accommodation, and should mean that financial support would be targeted and more flexible than the one-size-fits-all grant for the over-18s.
Properly, resettlement has become a prominent focus for attempts to tackle youth crime, but it has long been recognised that there is inadequate strategic direction, and poor performance. The use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and other forms of temporary accommodation, as well as a lack of resources and expertise nationwide, are frequently linked to reoffending. I hope that payment by results will bring about an improvement. Meanwhile, however, the Youth Justice Board last year set up a new resettlement programme with the aim of addressing numerous resettlement issues together. A key focus of the programme is the establishment of two regional resettlement consortia, around the Hindley young offenders institution in the north-west and the Ashfield young offenders institution in the south-west.
The aim is to bring together senior members from the secure estate, the youth offending teams, voluntary services and local authorities—particularly children’s services and housing—to take a strategic approach to developing flexible, co-ordinated resettlement services. Strengthening the links in the system through partnerships that work across agency and local authority boundaries not only tackles re-offending, but has additional advantages in addressing issues of child welfare, safeguarding and community safety. The proposals in our Green Paper are intended fundamentally to change the incentive structure in relation to resettlement. We want local authorities to take full responsibility for ensuring that young people who leave custody do not return there, and to incentivise more of the kind of work that I have outlined.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys raised the issue of the age of criminal responsibility and I am pleased that he supported the Government’s position, which is to leave it at the age of 10. Our coalition colleague the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington did not take quite that view, and having praised my hon. Friend for an admirably liberal speech disagreed with him about that. The Government believe that children aged 10 are able to distinguish between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing. It is entirely appropriate to hold them to account for their actions if they commit an offence, and it is important to ensure that communities know that a young person who offends will be dealt with appropriately. We have no plans to change the age of criminal responsibility. We accept, however, that prosecution is not always the most appropriate response to youth offending. Much of youth crime is addressed using out-of-court disposals and robust intervention to prevent reoffending. Indeed, we are now seriously considering widening the delivery of restorative justice and giving the police their own restorative justice interventions for the lower level of offences, which could be recorded for their own purposes. That is in addition to making sure that people both make restoration and receive punishment—the two are not alternatives—in the rest of the criminal justice system.
I am conscious that I have received advice on many issues on which, sadly, I do not have time to respond to my hon. Friend. I very much welcome his speech and the issues he has drawn to our attention in the debate. The policy area in question is very important, and relies on co-operation between a significant number of authorities, to drive down the number of people coming into the youth justice system, and make sure that fewer people leave that system to go into the adult one. We can learn a significant amount from work that was done previously—from the way youth offending teams were set up and the way they make such co-operation and co-ordination systematic. That is the challenge that I enjoy. I am delighted to have hon. Friends who take such an intelligent interest in the issue.
Armed Forces (Pensions and Benefits)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, given the importance of the topic before us.
I have to say at the outset that I am not an expert on the subject, but there are plenty of people who are, both here in Westminster Hall and watching proceedings on television. I shall attempt to set out the case against the proposed changes to pensions and benefits on behalf of the bravest of the brave—this country’s armed forces personnel.
I shall put my personal interest into context. I am not one of those courageous parliamentarians who have served our country in the armed forces, but my brother was in the Army for 12 years or so, and I learned a lot from him about what it was like to be in the services. I also have friends in the regulars and the Territorials, and they are never slow to tell of their exploits. However, I have some first-hand experience.
In early 1983, a few short months after the cessation of hostilities with Argentina, I worked in the Falkland Islands as bricklayer repairing the Port Stanley infrastructure that was damaged during the conflict. While there, I lived cheek by jowl with military personnel from all our forces. During my seven-month stint there, I gained a certain understanding of the conditions that they had lived through day by day, and of the sacrifices that they had made on our behalf. I am therefore delighted to have secured this timely debate.
The changes that the Government are set to push through will shortly take effect. However, there is still time for Ministers to rethink, and for fairness and common sense to prevail. As we speak, nearly 10,000 soldiers are risking life and limb in Afghanistan; and tens of thousands more are engaged in service and heavy combat training elsewhere. They have no direct voice, and they are too busy protecting our country’s interests, so we must speak for them here.
Let me make clear what today’s debate is about. Under their cuts agenda, the Government intend to link public sector pensions and benefits to the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index. Because CPI is an historically lower measure, pensions will increase by less year on year. Crucially, the change is intended to be permanent. It will apply across the board, with no exceptions. Essentially, it amounts to a cynical plan to reduce pensions indefinitely. That is bad news for all public sector employees and the source of ongoing challenge and debate, but it is particularly bad news for our armed forces. I shall explain why that is so, suggest why society has a moral obligation to make a separate case for armed forces pensions and explain how the impact of the planned changes might be at least mitigated, if not avoided entirely.
I start by pointing out that this is not a marginal matter, because it has major ramifications for many. The armed forces pensions community totals 1 million serving and formerly serving personnel—a huge number of lives—and I remind the Chamber that the quality of those lives is at stake. When discussing money matters, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that although we are talking about pounds and pence, we are also talking about real lives.
I think particularly of my constituent Craig Lunberg, who in the course of serving his country admirably was blinded by insurgents in Afghanistan. Craig is an inspiration to others; he is not bitter about the injuries that he received, and is philosophical about his life. However, Craig and his family need and deserve all the financial support that they can get. It is not charity; it is their due. We owe it to Craig and all the others who serve and who have served to look after them, remembering that their sacrifices were for us.
The number crunching has been done, and there is no disputing the impact that the planned changes will have on military personnel and their dependants, which will be immediate and profound. Widely published projections show that if the change goes ahead, recipients will feel the pinch from the get-go. In the coming financial year, military pensions will go up by 3.1%, rather than 4.6%. Severely injured discharged soldiers, who will not work again, will lose £120 of pension next year. Compensation for specified minor injuries will be £110 lower, and a widow with children will be £94 worse off.
Such amounts may seem trifling to independently wealthy Ministers—mere short change—but those reductions will be felt by those struggling to survive on state handouts. Only when we extrapolate the reductions, compounded over longer periods, do we see the full gravity of the changes. The long-term forecasts put paid to any suggestion that we are talking buttons. Military personnel are set to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits and pensions over their lifetimes. A double amputee corporal, disabled at the age of 28, will have lost £587,000 by the age of 70. A 40-year-old squadron leader will be £319,000 worse off by the age of 85. A 34-year-old widow of a staff sergeant will miss up to £750,000 during her lifetime.
I ask the House to note the ages cited in those examples. They are significant. For reasons that I shall deal with later, military personnel become reliant on pensions and benefits far earlier than others. We cannot get away from the fact that they are set to be disproportionately and adversely hit.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
This is an important debate; indeed, we debated the armed forces in the House last week. We understand that the country has economic problems, but we should remember that we have a covenant on pensions or whatever and that our troops are laying their lives on the line for their country. It is soul destroying, whenever we debate their finances, to hear that their morale is suffering. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to strike a balance? We understand that the economy is important, but our armed forces are laying their lives on the line and we need to balance the two.
Steve Rotheram
The hon. Gentleman is right. I shall pick up some specific matters a little later, but the main thrust is that there is undoubtedly a moral case to answer. The maths is one thing, but a principle is at stake.
The main problem is that the Government obstinately refuse to distinguish between military and civilian employees—indeed, they make a virtue of it. In November, a Ministry of Defence spokesman said:
“It is not possible to treat the armed forces differently from other public servants”.
That glib explanation was both pompous and dismissive. It is very convenient for the Government to fall back on their default position of, “We’re all in this together,” to imply that they are being firm but fair in treating all public sector workers equally. I remind colleagues that the coalition Government have been quick to criticise one-size-fits-all measures, when it suits. Their rationale on military pensions is as fallacious as it is dangerous, because military service is unique.
In the recent debate, to which the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) has referred, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) listed some of the ways in which a career in the armed forces is different from any other. They are worth repeating, because they demonstrate the utter absurdity of suggesting that soldiers, airmen and marines should be regarded and treated the same as other public servants:
“Service personnel, as many of us know, can be required to work unlimited hours in excessively dangerous conditions with no prospect of overtime or a bonus; they can be imprisoned for failing to show up; living conditions can, understandably, be very tough;”—
I have experienced that myself—
“they are often separated from family and loved ones for many months at a time; they can be compelled to return even after they have retired; they forgo several political freedoms and contractual rights that others rightly enjoy; and…they are at risk of being killed or horribly maimed as a direct result and an unavoidable consequence of their service. Often their pension is the only serious, tangible financial compensation available to them”.—[Official Report, 10 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 61.]
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
It is ironic that in the very next room, the Chief of the Defence Staff is briefing MPs on this very subject. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that his concerns will manifest themselves in a reduction in the ability of the armed forces to recruit in what could be some pretty testing times coming up?
Steve Rotheram
I will answer that question personally rather than as a representative of my party. As I have said, I am not an expert on this issue. However, having spoken to some senior officers in my local Army garrison only last month, I believe that it will have a detrimental impact on recruitment and retention in the armed forces. It is also about the morale of our troops, and I will touch on that subject a little later.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate and I declare my interest as a service pensioner. He underscores the importance of pensions and is right to do so. Will he note that pensions were perhaps the first manifestation of the military covenant since the Romans granted a pension to people settled in Britain after about 20 years’ service, so they have a very long history?
Steve Rotheram
I will touch on the Government’s position on the military covenant and what was said in the House a few weeks ago a little later in my contribution.
Military employees accept that many of their personal life choices will be determined, and often restricted, by duty to the military. Premature death and injury are occupational hazards and have lifelong and life-changing consequences that impact on entire families. Typically, armed forces employees have shorter careers; they retire at an average age of 40, which is much earlier than their civilian counterparts. For obvious reasons, many military widows and widowers are younger than the non-military average and thus more likely to be left to raise children alone. Injured or disabled retirees are frequently unable to work on civvy street following their discharge. For veterans, the quality of post-service support—medical, remedial and professional—remains patchy to say the least. Show me any other civilian public servant subject to this particular package of terms and conditions, and I will buy into the Government’s logic.
There is another way in which armed forces pensions and benefits differ from other public sector pensions. Yes, they are occupational pensions, but, as the Forces Pension Society has pointed out, they are also essentially a form of compensation for the unavoidable early cessation of a career. It is important, therefore, to consider why people join the armed forces. Individual motivations vary, but they include a yearning for travel and adventure, a desire for a structured career, an eagerness to acquire skills in a particular field and a desire simply to serve our country. None the less, let us not forget that a disproportionate number of young military personnel—men in particular—come from disadvantaged backgrounds. As we know, significant numbers are drawn from the care system. Let us not pretend that they are in it for the money. High-ranking staff may eventually find themselves comfortably off, but the vast majority of military personnel merely eke out a bog-standard living. For that, they sacrifice a great deal, particularly in the way of family life. For that, they risk permanent injury or death in the course of their duties. The theory is that as a nation, we acknowledge and value that, and that we guarantee that forces’ employees and their families will be looked after in return. In that respect, joining the armed forces is an act of faith. To change the terms and conditions of service—to move the goal posts—is to undermine that faith.
All the evidence suggests that serving troops already feel betrayed, disillusioned and frustrated. In a Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago, a British soldier serving in Afghanistan said:
“The British Army has no voice at grass-roots level. We have no union. There will be no strikes. No riots. Certainly no fire extinguishers thrown off buildings. We are just an easy target”.
There is the rub. In recent months, we have seen students protest, public sector workers strike and various interest groups demonstrate and engage in direct action. I suspect, and I say this with no relish, that we will see more and more people take to the streets as the Government’s excessive austerity measures kick in. Military personnel cannot do that. In the absence of civilian workers’ rights, they are particularly vulnerable and impotent in the face of damaging policy changes and cuts. Small wonder that they feel so beleaguered.
In January, Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore said:
“I have never seen a government erode the morale of the Armed Forces so quickly”.
What a terrible and shameful indictment. The Tory-led coalition’s attitude towards the military is shaping up to be, at best, ambivalent and, at worst, perverse. Some would argue that blue-blooded conservatism has traditionally been a friend of the military. Sure enough, the Conservative election manifesto pledged to
“ensure that our armed forces, their families and veterans are properly taken care of.”
The commitment appears to have started and stopped with the rhetoric. The Prime Minister is never slow to spot a good PR opportunity and he is slick when it comes to lavishing praise on our troops. For all his new-found hawkish instincts, he and his slash-happy Government stooges seem hellbent on making military service as unattractive and insecure as possible. It is under-resourced, under-equipped and undervalued with little regard to meeting current and future military needs.
The defence budget has been slashed and major projects have been cancelled or abruptly abandoned, frequently at ridiculous cost to the taxpayer. Around 17,000 armed forces posts are to go over the next few years, 11,000 of which will go through redundancy. A range of other issues, including the unequal treatment of military widows, disadvantageous changes to income tax relief on pension contributions and the proposed cuts to educational allowances for armed forces families only compound matters by adding to the cumulative effect. Those changes all seem incredibly short-sighted and it is difficult to see how any of them will do anything other than damage recruitment and recruitment levels, which I have been told are already at crisis point.
It is equally difficult not to suspect that the pensions indexation switch is something more opportunistic and ideologically driven than a mere fiscal measure. There has been no suggestion on the part of the Government that they consider the current pension and benefit arrangements to be overly generous, so that leaves the deficit reduction agenda as the only possible explanation for the cuts. Let us examine that explanation, because the problem with it is that it does not explain or justify the decision to change the index link permanently. That decision will have long-term impacts that will be felt long after the economy has recovered.
By way of an aside, it was mentioned earlier that my colleagues and I are urging the Government to enshrine the military covenant in law, but we must not let that campaign blur our vision or distract from the specific issues that we are discussing today. Let us consider the dry and self-explanatory observation of the Forces Pension Society to the Armed Forces Bill Committee:
“We note the commonly aired reference to the Covenant but we do not see a coherent and comprehensive set of actions which would make the Covenant come alive; it avoids any mention of pensions.”
When all is said and done, the most powerful argument in favour of abandoning this callous indexation plan for the armed forces’ pensions and benefits is basic—it is a moral one. It is about doing the right thing by those who have done the right thing by us. In return for the immense courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice shown by UK armed service personnel and their dependants, we have an obligation to provide them with the highest levels of support and reward, during and after service. If that involves discriminating in their favour, so be it.
As I hope I have illustrated, to renege on the deal made when service personnel signed on the dotted line would be to betray an implicit trust. Those serving will feel let-down and bitter, and who can blame them? And potential recruits will think twice before giving so much for so little in return.
I purposely paint a bleak picture, but as yet none of these changes is a fait accompli. There is still time for the Government to see sense. My own party has a number of ideas about how the deficit reduction dilemma might be resolved without so brutally hurting armed forces’ employees. In our view, the ideal solution is entirely to decouple armed forces pension and benefit schemes from other such schemes in the public sector. However, we recognise that that is not a practicable or realistic option at the current time. The best way forward would be to make the indexation switch a temporary one that could be reversed in 2014-15, or at least once the Budget deficit has been pared down.
Others favour an alternative time limit measure, something along the lines of maintaining the current RPI link for the armed forces personnel or their widowed spouses until they turn 55, when the link would come into line with the rest of the public sector. Such measures, and variations on them, are all quite feasible but none of them is perfect, and they will not please all the people all the time. However, they represent carefully considered compromises, which the grown-up coalition Government profess to be big on, and they would go some way to alleviating the short to medium-term pain.
In addressing the Minister, I urge the Government to consider those measures carefully. I also remind the Government that this is a cross-cutting issue, which requires joined-up thinking. Defence, Treasury and Work and Pensions Ministers must all think again.
I have a final salutary point to make. Thomas Southerne was an Irish dramatist of the 17th century. In 1685, he served in the army of James II, which fought against the Monmouth rebellion. Southerne knew what it was to be a soldier. In later life, he reportedly said:
“Dost thou know the fate of soldiers? They are but ambition’s tools, to cut a way to her unlawful ends. And when they are worn, hacked, hewn with constant service, thrown aside, to rust in peace and rot in hospitals.”
I am sure that everyone will agree that the part about “unlawful ends” is open to debate, but some modern military adventures spring to mind on hearing that quote. Southerne’s bitter closing observations make uncomfortable reading. Do we want to entertain the notion that, 300 years on and at the dawn of the 21st century, we hold our armed forces in no better esteem?
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing this important debate. As he mentioned, we have had a number of opportunities recently to debate these issues, including armed forces pensions and the military covenant. It is very important that we continue to debate them, because we have not yet received a satisfactory response from the Government Front-Bench team. Today we have a different Minister before us. Thus far, I have discussed these issues with the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), who is the Minister with responsibility for veterans. I am hopeful that we might hear something from the Minister who is here today that pleases us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has already mentioned a quote from the Forces Pension Society, but it is one that merits repeating. The chairman of the society, Sir Michael Moore, recently said:
“I have never seen a Government erode the morale of the armed forces so quickly.”
That is quite a strong statement and the reasons for it stem from the wide-ranging promises made by the coalition partners to our service personnel, ahead of last year’s election and since coming into office. Their record of delivery has spectacularly failed to live up to their rhetoric.
In opposition, the Conservatives declared that the military covenant was “shattered” and they promised to rebuild it. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats made clear pledges to our armed forces, such as improving service housing, setting minimum standards for family welfare and maximising rest and recuperation leave. In government, they have so far offered very little to address those issues. Indeed, it is worse than that, because the measures that we are seeing now will roll back the military covenant. Accommodation has been identified as an area in which to make savings; tours of duty will be reviewed and there has been no guarantee that they will not be lengthened; and the Government have confirmed that armed forces personnel will be cut by 11,000.
The Prime Minister could not have made a clearer pledge than the one that he made to sailors on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal just last summer:
“Whether it’s the schools you send your children to, whether it’s the healthcare that you expect, whether it’s the fact there should be a decent military ward for anyone who gets injured...I want all these things refreshed and renewed and written down in a new military covenant that’s written into the law of the land.”
However, nine months later, the Government have failed to enshrine a military covenant in law, or at the very least propose doing so in the Armed Forces Bill, which is making its way through Parliament. Instead, they have already changed their policy, as outlined to all MPs in a recent letter from the Royal British Legion.
As far as the armed forces are concerned, the Government’s time in office has been marked by broken promises and empty rhetoric. However, it is more serious than that. The actions of the Government are undermining the unwritten contract between the nation and our services in honour of the brave work that they do. In the process, as Sir Michael Moore said, the Government
“erode the morale of the armed forces”.
There is no better example of that than the impact of the Government’s planned pensions changes on the armed forces. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has outlined, the Government’s plans permanently to link public sector pension rises to CPI rather than to the usually higher measure of RPI will disproportionately affect members of the armed forces. I know that the Minister with responsibility for veterans does not accept that because he told me so in the Committee that considered the Armed Forces Bill, and I do not know whether the Minister for the Armed Forces will take a different approach today.
Dr Murrison
The hon. Lady puts forward an interesting case. Will she therefore commit any incoming Labour Government in 2015 to the measure that she appears to be articulating, namely, that the change will be temporary and, if so, how will that feature in the budget she intends to set? The armed forces will not be alone; others will say that they should be dealt with in a similar way.
Gemma Doyle
I think that the hon. Gentleman is aware that we proposed a much fairer, time-limited approach, and that would be a better way forward.
If the Minister will not listen to me, perhaps he will heed the concerns of the Forces Pension Society, which delivered a letter to No. 10 in December to explain to the Prime Minister the disproportionate impact of the pension changes on the armed forces. Many members of the armed forces leave the military by the time they are 40, or earlier perhaps, if they are injured, so their pensions start to pay out much earlier compared to those of other public sector workers, and the changes will result in their losing hundreds of thousands of pounds over their lifetimes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, we are not talking about small amounts of money—these are very significant amounts. For example, a corporal who lost both legs in a bomb blast—a horrific and serious injury—would miss out on about £500,000 in pension and benefit-related payment, a figure that is very difficult to justify. War widows, who disproportionately rely on their pension schemes, will also lose out enormously. According to figures from the Forces Pension Society, a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan would be almost £750,000 worse off. Again, that is very difficult to get one’s head around, and to justify.
There can be only two possible reasons for the changes. The Government might think that armed forces pensions are too generous, but I have not heard them saying that, so I can assume only that it must be about deficit reduction, which is indeed the argument that has been put forward. I am afraid, however, that that argument does not add up either because the impact of the change from RPI to CPI uprating will be felt long after the Government’s intention to pay down the deficit is achieved.
Steve Rotheram
I mentioned a constituent of mine, Craig Lunberg, who fought for his country and was blinded and severely injured, but is getting on with life. Why should he have to pay for the bankers’ excesses? My hon. Friend might wish to speculate on that.
Gemma Doyle
I agree with my hon. Friend that his constituent should not have to pay for the bankers’ excesses. I am not sure whether the Minister believes that, and perhaps he will address the point.
Although the figures demonstrate that the impact of the changes will be felt long after the deficit has been paid down—thus far paying down the deficit seems to be the only argument for change—the Government are determined to reduce the support given to forces members and their dependants every year from now on, even when the economy has returned to growth, as they predict it will. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) made the point very well that it is important to balance the needs of our economy with the unique debt that we owe our armed forces.
People will find it very hard to understand why men and women serving in Afghanistan now will receive poorer pensions, and why war widows will have their entitlements hit, year on year. Service personnel in Afghanistan were told, last November I think, by the Secretary of State that they would not be made redundant, but they have now been told that they have been included in the pool of people being considered. That is a very worrying U-turn by the Government. Our armed forces do very dangerous and difficult work in conflict zones all over the globe, and it places great strain on loved ones when their husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters spend many months at a time away from home. Dependants, the majority of whom are women, often make huge sacrifices to support those on the front line, and we owe them just as big a debt of gratitude as we do those in combat, particularly today, on international women’s day. The most important thing that we can do to go some way to repaying that debt is to ensure that service personnel and their families are looked after during and after their time in the forces, especially if their service is cut short because of injury or death.
Our military men and women deserve the best treatment for the work they do. They are not demanding special treatment on pensions; they just want to be treated fairly. By making pension changes that will hit members of the armed forces this hard, and for the rest of their lives, the Government are clearly not treating them fairly. Ministers must look again at the policy, and if they believe that it is part of their deficit reduction plan they should consider a time-limited measure during the period of deficit reduction and spending restraint. That would be a much fairer approach. There cannot be a logical reason why the bravest British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan should see their pensions reduced for the rest of their lives, and why war widows, who have had the person most special to them taken away, should have the support on which they so depend taken away.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) asked whether the changes will lead to a recruitment problem. Service families have recently told me that the changes are leading to their seriously considering leaving the armed forces. I am also told that people in the armed forces are talking about their exit strategy—not our exit strategy from Afghanistan, but their own personal exit strategy from the armed forces—because of the severity of the changes.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton has noted, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson, when challenged in November on the unique nature of military service, said:
“It is not possible to treat the armed forces differently from other pubic servants.”
I am happy to remind that spokesperson of the unique nature of military service. My hon. Friend has covered some of these points, but they are so important that I will make them again, and I hope that that spokesperson listens. Service personnel are required to work unlimited hours in dangerous conditions, with no prospect of overtime, and can be imprisoned for failing to show up. Their living conditions can be very tough, and they are often separated from family and loved ones for many months at a time. They can be compelled to return, even after retiring. They forgo several political freedoms and contractual rights that other people rightly enjoy, and they are at risk of being killed or horribly maimed as a direct result and an unavoidable consequence of their service. Their pension is a serious and tangible financial compensation for those things, and the Government must bear that in mind.
The Government must be held to greater account for their approach to the armed forces, particularly on pensions. They have reversed their promise to write the military covenant into legislation, when recognising the covenant and enshrining it in law is more important than ever. Instead of writing the covenant into law, it is proposed that the Secretary of State will report annually to Parliament on the effect that membership of the armed forces has on service people, with specific reference only to health care, education and housing. Of course, those issues are vital to service personnel, their families and veterans, but there are many other issues that affect their daily lives, particularly since the election of the Government.
With the Armed Forces Bill Committee, I visited a garrison a couple of weeks ago and met several soldiers and their families. The concerns they raised were about cuts to allowances, cuts to pensions and the difficulties faced by service family members seeking employment. We have seen no movement from the Government on the issue of honouring their pledge to enshrine the military covenant in law. The Minister said on Radio 4 in February that they were defining the covenant in law. He might wish to take the opportunity to correct his remarks. Even his own team has not said that it will be defined in law—it continues to insist that it will be enshrined in law. In fact, neither is true. However, if the Government will not honour their pledge, at the very least, they must broaden the scope of the annual report on the covenant. We have proposed, through a series of amendments in Committee, that the terms of the covenant report should be expanded to include issues such as mental health care, employment and training and, crucially, pensions and benefits. It would be bizarre if the Secretary of State was required to come to Parliament and produce a report that did not reflect his or her direct responsibilities.
The coalition has so far rejected that proposal but I urge it again—particularly in the light of the letter from Chris Simpkins, director general of the Royal British Legion, to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire—to ensure that Parliament has the opportunity to scrutinise closely the current and future Governments’ approach to the much wider range of issues facing our service personnel.
The chair of the RAF Families Federation told the Armed Forces Bill Committee recently:
“At the moment, there is a real feeling within the armed forces that they are being battered from all sides.”
It is easy to understand that view when one considers the Government’s pension changes, their plans to make thousands of service personnel redundant and the litany of broken promises that simply do not match the rhetoric that we heard before the election. We can add to that the Government’s decision to scrap major reforms to the system of inquests on military deaths, which has been described as a betrayal by forces families.
Today’s debate is an opportunity to highlight the unfair impact that the Government's pension changes will have on our brave servicemen and women, and again to call on Ministers to rethink their approach. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. It is also another opportunity to hold the Government to account for their general approach to our armed forces. In their nine months in office they have failed to live up to their pre-election rhetoric, and their actions—including the impact of the changes to pensions—have seriously damaged the sacred bond of trust between the nation and the armed forces who bravely defend our freedoms.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
I commend the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on initiating this debate on the effect on the armed forces of Government changes to pensions and benefits, and I acknowledge that the subject is profoundly important to many people.
Our armed forces are deployed to most demanding areas of conflict and we have a duty, not only as a Government but as a nation, to support and look after them, to care for the injured and the bereaved. That is common ground for all hon. Members. As the House knows, the priority for the Government is to bring the national finances under control by reducing the deficit, which inevitably means reducing public expenditure. That means that we have to take difficult and sometimes very unpalatable decisions in all areas of spending, including defence. Because of the priority we place on security, the defence budget is making a more modest contribution to deficit reduction relative to almost all other Departments.
However, in the comprehensive spending review and the strategic defence and security review, we have still had to take difficult decisions that have repercussions for some members of the armed forces and their families. I repeat that many of those decisions have been unpalatable. Nobody in the coalition came into politics to make cuts to the armed forces or to eliminate capabilities in our military power, but that is what we have had to do.
Gemma Doyle
Will the Minister confirm that the decisions he refers to are financial, not strategic?
Nick Harvey
I am coming to that. We have to acknowledge three things. First, the scale of the deficit is so enormous that £1 in every £4 of public expenditure is being borrowed, and the interest alone on the debt this year is greater than the entire defence budget, including the proportion being paid by the Treasury for operations in Afghanistan. That is how immense the overall deficit black hole is. That is compounded in the area of defence by the situation we inherited, where the defence budget was lagging behind the defence forward programme over the 10-year planning period by £38 billion. That is the gap between the programme that we inherited and the existing budget, set at a flat real basis, for the 10-year planning period. That is over and on top of the general deficit picture that we inherited. There is the general picture and the specific defence picture.
The third element, which I do not think was acknowledged adequately by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, is that before there ever was an economic downturn, before the banking crisis hit, before the deficit became part of the political currency, there was already a problem with public service pensions, which the previous Government had acknowledged and was beginning to address, and which was going to require pretty drastic action sooner or later, irrespective of the nation’s finances plunging as they did. Before any of that started, there was already a serious problem with the affordability of public service pensions. We have to acknowledge all three factors as the backcloth to the decisions that have subsequently been taken.
Gemma Doyle
Will the Minister give an example of a time in the previous Parliament when either his or the Conservative party called for less defence spending?
Nick Harvey
Certainly not. We would have liked to have seen more defence spending. We would still like to see that now. The fact is that defence figures, for obvious security reasons, are not exposed to the same degree of parliamentary scrutiny as those of other Departments, and with the long lead time of many defence items, commitments stretch further into the future than they do in many other Departments. Although we were aware from Bernard Gray’s report on procurement that there were some pretty serious financial difficulties inside the Ministry of Defence, it was not until we got in and saw the full scale of it that we realised how drastic the defence budget’s problems were.
Steve Rotheram
I have listened carefully to the Minister, and I understand the argument that we had in the main Chamber about deficit reduction. It is not possible to throw the old line that we are deficit deniers—I am stating publicly that I understand the rationale—because if that were the case, a proposal that was time-bound until the deficit was pared down would have got some support across the Chamber. However, that is not what is being proposed. As I mentioned, it is necessary to take cognisance of the fact that, because our forces personnel and their widows draw pensions at a much earlier age, the proposed changes are compounding the problem. It is not comparing apples with apples; it is not even comparing Cox’s with Cox’s. A completely different set of comparators must be used, because armed forces pensions are drawn at such an early age.
Nick Harvey
The hon. Gentleman is making two different points, and I shall address each in turn. The question of the deficit must be boiled down into the structural deficit and the cyclical deficit. If all the measures that we are taking during this Parliament to eliminate the structural deficit are reversed at some point in the future, the country will simply return to square one. This Government are attempting to address the cyclical deficit through economic growth over a period, but we must eliminate the structural deficit. The structural deficit is not a temporary phenomenon. It existed before the banking crisis. It is perfectly true that the banking crisis blew the lid off it and put the entire global economy into turmoil, but the fact is that the UK was in a serious deficit situation before the banking crisis hit. That is why measures taken now to address the deficit cannot be viewed as temporary. If we start reversing prior decisions when the cycle improves and the cyclical deficit is also eliminated, we will simply return to square one.
The hon. Gentleman’s second point is a fair one. On average, people leave the military and begin drawing pensions from the age of about 40. I am sceptical about some of the figures that he and the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) quoted, and I need to examine them in depth to see how on earth they were arrived at, but the general point that the pension is drawn from an earlier age is valid. However, in the vast majority of cases, people who draw a military pension from the age of about 40 do not then live on it exclusively for the rest of their days. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) acknowledged that he receives a service pension, but that has not prevented him from going on to do other things. Of course, some will not have further opportunities, but for the vast majority of people who leave the services at about 40, the service pension augments what they can earn in other walks of life for a long period. It is not really comparable with an old age pension in the sense that I think the hon. Gentleman meant.
Steve Rotheram
It is strange that the Minister mentions the difference between the structural and cyclical deficits. If the change is being made to address the structural deficit, that existed a long time before the banking crisis, as he rightly said, but I do not remember any dissident voices from the Tory and Liberal Democrat Benches at the time saying that we should reduce armed forces pensions. Why the change? If it was known well before the banking crisis, why was it not in either party’s manifesto?
Nick Harvey
The hon. Gentleman makes the point that we are having to take measures now to eliminate the deficit that we would not have taken or needed to take if the deficit had not grown over seven or eight years in the first place. Nobody in Government is saying that the precise measures that we are taking now are those that got the country into deficit, but the fact is that between 2001 and the banking crisis, we ran a budget deficit, some of it during a boom period in which traditional Keynesian economics should have dictated that we run a budget surplus.
The Government are now being forced to take drastic measures to address the structural deficit, not on the logic that these are the specific issues that built up the structural deficit, but because we must deal in the art of the possible. None of us came into politics to cut armed forces numbers or delete military capability, but we are driven to do so now by the scale of the budget deficit. It is simply not fair to say that nobody said anything. Throughout the period, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable) said that both personal debt and debt in the state’s coffers were mounting to the point of unsustainability and would sooner or later go pop. I do not claim to have been a soothsayer myself, but to say that nobody said it is simply inaccurate and untrue.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I apologise for not being here earlier, Mr Streeter. I was at the Health and Social Care Bill Committee. I noticed in the paper that the Army Families Federation, which represents soldiers and their families,
“said that it had received 2,000 complaints in the past five days about the impact of cuts from people who feel that pensions and pay changes are a sign that the offer they laid down their lives for has been reneged on”.
I understand the Government’s position clearly in relation to the Budget, but in the middle of it all are the families and those serving on the front whose benefits and pensions are being reduced. That is the clear issue for many of us in this Chamber.
[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]
Nick Harvey
It is a serious issue—I do not deny that for one minute—but I think that what the hon. Gentleman refers to was an online survey run by the Army Families Federation that had 2,000 participants in its first five days. Of course there is a lot of concern and anxiety about the measures; I do not deny that for a minute. It is understandable. Some of the changes that we have had to make to the allowances package, which is what I think the survey was specifically about, are unpopular and will require lifestyle adjustments, but they are a necessary part of the Department’s contribution to the overall Government effort to reduce the deficit and bring the defence budget into some sort of balance.
The strategic defence and security review set out a requirement to reduce expenditure on service and civil service allowances, amounting to £300 million a year. Allowances are designed to support service personnel in particular circumstances, not to supplement income. It is entirely right that the package of allowances is reviewed from time to time to ensure that it fits the needs and circumstances of today’s armed forces fairly and affordably. There is no getting away from the fact that the measures will have an impact on individuals; I acknowledge that. However, to minimise the effects, we have concentrated on ensuring where we can that no group is disproportionately affected by changes. We have also sought to mitigate the effects by phasing in some of the changes over two years.
Operational allowances have not been affected by any of those changes. The House will be aware that we have doubled the operational allowance, backdated to 6 May last year. We have also changed the policy governing rest and recuperation for service personnel deployed on operations. Personnel deploying for six months will remain eligible for 14 days’ R and R, and personnel who lose out on that, whether as a result of operations or of disruptions to the air bridge, will be guaranteed additional post-operational leave in lieu as compensation. An appropriate set of allowances is a vital part of our support to personnel, and it will remain so. We believe that the changes announced in January by my right hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for defence personnel, welfare and Veterans, struck the right balance between the need for savings and the need to get the package right.
The emergency Budget in June announced that from this April, the indexation of benefits, tax credits and the state second pension will be based on CPI rather than RPI. The change looks forward to the future. Future increases in the value of deferred pensions—all pensions in payment—will be based on CPI. Public service pensions will continue to be index-linked, which will continue to protect individual pensions against increases in the cost of living. The change is not a reduction of accrued rights, but we accept that, in the long term, CPI tends to increase at a lower rate than RPI. That is not always true—a year ago, RPI was negative and CPI positive—but I think that everybody accepts that, over the long term, CPI increases more slowly.
We have to link pensions to the appropriate target measure. CPI is the target measure used by the Bank of England, the headline measure of inflation in the UK, and the international standard measure. It uses a methodology that takes better account of consumer behaviour in response to price increases. The Government believe that it is the right index to use for uprating additional state pensions, public and private pensions and social security benefits, and that it is a more appropriate measure.
It is in the nature of public sector pension schemes that individual schemes cannot be seen in isolation. Much as I would wish, as the Armed Forces Minister, to see the armed forces pension schemes as utterly individual, the fact of the matter is that other workers in other areas of public service could not and should not be expected to see that. We cannot change one scheme without it at the very least having implications for others, and we cannot treat armed forces pension schemes inconsistently. The armed forces are part of the society they serve. Service pensioners do not live in a different world where prices move in different ways and the economy operates in a different fashion.
Steve Rotheram
Can the Minister inform me of what the envisaged savings will be—specifically for armed forces benefits and pensions—over the next few years as a result of the change from RPI to CPI?
Nick Harvey
No, we cannot forecast that at this stage. The Treasury has taken the decision across the public service, and it remains to be seen exactly what that will realise over time. It has based its policy on actuarial assessments that conclude that, over a longer period, there will be a significant saving to the public purse.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that Lord Hutton is in the final stages of a structural review of public service pension provision and will publish his findings this week. In his interim report, Lord Hutton noted that the most effective way to make short-term savings was to increase member contributions, but he did not recommend that in the case of the armed forces.
We recognise that there can be anomalies and do what we can to iron them out. It was unfair that, under the 1975 armed forces pension scheme, a service person who held acting rank and exercised the responsibilities of that rank, but who died as a result of service before a certain period had elapsed, did not have that higher rank reflected in his pension. We have, therefore, changed the rules. Every soldier, sailor or airman can be assured that, if they die for reasons related to service while holding acting rank, their dependants will receive payments that reflect that rank.
Steve Rotheram
I have reflected upon the Minister’s answer, and it seems that the Government do not know what the total savings of this policy will be. Surely there is a ballpark figure somewhere that can be used to say that the policy will address some of the structural deficit that he identified earlier.
Nick Harvey
The hon. Gentleman is right—there are such figures, but they are held by the Treasury and have been determined by the Treasury actuaries. They have not been worked out by each Department for itself. The Treasury’s policy is to address the entire situation of public service pensions, which—I will say it again—were a serious problem in terms of their affordability long before the financial crisis or the downturn occurred. The hon. Gentleman will remember that, during the previous Parliament, the previous Government ran themselves into hot water with some of the public service unions due to the reforms they began to make to public service pensions.
Moving indexation from RPI to CPI is one of the ways that this current Government have identified of reducing the scale of the measures that Lord Hutton will have to recommend in terms of varying either contributions or benefits for public service pensions. I have no idea what Lord Hutton will recommend later this week, but I am certain that, on top of that, some reforms will be proposed that will be unpopular and unpleasant. However, they will be less severe than they would have had to be, because of the Treasury’s switch from RPI to CPI. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I am sure that there are such figures, but they are not held at an individual departmental level. He might want to address his question to the Chancellor.
Let me be clear about the challenges we face and why we are considering the issues under discussion. The fact of the matter is that we inherited a record national debt and a huge black hole in the defence budget. We cannot run away from those harsh realities. Tough decisions have to be made, and we are facing up to that challenge. We accept that some of the changes will be difficult and that support for the armed forces remains very high throughout the country. We ask them to do things to keep us safe, and deny them the right to choose what assignments we set them. We will do all we can to support them, properly equip them, compensate them when they are injured and honour them when they die. We owe them nothing less.
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Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this subject this afternoon, particularly under your chairmanship, Ms Osborne. I am very pleased indeed that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science has taken the trouble to come to reply to the debate. I am sure that those of us who are present very much appreciate that.
I begin with a tribute to my right hon. Friend who has a long-standing, deep and passionate commitment to extending opportunity and to maintaining excellence in our universities. We are fortunate to have him serving as a Minister in this Government. However, serious questions must be asked about the Government’s guidance, which bears the name of my right hon. Friend, although I think it has come from the bowels of the Government. It has been issued to the director of fair access for him to pass on and to put pressure on universities.
The Office for Fair Access has an interesting background. It is a quango that was set up by the previous Labour Government, and it has a Labour-appointed chairman. I understand from what the director said on the “Today” programme that it will be given additional funding and take on additional staff. No doubt that will raise a cheer in one or two other quarters, certainly in the world of quangos, as an example of a quango that can survive and prosper even under present conditions.
I participated in the Standing Committee that considered the previous Government’s Higher Education Bill six or seven years ago. Memory may play tricks over such a period, but I remember the rationale that was advanced by the Labour Government for the creation of the Office for Fair Access. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but Conservative Members opposed its establishment and voted against the Bill. We opposed OFFA in principle and did not believe that it should be set up. It may be not just that my memory is playing tricks and I may have been under a misapprehension—perhaps we opposed it because we thought that it did not go far enough. I do not know, but it is certainly going much further now—this is the important point—than the Labour Government wanted. It is going even slightly further than some Labour Back Benchers urged. The then Labour Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), was robust in opposing some of the suggestions from his own Back Benchers because he thought that they were going too far. That is another quarter in which some cheer will be raised by the guidance that has been issued by this Government.
The guidance goes much further than the previous Government intended because it puts far more pressure, particularly financial pressure, on universities with the link between approval for charging higher fees, fee income and admissions, and it is clearly intended to go much further. OFFA’s original scheme was that agreement for universities to charge higher fees—the increase under the previous Government was from £1,100 to £3,000—was made dependent on universities undertaking activities to promote applications to university, but stopping short of specifying admission outcomes.
The coalition Government now want to go a great deal further. The guidance is quite detailed and very prescriptive in what it requires of universities, and just the introduction—it gives the flavour of the guidance—says:
“Through this letter, we want to encourage you and the higher education sector to focus more sharply on the outcomes of outreach and other access activities rather than the inputs and processes. In particular, the Government believes that progress over the past few years in securing fair access to the most selective universities has been inadequate, and that much more determined action now needs to be taken.”
Mr Clappison
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but may I first say that I am happy to give way to any hon. Member who wants to intervene?
Mr Smith
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I am following his argument with interest. Does he agree that the arrangements, critical though he was of them, that the Labour Government put in place have had an impact? For example, Oxford university’s first access agreement with OFFA resulted in increased applications from students in state schools to the extent that they rose from 6,000 to 7,624, an increase of 27%. That exhortation has had an effect.
Mr Clappison
I welcome a greater number of applications from all sectors to our most prestigious universities, and the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention was timely. I pay tribute to the work of the universities, including Oxford and Cambridge universities. In debates such as this, attention often focuses on those two universities, as it has in speeches by the Minister and others in the Government.
Oxford and Cambridge universities do a tremendous amount of outreach activities, certainly far more than 20 or 30 years ago. They devote a lot of effort to that. One unfairness of the approach now being taken is that the more outreach universities do, the more they are told they are not doing enough. They seem never to be able to please their bureaucratic master in the form of the Office for Fair Access. The Minister looks puzzled, but it was in his letter, which I quoted, that the Government said that progress over the past few years has been inadequate.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
The power of what the hon. Gentleman is saying is important, but I passionately disagree with nearly everything he has said. Does he acknowledge that the central difference between now and previously is the level of the fee income? Will he reflect on the fact that although more young people from poorer backgrounds are at university, the number of those who make it to the most selective universities remains largely flat, despite young people from state schools getting better grades? We must understand the effectiveness of much of that outreach work.
Mr Clappison
The right hon. Gentleman raises many points, and I will try to deal with some of them as I go along. I would like to see as many applications as possible to a wide range of institutions. The students who apply to universities must be selected on merit, and the pressure that the Government are applying cuts across that principle.
Mr Clappison
I have only half an hour, but if I have time at the end I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
May I suggest to my hon. Friend that in addition to quotas smacking of social engineering and lacking clear justification through evidence, they could harm the long-term economic interests of this country, which would adversely affect everyone? The answer is not quotas, but ensuring that standards in the state education system are brought up to the level that allows those within it to compete on merit, not by quotas.
Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I was coming to. It answers in part the point raised by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). There is a question of raising standards in some quarters of the state system, and also of raising aspirations among pupils, critically by their teachers. The universities have been playing their part, but there must be a limit at some point to how much we expect universities to do in reaching into schools and raising aspirations. Teachers have day-to-day contact with pupils, and there is a responsibility on them in some quarters to raise aspirations.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) referred to grades. Is it not also the case that there are severe question marks about the grades that pupils are being given in the appropriate examinations before they get into university? If the grades are not up to scratch, that is effectively a back door to the social engineering to which my hon. Friend referred.
Mr Clappison
One of the crosses that the Government may have to bear as a result of that guidance is a great deal of scrutiny of grades, and comparisons between the grades that people from certain schools received, and which universities they successfully applied to. I have a lot of confidence in university admissions tutors and their approach to the job, particularly in the most selective universities.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on an important subject. In August last year, the Minister told the Daily Mail:
“Admissions policies are for universities, not for Ministers”
Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mr Clappison
That happily brings me to my next point. I imagine that the Minister will say, in his fair way, exactly what he said to the Daily Mail a few months ago. I am sure he will be anxious to reassure us that the Government intend universities to be free to continue to make judgments and admissions based on individual merit. However, in light of the guidance given to universities by the Office for Fair Access, I am afraid I will not able to place as much confidence in the Minister’s reassurance as I would like, and it would be stretching my credulity to accept it at face value. In the long directive from the Office for Fair Access, the word “merit” appears only once after 25 paragraphs of detailed instructions to universities, backed by the threat of financial pressure. It uses the words
“so long as individuals are considered on their merits and institutions’ procedures are fair, transparent and evidence based.”
That is the only place I can find the word “merit”, and it appears in much the same place as one would expect to find the legal small print in an advertising brochure.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As my hon. Friend may know, I voted against the trebling of tuition fees. I did that as someone who has been to one of the top universities on a maximum grant. When I applied to that university, I was looking not for privileged treatment in the admission exam, but for fair treatment, and for the ability to afford the course if I were fortunate enough to be successful. We were told that trebling fees would not put off people from poorer backgrounds from applying. We are now told that for people from poorer backgrounds to apply, we must socially engineer the people who get in. The narrative seems to have changed and it now contradicts what was said before. Instead of people getting in on merit, they are getting in on considerations of social position.
Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend’s point will be widely shared and many people have come to the same conclusion. There is always a problem with such attempts to compensate. Even though bursaries are rightly awarded to people from lower-income families, there will always be a family on lower-middle income, or in straitened circumstances, who remain just above the level at which bursaries are awarded. They are called the “squeezed middle”. When the previous Government introduced fees at a much lower level, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Justice raised that issue as a particular problem with the fee system, and it is a matter to which we must devote some research. We all want students to be encouraged to go to the university of their choice and not to be discouraged by their financial circumstances.
Mr Clappison
Will the right hon. Gentleman contain himself because I have a number of questions to put to the Minister? I hope there will be other chances to debate this matter.
I have some questions arising from letters that I have received from my constituents and independent schools in my constituency. Is it not the case that universities are being put under tremendous financial pressure to come into line with the outcomes that central Government wish to bring about through the Office for Fair Access, irrespective of the principle of merit? As advocated by the Government, the principle of merit is a face saver, but the reality is that the financial pressure on universities puts them in an invidious position. Universities are told the outcomes they are expected to achieve, and financial pressure is put on them because they will not be able to charge the fees they wish if they do not achieve those outcomes. That cuts right across the principle of merit, which, much as Ministers may talk about it, cannot be sustained in light of the detailed guidance provided.
Will the Minister explain why the first access performance indicator relates to
“the percentage of students admitted from state schools or colleges”?
Given that a clear majority of pupils, including those who apply to the most prestigious universities, come from state schools, how does that equate to disadvantage? The headmaster of an independent school in my constituency wrote to me about the Government guidelines:
“The principle of widening access to university is an excellent one. But I know you will share my concern that disadvantage should not be equated with education in the state sector. Any lack of social mobility in the UK has causes that start even at the pre-school level: attempts to fix them at the point of university entrance are dangerous, misguided and unfair. Independent schools have large numbers of disadvantaged pupils receiving financial support: they do not deserve to be discriminated against.”
Ministers seem particularly interested in admission to Oxford and Cambridge, and although there are many other good universities, they choose to focus particularly on those. Is it the Government’s case that a lower proportion of independent school students who are admitted to Oxford and Cambridge go on to obtain a first-class degree than students from other backgrounds? That would appear to be the gist of the Government’s justification. Will the Minister supply evidence of a difference in degree performance between state sector and independent sector school students at Oxford and Cambridge? Even if the Government are able to provide such evidence—it will be interesting to see whether they can—surely that would be a matter for Oxford and Cambridge to take into account, and to exercise their judgment independently, without pressure from the Government.
A number of hon. Members may wish to ask questions of the Minister. To conclude, let me say that we all share—certainly in the Conservative party—the objectives of promoting excellence and spreading opportunity. However, in light of some of the interventions I have received, the Minister must explain how the Government’s plans for influencing university admissions will help raise standards in schools where standards need to be raised, and how they will help to raise aspiration. Should the Government not focus on improving standards in schools, establishing a positive ethos and, above all, raising expectations? I believe that is happening in the Education Bill, but the guidelines hardly seem like a vote of confidence for that. Would that not be a better course to take, and rather more in line with our traditional principles and ways of thinking, than the route taken in the guidelines, which are bureaucratic, complex and impose considerable burdens on universities? Above all, as I have said, the guidelines put significant financial pressure on universities. That cuts across the principle of admission on merit and sits uneasily with the Government’s creditable objectives of abolishing top-down targets and promoting localism and decentralised decision making. We must devote more time to this matter as there is a lot of interest in the debate from all parties. I hope that the Minister will begin, in his very fair manner, to give some indication of the Government’s thinking on this issue, and tell us what evidence lies behind it.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for securing the opportunity to debate this important issue. As he was so generous in what he said about me personally, let me reciprocate. I understand his personal commitment to what he rightly described as the principle of merit—meritocracy. I would argue that equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcome, is a key principle that the Conservative party believes in and that is probably shared by all parties.
The question is about how we apply the principle of merit and ensure meritocracy. The argument that we in government have gone though is as follows. First, we would all accept that, when going to university, merit involves some assessment of potential, not just what has already been achieved academically. Let us put ourselves in the position of an admissions tutor at one of the universities that my hon. Friend mentions. Let us say that two 18-year-olds present themselves. One has had an incredibly tough upbringing and been to a rather mediocre school with low educational standards, the other has had every advantage in life and benefited from high-quality schooling, but they have the same A-level grades. We would probably all intuitively reach a judgment about who had the higher underlying intellectual merit.
Mr Willetts
We might go further and say that the student who had lower grades but who came from the tougher background might have higher potential than the other student. That is our starting point. I see that requests for interventions are already piling in. I will accept brief interventions.
Dr Lewis
My right hon. Friend is, as always, extremely kind. I say to him that as someone who was in that position—someone who came from a poor household—I was prepared to be judged on the marks that I got, even though people in competition with me went through, shall we say, more advantaged educational processes, because once we start monkeying around with the grades and saying that the person with the higher marks should not get the place, we are in very dangerous and subjective territory indeed.
Mr Willetts
I hope to show my hon. Friend that it is not subjective, but absolutely it has to be about merit. I am not aware of any major higher education system in the world that says that the sole criterion for getting in is the exam marks that a person has already achieved. I would be interested to know whether my hon. Friend even believes that our own universities have ever solely used exam marks already achieved, rather than considering merit by including some assessment of potential.
Mr Willetts
I see that a lot of Members want to intervene. There are nine minutes to go. I shall give way to the former Minister.
Mr Lammy
I just want to confirm what the Minister said. Entrance to university in this country has always been based on attainment and achievement, potential, and aptitude to perform. There is lots of academic evidence that children from poorer backgrounds who get to universities do better than those from independent schools.
Mr Baron
My right hon. Friend is being generous. Is that not the point? No one could disagree with equality of opportunity. We are trying to assess potential. However, it is not for the Government to assess potential; it is for the universities to assess potential. That is the key point, and something that I think the Minister is missing.
Mr Willetts
I agree that it is for universities to assess potential. Let me take hon. Members through the next stages of the argument. There is a disagreement of principle. I am surprised that people could imagine that our universities have ever simply gone on academic marks already achieved. My understanding of how they have always operated is that they have tried to assess potential, and an understanding of merit does indeed involve consideration of the aptitude for future academic accomplishment. The question is how that should be done. Historically it has happened, but it has been done on a discretionary basis. We all have a picture in our mind of the elderly Oxbridge don sucking at his pipe as the interview candidates come through and assessing who might be best able to benefit from such an education, making an assessment that goes beyond simply the marks that they have already achieved.
However, it is very hard to operate a system on the basis of the personal discretion of the don or academic in a world in which, first, we are dealing with mass higher education; secondly, it is very important that those judgments be transparent and not be capricious, because otherwise they could be on the basis of personal bias; and thirdly, those judgments should be legally defensible. That is why it is very important that we have objective evidence.
Let me now turn to the legitimate challenge from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere: do we have any evidence? I shall cite two papers that try to get to the heart of the issue by assessing the relative chances of people getting a good degree when they go to university. There have been two recent studies, and experts will be able to assess their rigour. There has been a study of Oxford and a separate study in Bristol. Both examined the likelihood of getting a good degree, measured as a 2:1 or a first. We could apply what I would regard as a defensible, meritocratic criterion: we will accept students on the basis that they will have an equal chance of getting a 2:1 or a first. The studies found that students who came from schools where there had been particularly high academic standards got higher A-level grades relative to their chances of getting a 2:1 or a first than prospective students from other backgrounds.
I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will accept that, if we are to apply the principle of merit, one reasonable way of doing so would be to accept students on the basis that we are considering potential, based on an equal chance of getting a 2:1 or a first. Otherwise we would not be applying the principle of merit. We would be selecting students because they had good A-levels, rather than on the basis of their academic merit.
Mr Clappison
My right hon. Friend was kind enough to supply me with a copy of a speech that he had already made in which he referred to that evidence. He drew certain conclusions from it, which he has just referred to. The three authors of the report were called Ogg, Zimdars and Heath. Has my right hon. Friend read the whole report?
Mr Willetts
I confess—it may be a rather sad confession—that I have read the whole paper. Of course, there will be continuing dispute about its content, but I have read it. The question is, having gone this far—
Mr Willetts
I will give way, but we have only four minutes left and I want to respond to another challenge; I am getting behind on the challenges.
Mr Clappison
How does my right hon. Friend square what he has said with the conclusion of the report, to which he did not choose to refer? The authors of the report said that there was a slight difference between state and independent schools and it ought to be taken into account. However, it already was taken into account by academics in the admissions process. The report says that
“according to earlier research using the OAS data set, the selectors at Oxford in fact appear to already discount the GCSE grades of private school students…One might therefore be tempted to suggest that the selectors at Oxford have done their job of getting the best students to Oxford fairly well.”
The authors go on to say that there is no evidence of under-performance by private school students.
Mr Willetts
The crucial thing is that what universities have said they expect of us, quite reasonably, is a framework for their decisions that is—I shall quote our letter to OFFA—“fair, transparent and evidence-based”. Let me turn, in the few minutes left, to the crucial issue about universities. I value the autonomy of universities. We are not telling universities whom to select. We operate within a legal framework that goes back to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which makes it absolutely clear that it is not for Ministers and the Government to determine the admission of students. What we are trying to do is, quite simply, ask universities to choose and set out for themselves the criteria that they will use to ensure that we are not wasting talent in this country because there are children whose underlying abilities are being hidden by bad education.
Of course we hope that in the long run our school reforms will mean that that problem disappears, but as a Conservative I have to deal with the world as it is, and teaching standards in secondary schools diverge. I hope that when teaching standards in all secondary schools are the same, these types of exercise will not be necessary, but while teaching standards in secondary schools diverge, the assessment of potential cannot be based simply on the points that someone has achieved in their A-levels or elsewhere. Universities have to be able to exercise that judgment. They ask, quite rightly, for a framework from us, and we make demands of them. We agree that the criteria should be fair, transparent and evidence based. There will not be quotas. There will not be a specific requirement on a university to select people on a specific basis.
However, universities will have to show what they are doing to broaden access so that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who are clearly under-performing when it comes to getting to our most selective universities, have a fair opportunity to go there. Otherwise, we will not be delivering meritocracy. We will be rewarding the people with the best A-level grades; we will not be choosing the best and brightest to go to our research-intensive universities. That is morally wrong; it is not the principle of meritocracy and it is economically wasteful.
We can no longer rely on the old discretionary procedures, because they would be too capricious and they would be subject, rightly, to legal challenge. We have to have mechanisms, put forward by universities, that are fair, transparent and evidence based. Universities tell us that they understand that and welcome the fact that we are providing guidance and that they will not have to impose quotas. They will ultimately be deciding, on a case-by-case basis, on the merits of the individual person. However, that judgment must be based on assessment of potential, and assessment of potential can no longer be done on the basis of personal whim and discretion. They have to have something that is defensible to all of us as fair, transparent and evidence based. That is what our letter to OFFA is about. I believe that it passes the tests that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere has set out. It is consistent with the principle of merit; indeed, it is necessary to deliver the principle of merit. It does not intervene in the individual admissions decisions of universities and it is evidence based.
I look forward to continuing these exchanges with my hon. Friend, because I fully understand his passionate commitment to equality of opportunity. That is a principle in which all in our party believe.
Voluntary Sector (Nottingham)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Osborne?
The voluntary sector in Nottingham is doing a huge amount for our city and its citizens. It provides services, support and advocacy to a wide range of groups, including some of the most vulnerable in society, as well as raising awareness, campaigning and fundraising. It also offers thousands of volunteering opportunities, which are important in strengthening our civil society and sense of community, but which also provide vital experience and skills to people seeking to move into paid work. Finally, of course, it provides employment to many people who are committed to making Nottingham a better place to live.
There are 678 registered charities in Nottingham. Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service, the local support organisation for the voluntary and community sector, has more than 1,000 local groups on its database, including charities, community groups and social enterprises. I am grateful to have the opportunity today to pay tribute to the fantastic work that the voluntary sector carries out in Nottingham, but I also want to express the hope that action can be taken to protect the sector before it is too late. I must tell hon. Members that Nottingham’s voluntary sector faces a crisis brought on by the Government’s spending cuts and the particularly severe reduction in funding for our local authority.
In its response to the city council’s budget consultation, the NCVS has stated that
“we believe that direct support to the sector from the council in 2010/11 totalled approximately £47.5 million. This is testament to both the strength of our local voluntary sector and the spirit of partnership working developed over many years by the Council”.
It is clear that Nottingham is already doing what the Government say they want local councils to do by using specialist providers in the community and voluntary sector to provide services to local people.
Over the past week, Delia Monk, the local government correspondent for our local paper, the Nottingham Post, has revealed the impact that spending cuts are having on the many different groups that make up the sector. The paper has done the community a great service by bringing the crisis to public attention and explaining how and why it should matter to us all.
Local groups face this funding crisis because of Government decisions to cut local authority funding too far and too fast. The Government claim that Nottingham’s spending power will be reduced by 8.4% in 2011-12, but the actual figure is 16.5%. That masks even deeper cuts to needs-based grants, which have now been rolled up into the total settlement. Those cuts include the scrapping of the working neighbourhoods fund and the future jobs fund and the 48% reduction in Nottingham’s allocation for Supporting People.
Lilian Greenwood
No, I am sorry, but my time is very limited.
The evidence for those cuts has been set out in an exchange of correspondence between the leader of the council and Ministers. NCVS anticipates that £47.5 million of council funding for the voluntary sector last year could shrink to about £29.5 million this year, which is a 38% drop. That reduction includes the loss of £7.5 million from the working neighbourhoods fund and £3.5 million from the future jobs fund, £7.6 million of cuts to Supporting People funding, cuts to commissioned services and likely reductions in grant aid and in-kind support.
Although cuts to local authority funding are the biggest worry for local groups, they come alongside big changes to the way groups can access alternative funding. Those changes include, for example, the introduction of charges and direct payments for social care and the upheaval in the health service, which is also a commissioner of services. Some groups will also be hit by the Government’s 60% cut in funding for asylum advice and the decision to end entirely funding for advice to people with refugee status. Refugee Action has been forced to leave Nottingham and to offer only outreach from its Leicester office. Legal aid cuts will also prevent Nottingham’s advice agencies from responding effectively to increasing local need.
Last Tuesday, the Nottingham Post reported that 40 services in the city and the county are at risk of closure.
Lilian Greenwood
I am sorry, but I have said that my time is very limited.
By this morning, that list had grown to include 35 services that are due to close, 16 that are at serious risk of closure and 12 that will be reduced. Those include services for children, such as play sessions and toy libraries, help and support for teenage parents, services for the mentally ill and their carers, a handy person scheme for the elderly and projects supporting women and children suffering domestic abuse. The support service for those who are homeless, or who could become homeless without adequate support, is particularly hard hit.
In the time available, I cannot possibly set out the full range of support services that will be lost as a result of this Tory-led Government’s choices, or describe individuals and families and the ways they will be affected, so I intend to focus on three issues: how the reductions in Supporting People will impact on not only service users, but the wider community, and how they will cost us all more than they save; how opportunities for volunteers and volunteering will be undermined rather than enhanced; and how employment and the local economy will suffer.
The previous Government introduced Supporting People funding to provide housing-related support, such as services to support homeless people and services to help individuals with learning disabilities or mental health issues to live independently in their own homes and to participate in the community. An independent evaluation by Capgemini for the Government in 2009 estimated that national expenditure of £1.6 billion generated net savings of £3.4 billion by avoiding the need for more costly acute services. I know from my own casework that the lack of proper support for vulnerable people—for example, those with mental health issues or substance misuse problems—can lead to difficulties with neighbours, require intervention by the local housing office, police and health services, and ultimately threaten people’s tenancies.
Framework is a homelessness charity based in my city, which provides housing, support, training, care and resettlement services. It often works with those groups that are most marginalised and stigmatised, including ex-offenders, people with a history of alcohol or substance misuse, and Gypsies and Travellers. In addition to being a direct provider of services, Framework heads a number of consortia of smaller specialist organisations that fulfil contracts commissioned by the city council.
Of the £22.3 million the city council spent on Supporting People services last year, approximately £7.5 million was spent through Framework contracts. In 2011-12, that figure is due to fall to approximately £3.5 million, resulting in the complete loss of 10 services and reductions in a further two. The 10 to be closed include specialist floating—that is, home-visiting—services for people with problems related to the use of illegal substances and alcohol. Such services have helped more than 500 service users in the past year. Other services to be closed include floating support for teenage parents, which supported 128 young people in 2010-1, a 16-bed hostel and five supported move-on flats for young people with complex needs. Without such support services, people with real needs face the prospect of getting into difficulty with their rent and housing, not looking after themselves or their home properly, becoming isolated and possibly placing a much greater burden on local services. Such people do not have a strong voice and do not always enjoy widespread public support.
We should be concerned about these cuts, because we are compassionate and care about social justice, but even on a more practical level, they are short-sighted in the extreme. It will cost us all more to deal with problems when they become urgent, when they could have been avoided through less expensive preventive measures. That is the principle behind the early intervention work pioneered by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), for which our city is rightly recognised. There will also be non-financial costs because of the distress caused to service users, their families, their neighbours and people in their local community. Many of us remember the sight of rough sleepers on our city streets, and none of us wants to return to those days, yet the Government’s actions make that a real risk.
The Government claim that the national Supporting People budget has not been significantly reduced, but it has certainly been redistributed away from areas of high need. Nottingham is the 13th most deprived local authority in the country and is suffering the 21st largest reductions in formula grant funding, whereas Windsor and Maidenhead, which ranks 323rd in terms of deprivation, has seen its spending cut by just over 1%.
In Nottingham, the council has sought to cushion the impact on the voluntary sector by not passing on the impact of the full cuts—almost £10 million in 2011-12—to Supporting People. With the reductions already being made to other parts of council services, the ability to protect the sector is limited, and it is inevitable that front-line services will be affected now and in the years to come.
The second area that I want to highlight is the impact on volunteering. Given that the Government have said that a key objective of the so-called big society is
“encouraging and enabling people to play a more active part in society”,
it seems incomprehensible that they are making cuts that undermine the very organisations that provide those opportunities.
Lilian Greenwood
It is normal to ask in advance of the commencement of a debate whether it would be okay to intervene. I am afraid that the hon. Lady did not do that, and I am short of time, so I will not. I am sorry.
Nottingham volunteer centre supports groups to recruit and retain volunteers, as well as helping potential volunteers to find suitable placements. In the past year, the centre matched about 2,500 people with volunteering opportunities in the city. A recent survey also found that volunteers in Nottingham gave more than 1 million hours of their time free, to support local people. If the volunteers were paid for their work, it would cost more than £14 million. In less than four weeks, all funding to support volunteering in Nottingham will end. The volunteer centre is affected by the scrapping of the working neighbourhoods fund and the national youth volunteering programme, vinvolved—eight members of staff are losing their jobs. The Government plan a new national citizen service for young people, but, as far as we are aware, none of those projects will take place in Nottingham, and the valuable expertise and infrastructure that has been built up in the city will soon disappear completely.
In Nottingham, more than half the volunteer centre’s service users were aged 25 or under, and when I visited the project recently I was impressed by the commitment and skills of the staff. Last year, 16% of the people supported by the V project were classed as not in education, employment or training. At a time of record youth unemployment, when one in five young people is unable to find work, it seems both cruel and foolish to cut off that vital link to skills, training and confidence for the most disadvantaged groups. That is best summed up in the words of a young woman who at first doubted her ability to make a worthwhile contribution through volunteering.
“I doubted myself…who was I kidding to think I could do something so mature like help at a hospice. I called Charmaine at Vinvolved to tell her that I didn’t think could do it. She was brilliant…she reassured me....I’m so glad I called her as I was ready to give up....3 months have passed and I’m still volunteering. My confidence has grown loads.... I really feel like I am making a difference.”
With 40% of the centre’s users out of work at the time they come in to volunteer, not only will the loss of the service reduce the opportunities available for people to retrain and improve their skills and employability, at a time when demand for the service is expected to rise, but it will deprive dozens of organisations of potential volunteers. Unfortunately, as local community and voluntary sector groups are unsure of the future of their own services, they are also losing the capacity to recruit and train volunteers. In most cases having fewer paid staff will mean fewer volunteers, not more.
That brings me to the third point that I want to highlight, which is that the cuts will lead to a significant reduction in employment. Nottingham city Unison, the local union branch that represents many voluntary sector staff in the city, reports that more than 1,000 members have been placed at risk of redundancy. Others face proposals to make significant cuts to their terms and conditions in a sector where pay is not generally high. NCVS-commissioned research from 2010 indicated that voluntary organisations benefit the local community by employing local people, so the job cuts and pay cuts will affect the spending power of hundreds of families in Nottingham. Coupled with job losses in local government, the police, the health service and the construction industry, following the Government’s decision to cancel investment in new school buildings and better social housing, they will further undermine the ability of our local economy to recover from the recession.
I could say so much more. On the 100th anniversary of international women’s day it is particularly saddening to read of the loss of services for women, such as the closure of Noelle House, the only gender-specific homelessness service in the city, and the loss of courses for teenage parents run by Platform 51, formerly the Young Women’s Christian Association, which were funded by the local primary care trust. The Women’s Voluntary Action Network is so concerned that it has appealed to the Minister for Women and Equalities to intervene. Black and minority ethnic communities will also feel the effect of the Tory-led Government’s decisions. Tuntum housing association reports cuts of 80% in its Supporting People funding, which will remove all the assistance it provides for vulnerable young people, primarily from BME backgrounds, and particularly young women.
I have no doubt that the Minister will say that the cuts were inevitable and that what I have described is the legacy of a Labour Government who left the national coffers empty, but people in Nottingham are not gullible. They understand that the money spent on British schools, hospitals and police officers did not cause the recession that was felt in Ireland, France, Greece and the USA. They know that we had to borrow money to bail out the banks and that tax receipts plummeted, making the deficit inevitable. They also know that the decision to cut the deficit as deep and fast as the Government are doing is a political choice. My concern is that that political choice will have devastating effects in the city I represent, and that those bearing the brunt are the very people who are least able to withstand it, including the poor, the old, the young, the disabled, the mentally ill and the homeless.
The Minister will doubtless say that that is the fault of Nottingham city council, but not a single Communities and Local Government Minister would meet representatives of the council or the city’s voluntary sector when they came down to Westminster last Monday to voice their concerns about the unfair settlement imposed on our city.
Lilian Greenwood
Perhaps the Minister will also say that the council should cut backroom functions and make efficiency savings. Well, it is already doing those things, cutting corporate services by 20%. It has already reduced the chief executive’s pay.
The debate in our local press has brought the work of the voluntary and community sector, which often goes unnoticed, to the public attention. I hope I have been able to highlight some of the work under threat. It has also raised questions and concerns among the people whom we serve, and now I want to put those questions before the Minister. How can it be fair for councils that serve the most disadvantaged communities to suffer the deepest cuts? How can we expect people to take responsibility for themselves, while at the same time cutting away the support they need to do so? What good is talking about a big society while removing the infrastructure that it needs? Nottingham people want answers, and I hope that the Minister has them ready.
Sandra Osborne (in the Chair)
I just want to point out that in half-hour debates the Chair’s practice is to call the Member who obtained the debate, and the Minister. The Chair will call other Members to speak only if the Member in charge and the Minister indicate in advance that they are content. Whether Members accept interventions or not is a matter for them.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Ms Osborne. [Interruption.] There is a sort of chuntering noise somewhere in the Chamber. I do not know whether it is the microphone. Perhaps it is picking up some interference.
Chris Leslie
I thought it might be the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I will give way if I can just speak for a couple of minutes. [Interruption.] If the hon. Lady will allow me—
Sandra Osborne (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is not accepting an intervention.
Chris Leslie
This is not very becoming of the hon. Lady. Some might say that she is plucky in the way she is disrupting the proceedings, but others might say she has quite a lot of brass neck. [Interruption.] We are talking about a subject that is incredibly serious, and there should be all-party consensus on the matter, given that we are not talking about hanging baskets, coffee mornings or other such elements of the voluntary sector; we are talking about homelessness and people who may well find they have nowhere to reside, if their current accommodation closes.
Without getting into too much detail about the grant formula settlement, the simple point that I want to make in my couple of minutes is that homelessness charities and hostels are the things that most people will feel particularly strongly about. They are, after all, the last resort for many of the people who are in greatest need. They provide specialist support and acute help for people with mental difficulties, drug and alcohol problems and learning disabilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned the charity Framework and some of its hostels. In my constituency I am particularly concerned about the closure of the Handel Street centre, which specialises in dealing with drug and alcohol problems. The new Albion hostel with 21 flats is potentially under threat. My hon. Friend mentioned the Noelle House closure. There is also Acorn Lodge in St Ann’s, which is run by the Salvation Army, for homeless people over 55.
The consequences are obvious in terms of rough sleeping and potential disorder, but it is the ill health issues that worry me most, such as the knock-on effects on accident and emergency, bed-blocking and so forth. We are expected to believe in the big society, but I wonder whether it is realistic to expect private philanthropy to fill the void in what has been the historical support for these services. That is my concern. I urge the Minister to reconsider the quick withdrawal of this grant support given that there is no alternative plan.
Anna Soubry
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Over the years, Nottingham city council has spent excessive money not only on political advisers for the Labour group, but on promotional publicity, foreign jaunts and the like. It is unfortunate that the Labour-run city council did not use that money—taxpayers’ money—on the very services that he now is so keen to protect.
Chris Leslie
I had a feeling that the hon. Lady would want to make a political point. As predicted, some would say that she has a brass neck intervening on that point, given that it distracts from the primary issues that we face. There will always be examples of lower levels of expenditure on which local councillors will disagree, but given the sums involved—it is in multi-millions of pounds—it is not credible for the hon. Lady to say that that is the driver for the withdrawal of some of those services.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Lady disagrees—she has her point of view—but we have to do more to help the homeless in Nottingham and in my constituency.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Osborne.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this debate. She started by paying an extremely sincere tribute to her local voluntary community sector and her local paper. I began to lose respect for her speech, however, when she failed to recognise the difficulties faced not only by the Government, but by those trying to govern local authority areas.
The situation is horrendously difficult for everyone. The hon. Lady spoke of political choices, but I did not go into politics to make spending cuts, and I doubt whether the people on Nottingham city council did so either. The cuts were forced on us by the shambles that resulted from the previous Administration’s stewardship of our public finances, but she showed no recognition of that. I leave to one side whatever happened in the past to the administration of the various Nottinghamshire councils.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene, given the short time that he has left. Is he aware that Nottingham city council has compensated two previous chief executives that it could not get on with, has sent an executive to the south of France on jollies and has hired a cherry picker to remove conkers from a tree? Would it have been better to spend that money on the voluntary sector rather than wasting it like that?
Mr Hurd
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case, which brings me to my next point. However difficult this environment may be, it boils down to local choices, and local choice is often dictated by decisions taken in the past.
Those are local choices, but it is clear to me that the picture is very different around the country, with some local authorities—perhaps they were better run in the past, with a greater eye for efficiency and spending on what is really valuable—being in a position to minimise reductions to the voluntary and community sector. Indeed, places such as Reading and Wiltshire have increased investment, or are engaging in a process with that sector that is more transparent, more up-front and more engaged. There is a mixed picture across the country.
I know from personal contact with representatives of Nottinghamshire’s voluntary community sector that there are problems on the ground. I wrote to every Member of Parliament offering to meet members of the local voluntary community sector, and I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) took up my invitation. I met representatives of the sector there, and they directly expressed their concerns to me, which were principally about how the county council had managed the process of engagement.
In the little time that remains, I shall try to set out our stall and say what the Government are trying to do to help in this incredibly difficult situation. Clear messages have been sent to local authorities on the best way of behaving in this situation. The Prime Minister gave a clear steer, asking councils to cut their cost bases and make their own efficiencies before starting to think of making what might seem to be easy cuts to the voluntary sector. That is what my local authority has done, and many others are doing so, too.
That approach is clearly not happening across the piece, however, which is why I am delighted that my colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government have gone further. They are urging local authorities to be much more transparent about their spending on the voluntary and community sector, so that the people whom we represent can see what is being done in their names and exactly what choices are being made—for instance, decisions on county hall salaries compared with cuts for the local voluntary and community sector. The public have a right to know what is being done in their name.
Anna Soubry
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. It is most unfortunate that of all the local authorities in England, it is Nottingham that still refuses to publish expenditure of more than £500. One wonders what is the problem—what has Nottingham got to hide?
Mr Hurd
That is certainly the question in my mind and in the mind of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. We, in Parliament, know the power of transparency—we know that it gives real power to citizens. In this instance, the public have the right to know how their money is being spent and what choices are being made. We are trying to help by sending a strong steer to local authorities and allowing the public to make up their mind about local decisions.
We have set aside £100 million of taxpayers’ money—a significant sum—as a transition fund to help voluntary sector organisations. Many are finding themselves terribly exposed to cuts of grant or in contracts, and need some help to get out of the hole—as long as they have a plan to do so. We continue to invest on behalf of the taxpayer in that sector. My Department has a budget of £470 million, and we structure what we do around three questions.
First, we ask what we are doing to make it easier to run voluntary community sector organisations. That involves cutting red tape to make it easier for those who have the incredibly difficult job of running small charities or civil society organisations. We continue to invest in the infrastructure that exists to support the sector. We want to make it much more effective.
Secondly, we ask what we can do to get more resources—both time and money—into the sector. We published a Green Paper on giving, which will become a White Paper. We are well on track to deliver a big society bank, which will make it much easier for social entrepreneurs to access capital, and we are coming up with new programmes such as the National Citizen Service, which I hope will be available in Nottinghamshire before too long. We are about to commission next year’s pilots, with 30,000 places. I urge the hon. Member for Nottingham South to engage with it when it arrives, as it will be an enormously positive opportunity for local young people, and a fantastically good process of connecting them and giving them the power to make a contribution to community.
Last but not least, we ask ourselves the question, “What can we do to make it easier for charities, social enterprises and voluntary organisations to deliver public services?” The sector delivers about 2% of contract value, but we would like it to do much more. We are working towards publishing a White Paper on public service reform, which will specifically address what should be done to open up the public service markets to more competition. Under it, charities and social enterprises will have the opportunity to deliver more public services, with some of the real value being in supporting those people mentioned so eloquently by the hon. Member for Nottingham South. In my experience, with some of the really difficult things—getting the long-term unemployed back into work or keeping people out of jail or off drugs—really valuable work is being done by quite small community organisations or social enterprises. We want to level the playing field to make it much easier for such organisations to deliver public services.
Mr Hurd
I shall not give way, as this is my last minute and the hon. Lady spoke for a long time.
None of this is easy, but we are actively trying to help the sector and local authorities through the difficult process of managing this transition. We want to minimise the damage in the short term, and maximise the opportunities for the voluntary and community sector so as to unlock the potential that is out there for improving more lives.
Eco-island Strategy (Isle of Wight)
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am glad to be speaking today about eco-island. A group of environmentalists saw the opportunity to make the Isle of Wight the first truly sustainable region in Britain. As this issue clearly transcends departmental responsibilities, I understand that the Minister may not have all the information at his fingertips. In terms of being able to demonstrate sustainability, the island is almost perfect. It is a microcosm of the mainland, with a manageably sized population and a well-defined border. It is the perfect place in which to bring to reality a vision of living in balance with the land.
The Isle of Wight has great natural beauty, but it is not Utopia; it is faced with many challenges. It is dependent on the mainland for much of its food, power, water and fuel. To become truly self-sustaining, fundamental changes, both physical and social, must be made. To attain the eco-island vision, the energy equation must be addressed.
At present, the island is almost entirely dependent on the coal and oil-fired power stations on the mainland. Eco-island would introduce a whole new raft of technologies to change that. The Isle of Wight needs 575 GW-hours of electricity to become self-sufficient. Much of that could be achieved with a mix of solar voltaic panels on the roofs of social and private housing; solar thermal addressing some of the hot water and heating needs; wind, tidal and geothermal power; and energy recovered from waste recycling. The feed-in tariff designed for small installations supports the roll-out of photovoltaic technologies on a domestic scale. Solar farms on agricultural land may not be the best solution, but panels in business parks, and even awnings over car parks, could provide a significant amount of energy.
The feed-in tariff is currently under review. I am sure that the Department of Energy and Climate Change recognises that such schemes can successfully promote renewable energy across a broad range of properties. I hope that that will be taken into account when decisions are made about the future of the feed-in tariff and other schemes that are designed to promote renewable energy.
A number of other positive initiatives are on the horizon. The renewable heat incentive should be implemented as set out in consultation papers. It could make a massive difference to the number of installations of ground and air-source heat pumps, combined heat and power plants fuelled by biomass, and solar thermal systems. Currently, eco-island plans need certainty about the level of the RHI to encourage enough individual householders to take up the scheme. Will the Minister give an indication whether the RHI is likely to be introduced at the planned levels?
The Isle of Wight is blessed with more sunshine than almost anywhere else in the United Kingdom. It has a superb natural environment and could harvest a vast amount of energy direct from the sun. For workable plans to be put in place, the Government must maintain their commitment to renewable energy generation. Eco-island has already gained a good deal of interest and support.
With the support of the local council, the chambers of commerce, tourism and local businesses, the Eco-Island Partnership, a community interest company, has been formed. The partnership is led by David Green, who is personally so committed to sustainable living that he has turned his own home into a show home for renewable technologies.
The new partnership will act as a conduit and funding vehicle for the roll-out of new green technologies. A number of strategic projects and initiatives are already in the pipeline, including the installation of solar panels, free of charge, on social housing. While the panels are generating, the tenant will get a contribution to their energy needs. The feed-in tariff payments will cover the financial investment and generate funds to invest in other green community projects on the island.
A key area for long-term investment is helping people and businesses to reduce energy use. Energy conservation projects, in tandem with renewable energy generation, will make the eco-island goal of carbon neutrality easier to achieve quickly and economically. The focus will be on making existing housing less power-hungry both to improve living standards and to cut energy bills.
Eco-island is not just about solving the energy equation. As part of the vision, other challenges will be addressed. Electric cars and bikes will be introduced, thereby reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Public transport will be promoted. The use of water will be cut, thus reducing the island’s dependence on supplies from the mainland. Local produce will be collected from farmers via a local food hub to supply shops, hotels and restaurants that are keen to “buy local”. The Eco-Island Partnership is also engaged in discussions about acting as a vehicle to manage a whole-island waste solution. It seeks to cut landfill to zero, generate heat and power as by-products and stop waste being transported off the island.
Chale is one of the least populous parishes on the island, but it has 70 social houses and flats. Some of those ideas have already been piloted with the Chale community project, which received welcome support from DECC last year. Solar panels and effective insulation were retro-fitted in 1960s houses. All windows were replaced, and air-source heat-pumps installed with new wet-radiator systems and tanks. That led to carbon savings of about 50% and reduced energy costs to tenants by up to 30%. Some 1,500 further installations are now planned by the housing associations themselves working with the Eco-Island Partnership. That project proves that DECC funding, properly directed, can, as intended, produce a ripple effect, increasing the renewable energy infrastructure.
There are even bigger challenges. As more energy is produced, the balance of the grid will slowly shift. The Eco-Island Partnership will install “smart meters” to assist in managing peak supply and demand. The technology will gather and monitor data and shape demand, fitting it more closely with the availability of renewable energy. Until they are used to the system, people will receive messages telling them when solar panels are active or wind turbines are turning in their area. Put simply, when renewable energy is being generated, they will be reminded to put their washing on. Ultimately, homes may be semi-automated, with smart meters activating appliances when renewable energy is available.
The Eco-Island Partnership has started that work and the Isle of Wight is the perfect place in which to roll out the technology. The benefits will be measurable and quantifiable, but it is undoubtedly a difficult technical challenge. Can help be made available, in the form of knowledge and technical expertise, to ensure that the right technical solution is found for the island? The benefit of that will be that once the right technology is in place and thoroughly trialled, the solution can be promoted throughout the rest of the UK.
Part of the eco-island plan is to launch the greenback card, which will promote the benefits of renewable energy and offer discounts to members of the community. The card is designed to deliver significant savings to the average island family throughout the year. The Eco-Island Partnership will work towards improving the quality of life, increasing the island’s sustainability and reducing the cost of living for eco-islanders, all at the same time.
There are also plans to create an eco-centre visitor attraction on the island, which would be used to demonstrate renewable energy technologies, showcase the science of new builds and engage people in the process of becoming more sustainable. Activities will be related to growing, managing woodland, arable farming and livestock. All the materials used would be local and the technology would be capable of being updated. Approaches have already been made to schools with a view to their using such a resource to support the curriculum. The centre could also provide a valuable focus to support the development of eco-tourism on the island from the British isles and from further afield. Why not provide people with a showcase of how sustainability can work and of what a future sustainable society might look like? I would be grateful if Government officials explored with David Green of the partnership whether any support might be available for this education work.
Representatives of the Eco-Island Partnership are talking to major companies about possible employee volunteering schemes, in the hope of attracting top talent to help it with its work. BT and a number of other companies have agreed to help. A training scheme could be developed with the Isle of Wight college, which would offer all the necessary building industry qualifications and train up to 30 young people a year for jobs in the renewable energy sector. Those young people could work as apprentices as renewable technologies are installed.
Green businesses will be attracted to the island. Eco-technology companies will enjoy a business incubator environment and they will be at the centre of sustainable technology development. In time, the partnership hopes to act as an “eco-dragons den” for new business ideas, offering start-up loans and pump-priming new initiatives and opportunities on the island.
I would be grateful if the Minister indicated his support for these efforts to encourage eco-businesses. The partnership would like to receive help from DECC or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to identify where assistance is available for green business start-ups and employment training. Much of the funding for these plans will come from the private sector. The Eco-Island Partnership can provide a vehicle for individuals and investment companies to invest in ethical green community projects and it can act as a “one-stop shop” for a variety of investment projects. The partnership is also working to establish a dedicated eco-island equity fund, which would allow investors to contribute directly to its work.
When viewed as a whole, eco-island looks like the big society in action. When the big society bank comes into existence, I hope that the Minister will make representations to ensure that such schemes can apply for support from it. The Eco-Island Partnership regards the eco-island vision as being in tune with the big society ideas and localism.
The Eco-Island Partnership is representative of a community that is trying to take some of its destiny back into its own hands, by seeking to address the big issues and the realities that the community will face, as well as working towards a better quality of life for local business people, residents and visitors to the island. The partnership is also trying to convey that message of sustainability to the rest of the UK and to places further afield. The eco-island vision for the Isle of Wight is ambitious but it is grounded in reality. The projects that the partnership is engaged in are large and challenging, but they address the problems that we face as a nation while remaining focused at the level of the island itself.
The people behind eco-island are resourceful, pragmatic and highly motivated. They care passionately about the island. They view the various energy and environmental challenges as opportunities to find solutions that will benefit the eco-island community and ultimately—hopefully—the nation as a whole. The eco-island team would welcome the opportunity to have discussions with Ministers and officials to explain the eco-island strategy in more detail and to explore ways to develop the concept in line with Government aims.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Osborne.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) on securing this debate and I also congratulate his constituents on what is really a remarkable project. It is great to hear about this ambitious plan, which has the potential to be an exemplar for sustainable development in action.
Just last week, my Department announced our plans for mainstreaming sustainable development across Government. The plans aim to ensure that sustainable development is at the heart of everything that we do, from the way that we make our policies to how we operate our estates and procure our services. Our “greening Government” commitments were announced at the same time and they set out challenging goals for Departments to achieve in reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions and in the steps that must be taken to address adaptation to climate change and sustainable construction. The Government need to show that we can get our house in order, to inspire others to do the same. The eco-island strategy is a good example of a community recognising the need to do more to secure a sustainable future.
I realise that many of the issues that my hon. Friend has raised are perhaps more relevant to my colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. However, I am here today and I can assure him that DEFRA and DECC are two Departments that are joined at the hip, and we are working closely together on our sustainable policies and on our greening of Government. There is a considerable overlap between the two Departments and I will try to address the points that he has raised.
My colleagues in DECC recently announced their carbon plan, which is a cross-Government action plan on climate change backed by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. It sets out strict deadlines and actions for Whitehall. The new carbon plan sets out what must happen and by what date if the Government are to live up to our green ambitions, by meeting our tough domestic carbon targets and encouraging greater action internationally. The plan is focused on the jobs and economic opportunities of the low-carbon economy, and on policies that will help to insulate Britain from future energy price shocks. It precisely addresses the points that my hon. Friend has outlined about the impressive eco-island scheme.
The carbon plan is published in draft today, with the Government inviting the public and organisations to give their views on its contents. A final version will be published in the autumn. I hope that the people involved in the eco-island project on the Isle of Wight will have a chance to see the plan. We can learn from what they are already doing.
My hon. Friend talked about green jobs. We must recognise the importance of that issue. We know that it has been a huge issue on the Isle of Wight and received considerable publicity not long ago. It is great to see that there is a determination among those who are in business or in local government on the island to try to ensure that the island becomes a hub of green-growth jobs, and they are being led by my hon. Friend.
At least 1,000 green deal apprentices could receive Government funding towards their training, which might be an opportunity for the Isle of Wight. The apprentice scheme is part of our plans to reduce carbon emissions and to insulate the UK’s homes and businesses against rising energy prices. That is an important announcement that might be of interest to people on the Isle of Wight.
Regarding green skills, my colleagues in DECC continue to work with the sector skills councils and the National Apprenticeship Service to ensure that the provision of skills matches demand. NAS and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board are working together to increase the number of apprentices within the engineering-construction sector, to meet the future demand that will be created by major energy projects. There is great potential for synergy between the eco-island strategy and what we are doing in Government.
The opportunities offered by a move to a low-carbon economy are huge. In 2008-09, the global market for low-carbon goods and services was worth £3.2 trillion and it is forecast to grow by about 4% in the next five years. There are major opportunities for businesses to use energy more efficiently. They could save £3.3 billion per annum on energy bills through cost-effective measures. It has been interesting to hear how businesses on the Isle of Wight are embracing some of the technologies that promote energy efficiency. The market size of the UK low-carbon environmental goods and services sector rose to £112 billion in 2008-09, which represented an increase of 4.3% on revised figures for the previous year. The sector is the largest in the world.
My hon. Friend asked about the renewable heat incentive. The Government are committed to a massive expansion in renewable energy, of which supporting renewable heat is an integral part. We remain committed to the ambition to move from 1% to 12% of all heat generated being from a renewable source by 2020. The renewable heat incentive represents an investment of more than £860 million over the spending review period, and it will drive a more than tenfold increase in renewable heat over the coming decade, shifting the industry from the fringes to the mainstream. In the next day or two, we hope to publish measures to support renewable heat, within the budget agreed at the spending review.
Finally, on my hon. Friend’s points, I was particularly interested to hear him talk about Chale. The scheme there is remarkable and, with the support of organisations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, it appears to be bringing an entire off-grid rural community out of fuel poverty with an integrated approach to reducing carbon. That is really impressive. Additional funding is provided by the social landlord, to ensure that the properties are upgraded to the decent homes standard, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation supports the project management and behaviour change elements of the scheme. The entire village will benefit from the social improvements, and a number of photovoltaic installations throughout the estate will feed a community-managed funding initiative to ensure that the project continues to support improvements in the village for years to come. I commend the people involved on their enlightened approach, from which we can all learn for our constituencies elsewhere around the country.
The cross-Government adapting to climate change programme, based in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, supports local authorities in preparing adaptation strategies, including through the nine English climate change partnerships, the UK climate impacts programme and work undertaken with the Local Government Group. The adapting to climate change programme is also undertaking the UK’s first climate change risk assessment, which is due to report in January 2012, and which will inform the development of the Government’s first statutory national programme of action to prepare the country for climate change. Local authorities will need to play a key role in delivering on that important agenda, and it seems that the Isle of Wight is way ahead of the curve.
The Localism Bill will radically reform the planning system to give local people new rights to shape the development of the communities in which they live, including through neighbourhood plans. During this year, the Government will consult on a national planning policy framework, which will set out in a single, concise document our broad economic, environmental and social priorities, and how those priorities relate to each other. We are seeking, therefore, to do at a national level much of what the Isle of Wight is doing locally. The reforms will ensure that the majority of planning decisions are made at the local level, with the minimum of interference from Whitehall, empowering local authorities to achieve sustainable growth alongside environmental improvements and an improved quality of life for communities. The vision that my hon. Friend has described is precisely that which we seek to encourage, and I hope that the people involved will feel appreciated and valued for what they have done thus far, and for what they will do in the future.
We are also taking sustainable travel seriously. In January, the Department for Transport announced the introduction of a new local sustainable transport fund, providing £560 million for sustainable travel schemes. The January 2011 White Paper “Creating Growth, Cutting Carbon: Making Sustainable Local Transport Happen” sets out the importance of sustainable transport systems such as those in the eco-island strategy. The benefits from improved public transport and from encouraging modal shift away from car use to walking and cycling are clear, and these types of scheme often offer the best value for money. The Government understand the problems that councils have in maintaining their road network, and in February the Department for Transport announced, following the recent severe weather, that extra funding of more than £100 million would be given to councils for the repair of potholes.
The coalition also believes in work towards a zero-waste economy, and my hon. Friend touched on that. To ensure that we have the right policies to achieve that aim, the Government are conducting a thorough review of all aspects of waste policy and delivery in England, and the preliminary findings will be published in May 2011.
We recognise the benefits that the marketing of regional and local food can bring to producers and consumers alike. Shoppers increasingly want to know how the food they buy has been produced, and what its provenance is, and the established tourism industry in the Isle of Wight is ideally suited—I cannot think of anywhere better—to benefit from this Government’s determination to expand local food networks and identify key brands. Despite the evidence not being conclusive, we all know that local food is better for the environment. When production, processing and distribution systems are similar, choosing produce that has travelled a shorter distance can result in lower transport emissions. That must be one of the most obvious comments ever made in the House, but the opportunity for communities such as the Isle of Wight to benefit from such a strategy is enormous.
Finally, I shall mention the natural environment White Paper, which is a major piece of work being carried out by DEFRA, offering both large and small communities a vision of how we want to manage our natural environment, and how we value it and will continue to value it. I commend that important work, which will be published in a few weeks’ time.
I have spoken about several issues, which are linked by the fact that they all highlight the importance of sustainable development. Sustainable development covers everything we do, and is reflected in our recognition that decisions should not be taken in isolation. I look forward to hearing more about the progress on the eco-island strategy. I commend the people involved in it, and I commend my hon. Friend both for raising the topic in the House and for his leadership in the area.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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EU Competitiveness Council
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Baroness Wilcox, has today made the following statement:
The EU Competitiveness Council will take place in Brussels on 9 and 10 March 2011. Andy Lebrecht, the UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU will represent the UK on research issues on 9 March and I shall represent the UK on internal market and industry issues on 10 March.
The research substantive agenda items on 9 March will be a Commission presentation and exchange of views on the Europe 2020 strategy annual growth survey; adoption of Council conclusions on the interim evaluation of the seventh research framework programme including the risk-sharing finance facility; an update on the European innovation union flagship initiative; and adoption of Council conclusions on a pilot innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing. There will also be a lunchtime discussion on the European Commission’s common strategic framework for research and innovation funding Green Paper.
The research any other business items are: a report from the Belgian delegation and the Commission on the conference “The knowledge-based bio-economy towards 2020” and a Commission presentation on the Council decision concerning the framework programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for nuclear research and training activities (2012 to 2013).
The internal market and industry substantive agenda items on 10 March will be a Commission update and exchange of views on the results of the public consultation on the Single Market Act; adoption of Council conclusions on the Commission communication “Towards a better functioning single market for services—building on the results of the mutual evaluation process of the services directive”; adoption of the proposed Council decision authorising enhanced co-operation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection; a Commission presentation and exchange of views (industry perspective) on the Europe 2020 strategy annual growth survey; and adoption of Council conclusions on the raw materials initiative. There will also be an Industry Ministers lunchtime discussion on the Commission’s mid-term review of the Small Business Act.
The internal market and industry any other business items will comprise Commission presentations and updates on the following:
The internal market information system (IMI);
The SOLVIT annual report;
The European Court of Justice opinion on a draft treaty for the creation of a single court for patent related disputes;
The fifth consumer scoreboard;
The public consultation: towards coherent European approach to collective redress;
The public consultation on alternative dispute resolution;
The Commission communication on reaping the benefits of electronic invoicing for Europe;
The implementation of the recommendations of the high-level group on the competitiveness of the European chemical industry.
The Government’s main aims will be:
To emphasise the UK’s priorities for the Single Market Act;
To agree Council conclusions on the services directive mutual evaluation process and on the Commission’s raw materials initiative;
To support further progress on the EU patent;
To highlight the UK’s priorities for achieving EU growth (from both industry and research perspectives) in response to the Commission’s annual growth survey;
To agree Council conclusions on the seventh research framework programme interim evaluation and on the pilot innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing.
Cattle Movements
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I wish to inform the House that following a Government investigation into whether any illegal trade in older cattle has occurred, new movement restrictions will be placed on cattle born or reared in the UK before 1 August 1996. This is an extra precaution against meat from these older cattle entering the food chain.
DEFRA has written to the 18,000 keepers with animals of this age to inform them that in future individual licences must be obtained before the cattle can be moved.
Controls to prevent these animals from entering the food chain are already strong. It is illegal to slaughter pre-1996 animals for food, and specified risk material (SRM) such as brain and spinal cord is removed from all cattle after slaughter. In addition, any cattle aged over 48 months are tested for BSE after slaughter and only those that test negative are allowed into the food chain.
The industry has worked hard over the years to ensure British beef regained the good reputation it deserves, both at home and abroad. This extra safeguard will help maintain this reputation.
Environment Council
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and I will represent the UK at the Environment Council in Brussels in 14 March.
At this Council, the Hungarian presidency is expected to seek political agreement on the proposal for a recast of the directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).
The presidency will also seek the adoption of Council conclusions on the follow-up to the 16th conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change in Cancun and on the review of the community strategy concerning mercury.
There will be an exchange of views on the latest analysis of the proposal for a regulation regarding the possibility for member states to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs in their territory. A further exchange of views will be held on the common agricultural policy towards 2020 and on the Environment Council’s contribution to the EU semester.
The following topics will be covered under “any other business”:
Presentation by the Commission on the low-carbon economy roadmap 2050;
Information from the Danish delegation on endocrine disrupters;
Information from the Commission on a communication on “Regional policy contributing to sustainable growth in Europe 2020”;
Information from the Commission on the state of the ETS registry; and
Information from the Austrian delegation on measures concerning the use of plastic carrier bags.
Ending Violence Against Women and Girls
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Ending violence against women and girls is a priority for this Government. On 25 November 2010, I set out our guiding principles in this area over the spending review period in a “Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls” and announced that we will be committing Home Office funding of £28 million to fund specialist services in this area over the next four years.
Today, to mark International Women’s Day, I am publishing a set of supporting actions to realise our ambition in this area. This includes a full response to Baroness Stern’s review into how rape cases are handled in England and Wales.
Copies of both documents will be placed in the House Library.
Police Remuneration and Conditions of Service
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Tom Winsor has today published the first report of his review of remuneration and conditions of service for police officers and staff in England and Wales.
The review began its work on 1 October last year. The terms of reference asked the review to make recommendations that enable the police service to manage its resources to serve the public more cost-effectively, taking account of the fiscal challenges. In particular they invited the review to focus on proposals that:
Use remuneration and conditions of service to maximise officer and staff deployment to front-line roles where their powers and skills are required;
Provide remuneration and conditions of service that are fair to and reasonable for both the public taxpayer and police officers and staff;
Enable modern management practices in line with practices elsewhere in the public sector and the wider economy.
And to have regard to:
The tough economic conditions and unprecedented public sector deficit, and the consequent Government’s spending review;
The resolution by the Government that the public sector must share the burden of the deficit;
The Government’s policy on pay and pensions;
Analysis of the value of current remuneration and conditions of service for police officers and staff, as compared to other workforces;
A strong desire from the public to see more police officers and operational staff out on the front-line of local policing;
A recognition that there are also less visible front-line roles that require policing powers and skills in order to protect the public;
The particular front-line role and nature of the office of constable in British policing, including the lack of a right to strike;
Parallel work by the police service to improve value for money;
Wider Government objectives for police reform, including the introduction of police and crime commissioners, the reduction of police bureaucracy and collaboration between police forces and with other public services;
Other relevant developments including the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission led by Lord Hutton, the Hutton review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector led by Will Hutton, any emerging recommendations from them, and the Government’s commitment to protect accrued pension rights;
The impact of any recommendations on equality and diversity.
The review was asked to report in two stages, the first covering short-term improvements. Tom Winsor has now provided this first report and has been supported in this work by former chief constable Sir Edward Crew and labour market economist Professor Richard Disney.
I am very grateful for their work on this review and for this report. I will now consider the report very carefully. The report has been laid before Parliament today and copies are available from the Vote Office. It is also available electronically to the service and the public on the review’s website at: http://review.police.uk/.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Glasman
Introduction: The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
Big Society: Women’s Organisations
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Gould of Potternewton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how local and regional women’s organisations will be involved in the Big Society agenda.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, it is a pleasure to answer this Question on the day of the centenary celebrations of International Women’s Day. I am sure that the House will join me in paying tribute to the millions of women around the world who continue to struggle and campaign for equality, dignity and respect. The big society is about a volunteering, social action, philanthropic approach to life, but it is also about the opening up of public services to local control and the devolution of power from Whitehall to local communities. This offers women’s groups and organisations an excellent opportunity to get more involved in their local communities and to have a say.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but it seems a little contradictory that, at the same time as the Government are setting up this rather costly structure of community organisers, experienced and committed women’s organisations such as Refuge and outreach organisations are being closed down through lack of funding. Would it not be much more sensible to use what we already have, train them up and get them to be part of the big society?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I have said on many occasions that it is a shame that we are having to deliver the big society against the backdrop of the financial circumstances that we find ourselves in. In relation to commitment to women’s organisations, I know that the noble Baroness has given a huge amount of her life to chairing the Women’s National Commission, which has done much to be proud of, including tackling violence against women, increasing involvement in public life and promoting gender equality both in Britain and internationally. The consultation published yesterday by my colleague in another place, Lynne Featherstone, is specifically geared towards engaging women in a way that is reliant not only on umbrella bodies but also across a range of organisations and expertise. I am sure that the noble Baroness will agree that that is a step forward.
Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, is the Minister aware, as I am, that women have great difficulty in taking their proper place in society? Is she also aware that I consider this Chamber a funny old place? Last Thursday I stood in here surrounded by 45 women and began my speech with, “My Lords”.
Baroness Warsi
The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. I always revert to her for her experience and I am sure that she will be able to teach me much about the constitutional background to the term, “My Lords”.
Baroness Afshar
My Lords, I declare an interest both as an outgoing member of the Women’s National Commission and as the honorary president of the Muslim Women’s Network. In the context of current Islamophobia, who is going to help networks such as the Muslim Women’s Network that were supported by the commission and need resources in order to campaign against daily experiences of harassment and hardship?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that I have recently raised the issue of anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia. This is a growing issue and it is right that women’s organisations such as the Muslim Women’s Network should play a key role in taking forward the concerns that I have raised. The Government are looking at the issue of Islamophobia in much detail and we will bring forward a paper to look at concerns that have been raised. I assure the noble Baroness that we will be consulting many groups, including the Muslim Women’s Network.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, in the light of the abolition of the Audit Commission and comprehensive area assessments, what mechanisms will be available to assess the impact of funding cuts on women’s voluntary organisations at local level?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, as I said, the consultation that was announced yesterday by my honourable friend Lynne Featherstone in the other place is all about seeing how we can engage with women’s organisations on the ground that have to deal with the issues that affect women in local communities. There are a number of questions in the consultation document, which, among other things, looks at the equality assessment impact of funding decisions.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, can the Minister explain to the House how the dramatic reductions in the staffing of national charities such as the Children’s Society assists the cause of women within the big society, in the light of the deficit reduction programme?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, this is a recurring concern. When we are having to make difficult funding decisions —I say again that this is because of the economic circumstances that this Government inherited from the last one—it is important that local authorities make those decisions in a way that preserves those much needed front-line services. I can also say that the transition fund, which was brought in specifically to support voluntary and charitable organisations in these difficult times, has already made grants, of which two are specifically to women’s groups: the Domestic Violence Integrated Response Project in Leicester, which received £103,000, and the Incest and Sexual Abuse Survivors network in Newark in Nottinghamshire, which received £26,800. I hope that noble Lords will see that the Government, even in these very difficult times, are prioritising the needs of women.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, the Minister will know that the transition fund that she has just mentioned was already oversubscribed almost before it was announced. Is there any possibility that the Cabinet Office will make more money available to women’s groups and others in the voluntary sector that do such important work on the themes that she has described?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, we are in discussions at all times with local authorities to ask them to prioritise the areas that the noble Baroness has mentioned. However, she will also be aware that the big society bank, which among other things will be able to fund the projects to which she referred, will be on stream soon.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
Would the Minister care to comment on the fact that local authorities of all political persuasions are getting increasingly irritated by Ministers washing their hands of responsibility for cuts that the local authorities are being forced to make? Before the noble Baroness refers to the economic climate, let me say that the Government had two opportunities: first, to ensure that local authorities did not suffer more savage cuts than central government departments; and, secondly, to ensure the phasing that has been advised by local authorities of all political persuasions.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, this Government firmly believe that the devolution of power to local authorities, including the responsibility to make decisions on funding—more so because of the taking away of ring-fencing, which this Government have implemented—is the right way forward. However, I think that it is right for us to accept that, when councils such as Labour-run Manchester City Council feel that, in these difficult economic circumstances, they can still advertise to recruit a “Twitter tsar”, that is money not well spent.
Credit Unions
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to support the development of credit unions in the United Kingdom.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, the Government are bringing forward legislative reforms to help modernise the way in which credit unions do business and to remove barriers to their development and growth. We have recently announced funding of up to £73 million for the expansion of credit union services. The Government also intend to bring Northern Ireland credit unions under FSA regulation to give their members access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for his response. Does he agree with me that, today of all days, the Government must pledge themselves to urgent action to deal with illegal loan sharks, who in some cases revert to physical and sexual violence against women as they bully and threaten families to pay interest rates of hundreds of thousands of per cent? Will he agree to meet a delegation from the Association of British Credit Unions to discuss a link-up between credit unions and the Post Office, as a way of providing cheap, affordable credit to all?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am certainly happy to confirm that credit unions play an important part in the Government’s priority to see diversity and choice in financial services and to support financial inclusion, given that in areas of the highest economic and social deprivation credit unions are able to achieve the most impact. The credit union movement is growing significantly, with government support and following the support of the previous Government. We will certainly work to do whatever is reasonable to continue with that growth of the credit union movement.
Lord Newby
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a key role of credit unions is to provide basic bank accounts for people who are currently unbanked? Could he therefore confirm whether the £73 million that the Government are making available to credit unions will be used in part to set up a shared banking platform for credit unions that would be available in all post offices?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am happy to confirm to my noble friend that Ministers expect the post office network to play a central role in enabling credit unions to reach more families. Part of the funding, which I have already mentioned, is going towards projects related to that end—projects that are in the capable hands of my noble friend Lord Freud. He is running with that project; it is in safe hands and the Post Office is central to it.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the commission into personal debt that was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach? I declare an interest as a member of that commission. Will the Minister consider the proposals and recommendations of the commission, in particular, the proposal to set up a community finance trust that would assist community finance projects such as credit unions?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am happy to look at any suggestions for furthering the development of credit unions and similar savings channels. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing my attention to those recommendations.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, while I welcome most warmly the initiative announced on behalf of the Government, does the Minister agree that a great deal of suffering and injustice could be alleviated and avoided by giving judges in our civil courts the right to strike down claims that arise from loan contracts with unconscionably harsh conditions, particularly extortionate interest rates?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, it is very much at the forefront of the Government’s thinking in this area to make sure that all appropriate steps and options are available so that those at the more deprived end of the economic and social spectrum are not ripped off by loan sharks or whoever. The credit unions that we are talking about have a central role to play in that.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, when the Government end the social fund maternity grant for the birth of the second child in April, many poorer families will be tempted to turn to loan sharks to borrow money. Will the Government help these families by promoting credit unions as a better way to save and borrow? In asking that question I declare an interest as a member and president of the Islwyn Community Credit Union.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, that is exactly what we are doing by bringing forward the various reforms that I have described, which will help to modernise and drive forward the credit union movement—a movement that now numbers some 760,000 members in Great Britain. In Northern Ireland, where the movement has a different history, it has some 400,000 members. We wish to see the total in the United Kingdom growing, which is why the measures that we are bringing forward will promote this area of financial activity.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, is it not the case that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, less than a week ago drew attention to the exploitation by the clearing banks of what he called unsuspecting and unsophisticated depositors through their wholly unethical manipulation of interest rates? Should the strictures that the noble Minister has placed on loan sharks not be somewhat directed at the clearing banks as well?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we are talking about credit unions this afternoon. I have explained what an important and growing role they have to play in the diversity and choice of our financial services sector in the UK. That is what we should work to promote.
Women: Assistance in Pregnancy
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Gale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to assist pregnant women who no longer qualify for a maternity grant and a health in pregnancy grant.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, addressing the deficit presents difficult choices. We are focusing resources on those in greatest need. Pregnant women on low incomes will benefit from the increases to the child element of child tax credit above indexation by £180 in 2011-12 and £110 in 2012-13. All eligible women will still receive Healthy Start vouchers and will still qualify for a £500 maternity grant for their first child. We are also extending budgeting loans to include maternity needs.
Baroness Gale
I thank the Minister for his reply. What help will be given to women having a second child given that the grant will end in April and the new Social Fund amendments to allow them to claim for maternity items will not come into force until eight to 12 months’ time, so there will be a gap? What are those women supposed to do? The link has now been broken with the health in pregnancy grant, which ended in January, under which midwives and doctors gave advice to pregnant women on healthy pregnancy. How will the Minister ensure that those mothers receive good advice to make sure that they have a healthy pregnancy?
Lord Freud
There are two areas of financial help. The first is the budgeting loans. As I said yesterday, we are encouraging people to look at budgeting loans in the widest possible way. The second area is community care grants. Again, we expect that many people in the most difficult circumstances will be able to take advantage of those. The noble Baroness’s second question concerned what we were doing to help pregnant women. The Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families are developing a project, Preparing for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond, which is looking at a renewed model of universal antenatal education and preparation for parenthood.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, is the Minister aware that young women in care are two and a half times more likely to become pregnant than their peers and that a quarter of young women leaving care are either pregnant or have a child already? Will he consider asking his colleagues who talk with local authorities whether all best practice in the area of support for such young women is collated and being shared as it should be?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I share the noble Earl’s great concern for children in care and take his point about the relatively much higher rate of pregnancy. I shall look closely at what we can do in that area.
Lord German
My Lords, there will be a moment of time between the outgoing regulations and the incoming regulations in respect of budgeting loans to which the Minister has just referred. Given that most people will be looking for low-cost, low-interest loans to buy such things as a buggy, a pram or a cot, what advice is the Minister giving to his department on exercising flexibility in this regard to ensure that the current regulations may be as widely accessible as possible so that people are not disadvantaged during the short period between the old and the new regulations?
Lord Freud
I thank my noble friend for reinforcing this important point. There will be a gap, probably of around nine months, before we can formally change the budgeting loans. We are making the very firm point—I made that firm point formally in the Chamber yesterday—that we are encouraging people to use the scheme to the utmost extent that they can and to apply it to slightly wider items than those around budgeting for the baby.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the Minister has confirmed again, as he did in the debate yesterday, that families will eventually be able to access budgeting loans. However, is he aware that just last week the Minister for Pensions announced a further tightening of the screw on the availability of crisis loans from the Social Fund on the basis that this would enable the trickle of budgeting loans to continue? Is this not making the very poor pay for the poor?
Lord Freud
My Lords, the trouble was that the crisis loans were being used in a non-crisis context to buy ordinary items of household expenditure, so we were in danger of running out of funding for the whole system because of the way it was being used. Our concern with controlling the crisis loan situation was to make sure that funding was left available for budgeting loans for exactly this kind of thing.
Lord Northbourne
Is the noble Lord aware that there is a large and growing body of research which shows that the quality of parenting and parental care during the weeks before birth and the months after birth is absolutely crucial to the way in which the child’s brain develops? Surely any kind of penny-pinching at that stage of the child’s development is a false economy.
Lord Freud
My Lords, we have to look at a holistic system of support for people who are the most disadvantaged in this country. Having bits and pieces of things that do not work is the wrong way to go. This was an example of support that was directed at the wrong point in maternity. If you want to really help in terms of what women eat, it is better to do it in the first trimester, not in the last. The structure of what we are doing with the universal credit involves a system that puts in coherent support for the most disadvantaged right the way through and, by definition, will catch people at the beginning of pregnancy, not at the end.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, the Minister has admitted rushing through these regulations, totally against time conventions, in order to deprive new mothers of claiming after 11 April. Does he realise that this conjures up a picture of Tory and Liberal hard-faced men sitting around a table in Westminster plotting to deprive the poorest people of some financial aid? Is he proud of that?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am not proud of a previous Government who threw bits and pieces of money around like an out-of-control farmyard muckspreader. We are making coherent provision for the most disadvantaged in a way that you could not.
Insurance: Gender Discrimination
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Gordon of Strathblane
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intervened in the case before the European Court of Justice on gender discrimination in insurance policies and annuities.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the UK Government, along with a number of other member states, the European Council and the Commission made oral and written representations to the European Court of Justice during legal proceedings. The representations argued that, rather than preventing true equality, the article in question ensured that different cases could be treated differently, thereby ensuring true equality. However, the court has ruled that the practice of using gender as a factor in the calculation of premiums and benefits must cease, with effect from 21 December 2012.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane
I thank the Minister for that reply, and I sense that she was as unhappy with it as I and, I suspect, most of the House will be. The problem is that article 5.2 of the gender directive, as the Minister indicated, allowed an opt-out where there was clear, up-to-date statistical evidence that gender was a major risk factor in insurance. That evidence still exists. It is a fact that women tend to live longer than men, yet an insurer is required by the court to ignore that in computing either insurance premiums or annuity rates. Does the Minister agree that it is likely that all of us will be worse off, because a sensible and prudent insurer must provide for the worst-case scenario and cannot predict whether the uptake will be mainly male or female? What steps are the Government taking to remedy this situation, bearing in mind, as she said, that we are not alone? Indeed, the European Commission itself intervened in the case.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord has referred to a number of very difficult decisions that had to be taken. We are disappointed by the ruling. The previous Government made written representations and we made oral representations, but the judges unfortunately decided that by 21 December 2012 it will be illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender. It is clearly undesirable to treat people unfairly because of their sex. However, financial services providers will be allowed a period in which to make the changes. We are encouraged that people have supported our drive for equality. Unfortunately, things such as this make our task much more difficult. I am pleased to say that the insurance industry has adopted a can-do attitude to this ruling, and I am sure that we will do our very best as a Government to assist it.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, what steps have the Government taken to discuss this judgment with the insurance industry in order to prevent profiteering? Why has my stepdaughter's motor premium gone up now, when there will be no difference until December 2012?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend raises another very important issue. We cannot dictate to insurance companies how they should make judgments on how their premiums should be costed. However, we are working closely with insurance companies and the financial services sector to ensure that they do not roll out unfair premiums on the back of this ruling.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, it is a pretty remarkable day when an insurance market is instructed to operate contrary to actuarial principles. Are there not two things that could flow from this? Either everybody will be forced to buy their insurance within the EU by some means or other, which would surely be contrary to both the spirit and the letter of our WTO commitments; or those categories of people disadvantaged under the new ruling will simply buy their annuities or motor cover offshore, outside the EU, in the United States, Canada, Bermuda, the Channel Islands or wherever. In those circumstances, a substantial industry will develop offshore to supply those important segments of the EU market at the expense of the EU economy.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord raises a question that I posed to civil servants. The response I received was that any insurance sold in the EU, whether or not it is from outside the EU, will be applicable under these rules.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the predicament of the noble Baroness, but perhaps she would tell the House whether the Government, if they had the choice, would support the payment of equal annuities to men and women who have earned an equal financial entitlement to them, rather than continuing with the existing system in which a woman gets considerably less just because her average life expectancy is a few months more.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises very important questions. However, the responses to these questions are for the industry to make.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, does not this demonstrate that on this occasion the Court behaved as a court of injustice?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend raises a good point, but I am afraid that I have to go by the ruling, as we all do as members of the EU.
Lord Peston
It is about time a Labour speaker was allowed to join in, unless they have changed the rules of the House. First, I will break a lifetime's habit and congratulate the Minister on the excellence of her answers. Is she absolutely certain that there is nothing Her Majesty's Government can do to move back on this matter? It is immensely damaging to the workings of the insurance market, which will be immensely damaging for our country in particular. Can nothing be done to get this reversed?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the Government will continue, with other member states, to press to see what can be done, but I am afraid that there is no appeals process under the ruling.
Business of the House
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That Standing Order 46 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Wednesday 9 March to allow the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) (No. 2) Bill to be taken through its remaining stages that day.
Draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extension) Bills
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That it is expedient that a joint committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on the draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extension) Bills presented to both Houses on 11 February (Cm 8018) and that the committee should report on the draft Bills by 9 June.
Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work Experience) (Amendment) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Freud
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 26 January be approved.
Relevant document: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 2 March.
Postal Services Bill
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, the Government propose to sell off 100 per cent of Royal Mail, which may be regarded as one of our oldest public services, dating back to the 17th century. It will be the sale of one of our greatest and most cherished national institutions. It has a noble history in the development of the culture, social cohesion and economic strength of this nation, and today it still provides a vital public service. Richard Hooper has described the sale as a momentous step by any standard, as I am sure the whole House appreciates, whether or not they support the move.
We and fellow Peers of several and no party affiliations have submitted amendments which seek to ensure that, if the sale of Royal Mail goes ahead, it meets four main objectives: first, that it is done in a timely fashion that does not present the prospect of an endless cloud of doubt hanging over the future of the company; secondly, that proper measures are taken to ensure that value for money is gained for the taxpayer and that the company is not sold at too low a price; thirdly, that there is greater clarity and greater accountability than the Bill currently provides; and, fourthly, that a privatised Royal Mail is put on a secure footing and is not subject to the ravages of asset-stripping and disintegration or doomed to failure because of the circumstances that the Bill creates.
The amendment to make provision for a sunset clause aims to meet the first of those objectives, ensuring that any sale takes place in a timely fashion without a long-lasting aura of uncertainty besetting the company. Sunset clauses are well recognised. Indeed, Members, regardless of party affiliation, have argued for them in the past in various pieces of legislation, as I well remember. In fact, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, stated in another place in June 2009:
“I also welcome the fact that there is a sunset clause. As other hon. Members have pointed out, sunset clauses are, in principle, a very good thing to include in any legislation”.—[Official Report, Commons, Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Public Bill Committee, 10/06/09; col. 13.]
If the Government had provided for a sunset clause in the Bill, there would be no need to debate this amendment. As they have not, perhaps a few examples of sunset clauses and their use would help the Committee. In 2009, interestingly, the Conservatives in Scotland argued that sunset clauses should be added to all Scottish legislation. I am sure that Conservative Members of this House will support that position, given that it was stated in their party’s manifesto in 2007. The debt relief Act 2010 has a sunset clause which expires on 7 June 2011, which neither of the coalition parties voted against. In the Budget of June last year, regulatory sunset clauses were announced—a well tried and recognised tool for Parliament and, indeed, the Government to use.
How would the amendment assist in the progress of this Bill? The answer is fairly straightforward: it would add clarity. The Labour Party’s position on 100 per cent privatisation of Royal Mail has been made clear. However, if the Government’s proposals to privatise Royal Mail completely were approved by this House and the other place, the amendment would put a time limit on the Government’s ability to sell off Royal Mail. Setting a relevant date would add certainty for the business and, indeed, for the workforce—certainty that is currently lacking in the Bill.
As it stands, the Bill empowers not only this Government but future Governments to sell off Royal Mail. That process could go on and on. The Minister in the other place has made it clear that he would not intend to sell Royal Mail however low the price. That is a sound position and one with which we would agree. The Bill permits a period of uncertainty to continue not just into next year but possibly into the year after and even longer. That would be an intolerable position for Royal Mail, its management and its workforce. It would place the chief executive of the company in a perilous and uncertain position, which perhaps could be compared with that of a modern-day Premier League football manager at certain clubs, where team continuity has little value. It would damage the morale among the workforce too.
If the amendment were passed, it would not, of course, rule out a future disposal of some or all of the company; but it would require the Government to return to the House if they failed to dispose of Royal Mail by 31 December 2012. We deliberately selected a date which we felt is achievable and viable, rather than a date that could lead to this being characterised as a wrecking amendment.
As we proceed we shall put to the Minister other proposals that outline other areas where we would want them to come back to the House in order to do certain things. This amendment would not prevent the Government selling Royal Mail at another point in the future provided that the sunset clause is repealed. However, the Government have given no indication of a timetable for the sell-off. These amendments—one of which I hope the Government will accept—would enable this Government or a future Government to sell off Royal Mail and also ensure that the matter is not drawn out over many years. Without a sunset clause, the business, the employees, the partners in the Post Office, not to mention its business customers and the public, would be left in a strange limbo-land with no conclusion in sight. That would create massive uncertainty for the business. That could not be seen as an attraction to potential employees and customers, who could be driven away from the business by such massive uncertainty.
An unrestricted time limit could also act as a mechanism to drive down the price of the business. We are told that letter volumes will continue to fall and that the business can modernise only with private investment—so how would a long delay be helpful? The Minister needs to address that issue. Market conditions would likely get worse, and a period of uncertainty would surely make it very difficult to succeed in modernisation or to make proper investment decisions. Can the Minister tell us what impact an extended period of uncertainty would have on the value of the business, and therefore on the value for taxpayers? What will be the impact on employees of the falling value of the share participation scheme, if the legislation is approved?
As for the counterargument that a sunset clause would lead the Government to go for a fire sale of Royal Mail to get ahead of the time limit, the Government have already said that they will not sell Royal Mail at “any price”. As I said, that is a sound position. It would show very little faith in the current Government to think that they would put making an expedient sale before gaining best value for money.
This amendment is reasonable and necessary. It is called holding the Government to account. The legislation timetable is in the Government’s control. If the Government have the will, we will encourage and support the Minister—as we expect her to support our amendments. We will support her in bringing matters to the House and dealing with them as quickly as possible.
The Bill currently provides for the creation of a situation which is similar to the perpetual “sales” at retail outlets. As we all know, there is no rush to get to Currys, Dixons or wherever to buy new electrical goods because the “sale” does not really exist—it is perpetual. A perpetual sale drives down the price. Nothing in the Bill seems to prevent Royal Mail being sold off piecemeal over an extended period, as I said. Even the Minister must agree that that cannot be an acceptable solution. If the Government cannot complete a sale by one of the dates stipulated in the amendments, my honourable friends and I think it right and proper for the sunset clause to be enacted.
The amendments would impose on the Government a requirement to focus on their ambitions—which, as I said, are contrary to mine and those of my honourable friends. The alternative of death by a thousand cuts would wreck the Royal Mail and the improvements made recently, which even Richard Hooper could not envisage happening in 2008, at the time of his first report. The second Hooper report showed that good progress can be made with public ownership of the Royal Mail. It is vital that that is not unpicked and allowed to fall into disarray. The Bill, however, creates the opportunity for that kind of uncertainty. If the Minister and the Government are so sure that selling it off is a good thing, they should tell the Committee about the dangers of an extended period of sale. Indeed, it could be said that an extended sale period for Royal Mail might lead to a Dutch auction of sorts, which may suit some potential buyers more than others.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
My Lords, what a remarkable performance. I enjoyed the 14-minute speech by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, for a number of reasons, but first, I join him in paying tribute to Richard Hooper and say what a remarkable job he has done for Royal Mail. We were all thrilled when he was present at the Oscar ceremony when his son Tom won the best director award, one of the many awards for “The King’s Speech”.
The noble Lord made a remarkable presentation arguing in favour of a sunset clause when, thanks to the noble Lord when he was in Government, we are still awaiting sunrise. The great period of massive uncertainty that he described is wholly as a result of the previous Government’s inability to take the previous Bill through the other place after we had spent many hours improving it. I also heard him say that we must not have the Royal Mail engaging in some strange limbo-land. All I will say is that that is exactly what we had. The great thing now is that we have a Government determined to realise the ambitions of all those of us who care deeply about the Royal Mail and make it a great success. I share the noble Lord’s four principles, but I say to him that when he makes the first principle “timely”, I wish that he might have expressed some regret about the fact that the previous Bill did not proceed any further when it should have done. Of course he is right to say that we have to look for value for money, clarity and a secure footing. The great thing I have learnt from that remarkable lady, Moya Greene, is that she is determined to make Royal Mail the most respected institution in the UK. That is something she achieved with Canada Post, and I am a great admirer. Please, whatever the arguments for or against sunset clauses, let us have sunrise, let us get on with it.
Lord Hoyle
I was not going to rise, but I am going to rise and there may be other occasions when I rise when we hear the eloquence of the noble Lord opposite. I notice that he did not reply to the argument being put forward here about the uncertainty that would rest with Royal Mail unless there is a conclusion date. The question that was being asked was, “Are they going to give it away?”. I know that the Minister is a more reasonable person, and I expect that she will deal with the arguments rather than going round the periphery and talking about what might or might not have been. The pair of us had a little discussion. We did not always agree, although on other subjects in the past we have agreed, so we have something in common, but not on this. I hope the noble Lord will not rise again unless he is going to deal with the arguments in a constructive way and say why we should not have it. The reason is that we cannot allow uncertainty to continue. That will happen. How can management plan ahead if it has to keep asking itself: When will we be selling it off? How will we sell it off? Where are we going to go? No planning can take place in such circumstances. It not only affects the Royal Mail; it affects the Post Office network as well. We need to know what the Government are thinking. They have said, and I completely agree with them, that it will not be a giveaway. They are trying to get the right price with the right company that will serve the interest. I, of course, am totally against that, as is known. The point is that we are where we are in discussing this Bill, and it is reasonable to put a limit on this. After all, we are only at the beginning of 2011 and we are talking about the end of 2012. What is wrong with that? I do hope that we get a more constructive reply from the Minister.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I should, I suppose, confess to something of a wicked past. Back when I was a banker in the United States, part of my work was advising companies that were making purchases and selling off subsidiaries. If I was advising a potential buyer of Royal Mail, I would be hoping very much that this amendment would pass, because, frankly, nothing would give more leverage to a potential purchaser than what in effect is being described here as a drop-dead date.
We have seen government in the past sell assets at far below their appropriate value. I was very involved from the other side when I was on the board of Transport for London and the Government insisted on the Tube public/private partnership. TfL set itself internal deadlines. I do not believe that they were externally set, although I would have to check that. The ability to negotiate in effect collapsed in the final days as those deadlines approached and were very much exploited by the private partners and the banks on the other side, so I beg this House not to fall back into that trap.
The noble Lord discussed uncertainty, but what greater uncertainty could there be than the knowledge that the Government might find themselves coming back to this House at the time of a sunset clause for leave to continue with a sales programme. That maximises uncertainty for Royal Mail and for the other parts of the group that will, we hope, go on to their new future.
Lord Jones of Birmingham
My Lords, I concur with the noble Baroness. If this amendment was passed, there would be no activity whatever until about November 2012. As noble Lords will know, I spend a lot of my time in the corporate private sector, and I can tell the House that a lot of companies would just wait. There would then be a lot of activity in December 2012, and the Government would find themselves selling this at a price that none of us would want.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, I must be the only person in this Committee, certainly in the House, who regrets not having spoken on this Bill at Second Reading. I did not do so because I was pursuing my day job as a director of a mail-order company. There is a temptation on these occasions to give a Second Reading speech, but I have no intention whatever of doing that. On this amendment, however, I agree with both my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that putting a final date into this legislation would make things even more difficult for the Post Office management. I have been advised that the point that I really want to make about Clause 1, and would have made on Clause 1 stand part, is deprecated by Standing Orders. Therefore, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, but I will speak no more about my reactions to this amendment.
I bring to the House’s attention Clause 1(2), which is gratuitous. The nuts and bolts of this Bill are contained in Clauses 1 and 4. Clause 1(1) removes from the statute book Sections 65 and 67 of the Postal Services Act 2000, and Clause 4 replaces them with a new formulation. My contention is that it would be far better drafting of this legislation if those two clauses were combined and we therefore left out Clause 1(2).
Over many years, I have been interested in the size and length of the statute book. Anything we can do to reduce the number of words or even the number of pages we should certainly do. I do not expect an answer on this conundrum that I have set myself from the Minister today. She has already instructed officials to give me some sort of answer, which I do not find particularly convincing. I would be happy to have discussions with her and them between now and the next stage of the Bill.
Lord Borrie
Like the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, I have been interested to read Clause 1(2). It seems to be inelegantly worded, confusing and surplus to requirements. Why is it inelegant? Does one normally have the words “But see” another clause? It seems more like a text message or an e-mail rather than a provision in a Bill. Why is it confusing? Its position is confusing because essentially the first three clauses deal with Royal Mail. Clause 4 deals with the Post Office network. The Government properly have a different attitude from one to the other and so, I am sure, does my own Front Bench. Subsequent clauses deal with the network and there is no need for this cross-reference inelegantly expressed in Clause 1(2). I share the noble Lord’s view about that.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I, too, apologise for not having been present at Second Reading, but I support my noble friend Lady Kramer and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, on the Cross Benches. This amendment may be based on a misunderstanding. If there is to be a successful deal to move Royal Mail on and to bring in private capital, that deal will need to be set up by the board of Royal Mail and the chief executive of Royal Mail. It will not be set up by the Secretary of State, who I hope will stay right out of any negotiations that might take place to achieve that deal. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, seemed to expect the Secretary of State to play an active role, which is completely mistaken.
Lord Christopher
I was not going to speak on this amendment, but I have been provoked. I hope that the Minister will answer directly the question just asked from behind her on whether the Government will have some say on the sale or whether it will be left exclusively to the board of Royal Mail. I do not think that it should. One issue has not been mentioned in this discussion. While there may be much anxiety about the hope that by Christmas 2012 we can all go back to where we were, underlying this is another issue—on this matter I hope that the noble Baroness will have something to say. As I said at Second Reading, it is easier to say to whom you would not wish to sell Royal Mail than it is to say to whom you would. There is such a lack of clarity on this that the Government need to give reassurance. Would we, for example, be prepared to see it sold to a hedge fund? Would we be prepared to see it sold to a private equity fund? Would we be prepared to see it sold to a sovereign wealth fund? If so, would that be to all, to none or to some?
I have one final point on this issue. Would we sell it to any buyer with a reputation for asset stripping? I hope to come to this point on a later amendment, but I believe that unless we get the price right, there are assets in Royal Mail which could easily be sold at a very significant profit.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, I wonder whether it would be okay with your Lordships if I deal with the question put by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, before moving on to the amendment. Clause 1(2) ensures that the two major issues under Part 1, the ownership of Royal Mail and the ownership of Post Office Ltd, are addressed in the very first clause. We believe that, given their importance, this is appropriate. The purpose of subsection (2) is to assist the reader in understanding the full implications of the Bill. It is intended to highlight the relevant provisions that appear further on in the Bill and of which the reader might not yet be aware. Without subsection (2), the clause may read as lifting the restrictions on ownership of Post Office Ltd with no indication that new restrictions have been put in place further on in the Bill.
While the majority of readers will look at the full Bill and draw up relevant connections, we believe it is important to consider how to make the Bill accessible to those who may be unfamiliar with legislative text or to those with an interest in one particular aspect of the policy. It is these readers who may look at what they believe are the relevant provisions and then fail to see the other relevant provisions further on. Provisions such as Clause 1(2) are designed to assist readers by making explicit any interdependencies between clauses. Furthermore, subsection (2) ensures that the two major issues in Part 1—ownership of Royal Mail and ownership of Post Office Ltd—are addressed in the very first clause, thus reflecting their importance. I hope that this explanation addresses the concerns of noble Lords, but I am sure that they will come back for further clarification if they feel that we have not been able to cover the point at this stage.
Lord Lea of Crondall
As someone who is not directly involved in this, perhaps I may make an observation. It is plain common sense for the noble Baroness to say, in the light of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and my noble friend Lord Borrie, that it is no big deal, but this is not language appropriate to an Act of Parliament. Quite simply, will she agree to think about some answers on the back of a postcard before we move on to the next stage of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, I would not put it quite as rudely or as crudely as the noble Lord opposite has just done. However, I did suggest in my few words that the draftsmen ought to look at combining Clause 1(1) with Clause 4 and then putting that at the very beginning of the Bill. I noted that my noble friend did not respond to the suggestion, but as I said, I do not expect her to do so now. I am sure she has many more important things to do, such as responding to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, which I am sure she will do in her usual adequate fashion. All I am asking for is future discussions, and from what my noble friend has just said, I am sure that she would find that acceptable.
Baroness Wilcox
I thank my noble friend and of course I will be happy to speak to him afterwards, at any time that is convenient to him. I should now turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, otherwise we may be here for much longer than we anticipated.
I believe that Clause 1 exposes the real difference between the previous Government’s approach as set out in their 2009 Bill to the fundamental problems facing Royal Mail, and the approach that this Government are taking to secure the company’s future. Setting aside the ownership issue for a moment, I think it is clear to everyone that the powers in the Bill to tackle the pension deficit and regulation are either the same as or very similar to those provided in the 2009 Bill. This is perhaps not surprising as we have based our Bill on the same evidence, that of the Hooper report, as the previous Government. However, we have not simply produced a cut-and-paste Bill. As we will discuss during this Committee stage, we have included new regulatory measures to safeguard the universal postal service and introduced fresh ideas on employee ownership and the potential of a mutual ownership structure for the post office network.
All sides of the House agreed with the analysis contained in Richard Hooper’s 2008 report. We all agreed that the current framework was untenable and that urgent action needed to be taken if we were to secure the universal postal service for the benefit of all postal service users, both business and social.
Richard Hooper’s recent update showed that the situation is now much worse than it was in 2008. In fact, he described the Royal Mail’s current position as being “even more precarious”. The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked about the effect on the value of Royal Mail of prolonged uncertainty. I would say to him that it was the failure of the previous Government’s Bill that has caused prolonged uncertainty for Royal Mail and all other postal operators. That is what is putting the universal postal service at risk.
The Bill addresses those problems and creates a framework that will help to secure the future of Royal Mail and maintain the universal postal service. Part 1 sets out provisions relating to the restructuring of the Royal Mail group of companies. The Government committed in the coalition agreement to injecting private sector capital into Royal Mail, including opportunities for employee ownership. We also said that we would retain Post Office Ltd in public ownership, on which the noble Lord, Lord Young, raised a number of points. We will have plenty of opportunity to discuss the Post Office when we debate those clauses dealing specifically with it.
I turn to Amendment 1. The disposal of shares in Royal Mail will be a commercial transaction. The Government’s objective is to ensure that the transaction represents value for money for the taxpayer and secures the future of Royal Mail. In doing so, our overriding objective is to secure the future of the universal postal service. I cannot understand, therefore, why the noble Lords have brought forward this amendment, the substance of which was fully debated in the other place.
By setting a deadline for a disposal, all the commercial advantage would be given to the buyer if we were selling the business by auction. The buyer would know that the Government were up against a deadline, giving him the whip hand in any negotiation, and all sorts of demands could be made as the deadline approached. The amendment would not therefore allow the Government to ensure that they could get value for money from a sale and secure the best future owners for Royal Mail; in our view, it would do the opposite. When I was on the opposition Benches, I was very keen on sunset clauses in legislation and I am not opposed to them now—in fact, in most cases I encourage them—but the proposal set out in this amendment is simply not appropriate to the circumstances.
A failing of the previous Government’s policy on Royal Mail was that it tried to do too much at the same time by running the legislative and the sale processes in parallel. We have decided to take a staged approach; our first priority is passing the Postal Services Bill to allow the framework for action. The Government will then bring into force the new regulatory regime. Only then will we start the process to introduce private sector investment, including the employee share scheme and the pension solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked what the Government would do if they could not sell Royal Mail before the end of the current modernisation plan. Through this Bill, the Government are taking the preparatory steps necessary to enable Royal Mail to attract the private capital that it needs. As noble Lords will appreciate, the timing will depend on when we can best secure our twin objectives of the best outcome for Royal Mail and the best outcome for the taxpayer. The Government are focused on ensuring that Royal Mail can attract private investment, not on putting new obstacles in its way.
An integral aspect of the Bill is that it allows flexibility, because that is what any sensible commercial shareholder would retain for themselves. Such flexibility enables the Government to decide when to conduct a disposal of shares and how to do it, either through a trade sale or a flotation. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hunt, who said, as did the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that we want no artificial deadlines. Although I do not agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said, I do agree that we want the right price and the right company, and for that we must wait our time until the right moment. I thank my noble friends Lady Kramer and Lord Eccles for their support.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, that I hope we will be flexible, get a really good deal for the taxpayer and make sure, as always, that we support the universal service. The proposal in the amendment is, I fear, impractical and would risk the future of the very universal postal service that we are all trying to save. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Young, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I have obviously reflected on the range of answers and it is no surprise that I do not agree with all the analyses. What is past is past but perhaps there will be a new dawn, to paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Hoyle that the amendment is justified. I was confused by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I was not sure whether or not she was supporting the amendment but, at the end, I gathered not because she tended to concur with the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that, apparently, no one is going to do anything at all and they are going to wait until 20 December, or whenever it is. I find that unlikely.
As regards the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and my noble friend Lord Borrie, I quite like the idea of the Bill being drafted by committee. It would take a long time and I doubt whether it would be any more elegant or inelegant than it is currently. From my experience of dealing with parliamentary draftsmen, it is a painful and tortuous process to sort out what is required or what they tell you is required. I wish the Minister the best of luck in sorting out that particular problem.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Christopher; I am sure the Government will be involved in the sale. The Minister pointed out the possibilities and I cannot conceive of a situation where the Government will hand this over lock, stock and barrel to Royal Mail. She did not answer the question posed by my noble friend Lord Christopher about whether it could be sold to a hedge fund or a sovereign wealth fund and the dangers of asset-strippers.
I made clear at the outset that this is not intended to be a wrecking amendment; that is why it refers to 31 December 2012. As to whether the situation is much worse, it is challenging but, in one respect, it is better because we have an agreement on Royal Mail transformation with the union and modernisation is going ahead, which is a profound step forward. I will not say that mistakes were not made but there is now a good foundation and a good relationship between management and the union, which is fundamentally important to long-term success.
As to the deadline giving buyers the advantage, that depends on whether you believe that everyone will wait until the end. I find that unlikely.
We will obviously reflect on what has been said by the Minister. However, we would ask her to reflect on whether or not there should be any timescale at all in relation to the projected sale. Nevertheless, in the light of the debate, I will withdraw the amendment.
“Royal Mail companies to be publicly owned
(1) Each Royal Mail company must at all times be publicly owned.
(2) Accordingly—
(a) any issue or transfer of shares in a company will have no effect if it would cause a Royal Mail company to cease to be publicly owned, and(b) any issue or transfer of share rights to a person will have no effect if the acquisition by the person of the shares to which the share rights relate would cause a Royal Mail company to cease to be publicly owned.”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Under Clause 1, the Government have made it clear that they propose to sell off 100 per cent, albeit with 10 per cent employee shares, of Royal Mail—which may, as I have already said, be regarded as one our of oldest public services. It is the sale of a great public institution; it has a noble history in the development of the culture, social cohesion and economic strength of the nation and still provides a vital public service.
For 350 years, Royal Mail has been, to all intents and purposes, a public service and is seen as a huge and valuable asset run in the national interest. One should not underestimate the importance of a trusted, secure and relatively efficient means of common communication for our economic and social development as a nation. Indeed, it became a template copied around the world. The penny post introduced by Rowland Hill was arguably as vital to this country’s development as the railway or the electricity grid.
Turning to the modern day, I also pay tribute to Richard Hooper, who described the Royal Mail and the service it provides as part of the UK’s “economic and social glue”, binding communities together. That is an elegant and apposite description. Many noble Lords have praised the work of the Royal Mail and the social value of the country’s 11,900 local post offices. Let us also remember that, despite the fact that we send fewer letters than we used to, in common with people in developed countries around the world, the Royal Mail still delivers some 70 millions letters a day to the 28 million homes and businesses in the United Kingdom.
The 100 per cent sale of one of our greatest and most cherished national institutions is therefore a momentous step by any standard, as I am sure all noble Lords appreciate, whether or not they support this move. We on these Benches will ensure that the Bill receives the line-by-line scrutiny at which this House excels in order to gain greater clarity and provide greater assurance for the future.
It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, has disappeared from his vantage point because at Second Reading he remarked that the debate seemed to him a little like Groundhog Day. My noble friend behind me has explored the relative merits and demerits of Groundhog Day and I am not going to go through that again. He said the debate had,
“a remarkably similar feel to it to many others that we have had. Of course, we had the Second Reading of a Postal Services Bill on Tuesday 10 March 2009”.—[Official Report, 16/2/11; col. 734.]
Yet perhaps his mind was wandering back to an earlier era because the history of attempts to privatise the Post Office goes back much further than just two years. The noble Lord was a serving member of the previous Conservative Government as Secretary of State for Wales from 1990 to 1993 and then in a number of positions. He earned a great deal of respect across the political spectrum for the way in which he conducted himself during that time but I must remind the noble Lord and the House that, for a good deal of that period, the privatisation of the Post Office was a burning issue of debate, especially between 1992 and 1995.
On 30 July 1992, the Financial Times reported:
“In a departure from previous policy, Mr Michael Heseltine”—
as he was at that time—
“trade and industry secretary, put privatisation of the Post Office on the political agenda”.
Some 18 months later, on 14 December 1993, the Independent newspaper reported under the headline,
“Post Office in ‘crisis’ over Tory delay”,
that,
“the Government came under a barrage of criticism yesterday over the year-long delay in deciding whether to privatise the Post Office”.
Delay and privatisation has an honourable—or dishonourable—history. There have certainly been a number of attempts to resolve this problem.
On 2 February 1994, the Independent reported that full-scale,
“privatisation of the Post Office is still on the political agenda, Michael Heseltine said last night … after it had been shelved by the Cabinet in the face of opposition from ministerial colleagues”.
There is certainly a sense of déjà vu about that.
On 19 May 1994, a Green Paper on postal reform was at long last published. It proposed 100 per cent privatisation of the Royal Mail with a Stock Exchange flotation to the public and employees, and another option of 51 per cent privatisation of Royal Mail. The Post Office network would be kept under the existing arrangements and the Post Office management supported a 100 per cent sale. However, the records show that that met with considerable opposition from much of the public and Back-Bench Conservative MPs. That is an interesting scenario.
In November 1994, a newspaper reported that:
“Michael Heseltine put a last-ditch compromise to leading Tory backbench rebels”.
It certainly was the last ditch; although he did not die in it, the attempt to privatise certainly did. So there are certainly a few echoes in that report.
There was a further twist in the tale. The Cabinet considered the privatisation plan and decided against it. Some members of that Cabinet at the time are Members of this House today. I feel sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will remember why they concluded that privatising the Royal Mail was a privatisation too far. Maybe these thoughts were in the noble Lord’s mind when he was experiencing his bout of déjà vu and teasing the Opposition Front Bench today.
I make these remarks not only as a mild riposte to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the 2009 Bill but to illustrate that the future of Royal Mail and the Post Office network is an important issue that has prompted heated debate for many years. What a shame we cannot rewind—but Hansard will reveal all.
The noble Lord reminded us that all the Front Benches were in favour of the Postal Services Bill 2009. Indeed they were, but I remind noble Lords that the Bill before the House at that time did not propose 100 per cent privatisation of Royal Mail. Indeed, it was remarked at the time that no one was proposing 100 per cent privatisation. The Bill stated explicitly that each Royal Mail company must be publicly owned; that is, they must be in overall public ownership. The previous Bill of 2000, still in force today, permits joint ventures between Royal Mail and private companies. That has been a good thing—for example, in relation to GLS. The 2009 Bill permitted a minority partnership. What neither Bill permitted was 100 per cent privatisation, which the Bill before us proposes. That is the nub of the difference and, I suppose, of this amendment.
Amendment 2 is intended to reinsert the provision of the 2009 Bill that each Royal Mail company must be in overall—I stress “overall”—public ownership. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, observed, all the Front Benches at the time and indeed the Liberal Democrats supported that proposition.
Perhaps there was a change of heart at the general election. One might find a clue in the manifestos of the two parties that came together to form the Government. If you search for the privatisation proposals contained in the Postal Services Bill in the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos of 2010, though, I am afraid that you will search in vain. The Liberal Democrat manifesto clearly rejected 100 per cent privatisation of Royal Mail. It pledged to:
“Give both Royal Mail and post offices a long-term future, by separating Post Office Ltd from the Royal Mail and retaining Post Office Ltd in full public ownership. 49 per cent of Royal Mail will be sold to create funds for investment. The ownership of the other 51 per cent will be divided between an employee trust and the government”.
No doubt Liberal Democrat Members will tell us that things have changed fundamentally since they wrote that manifesto, as they have done on a whole range of other issues that I will not refer to today.
Perhaps the Conservative manifesto will be more enlightening. It was enticingly entitled Invitation to Join the Government of Britain. Did we miss something? Was it really an exclusive appeal to Liberal Democrat MPs and Peers? One can scour the contents of the Conservative manifesto from start to finish but there is no mention at all of Post Office privatisation.
During debates in 2009, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, criticised the previous Secretary of State for introducing a Bill with insufficient consultation, but by comparison this Bill is being pressed through with breathtaking speed. The Government carried out no public consultation on their proposal to privatise 100 per cent of Royal Mail. There was no Green Paper or White Paper. Questioned in another place, the Minister for Postal Affairs did not deny this but seemed unapologetic in the extreme. He said,
“We could, of course, consult again on some other idea. We could consult again and keep consulting. We could never take a decision”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/10; col. 222.]
We are not suggesting that the Government should keep consulting but some consultation might have been of value, given the number of times that I remember receiving criticism when we were in government if there was not enough pre-legislative scrutiny or consultation. Our debates on Royal Mail have been usefully informed by Richard Hooper’s panel producing two reports in May and December 2008, and being asked by the current Government, sitting alone this time, to review his work in 2010.
We all recognise the technological, social and competitive pressures on postal operators in modern times, including new ways of communicating. Last year Royal Mail experienced a drop of 7 per cent in letter volumes. Other operators are taking advantage of liberalisation and what are now regarded as generous terms for access to Royal Mail networks. If I am pleased about nothing else about my ministerial contribution, our prominent pledge that we were going to get regulation right is something that I hope will be achieved.
Lord Cotter
This amendment is a direct attack on the fundamental principles of the Bill and, indeed, on the necessity of addressing the serious situation of declining turnover and decline in the use of the mail service. The Bill needs to be effective to attract fresh capital and, as has frequently been said, to achieve the spin-off of securing the post office network at the same time. Surely no one can forget—the public certainly cannot—the continuing programme of closures in the post office network over the past few years. That is what the Bill is needed to address. The important part is for the Bill to bring in capital to address not only the issue of the mail service but the matter of the post offices. The input of private-sector capital is essential and the Bill, as it stands, is vital to secure this for the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, said that the Bill is being pushed through with breathtaking speed. He also described the attempts over many years to address the concerns about the mail service. Surely he can see that this is not breathtaking speed. Surely he will agree that we cannot afford to lose any more time. We must proceed to get a solution to our need for a universal mail service in this country.
Lord Skelmersdale
It strikes me that if you juxtapose the first amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, and this amendment, they are diametrically opposed.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I support my noble friend who introduced this amendment. He is quite right: we are talking about a major public institution which—despite what some noble Lords have said—has a great deal of public respect and support. It is always assumed by the present Government that if there is anything wrong you have to privatise. Privatisation is supposed to produce greater efficiency and more investment. That is not always true. I speak as a consumer of several recently privatised services. The first thing that a privatised company does is usually to economise in order to increase the share price for shareholders. That often involves decreasing the number of staff so that when you phone them, instead of talking to a human being, you talk to an automated voice, which says, “If you want this press 1, if you want the other press 2, if you want something else press 3, or hang on to talk to an adviser”. Twenty minutes later, you are still hanging on. That has been my experience of a good many privatised companies. I would not like that to happen to the Royal Mail.
We are talking, as I said, about an organisation that has a lot of public support. I very much hope that the full statement which my noble friend made from the Front Bench will receive intense investigation from the Government, because it is worth considering. This is an important issue and a major one for this Bill.
Lord Hoyle
Does my noble friend not press all the right buttons when she addresses the House? I cannot understand why the Government are going down this road. My noble friend Lord Young remarked on the ability of the new chief executive. She comes with a highly successful track record. Why do we not give her an opportunity to develop the Royal Mail, rather than going down the avenue of selling it off to any Tom, Dick or Harry?
The Government have said that they will try to get an adequate price for Royal Mail. That does not seem to me to be a good reason for what they are doing. Agreement has been reached between the unions and the management on the way forward, and they are willing to co-operate. We do not need to go over the past, as the noble Lord who spoke from the Cross Benches has suggested. We know where we are going. The capital is there. The important difference is that the Government have undertaken to underwrite the pension liability which will lift a great burden from the back of the Post Office.
I come back to the point that we have achieved an awful lot. The capital is available and the unions and management are co-operating. Everybody on both sides admits that we have a new chief executive who is very forward looking and will do all that she can to make the Royal Mail a success, so why are the Government kicking away the ground again? They do not appear to have much idea who will make a bid for Royal Mail. We certainly know that, given the recession, they will not get a good price for it. It seems to me that we are going down the wrong avenue. We on this side certainly support the amendment. My noble friend who spoke from the Front Bench made a very intelligent speech in which he outlined why we want the measure to go ahead. I hope that the Government are listening to what we are saying. I would like them to give the new management of Royal Mail the opportunity to carry out the modernisation. If they do so, I see no reason at all why the privatisation should go ahead.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, following on the same theme as my noble friend Lord Hoyle, it is pertinent to point out that the Minister did not accept the importance of the question posed by my noble friend Lord Christopher on the previous amendment. We have had a broad sweep of what a marvellous idea private capital is. However, we have no idea about guarantees relating to asset-stripping or about country of ownership, sovereign funds and all the other items on the long list. Does that not dent the picture that we are expected to believe in, given that the picture could be this one, that one or another? Would it not be more relevant to mention the interests of the British people, as we are here to represent the interests of society as a whole? They are interested in such things as the universal service, obviously, and in not selling off public assets. It is said that a big profit will not be made from selling the Royal Mail to private business. Is it not relevant to remind noble Lords that in the great wave of privatisations in the 1980s, the undervaluation of British Airways, British Gas and British Telecom alone on the first day of trading amounted to more than £2 billion? That will happen again prima facie unless the noble Baroness can say how the Bill will ensure that that will not occur.
Baroness Wilcox
Amendment 2 seeks to keep Royal Mail in public ownership and reflects the position set out in the previous Government’s Postal Services Bill, which this House considered in 2009, although it never completed its passage through the other place and on to the statute book.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, that I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Young. I take what he says most seriously. I always listen to him and will be doing so throughout the Bill. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, that we are listening and will continue to do so.
I should say first that I am pleased that the amendment indicates that the Opposition continue to accept that the sale of shares in Royal Mail is the right way to secure the future of the universal service and that, as Richard Hooper recommended, an injection of private capital into the company is necessary. My noble friend Lord Cotter supported that also.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested that the Government had not consulted appropriately. The Bill actually draws heavily of the year-long independent review of the universal postal service chaired by Richard Hooper, as did the previous Government’s Bill in 2009. The Bill also draws on the subsequent update by Richard Hooper published in September last year, which was commissioned by the Secretary of State. The original review and the update took evidence from hundreds of organisations and individuals with an interest in the future of the postal sector. For the original report, there were some 200 meetings and 70 written submissions. All major stakeholders in the sector made an input into the review. We feel that that constitutes consultation.
However, the difference between the positions of this Government and the previous Government is that we do not believe that it is necessary for government to retain overall ownership of Royal Mail. The noble Lord, Lord Young, argued that there is no public mandate for this privatisation. The Liberal Democrat manifesto was explicit about the need for private-sector investment and employee shares. The coalition agreement also was explicit. It stated:
“We will seek to ensure an injection of private capital into Royal Mail, including opportunities for employee ownership. We will retain Post Office Ltd in public ownership”.
The Bill is doing exactly what we said we would do.
Indeed, we believe that the Government are the wrong shareholders for Royal Mail, especially at a time when the postal market is undergoing significant change and Royal Mail has to respond to that change. We are not alone in thinking this. Moya Greene, the chief executive officer of Royal Mail, who has been complimented from all sides of the House today, made this clear to the Public Bill Committee in the other place. As I said during the Second Reading of the Bill, public ownership has failed Royal Mail and has not helped it to move with the times and make the changes which it needs to succeed. That is why we need a different approach if we are to safeguard the universal postal service.
Government cannot provide capital fast enough and, as the House knows, every investment that we make has to be cleared by the European Union under state aid rules. With so many competing calls on the public finances, we cannot guarantee that Royal Mail will always have access to the capital that it needs. In addition, we believe that limiting a sale to only a minority of Royal Mail’s shares will reduce our ability to attract the best future owners for the company and secure the best value for the taxpayer. For example, private investors are likely to find it more attractive to invest in Royal Mail if there are no barriers to owning a majority of shares and they can therefore have real control to ensure the future success of the company. I suspect that this was one of the reasons why a buyer could not be found in 2009.
The noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, asked what specific protections against asset-stripping are in the Bill. A number of protections are in place if asset-stripping or other shareholders’ actions become a concern. The protections are contained in the Bill and in other legislation. Ofcom has the power in Clause 35 to imposed designated USP conditions, akin to condition 16 in Royal Mail’s existing licence, that do not allow it to do anything such as asset disposal or make a dividend payment that,
“creates any significant risk that necessary resources will not be available to”,
continue its business. If Royal Mail is found to be breach of its regulatory obligations—
Lord Hoyle
I am listening intently to the Minister, but there is a whining noise and I cannot hear clearly what is being said.
Baroness Wilcox
I think that it was someone's hearing aid that they have now switched off. I will return to the specific protections in the Bill against asset-stripping that could affect the universal service. A number of protections are in place in case asset-stripping or other shareholder actions become a concern. These protections are contained both in the Bill and in other legislation. Ofcom has the power to impose designated USP conditions akin to condition 16 in Royal Mail's existing licence, which does not allow it to do anything that would create a significant risk that necessary resources would not be available to continue its business. If Royal Mail is found to be in breach of its regulatory obligations, Ofcom could fine it up to 10 per cent of the annual turnover of its postal business. On current turnover, this would be more than £650 million.
Directors of a company must act in the way that they consider most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole. If an asset disposal or dividend payment did not meet that test, they would be in breach of that obligation. Royal Mail's debt is secured on its assets, so it is simply not possible to transfer assets away from the business and its debts. The Pensions Regulator may also not allow such behaviour, as it would weaken Royal Mail's covenant to its pensioners. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, will find that helpful.
Lord Christopher
I hear what the noble Baroness says, and I will certainly have another look at the Bill. However, it does not seem that the sale of a particular asset would necessarily interfere one way or the other with the service. For example, if I provide a much cheaper-sited sorting office and sell one that is very valuable for another use, that may not alter the delivery service at all.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Perhaps it would be convenient if I asked for confirmation from the noble Baroness at the same time as she answers the noble Lord, Lord Christopher. We all have the Bill in front of us. If I heard correctly, Clause 35 was drawn to our attention. That does not provide all the requirements that the noble Baroness referred to.
Baroness Wilcox
I am sorry. Ofcom has the power under Clause 35 to impose designated USP conditions akin to condition 16 in Royal Mail's existing licence, which does not allow it to do anything that would create a significant risk that necessary resources would not be available to continue its business. Is the noble Lord saying that his point is not there?
Lord Lea of Crondall
That point covers the universal service. The question of sovereign funds, and the other questions, are not covered by the clause; that is all I am saying.
Baroness Wilcox
Perhaps I may deal with that when we get to Section 35. I turn to the point of noble Lord, Lord Christopher.
Lord Christopher
I will put it in simple terms. If I owned a big sorting office in Oxford, I could sell the site at a good price to the university and build a sorting office outside Oxford. I would not have interfered with the universal service, but I would have made a nice profit.
Viscount Eccles
Perhaps I might ask the noble Lord whether he would describe that as asset-stripping.
Viscount Eccles
Many of us would describe it as a very sensible piece of business.
Lord Skelmersdale
Not only that, but the Post Office could do the same thing under the current arrangements and no one would complain.
Baroness Kramer
Is it not correct that in negotiating the sale of the shares, the value of property that could be disposed of would be considered as part of the mechanism for valuing the company?
Baroness Wilcox
I am much supported by my noble friends on this side. They have given every answer that I could give at this stage and I am very grateful to them. I return to Amendment 2 and ask the noble Lord to withdraw it. I am sorry that it is such a long time since I made my argument. I hope that he has kindly remembered it.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall address a few of the points that were made. The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, and I do not normally find ourselves so diametrically opposed. We do not see this as a fundamental attack; we see it as a different approach and one that we believe is well worth opposing, given the importance of the decision to privatise Royal Mail 100 per cent. We do not think that putting to the Committee an alternative solution, which was almost unanimously approved by this House, is a fundamental attack.
The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said that I contradicted myself with Amendments 1 and 2. I do not believe that that is the case. We have to take into account a number of eventualities, depending on how the Bill progresses.
My noble friend Lady Turner reminded us that privatisation is not necessarily always beneficial or effective. My noble friend Lord Lea made an interesting point about undervaluations in previous privatisations, and that should be a warning to the Minister about the importance of getting the sale right.
The sale of shares draws heavily on the Hooper report, and I would not disagree with that. We are not proposing that there should not be any external investment, but there is a fundamental difference between that and a 100 per cent sale. As we go through the Bill, I think that it will pose some difficult problems, one of which—the inter-business agreement and the ability to get satisfactory assurances in that area—we will explore in greater detail.
I shall obviously reflect on this debate. I await Report stage with interest, and we shall see whether we return to this subject then. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Before making a decision referred to in subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall cause to be laid before Parliament a report setting out how the value of the shares in the Royal Mail Group to be disposed of has been assessed, including an independent overall valuation placed on the business.”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I was sorry to hear the Minister say a few moments ago that she was looking forward to debating with my noble friend Lord Young and to listening to what he had to say, because I am going to interpose in that relationship. I hope that that is not to her discomfort or concern. However, we want to give my noble friend a rest and to allow him to come back even more vigorously.
This amendment places a duty on the Secretary of State such that, before making a relevant disposal, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report setting out how the value of shares in the Royal Mail Group has been assessed and, with this, she or he must provide an independent report of the value being placed on the business.
This is a straightforward amendment and it has, perhaps uniquely, the support of such diverse groups as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Communication Workers Union. If I may say so, its beauty is in its simplicity, but its logic is derived from the experience of privatisations long past.
Several noble Lords have mentioned the sell-offs of British Gas and British Telecom. The British Gas share issue totalled £9 billion in 1986—at that time, the highest-ever equity sale on the UK stock market. However, within a year the value of those shares, initially at £1.35, had risen significantly. A few years before that, in 1982 in the first of the big privatisations, the share price of British Telecom rose 40p on the day after the shares were sold, making an immediate and tidy profit for investors.
Of course, those were different times, and a privatised Royal Mail is neither British Gas nor British Telecom, but what links these original privatisations to the present day is a worry that, in the rush to get this show on the road, the Government appear to be glossing over the fundamental question which would surely occur to anyone selling anything, whether it is a watch on eBay, a second-hand car or a company the size of Royal Mail. What is it worth?
Valuation is an art. Some of the value can of course be derived from the assets, the stocks and the history of trading. Removing the pension liabilities is a huge start in this case, but it is also worth pointing out that a long-run inter-business agreement with the Post Office and a firm commitment to use the Royal Mail by government departments will be material facts in any calculation of value. Valuation is a two-way process. It is often conceived as a willing-buyer/willing-seller situation, and we hope that that will be the case in this sale. How different would it be if there were a forced sale or no ready buyer and we had to think of other ways to try to get rid of the assets? That would change the way in which the valuation was approached.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, it is often said that it is a fallacy that the price is much lower than the value soon after privatisation. It is a matter of the scale of the difference. I have some data on the big privatisations that took place under the Conservative Government. In one year, the average share issue premium on major shares issued was 7 per cent. On privatisation issues the average premium on the first day of trading was 77 per cent. That is 10 times more. Is that not prima facie evidence that the public tend not to get a good deal on these big privatisation issues?
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, we are dealing with a very different situation here. Unless and until the Bill becomes an Act and the pension issue is resolved for the time being, it would be a very bold person who said that you could put any value on Royal Mail. In the context of a willing-buyer willing-seller market, I do not think that you will find a willing buyer. Even if the buyer thought that the business was residually worth something, he would not want to enter into the deal. This amendment goes to the same point. In a willing-buyer willing-seller deal, neither the seller nor the buyer wants to know exactly how the sums have been worked out and if they thought that the sums had to be submitted to a third party and debated in this Chamber as a matter of parliamentary interest, I think you would scupper almost any deal.
Lord Christopher
My Lords, I do not understand what has just been said. However it is done, someone somewhere in Government has to decide whether the Royal Mail is worth X. The issue in front of us is how to arrive at X. I am very sceptical about whether Royal Mail knows what it owns.
To take a trite example, there are some valuable stamp collections in this country: Her Majesty has one, the Board of Inland Revenue has another and, I understand, the Post Office has one. The Revenue’s collection used to be displayed in cases as you walked into Somerset House. A representative of Stanley Gibbons walked in to ask the chairman, “Do you know what you have in those glass cases?”—there were three big ones. The answer was that it was worth well over £1 million. I think that the Post Office has a stamp collection, but I am pretty sure that no one there knows what it is worth. The outfit could well be sold lock, stock and barrel and then someone opens a safe one day and finds all those stamps.
There should be a proper valuation of all the assets of Royal Mail and the Post Office, because it will be divided up. Until that is done, we cannot satisfy the British people that we are asking a fair price. I do not complain about a modest discount, but we should have a clear idea of what assets we have. I will use my mythical Oxford sorting office as an example. What is it worth? An acre of land in most parts of the country is worth £5,000. With planning permission, it is worth nearly £1 million. Unless we explore the assets and ensure that we have an objective valuation of what is there, we will never feel that we have sold the Royal Mail properly.
Others have mentioned previous experiences. There have been two relatively recent ones, one by us of a company whose name I can never get my tongue around— QinetiQ—where people have walked away with millions. I have talked to many Members opposite who would never have privatised our railways in the way they did. Over the first two or three years, people walked away with very large sums of money. We have to avoid that. We cannot value the company in the way that companies are generally valued. Price/earnings ratios and so on have no relevance in that context. We must be sure that when we say to the British company, “We are trying to sell this for X”, that X is a reasonable, accurate figure.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I fully understand the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, that Royal Mail fully assesses the value of what it is, what it owns and what it has to offer, so that it understands its full value in the marketplace. That is an important process. I agree that that has not always been done when public entities have been sold. Indeed, there has often been an anxiety to achieve a sale quickly. I think that Governments have sometimes been seduced by investment bankers who would like a cheap, easy deal rather than trying to ensure that they get the maximum for the seller—in this case, the public. I hope that those lessons can be learnt. I agree that internal due diligence is critical.
However, I must say to the noble Lord that, although I care a great deal about transparency and openness, the day that this House or the Government put a value—£700 million or £800 million—on the asset, no bidder will offer a penny more. The art in a negotiation when you are selling a property is to get the buyer on the other side to decide what value he will bring to the table and give up some of that value to the seller. The goal is not just to achieve the value of the assets as they stand in some neutral and abstract form but to extract further value because of the benefits that a particular buyer sees because of their business plan and goals.
All of that disappears the day that the Government come out and publicly say, “This is what it is worth. You will not get X plus a penny, you will only ever get X”. I think that that is unadvisable for the taxpayer.
Lord Christopher
How would the noble Baroness value it? How would she put a price on it?
Baroness Kramer
Internally, due diligence is critical. The specifications and the instructions to the investment bankers, accountants and others engaged in the valuation have to be tough and in the monitoring and examination rigour should be applied to the response that they come back with. However, it still has to be in an internal setting, not a public setting. People will have many opinions across this House, but this will be a highly complex process with a great deal of detail. While this House has the ability to understand all that, there may be a subset of people who might be interested in being part of the consultation process by taking a look at that on behalf of the House. However, to me, it certainly would not be possible to do it in a public setting without giving the buyer the most impossible leverage.
Lord Hoyle
The noble Baroness said that if we value it, we will not get a penny more. In past privatisations, it was not that we got the value for the business, but that we sold it at a loss, at a low price. That is what we are asking her to deal with.
Baroness Kramer
I fully understand what the noble Lord is saying. In the past, privatisations have been naive. We have to use pressure to make sure that the Government do not go through that naive process once again. I suggest that the remedy being proposed here—that the value is discussed in detail out in the public arena—does not achieve the purpose. It simply has the effect of making sure that in the end there is a cap on the sale price and creates another set of problems without necessarily disposing of the first set. We need to be pressing to make sure that the internal work is up to standard, but to my mind—and that is one person’s opinion—bringing it into the public arena does not achieve that.
Lord Brookman
My Lords, I had no intention of making a contribution in this debate but as someone who was involved in going from public to private in the steel industry I shall make one point. Who owns things is quite important. When the British Steel Corporation was formed when I was a young man, it had 267,000 employees. Tata Steel, formerly Corus, now employs between 15,000 and 20,000 people. Put that aside. We are a country that used to take pride in what we had and what we owned. I want to be reassured that if the Post Office or any other publicly owned business is hived off to foreign competition the interest of the British people is safeguarded. I just wanted to make that point.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, if the Royal Mail had gone bankrupt as so many people predicted it would, a value would ultimately be placed on it. Administration would see to that, and we would all know what it was worth at the end of the day. I believe that the government shareholder executive, which holds the shares for Royal Mail, will broadly have some idea of what Royal Mail is worth at the moment and of what it would be likely to fetch if it went, for example, to another mail company, such as TNT. If it went to private equity, it could be a different basis entirely because its approach to running the business would be quite different. It is not easy. I freely concede to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that having this out in the public domain is not simple and straightforward. We all speak with one voice when we say that we want to ensure that the British public are not taken for the usual ride that arises on privatisation but get value for money.
I believe that the Liberal Democrat party had the solution to the problem, and so did we. We wanted to retain a stake in Royal Mail so that, regardless of the final valuation when the deal was done, the British public would know what it was, would continue to have a stake in it and would be able to redeem that, if they so chose, at the appropriate time. The Liberal Democrat party went for 49 per cent in its manifesto, which it has now abandoned for reasons that have not been explained, although it recognises that there is a problem, and no easy solution on the way forward is forthcoming from that part of the Government. We presented an amendment today that I freely recognise has some difficulties with it, but I believe that, for reasons that I just described, there are ways in which valuations in a broad sense can be made of government assets. I also believe, in the light of our previous experience, that an attempt should be made this time around, notwithstanding the obstacles to be overcome, and that that should be reported to Parliament.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for being as succinct as he was in proposing Amendment 3. It seems a long time ago now, but he presented his amendment in three minutes flat, which was very kind of him.
Before I go on, I will put the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, at rest on at least point today. He was concerned about what will happen to Royal Mail’s valuable collection of stamps, including iconic and historic stamps such as the penny blacks. Collections of such stamps are classified as public records. These are deposited with the British Postal Museum and Archive, and under the Bill they will remain public records. The ownership of Royal Mail’s museum collection, which contains artefacts that are not classified as public records, has been transferred to the BPMA, and as a charitable trust the BPMA cannot sell off this collection—so at least there is a little good news there.
The proposal in Amendment 3, like the one in Amendment 1, does not seem to reflect the fact that the disposal of shares in Royal Mail is a commercial transaction. In particular, if the Government decided to conduct an auction and invite bids from trade buyers, it would make no commercial sense to advertise to bidders our own view of the value of Royal Mail. As my noble friend Lady Kramer has pointed out, that is not exactly the art of negotiation, because all anyone would do would be to bid to that price. We really feel that we will not do that. No trade buyer would bid above the value, and it would therefore reduce the Government’s ability to get the best result for the company and for the taxpayer, because that is what we are about. The Government will, of course, work with their advisers to consider the potential value of Royal Mail so that we can properly assess bids from buyers. However, as my noble friend Lord Eccles clearly said, there is little logic in revealing what we consider the value of the company to be before any sale.
As I have said previously, the Government have not decided how they will dispose of the shares. We wish to retain flexibility, and in this way get the best result for the company and for the taxpayers, but we expect that both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee in the other place might wish to review the sale process after a sale had been completed. They would both provide their own independent view to Parliament on whether the Government had achieved value for money for the taxpayer.
I have of course listened to what has been said, and it will of course go on the record. I know that there are Members of your Lordships' House who would rather that Royal Mail was not sold at all, and I understand people who have been associated with Royal Mail for many years finding all discussions of this sort very difficult, especially having gone through all this a year ago with the previous Government—a Government of their own. Yet that Government, too, could not successfully find a way out. We need to find the right buyer for Royal Mail who will keep it alive and well. These are very difficult times. No one is writing letters. We have exercised these arguments over and over again, which I am sure everyone in the House knows. We think that this is the best way forward and that flexibility until the very last minute will be needed so that we can get the best price. I therefore ask the noble Lord if he will kindly withdraw his amendment at this stage.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
Dash it, I thought that the noble Baroness had forgotten that. I was going to enjoy wondering what to do if she had not asked me to withdraw—clearly, she was supportive. The point that we are trying to get across in this useful and interesting debate is that if there is no valuation process we will have two problems. The public will not necessarily know that we are getting value for money, which they should, and we would lose transparency, which is an important part of any transaction involving public assets. These are important principles to hold in our mind.
I fully accept what has been said, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that public bodies are not in the normal business of valuing themselves. That is not what they are about. Their job is to provide a utilitarian service that is specified in statute. If they devote time to worrying about whether or not they have caught all the assets that they have acquired while they have been in existence and working out what their market value might be, they would not be focusing on what they should be doing and we do not want much of that.
However, if the Government are selling off the family silver, we should have a full inventory of all the aspects of that before it happens. The Minister is saying that that will happen and I hope that we will have a record. A compromise would not necessarily want to go all down this route, but we would get a much better Domesday Book of what the Royal Mail consists of and, thus, a better sense of what it might be valued at. We would therefore be in a better position to assess whether the bids received subsequently would be appropriate. Therefore, if the pound signs are removed, we would know about what we are talking a bit more at the time of the sale.
My noble friend Lord Christopher is eloquent in his ability to run the market in Oxfordshire—I am not sure why it is Oxfordshire—in terms of the sale he has clearly eyed up for the Post Office service stations there. I think that we would want to help him in ensuring his long retirement on the proceeds. I jest of course.
The second strand that comes through is that the valuation, or at least the lining up, of the assets that we are selling is not the same as disclosing to all and sundry what we want for them. But we can be a bit too coy about that. Clearly, we want to be in a position where we force someone to bid higher than we would have ever dreamed of receiving for the assets that we are putting up for sale. That is what we do all the time in our domestic lives.
I have always been perplexed by why the English do not adopt the Scottish system of selling houses, for example. In that situation, the seller seems to have all the cards. You say that your flat or house is for sale. What it consists of is advertised publicly and you say that you will accept offers in excess of £X where £X is the largest figure that you could possibly think of. Then you sit back and hope. It may have changed since I last sold a house up there, but the three times when I have done it I have been astonished by the braveness of those who have bid for the house and, disclosing no secrets, I have achieved many times more than I thought that I would get every time I have sold. I recommend that to all ye English and perhaps even to the Government in respect of the Royal Mail.
Yes, we want someone to bid more than we are prepared to disclose that we are prepared to accept. But there is a chap called Rupert Murdoch out there who is publicly engaged in bidding for part of his empire, which he only partly holds; yet I read every day about what price people are prepared to accept and what price they think it will be worth. The share prices down to even the last penny are mentioned. I do not think that we should be too worried about where we are going on this. It would not be wrong to say—privately if we want—what we will not accept. In other words, we would expect better bids.
The last thing we want to be part of is a post-hoc analysis of what went wrong in this case. Surely, we have got beyond that. The noble Lord, Lord Lea, made the point absolutely clear. If there is a 7 per cent premium on average sales of new or existing companies and it is 77 per cent on privatisations, there is clearly an issue to be addressed. I am jolly glad to hear that the stamps are being saved for the future, although it is a bit odd that they are going in the archive and not a museum where one would want them to be, but that is how it is.
Whenever one hears of public assets being sold, one has to think of the experience of other countries. It may be to the benefit of English football that this worked well in countries in the East, but we do not want that to be said of here. We want a good and sensible sale that is done in as open and transparent a way as possible. We want to be able to comment on the commerciality of what we are about and to do it so that no one feels that we have in any sense lost out. Those are conditions which I suggest should be taken into consideration of the Bill. We will reflect on what has been said, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) A disposal of the Crown’s interest in a Royal Mail company will not be authorised until the Secretary of State has secured a written contract from the proposed purchaser that at least one representative from those directly employed by Royal Mail or its successors will sit on the board of the new body.”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, postal workers already have a major stake in the company, and their livelihoods are dependent on its viability. This is more than just an issue of immediate employment, of course. It is the final guarantee of rent or mortgage repayments. Working for Royal Mail is the means whereby their children will be educated and cared for. I make the point because it is sometimes suggested that postal workers lack motivation because they do not identify with Royal Mail. Postal workers may not always see eye to eye with management, but they are acutely aware that a viable and successful Royal Mail is in their own interests.
Through their own organising efforts, postal workers have achieved a high level of unionisation in Royal Mail. They have also, over many years, secured comprehensive negotiating rights on matters of national and local significance. This has meant that members of the workforce have some elements of control in their own working lives. Management, for its part, has learnt to accept and live with the fact that the workforce does have a say in workplace relations. Sometimes there are conflicts, but 99 per cent of those cases are resolved by the usual patterns of industrial relations which have been established in the industry. This is important because those endeavours have been made by postal workers themselves, and they have made the workplace a better, safer, more comfortable and rewarding place. So we should leave aside any suggestion that postal workers are unable to express themselves, unable to organise themselves, or unable to exercise their rights in the workplace.
Recently there has been a much-trailed comparison on rights of representation or share ownership with John Lewis workers, although we believe that that is misunderstood. In comparison, postal workers have many more rights than John Lewis workers, who are not even unionised. That said, if there is to be an employee share scheme, it is only right that it should be introduced with employee involvement and voice, and placing at least one member on the board would be of benefit both to the workforce and the employer. Members of the workforce would see that it had someone who could reflect their experiences and concerns in the most powerful part of management, and the employer would have an immediate expression of the wider concerns of the workforce in the deliberations of the central management team.
In the past, there has been some experience of trade union involvement on the board. Although not a postal worker, my noble friend Lady Prosser, who unfortunately is not in her place, was until recently a widely respected and influential trade union leader before she became a member of the Royal Mail board. Certainly, management believes that it has benefited from her experience in the working of the Royal Mail board. Failure to introduce representation of postal workers on the board would, in my view, risk missing a real opportunity to create trust and confidence. It is widely known that employee representation exists on management boards in other European countries, and surely it is time that this became more general in Britain. I welcome the coalition Government’s espousal of mutualisation in another part of the Bill, and the requirement that we are suggesting here would strike a chord with that principle and approach. I therefore commend the amendment to the Committee. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)
I should inform the Committee that if this amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 5 to 7 inclusive by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, perhaps I may make a point for clarity. The discussion we have just had about the wider public interest and stakeholders around the country suggests to me that what we are looking at is a sort of supervisory board. Does that not frighten the horses so far as the Minister is concerned? Does she acknowledge that the maximum number of different stakeholders should be somehow involved in this exercise since that would help to put our worries at rest on a number of other aspects that we have just been taking on board, such as asset-stripping and all the rest of it, and where ambiguities still remain in the Bill?
Baroness Turner of Camden
I support the amendment and have put my name to it. When the Bill was discussed previously, concern was expressed about the state of labour relations at Royal Mail. At Second Reading, I pointed out that the union was in discussion with management about modernisation and that the indications were that poor labour relations had been overcome. The union wants to co-operate, but believes that amendments to the Bill could be useful towards that end. It is for that reason that I have put my name to the amendment. It would be useful for the Bill to make it a requirement that the staff of the company be involved at the very highest level. To that end, it is proposed that a seat be reserved on the company board and that, before a sale takes place, Parliament should be assured that this proviso is a part of the deal.
The Government have already committed to an employee interest as Clause 3 makes provision for an employee share scheme. The proposal for staff representation at the highest level is in tune with that kind of thinking and helps to confirm employee interest in the well-being of the company and, most importantly, in its service to the public. As I indicated previously, I believe that the public still hold in high esteem the Royal Mail and the staff who work for it. I therefore hope that the Government will be prepared to accept the amendment or that, if they do not like the wording—as has sometimes happened—they will accept the notion and perhaps come back with different wording that incorporates the same idea. We think that it is a very good idea, because it involves the participation of staff in, and their commitment to, the well-being of the company.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and others for raising an issue whose importance I am aware of from my own experience. I was managing director of a small plastics manufacturing company. It had only 30 employees, but it was important to me to bring those employees with me. Our discussion today is an important part of that approach. That employees will have shareholdings in Royal Mail is to be welcomed. It is disappointing that many other companies, of all sizes, do not recognise the importance of involving their workforce. As the noble Baroness and others said, a welcome improvement in labour relations has been seen within Royal Mail. I know that the Minister will take this issue very seriously and I am sure that she will give adequate answers to the points that have been raised. It is crucial that employees have not only shares but a real voice in one way or the other. Without that, so many companies fail. We want the new conglomerate to succeed, to go forward and to bring its employees with it, as opposed to management and employees being at each other’s throats as has sometimes been the case in the past.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I, too, support the amendment and agree with the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. As the Minister knows I was a partnership director of NATS, where, when the PPP was created, 5 per cent of the shares were allocated to the employees. I acted as the director responsible for that element of the share distribution and had conversations with the staff about it. However, it was not entirely satisfactory; I was still at a distance from them because I was also involved in the management side of the business. While anyone who went on to a board would have to be involved in the management side too, if the Government were to accept the amendment there would certainly be someone there who was better able to speak directly for the feelings of the workforce than someone doing so one removed, in the way that I did.
I have been to a number of meetings recently at which coalition government Ministers have spoken about employee ownership and share involvement and extending it over a wider front. Many have spoken about providing greater opportunities for the workforce to be more directly involved with management of companies, particularly where they have a stake in the shares.
The amendment presents a modest proposal—I would have preferred it to suggest that two places should be allocated—but I am reasonably content today to go along with opening the door through one seat being made available for the employees. I hope there will now be an opportunity for the Minister to display, not only to her noble friend Lord Cotter but to a variety of Ministers who have spoken recently on this at meetings, that extending employee ownership will be put into practice when the opportunity is immediately before the Government.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I add my support to the amendment and endorse the views expressed by my noble friend Lord Brooke and the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on the Liberal Democrat Benches.
There are two issues involved here. First, in a conventional private sector situation where another company or body of investors has a large shareholding, it is quite customary for it to seek board representation, recognising that when it sits on the board it shares the responsibilities of other directors to the company as a unitary board. I note the presence of the noble Lord, Lord St John of Fawsley, in his place on the government Benches and it immediately reminds me that News International, as a particularly large shareholder, has always had its interests represented on the board of BSkyB. It is entirely logical and consistent with good private sector practice for the workers in the Post Office to have such representation on the board of directors until such time as they cease to be significant shareholders.
However, on my second point, I have regard to the fact that the Minister not only brings considerable business experience to her position but also speaks on issues of corporate governance. There is a bigger issue at heart here: the shareholders in a privatised Post Office—whether it is a large corporation, perhaps based overseas, or is floated on the stock market with a large number of investors—will nevertheless individually have a very modest interest in the company. If it is bought by a Dutch company and that company is floated, the ultimate shareholders will be institutions spread across the world, few of whom will own more than 1 per cent of the company; they will have diversified their risk through portfolio construction. The employees cannot do that; they will have what investors would call a high-conviction portfolio, with all their money invested in a single share and all their employment in one place of work. It is surely right that people who exhibit such a high conviction to a company should have some voice in the leadership and management of the business. Some of the malfunctioning of companies over recent years might not have happened had there been a voice around the board table reflecting the views, knowledge and insights of the employees of the company, as opposed to executives who sit in executive suites at the top of the tower building or non-executives who turn up for two or three hours a month. There is a broader issue here and I hope that the Minister, given her responsibilities for corporate governance, will speak to that broader issue in addition to giving us some welcoming encouragement on this amendment.
Lord Hoyle
I agree with those who have spoken in support of the amendment, and particularly with the comments of my noble friend Lord Myners. Although some people can walk away from a company if it is not successful, those who are employed there cannot; it is their—and their family’s—livelihood. I know that the Minister will take into account all that we have said when making her reply, and I hope that it will be a positive and constructive reply. I agree with my noble friend Lord Brooke that one representative is a modest request. I would have asked for at least two—but here we are, with a suggestion that everyone who has spoken agrees is both modest and important.
I am glad that it is recognised that employees matter. Speaking of his own, small company, the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, said that he tried wherever possible to take his staff with him. If staff feel that the company they work for is being sold from underneath them, they can have no loyalty to the new group that comes in. Staff have to be won over, and is there a better way of doing that than by making them part of the decision-making? As employees of the company, they will be able to reflect back. Rather than having somebody external—who could do a job for the employers, as my noble friend Lord Brooke said—would it not be better to have these staff representing the company so that they could take the views at the highest level on why certain decisions are being made to achieve what one hopes will be their future prosperity? I totally agree, and repeat again, that this is a modest suggestion.
Viscount Eccles
Employee participation is indeed a big subject, and I have no quarrel or difficulty with many of the views that have been expressed. However, as I read this amendment, it would be satisfied if the successor company asked Moya Greene to sit on the board. She is directly employed by Royal Mail and it is likely that the successor company would want her on the board. After all, she is extremely well qualified to be on the board of any mail company. If noble Lords opposite really wish to pursue this, they might need to do so in a rather different way.
Baroness Wilcox
The Government recognise the important role that employees will play in the modernisation of Royal Mail. The implementation of the business transformation agreement reached in March 2010 is vital to the success of the company. This requires changes in the way in which people work and will impact on everybody employed by the company.
This agreement sets out a new relationship between the management and the union in Royal Mail which seeks to improve industrial relations, which have been so poor in recent years. Progress on the implementation of the agreement has been encouraging, and we encourage both sides of the agreement to build on this promising start. Nobody inside or outside the House wants to see a return to the national strikes that so damaged Royal Mail and the postal market in 2007 and 2009.
The current position is that there is no employee representation on the board of the Royal Mail. My understanding is that there has been no pressure or suggestion that there should be an employee representative on the board. In public ownership the Royal Mail is being run on a commercial basis, so I fail to see that a change in ownership should automatically require that there should be an employer representative on the board, a requirement that the amendment proposes should be written into primary legislation. I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, with her terrific record within the union movement. The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, talked about bringing staff with you; I have done that myself. In a small company, especially, you are all working together very closely and you can really involve the workforce in a way that large companies sometimes cannot.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, talked about shares and NATS. I know how well he did there. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Myners, with his corporate governance, and the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, on employee participation, a seat on the board is not the only way to actively encourage employee participation. For example, the concept of world-class mail at Gatwick and elsewhere has shown what increased engagement can achieve. We hope that there will be increased engagement. That is one of the reasons for making sure that shares are passed in such a large number to employees of the company.
I am not at all clear how such an arrangement as proposed in the amendment would work in practice. For example, how does it link up with the CWU and Unite’s representation of the workforce and their roles in collective bargaining?
I should say that the Government are not saying that there should never be an employee representative on the board. Royal Mail may decide in future that there are advantages to doing exactly that. I refer us back to my noble friend Lord Eccles, who suggested that Moya Greene might be a wonderful example of someone who could be brought on to the board to the benefit of the company, as she is at the moment the chief executive. However, I do not believe that it is appropriate to impose such a requirement through legislation.
Issues relating to board composition are properly issues for the company and its shareholders who, thanks to the Bill, will include its employees. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Myners
The Minister started her answer by saying that as things were as they are, and there was no good reason for changing that, they should remain as they are. Surely, however, the Government are making changes, and that is the appropriate trigger for consideration of this factor. From these Benches we are urging that it is essential that the workers in this company, which has always been a very delicate organisation, who have served it loyally over many decades, are entitled to believe—almost as part of the concept of the “big society”—that the Government recognise that there is a degree of mutualisation. After all, that is why the Government are gifting shares to the workforce. So why go only halfway? Why stop at the point of gifting shares and not empower those shareholders to give voice and expression around the board table?
Baroness Wilcox
I can only repeat that, as we all know, the previous Bill failed. We hope that this Bill will succeed. We want as much flexibility as possible when it comes to selling Royal Mail. We have faith in the fact that the people who have worked for this company for so long should be offered the best possible opportunity. We are offering the biggest ever issue of shares to the employees of the company—over 10 per cent. That is a wonderful voice that they will have. No one is saying that no one will finish up on the board. We are saying that we cannot put this in legislation. We need to keep this as flexible as possible to get the best possible price and the best possible deal. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, of all people, City man that he is, knows what I am talking about. I ask that the noble Lord, Lord Young, withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate; I did not expect quite as much of a debate as this. This is an important issue. I agree with my noble friend Lady Turner about the value of employee involvement. It is nice to return to agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, in his evaluation of the importance of involving the workforce; I wholeheartedly endorse that. My noble friend Lord Brooke demonstrated the value of his experience as a partnership director in NATS.
Several times in this debate people have talked about there being only one representative. The Minister had trouble dealing with that. In fact, I remind the House that the amendment says “at least one”.
My noble friend Lord Myners made a fascinating contribution. I am glad that he told me what a high-conviction portfolio was; I would have thought it was someone being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure if he had not explained that. His argument was valid when he talked about the question of risk and the way that other shareholders may be able to diversify their risk, but in many cases those employees are pledging all their working life to the company.
The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, pointed out that there might be a flaw in the amendment, but I remind him that it says “at least one”.
I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed in the Minister’s response. The only argument that she could give us was the need to retain flexibility. Are we really saying that one employee representative—if indeed it were one—would wreck that flexibility? If that were the case, if you wanted ultimate flexibility, then why has she boasted about the 10 per cent employee shareholding? I do not believe that that was a valid argument against the very reasonable suggestion in this amendment.
Having reflected on the debate, I will withdraw the amendment at this stage. We were somewhat puzzled by the pre-emption, but as we are not going to invoke that we can have that argument outside the Chamber. We will certainly return to this subject, probably on Report. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I am sure that a number of amendments to the Bill will come from all sides of the House as we progress. I am seeking more information about the Government’s plans for postal services in the UK. The purpose of the amendment would be to ensure that the Secretary of State reported back to Parliament on the disposal of Royal Mail. The Secretary of State would have to deliver an Oral Statement and lay an order subject to the affirmative procedure.
There are real concerns about what the Bill will mean for people who live in rural areas, for small businesses, for those who receive specialist services for the blind, for the taxpayer and for the employees and agents of Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd. Rarely can a government Bill have given rise to as many questions as it seeks to answer.
Noble Lords have argued eloquently that it is essential for Parliament to receive more detail about the financial value of Royal Mail, the future of universal and affordable postal services and the impact of privatisation on services in the devolved Administrations. The Government are urged to respond to these concerns with written and oral reports to the House at the time when Ministers decide to dispose of some or all of the Government’s shares in Royal Mail. Only the Government appear to suggest that these concerns are not legitimate, otherwise they would happily accept these amendments and the Minister would produce the reports requested in advance of the sale.
At times the Government appear to be in an unseemly haste to complete all the stages of the Bill. The danger is that, if the Bill is not itself flawed, then there are significant gaps in it that need filling. There are simply too many questions unanswered, too many concerns about the Government’s intentions and too little of substance in the way that the Government have responded to these concerns for Parliament simply to give its assent to this measure and then depart the field. It is the firm belief of the Opposition that the lack of a fully worked-out proposal, linked to a wait of possibly two, three or four years before a disposal takes place, necessitates Parliament being able to review this matter once again.
As the Bill stands, the Secretary of State will make a decision about a full or partial disposal of Royal Mail and then make a report to Parliament. There is no requirement even for the report to be accompanied by an Oral Statement; there is no commitment that Oral Questions should be able to be put to Ministers; and there is no commitment for Parliament to have a vote of any kind. Moreover, the report will be made after the Secretary of State has made the decision. That is, I am sure many in this House would agree, simply not adequate. As I said earlier, it is interesting how often, in dealing with other Bills when we were in government, the affirmative procedure was required and demanded.
The current Postal Services Bill has a number of similarities to the 2009 Postal Services Bill, but the fact that this Bill seeks to privatise Royal Mail in its entirety makes it distinct from the 2009 Bill. One of our difficulties is in trying to grasp the detail to discover exactly what information is in the Bill about whether there will be an initial public offering or a trade sale at auction. The Government have not set a clear timetable. They have not explained whether there will be a general sale of shares to the public, an IPO, a restricted sale to certain categories of buyer or a trade sale by auction to a single buyer, such as a private equity firm or a postal competitor, which might raise competition issues.
Nor have the Government explained any measures to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. They have not explained whether they would sell the whole company all at once—with all the risk involved of selling cheaply, as has been mentioned—or whether they would be prepared to sell in tranches. They have not been clear about how valuable public assets will be allocated among Post Office Ltd, the pension funds and Royal Mail—and thus find their way into private hands. They have not indicated how the board might be consulted. They have not ruled out dismantling the Royal Mail and cherry-picking the most profitable parts, such as Royal Mail’s successful European parcels service GLS and Parcelforce. They have not indicated how they will guard against a buyer with a short-term horizon that seeks to squeeze costs and cherry-pick the assets.
Before any sale takes places, this House will want to be assured about the future of the universal service, the exact regulatory regime and the future of the post office network. What state has been reached in obtaining state aid clearance from the Commission? What is the expected timetable for that state aid clearance?
The other amendments in this group seek to require a further Bill or a super-affirmative procedure to allow Parliament properly to scrutinise and have a say about the method of sale and the sort of Royal Mail that will emerge in the private sector; our amendment provides for a less stringent parliamentary test, but I feel that it is the very minimum that is owed in the name of proper parliamentary scrutiny. Of course there is no wish to constrain the Government unreasonably in carrying out a sale if the Bill is passed with Clause 1 intact. The House will of course recognise the reasonable constraints of commercial confidentiality, but for such a momentous decision as this to be carried to its conclusion without further reference to Parliament, in a way that gives Parliament a proper say, would be highly regrettable.
If the Government are not willing to report back to Parliament on the specific concerns set out in other amendments, they should accept our amendment and agree to allow a general scrutiny of the disposal of Royal Mail at the point that that takes place. They should do so under the affirmative procedure, so that there is a genuine opportunity to consider and debate the sale.
There is genuine, non-partisan, cross-party concern about this measure, so it is right that Parliament is given the opportunity to debate the matter again when the Government are in a better position to answer the questions that they have so far failed to answer. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to improve the Bill by accepting a more accountable route for parliamentary accountability, which would involve not just an ex post facto report after the decision has been taken. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
I should tell the Committee that, if Amendment 5 is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendments 6 or 7 by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 6 and 17 in this group, which stand in my name.
As currently drafted, Clause 2 requires the Secretary of State to make a report to Parliament only when a decision has been made to dispose of shares or share rights in Royal Mail. That report is to include both the type and the timing of any disposal. Amendment 6 seeks to ensure both that the Secretary of State is more fully accountable to Parliament for any decision that he or she may take regarding the sale of Royal Mail and that the decision is consistent with best practice and legislation governing regulatory reform.
Amendment 6 seeks to do that by means of a super-affirmative order and an explanatory document accompanying the proposed disposal order that are to be laid at the point of a decision on a sale. The amendment would not undermine the Bill’s three main proposals, which are to allow the unrestricted sale of shares in Royal Mail, to introduce a new regulatory regime and to provide for the transfer of pension liabilities. Rather, because of the implications that would flow from an unrestricted sale, I believe that the super-affirmative procedure is appropriate.
Many noble Lords are concerned at the haste with which the Government have sought to complete the passage of the Bill, and one is left anxious about the scrutiny of matters that will arise from the implementation of the Bill potentially at some point significantly in the future. Amendment 6 would require the Secretary of State to return to Parliament to seek approval when a decision is taken on a specific disposal of Royal Mail—a decision that may not occur for, say, another three years. That is very important. The Bill is significant, given that its provisions will have a major impact on business and personal users of the service, on citizens’ interests and on the employees and agents of Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd. It will also have a significant impact on the Exchequer. Such a decision deserves close scrutiny.
The super-affirmative resolution procedure would allow Parliament the right fully to consider the proposals for the sale in a way that is provided for in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. Under that Act, Ministers have wide-ranging powers to amend primary legislation by order and the Act makes provision for determining the parliamentary procedures for such orders. If noble Lords would indulge me—as a new Member of the House, I am all too conscious of the paucity of my knowledge of parliamentary procedures compared to the depth of knowledge held by so many noble Lords—sometimes one feels that a matter is of such significance that one must split an infinitive and be prepared to boldly go. I am advised that there is no simple definition of the super-affirmative procedure, so it is necessary to lay it out fully in the Bill; hence the tabling of Amendment 17, which seeks to do precisely that.
I shall give the briefest of summaries. Under the super-affirmative resolution procedure, during a 60-day period when the draft order is laid the Minister must have regard to any representations received, any resolution of either House and any recommendations made by a scrutiny committee of either House. At the end of the 60-day period, the Minister can decide to proceed with the draft or lay a revised draft with, in either instance, a statement about any representations made and revisions proposed. In each case, the order then proceeds as a normal affirmative order. However, if a scrutiny committee of either House recommends, after the laying of the statement or of the revised draft order and statement, that the order should not proceed, then the order may not proceed unless the House concerned rejects the recommendation.
In the circumstances of this important Bill, the merit of the super-affirmative procedure is that the process would take place over a 60-day period and it would allow the Minister to amend any draft order, if Parliament decides it appropriate, but that decision would not undermine the whole basis of the proposal. Such an approach would have three key benefits: it would allow effective scrutiny at the time that it matters—at the point of sale—which may be some few years hence; it would ensure that the impact of the terms of sale could be understood; and it would ensure democratic accountability on matters flowing from an enabling Bill. In this instance the super-affirmative procedure would be good for users and the taxpayer, who will benefit from Parliament scrutinising a Royal Mail disposal at the precise time that the Government make their decision.
I turn to the explanatory document. Parliament is being asked to consider the Bill one, two, three or maybe even four years prior to the sale of Royal Mail. By adopting the super-affirmative procedure, together with requiring an explanatory document when a disposal order is laid, Parliament has the opportunity to scrutinise the decision of the Secretary of State at the very point at which the sale is due to take place. This scrutiny will also allow more transparency on the valuing of Royal Mail in relation to the proposed sale price. That applies to a post-final-bid situation, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, was so concerned. Having that transparency prior to the bidding process would undermine the Government’s ability to leverage the price that they could secure. Such an explanatory document would give transparency, but only in a post-final-bid situation.
Amendment 6 sets out what the explanatory document should cover. The terms of agreement for the sale of Royal Mail will be highly significant but they are not yet known. A buyer has to be found and negotiations have to take place. No one at this point knows what the terms will definitely contain but their impact is of public interest. An explanatory document should provide a report on consultations and representations received, which should include those from user groups, bodies representing rural communities, pensioners, those with disabilities, businesses including small businesses, other operators, employee representatives and the devolved Administrations. The amendment provides for certain persons making representations to be afforded confidentiality. I understand that this is consistent with the provisions in the 2006 Act. One can also understand that there may be matters of commercial confidentiality, including some from the bidder and other private carriers, which would require this. The report would also provide a detailed regulatory impact assessment and such other information as the Minister considers would be of assistance to Parliament in considering the proposed disposal.
A number of concerns about the Bill necessitate the Minister returning to Parliament with the proposed disposal order and an explanatory document at the point of sale. These concerns have been reflected in the amendments tabled to the Bill, both here and in the other place, and in contributions by noble Lords from all sides of the House. The central part of the Bill enables legislation; it enables the Government to privatise Royal Mail. However, that is not the end of the story. As the Minister said in replying to Amendment 4, the Government are looking for maximum flexibility in this Bill. There is much detail yet to crystallise. Royal Mail needs capital investment and a buyer will want to see a business case. Therefore, the highest price, or even an acceptable price, may come from giving the buyer the greatest freedom to be profitable. A Government keen to secure a buyer will be under pressure to maximise freedom for the purchaser. There is a great deal left to regulations. Many uncertainties still exist and will require parliamentary scrutiny.
I will recap some of those concerns and uncertainties. While I acknowledge the merits of the transition to Ofcom as the regulator, there is still uncertainty about the regulatory regime, including how the move from licensing to regulatory authorisation will impact on the maintenance of the minimum universal service requirements over time and the robustness of any universal postal service obligation placed on a universal service provider. It is important that the terms of any sale or disposal do not pre-empt the setting or delivery of those obligations in any way that would be detrimental to users’ needs, business needs and citizens’ social and economic interests. We do not know the terms of the sale—no one can know them prior to negotiation or the detail being settled—so there could be a tension between the terms of sale and the regulatory principles in the Bill.
There will be a need for reassurance that the terms of the sale do not qualify or pre-empt the ability of Ofcom to discharge its duties under, for example, Clause 28 on such matters as access points, universal service and financial sustainability; Clause 42 and the financial obligations that could be placed on a universal provider; or Clause 35, to which the Minister referred, and Clause 37 on the universal service provider’s network access and universal service conditions. Ofcom is unlikely to be able to override the terms of any sale agreed by the Government when Ofcom seeks to set or impose regulatory requirements on universal service provision.
A further area of uncertainty is the future of the post office network and the commercial relationship between the Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd. The Government are anxious to suggest that the Bill is not about the post office network. However, one cannot entirely divorce Post Office Counters from this Bill. Parliament has been assured that a commercial relationship between these two businesses will be sustained. The key test here, however, is of whether it is sustained at current levels or is slowly eroded by Royal Mail to the detriment of the nationwide network of post offices. No one can truly answer the question of how the terms of sale with any bidder will impact on those assurances at the moment. Once privatisation has taken place, it will be difficult for a Government to influence an inter-business agreement between a privatised Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd. The Government have not specified to date a minimum number of outlets across the UK where counter services must be provided, notwithstanding that in other countries legislation does so specify.
A primary driver for full privatisation of Royal Mail is the need to secure private capital investment. Securing that investment will be heavily influenced by the viability of the business model captured by the terms of sale. This will not be solely a matter of asset price or of how much the Oxford sorting office can be sold for, but will be about the extent of regulation and commercial freedom and network access conditions. Market conditions for postal service operators are challenging because of the growth of e-substitution and the digital media. Any potential buyer will know this. Any analyst will look at the regulatory framework within which a privatised Post Office will have to operate.
These are weighty issues, which will determine how a future privatised Royal Mail will continue to perform its functions as a provider of affordable, non-discriminatory, universal postal services. Currently no one can truly assert what the full terms of any sale to a purchaser will be because those negotiations have not taken place. That is precisely why scrutiny at the level of a super-affirmative procedure, accompanied by an order with an explanatory document, is appropriate. I accept that Parliament cannot micromanage postal services. However, it should try its hardest, given that the sale may not take place for some years, to ensure that the interests of the user, the citizen, the taxpayer and the Exchequer are protected by directing the Secretary of State to return to Parliament with a proposed disposal order and an explanatory document at the point of the disposal that will be the subject of a super-affirmative order.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, we can only admire the way in which the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, put forward her amendments. She has carried out a lot of due diligence and her speech was wholly admirable. However, my problem with it is—noble Lords will guess that I have a problem with it—that I do not see any way of removing uncertainty now or in the medium term or, as she suggested, in three or four years. I hope that that pessimistic estimate turns out to be wrong and that this matter is resolved in a lot less time than four years.
The uncertainty arises primarily from the behaviour of the market. We have talked a bit about other privatisations. The steel industry was mentioned. That industry was in decline when it was privatised. However, the opposite was the case with British Telecom. A lot of our experience of privatisations is highly coloured by the market conditions prevailing at the time. If what I have picked up turns out to be true, one of the issues which faces a mail operator is to find new streams of business and not to rely just on the mail and the universal obligation to deliver it at the same price to every household in the country. That brings me to one of the uncertainties about any deal that might be proposed by the Royal Mail to the Secretary of State as being a deal that he or she might wish to approve. I think that I have mentioned this before. There could be two bidders—there might even be three—with very different solutions. It is not a question of there being one deal. In a negotiation you may well find that not only is there more than one bidder but their bids are so different that you have to have two completely separate sets of due diligence to make sense of them and to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. As I see it, that is the way that this matter will go forward.
In those circumstances I am very doubtful about the role of Parliament except in an ex-post involvement through the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, as my noble friend on the Front Bench said earlier. Then Parliament will have its opportunity to say whether it thinks that the Secretary of State made a good or bad decision in backing one of the recommendations made to him or her. Parliament will have to be satisfied with an ex-post role.
As regards the super-affirmative procedure and the 60 day period, 60 days is a long time for a bid to remain open without being reneged on or altered. In my opinion it simply is not practical to think that any bidder will be willing to go through this process. Given my past experience of buying and selling businesses, if I was faced with these amendments in the Bill, I think that I would say, “Please will you assure me that this part of the Bill is not going to be triggered because if it is my bid is withdrawn?” or I would not enter the negotiation in the first place. The intentions behind these amendments are absolutely clear to all of us and if the circumstances of the Royal Mail and the mail market were entirely different we might be able to live with such a procedure. However, I do not think that we can live with it in these circumstances.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to add to the Bill a requirement for the Secretary of State to make an Oral Statement and obtain additional parliamentary approval before there can be a relevant disposal of shares in a Royal Mail company.
Amendment 5 of the noble Lord, Lord Young, proposes that an order on the disposal should be subject to the affirmative procedure. The noble Baroness’s Amendments 6 and 17 seek to insert into the Bill a requirement for a super-affirmative procedure before there can be a disposal of shares. Like my noble friend Lord Eccles, I congratulate her on the thoroughness of these amendments which set out clearly the process that is required under the super-affirmative procedure. The noble Baroness may be new to your Lordships’ House but from these amendments it is clear that her knowledge and attention to detail will ensure that its business receives proper and close scrutiny in the years to come. I congratulate her on that. From my noble friend Lord Eccles we received a master class in how to buy and sell businesses. I suspect that I shall lean on him heavily as this Bill goes through to make speeches like that again.
I do not believe that further parliamentary procedures should be required before there can be a disposal of shares in Royal Mail. A committee in the other place has fully debated the disposal of shares as set out in this Bill and this Committee of the Whole House is now debating the issue. The disposal of shares to enable an injection of private capital into Royal Mail is part of a package of measures set out in this Bill which should be scrutinised as a package. The disposal of shares should not be looked at in isolation but alongside the other two essential parts of the package—tackling the pension deficit and reforming the regulatory regime. Richard Hooper emphasised the importance of this package when he gave evidence to the committee in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked about the timetable for state aid clearance. We have not at this stage notified the European Commission of the proposed aid but we will do so as soon as we are ready. As I said earlier, this Government have learnt the lessons of 2009. We will take a staged approach to all the steps we need to take before a sale can be completed.
The Opposition’s Postal Services Bill in 2009 did not include a requirement for additional parliamentary procedures before there could be a disposal of shares. As noble Lords opposite themselves said in 2009, additional parliamentary procedures would be unwelcome because they would create uncertainty for potential investors. During the passage of that Bill, noble Lords representing the then Government suggested that noble Lords would agree that the appropriate place for commercial negotiations to take place was not on the Floor of the House.
Noble Lords opposite have expressed interest in the value of Royal Mail. The uncertainty that would exist if a disposal is subject to voting in Parliament would only further reduce the value of the business. This would damage the chances of achieving the best deal for the taxpayer and the company from any future disposal. I fail to see how this amendment fits with other amendments tabled by noble Lords where there has been an emphasis to take forward a sale of shares quickly. These amendments would insert time-consuming mechanisms that would add delay to a disposal.
With regard to legislative provision for the Secretary of State to make an Oral Statement, we do not think that is necessary whenever there is a sale of shares. The Bill is setting the minimum requirements for government action. What is important is the principle that information on this sale should be provided to Parliament. The requirement for a report in Clause 2 applies not only to the first sale of shares but any subsequent sale of shares. I fully accept that an Oral Statement might, of course, be appropriate for the first sale of shares, but would it also be a good use of time if, for instance, five years later Ministers decided to put an extra 100 shares into the employee share scheme? We are committing in Clause 2 that there should be a report to Parliament every time the Government reduce their stake in Royal Mail. We will, of course, discuss with the House authorities the appropriate format for such reports at the relevant times, including whether or not an Oral Statement is appropriate.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, asks in her amendments for evidence of consultation and an impact assessment. I point the noble Baroness to the extensive consultation carried out by Richard Hooper in his two independent reviews on the future of the Royal Mail and the impact assessment published alongside the Bill. On this basis, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to the contributions. It was another interesting debate. I feel that I have been trumped by my noble friend Lady Drake in her forensic analysis of the super-affirmative procedure. She certainly demonstrated her knowledge of it and her diligence.
This issue is a matter of judgment. I did not expect the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, to leap to his feet and say, “Yes, I agree with this”. He referred to the behaviour of the market and the introduction of more uncertainty. We balance that against accountability and the ability of Parliament to scrutinise but not negotiate. I look forward to hearing from the Minister when she notifies the European Commission, because that is an important point. She rightly pointed out that there was no provision for an affirmative procedure in the 2009 Bill. However, we were not going for a 100 per cent disposal. As the Bill is further scrutinised, we will analyse the issue of whether Oral Statements are required for a range of future share sales.
I will reflect on the nature of this debate and the Minister’s response. I warn that I may well return to this matter on Report but, in the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, Clause 2 relates to the Government reporting on their decision to dispose of shares in a Royal Mail company. As the Bill stands, the Secretary of State must, as soon as reasonably practicable after making a decision about arrangements for the sale of Royal Mail, lay a report before Parliament on the detail of those arrangements. The report will be made after the decision has been taken. It can also be made after that decision has begun to be enacted. The report must state the kind of relevant disposal that the Secretary of State intends to make and the expected timescale for undertaking it.
As currently drafted, there is nothing in the Bill to prevent the Secretary of State proceeding with a disposal of shares in all or part of Royal Mail before a report is laid before Parliament. The Bill requires only that the report is laid before Parliament as soon as is reasonably practicable. This is a cause for significant concern. Opportunities for proper accountability and oversight are potentially compromised by this arrangement. It does not allow for suitable scrutiny of the proposals. The Government must be accountable to Parliament for their actions. Parliament must have oversight of such important policy before it is enacted.
The amendment provides simply for greater accountability and transparency in the Government’s plans. It does not prevent a sale but restricts it to after such a time as Parliament has had an opportunity to be fully informed of the Secretary of State’s plans. Royal Mail is an incredibly important and valuable asset. It touches the lives of everyone in this country, employs 160,000 of them and has an annual turnover of more than £9 billion.
Royal Mail has struggled with a tumultuous history in recent years. Post Office closures and the impact of competition and regulation have taken their toll on the business and the public’s experience of engaging with the company. It is important that any further change is right for Royal Mail and is implemented correctly. A key way to ensure that this happens is to allow for an adequate level of parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s plans. It is essential that Parliament follows the detail of the share disposal and ensures that the Government seek to maximise their return on the value of this asset and secure a sustainable future for Royal Mail and the UK postal industry.
I therefore urge support for the amendment, which requires the Secretary of State to lay his report on the detail of his decision regarding the sale of Royal Mail before any such sale takes place. I beg to move.
Lord Hoyle
I am sure that the Minister will accept the amendment because it makes sense to have a report before any sale takes place. What is the point of reporting to us if the sale has already been completed? There is no point whatever to that. I am certain that she will agree to the amendment with a view to the application of democracy. It might be the first success that we have had this Session. I notice the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, shaking his head behind her. I know that he is the Minister’s mentor, but I ask her to disregard him. Why not be a democrat and accept this?
Viscount Eccles
I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said that with great charm. However, what will we do in Parliament if the bidder says that he will not make his bid unconditional if the matter is to be submitted to Parliament?
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, the amendment seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State lays a report before Parliament before there is a sale of shares. I shall talk quickly, because I am worried about the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, influencing me before I reach the end. I believe that the drafting of the clause makes it clear that the report should be laid before a disposal of shares is made. The clause requires the Secretary of State to lay a report as soon as reasonably practicable after a decision has been made to undertake a sale of shares.
The arrangements needed to organise a disposal of shares in Royal Mail to a trade buyer through a competition or to conduct a public flotation would take several months. It would not be the case that the Secretary of State would decide over breakfast to sell shares in Royal Mail and then complete the sale by the time we in this House enjoy our evening dinner. It simply would not happen that way. The starting gun for work on the specific arrangements for a sale would be a decision by the Secretary of State to undertake a sale. Under the Bill, the Secretary of State has to lay a report before Parliament as soon as reasonably practicable after a decision is taken to dispose of shares. This would be before a sale of shares. I therefore kindly ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for her response. I must admit that had I known that the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, would be that effective I would deploy him more regularly and more often. That way, we might achieve acceptance of at least one amendment. We have gone from considering affirmative and super-affirmative procedures to a report. Blandishments from me or the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, seem to be of no use whatever. Nevertheless, we still believe that this is a reasonable request. It is part of what we would describe as accountability and scrutiny. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment—again, on the understanding that I may well return to this matter on Report.
Energy Bill [HL]
Lord Whitty
“Compensation where the Secretary of State requests termination of offshore lease or agreement to lease
(1) The Secretary of State shall make a scheme (in this section, an “early termination compensation scheme”) to have effect where—
(a) a lease granted or agreement to lease has been made by the Crown Estates for the purpose of construction and operation of a generating station powered by wind, wave or tidal energy, or of equipment for transmission of electricity at a site in United Kingdom territorial waters or the REZ;(b) that lease or agreement to lease gives the landlord power to determine the lease or agreement where the Secretary of State so requests on the basis that the whole site, or any part of it, is required in connection with oil or gas works or rights; and(c) the landlord proposes to determine the lease or agreement, as regards the whole site or any part of it, as a result of such a request.(2) An early termination compensation scheme—
(a) must require the owner of, or person seeking to exploit, the oil or gas works or rights in question to pay compensation to the full extent of the loss which is likely to be incurred including the recovery of any wasted expenditure, loss of profits and any consequential loss suffered as a result of such works, by the lessee or holder of the agreement to lease as a result of the determination;(b) may, subject to paragraph (a), make such provision as the Secretary of State considers appropriate for the computation of compensation;(c) must make provision for the procedure applicable to the making and determination of claims, including provision for resolution of matters, in the event of disagreement, by an independent body;(d) must provide for the Secretary of State, when satisfied that compensation as required by the scheme has been agreed or resolved, so to certify in writing; and(e) may contain such other provision as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(3) The landlord must not determine the lease or agreement to lease until the Secretary of State has certified the determination in accordance with subsection (2)(d).
(4) Subsections (1), (2), (5), (6), (7)(b) and (8) of section 33 apply, with the necessary modifications, to an early termination compensation scheme.”
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I had hoped that we would have a replacement to move the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who is not able to be here. However, we have no one, so the amendment is not moved.
“Bodies able to produce and supply renewable energyProduction and supply of renewable energy by National Park authorities and the Broads Authority
(1) Section 11 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 (production and supply of heat etc. by local authorities) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In subsection (1) the definition of a “local authority” shall be understood to include the Broads Authority and National Park authorities when applied to subsection (1)(a), (b) and (d) (production of heat or electricity or both; establishment and operation of generating stations for production of heat or electricity or both; and use or sale of heat or electricity).”
(3) In subsection (3), after “a local authority” insert “including the Broads Authority and National Park authorities”.”
Lord Judd
My Lords, we live in an age of communication, but I was in a meeting at the other end and there was no Lords screen; it was just intuition that brought me back. The amendment is intended to raise on Report a matter that we discussed in Committee. The aim is to put the parks and broads authorities on the same footing as local authorities in being able to develop alternative energy possibilities in the national parks and in the broads authority area, and to feed back into the national system. That has been made possible by legislation for other local authorities, but somehow these authorities were not included. The purpose of the amendment is simply to ensure that they are put on an equal footing.
I will make two points. First, the park authorities are very keen to do this. They have found all sorts of imaginative ways in which it could be done, and which would be very much in keeping with the purposes, environment and character of the parks. Small projects done appropriately by park authorities could be a great generator of interest in the possibilities that could be undertaken by other people; they could have great demonstrative value. For all these reasons, I hope that we will get some firm reassurance from the Minister that we will see the possibilities opened up for the park authorities without further delay. I beg to move.
Lord Deben
My Lords, having been rather critical of the national parks in the past, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. They should be accepted with one small caveat; namely, that the national parks ought in these circumstances to do everything in their power to make sure that others who are in the national parks should be able to play a part in this, and do things independently as well. My one concern is that the national parks should not feel that this is something only for them. It should be something for everyone who lives in the national parks, and when it is more suitable for other people to do something, I hope that they will be able to do it. Not all, but one or two national parks are inclined to believe that only what they do is acceptable. With that caveat, I hope that the Minister will help the House to agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, seeks to do.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I am grateful for that last contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Deben. He indicated that past experience of the national parks was not always entirely satisfactory. As we all recognise, what Minister ever finds that a group for which he is responsible is entirely satisfactory? However, the noble Lord indicated that he did not quite subscribe to the perspective that my noble friend Lord Judd proposes in his amendment, and I am very glad that today he has indicated that he supports the amendment, which is an important contribution to the Bill. I am sure that the Minister will look upon it favourably. The national parks will not be asking for anything outrageous, merely that they should play their part.
We all recognise the uniqueness of the national parks' ability to commit themselves to aspects of renewable energy. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. The national parks should not be able to operate in an exclusive manner; they must also look towards canalising within their areas others that can make this contribution. However, there is no doubt that providing an opportunity for the national parks to contribute to these renewable energy developments will be advantageous, and I hope that the Minister takes the same view.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, I very much welcome the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. In Committee, we all spoke very favourably about this particular aspect. At the time, I said that I would, through my officials, actively look to see whether we could include this measure, and I have good news. We have consulted and carried out research, though counsel, and the good news is that the national parks have the authority to undertake this role. We now have to encourage them to understand that they have that opportunity. I know that, in addition to the message that I shall be sending the national parks myself, I can count on noble Lords here to ensure that this message gets back to them. I am extremely pleased with this development, as, I hope, is the noble Lord, because it saves us having to move a government amendment, which would only have taken more of your Lordships’ time.
I re-emphasise what my noble friend Lord Deben said. It is important that national parks understand their responsibility and how they transfer that responsibility to the people who live within them. It is important that they exercise the authority that they have through this amendment, and that they support renewable activities and microgeneration for those who live in national parks. I hope that that satisfies the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Judd
This is very encouraging news and I hope that it is not just in the world of aspiration. I have absolutely no doubt about the Minister’s personal commitment to, and hopes for, this area. However, I hope that a way will be found by the Government to get firmly on the record what the parks’ powers are in this respect. I hope that he can give me an assurance on that.
Lord Marland
Perhaps I may reassure the noble Lord that we will get something on the record, and I shall be very happy to write to him outlining the details.
Lord Judd
In those circumstances, I thank the Minister. His response has been very constructive throughout our deliberations on this matter, and this is very encouraging news. I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that every time he speaks on the national parks, I am dying to know which two national parks so obviously got under his skin when he was Secretary of State.
With regard to the point about the role of the parks and the role of the people within them, as I understand it, that is very much how the authorities envisage the future. They have to be certain that people who undertake projects of this or any other kind do so in the context of the purposes of the parks and that they do it in the most sensitive, environmentally friendly way, respecting the objectives and not breaking them. However, if people want to undertake possibilities of this kind within that firm commitment, I am sure that the park authorities will welcome such co-operation with those who want to play a part.
Above all, I thank the Minister and, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lea of Crondall
“PART 4AEnergy revenues, taxes and subsidies: equitable price effectsEnergy revenues, taxes and subsidies: equitable price effects
(1) The Treasury shall publish an annual financial abstract of all fiscal and quasi-fiscal instruments, including revenues, tax expenditures and subsidies, which relate to the supply of energy, including hydrocarbons.
(2) The Office for Budget Responsibility shall produce annual assessments, having regard to each carbon budgetary period specified under the Climate Change Act 2008, of the incidence on each sector of the economy, including—
(a) manufacturing and services;(b) public and private transport, including—(i) road travel (by bus and private vehicles),(ii) rail and air travel (both personal and freight);(c) home and industrial heating.(3) The Office for National Statistics shall publish in easily assimilable form an assessment of how each fiscal instrument or market intervention affects consumers with different levels of income.
(4) Both assessments shall be tabled for discussion at a periodic forum of industry, trade unions, consumers and other stakeholders; and the forum shall publish its minutes and executive summaries of documentation shall be circulated widely.”
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, the proposal in this amendment is, in some respects, complementary to the green industrial strategy. I think that the Government are doing rather well, in terms of the co-ordination within government, in getting their act together on a green industrial strategy, and this Bill bears witness to that. I know that a couple of weeks ago the Green Economy Council had its first meeting on the green industrial strategy. The council is chaired by Vince Cable and attended by Chris Huhne and Caroline Spelman, together with, I believe, junior Ministers from the Treasury and other departments. Apart from Ministers, there is very wide participation from members of industry, including the modern energy industries, and trade unions.
However, that is totally separate from where I think there is currently a gap in the narrative so far as concerns the general public, although it is in the same family of issues relating to carbon and so on. I refer to the tax subsidy side of the jigsaw puzzle. There is concern at the lack of an easily understandable narrative about how the tax and price side affects industry and how what one might call the fiscal energy accounts affect the consumer.
At the end of my speech I shall come back to the nature of the body that I am proposing to deal with this issue but, first, the question to be asked is: what sort of information flow on the taxation and price effect side is needed? I have set out briefly in the amendment the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility in providing verification of, and therefore greater credibility to, the picture presented by the Treasury. I also mention the role of the Office for National Statistics. It is a very important part of the governance of Britain but in some respects it has its own independent role, as must be the case in all countries. We all go round the world talking about the independence of audit and statistics as being central to a properly run modern mixed economy. Statistical bodies certainly have to be seen to be independent, and the ONS can, separately from the Treasury, produce independent studies—for example, on the income distribution aspect, which is measured in several ways, including through the composition of the retail prices index and the consumer prices index.
However, we need two sorts of information. One is what one might call a flow chart of the final incidence of all the taxes and subsidies faced directly by consumers today and indirectly through industrial sectors—transport being a notable example of that, given the weight of hydrocarbon fiscal imposts, and heating being another good example. Of course, that is information that can be presented at a point in time, but more significant in the dynamics of the hugely changing scenario over the next five to 10 years—and it is more or less a revolution in how the fiscal context of energy is governed—is the carbon floor. Over time, there will be a hugely important set of indirect subsidies relating to the carbon floor compared with if it were not there. Broadly speaking—you could have a very complicated debate on this—you can underpin a carbon price agreed nationally or internationally, or you can have a carbon tax, and we could debate that.
Another idea is the new entry tariff for electricity. That was announced by the Treasury and DECC in a Statement last December. You do not have to look into a crystal ball when you can read the book. A straightforward carbon tax—I shall use that as a proxy for all other hydrocarbon taxes—is highly regressive. We know that four times as much share of income is spent on carbon by the bottom decile compared with the top decile. That information is often fed to journalists. The person in the Rolls-Royce pays more but not as a percentage of his or her income. Unless people are deliberately setting out to mislead, it is not sensible to say that.
It is also not sensible for people to say on the BBC or anywhere else, unless they want to be mendacious, that people who no longer own cars because they cannot afford them are no longer part of the calculation under the heading of cars. Although that is the rule in the Office for National Statistics, there is a linking mechanism. If you are a youth looking for a job and you do not have a car, there is not much comfort in someone saying, “By the way, you haven’t got a car so this is not a cost to you as measured in the retail prices index”. People have to get their brains round that—this is the central theme of my speech and my amendment—so that they do not think they are being sold a pup. On home heating, currently the top decile of people pay 2 per cent of their income and the bottom decile pay no less than 16 per cent of their income.
I think the Treasury, DECC and others collect an amazingly interesting variety of statistics, some of which are hidden. Officials very kindly took me through some of the things available. I thought I knew roughly what was available but there were two or three things I had not heard of. That is not hiding one's light under a bushel; it is a failure to factor in or agree, a priori, the fact that statistics do not speak for themselves but they need some relevance to a narrative that is presented to people in Burton upon Trent. That does not happen at the moment. It is vital and it will be increasingly challenging to ensure that that happens in future. I put it to the Treasury—some of my best friends work in the Treasury—that they deliberately confuse the need for confidentiality and secrecy when it comes to the Budget. There is a question of how open they should be when it comes to simplifying information for popular consumption. You cannot get away from the fact that the Treasury is a highly political department because it and the Chancellor take a lot of heat from the public and the media on the big issues of the economy, taxation, employment and so on.
Against that background, I strongly welcome the creation of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. I shall be corrected if I am wrong, but I think that the precursor to that was a statement by Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling before the election; they were present at the conception. I think it is now separate from the Treasury in terms of the building; it has its own Act of Parliament and I think it even has a telephone number. I spent months trying to ring it up and someone said, “Who do you want?”. I said, “Who are you?”, and he said, “I’m in the Treasury”. I said, “I’m trying to get the Office for Budget Responsibility”. There was a lot of shuffling around and then I heard, “Jonathan, are you the Office for Budget Responsibility?”—I am caricaturing it of course. That will be an increasingly important part of the national governance furniture.
Baroness Northover
Perhaps I could remind the noble Lord that, according to the Companion, he is expected to keep to 15 minutes. Given the time on the clock, he might want to draw his remarks to a close.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I am sorry. I have read the Companion. I am moving on amendment so the time limit is 20 minutes.
Baroness Northover
The important thing is for us to focus on the matter in hand; perhaps the noble Lord might bring his remarks to a sharp conclusion.
Lord Lea of Crondall
No, I am sorry, but I think that that is a bit rough when I planned on the basis of what I was told this afternoon was the interpretation of the Companion. Are you making a ruling?
Baroness Northover
I am reading what it says in the Companion. We are losing time. Whether it is 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I am sure that the noble Lord will wish to bring his remarks to a clear conclusion.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I will take another three minutes as a compromise, if I may, because I am not there yet.
Carbon capture and storage is another good example where lobbyists say that they need to give confidence that they can recover their up-front costs. That is in fact a demand for an open-ended subsidy. I could go on. Those are all difficult questions to put into the jigsaw puzzle that the statisticians have to put together. We cannot just have random subsidies all round.
I could mention the electricity market reform proposals, where there are four options—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will be pleased to know that I will not read them all out. How many people in this country —how many people in this House—know about them? If we are talking about baseload nuclear and the problems of making wind power work, we cannot shut down wind power, so will nuclear have to shut down when the range of electricity use between the summer night and the winter night is between 25 gigawatts in summer and 50 gigawatts in winter? What will the rules be about that?
I make my last point. We may think that this is complicated, but it is against the background of a spike in the world price. We must be clear which is the world price effect and which is domestic subsidies for people in the street. That is essential politically. I hope that no one thinks that I am talking in a partisan sense. It can mean less need for higher indirect taxation if people take the view that the important thing is the reduction of carbon growth, but the Treasury will not be keen on seeing that as a scope for lowering indirect taxation.
I am on my last thought. I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, in our last day in Committee, said that she agreed with a few ideas in my amendment then—there were some things with which she disagreed, which I have therefore taken out. The Government are ticking the box of transparency. Secondly, they are taking the first tentative steps to what I call saleability. We still have to jump the next fence of how to get a high degree of responsibility around the country. That is the signal, which I hope can be taken on board, that there is a good deal of convergence on the view that the approach of the amendment is rational and reasonable. It is very much in the Government’s interest, as well as the wider public interest. I hope that the Minister will now, having heard about the rationale and future adjustments that can be made, give careful consideration with her colleagues before the Bill reaches the other place.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, has adumbrated a number of very important issues. I do not dispute that for a moment. It was not altogether easy to follow all the details, but there is no doubt that we have been moving through a consumer revolution in how energy is priced and sold, and the impact of that on the population at large. There are clearly attractions to the noble Lord’s proposal. He mentioned the new green economy council. I, too, have studied the proposals for that and welcome that initiative. We look forward to seeing what comes from that. I am not sure how far that differs from the forum that he proposes in the last paragraph of his amendment.
The noble Lord’s amendment goes very wide. It covers not just prices but taxes and the whole question of the impact on different sections of the community. There is a need for more clarity on this. I cite just two examples. In case some noble Lords feel that they are being singled out, I shall not mention any names. I find it absurd that people can in two successive amendments or speeches demand that this or that renewable should be supported by the renewables obligation certificate—which, as we all know, is fed straight through the supplier companies and falls on to the bills of consumers—and then in the next amendment set up a great cry of woe because of the impact that this will have on the fuel poor. Some people do not seem to have been adding those two things together and realising that there must be some conflict between them: to ask for more subsidy and say that they are very sorry that it will put the price up.
I agree totally with the noble Lord that there is a need for more public understanding of what this is all about. I give another example very briefly. When the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change made an extremely important Statement last October heralding electricity market reform—the noble Lord referred to that in his speech—he drew on the paper published by the department last July entitled Estimated Impacts of Energy and Climate Change Policies on Energy Prices and Bills. At least, I think he was drawing on that. However, there was a freedom of information appeal to the department reported in the Times this January. The headline read:
“Energy shake-up will lift electricity bills to £1,000 in 20 years”.
That may be a massive exaggeration; I do not know, but there are great uncertainties in all this. That seems to be what the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, is seeking to identify and to provide a process whereby there can be more public understanding. I am sure that we would all applaud that.
The noble Lord proposes to add a major measure, or series of measures, to this Bill, which is quite specific. The Energy Bill is primarily dealing with the Green Deal.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I have a problem with what the noble Lord said. Is he suggesting that the Table Office did not think that this amendment could be made to the Bill?
Lord Jenkin of Roding
If the noble Lord will just wait a moment, that is the point that I am coming to. I think there is a lot in what he said, but I find it extremely difficult to see how we could add at virtually the last stage—although he raised it in Committee and mentioned it at Second Reading—a series of major proposals.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
The noble Lord must allow me to finish my sentence. How could we add a major series of constitutional and economic innovations which would clearly need infinitely more discussion? The House is extremely full at the moment, and we could go on discussing this for some time, but it is not for this Bill. I hope that the noble Lord will find other opportunities to bring this forward on other occasions, because there are many things that could be discussed; but at the moment, at this stage—on the last day on Report; we will have Third Reading next week—I just do not feel that we should accept this amendment.
I do not know what my noble friend is going to say from the Front Bench, but I think that it would be a somewhat bizarre action for this House, at this stage of the Bill, to add the very far-reaching amendment that the noble Lord has tabled. He has spoken to it eloquently and explained what he is trying to achieve. I have indicated that I think there is much merit in that for generating public understanding. However, I would advise the House against trying at this stage, with what would inevitably be a comparatively limited debate, to add a wholly new process of government in order to fulfil the requirements of the amendment. I just do not think that we should do that.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Before the noble Lord sits down, I have to come back and say that he is totally misinformed about how this amendment was written, when it was written, where it has been placed in the Bill, and so on. This amendment was written for debate in Committee—just like the innumerable amendments that were debated with speeches of several hours at a time by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. That is the first thing. The second thing is that the fact that it has been placed at the end of the Bill was not my doing. I could have had it in Clause 2, and then that argument would have fallen. Thirdly, I have made it clear that we have reached a stage where a lot of noble Lords have said that the points are interesting in terms of scrutiny. The amendment also has to go to the House of Commons. I find it amazing that that is the best argument that the noble Lord can offer regarding an amendment to which I have given a lot of study and thought. I have looked at statistics and discussed it with civil servants—
Baroness Northover
I remind the noble Lord that he will have the opportunity to respond to all the points made in this mini-debate at the end of the debate, after the Minister has replied.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
I shall finish my speech, as I gave way to the noble Lord to allow him to make his intervention.
I am not complaining that the amendment is placed at the end of the Bill. Of course the noble Lord has placed his amendment where it appears to fit. I am concerned that he is proposing a major series of changes to the whole way in which all the organs of government—the Treasury, the Office for National Statistics and all the others—should conduct themselves, and a new forum to examine the assessments. With the greatest respect, I do not think that this can be added to a Bill of the very specific nature that we have before us.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I hesitated to break into my old mentor’s speech, but I want to agree with him and to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, that in his speech he proved why this is impossible. In this amendment, the Office for National Statistics is supposed to publish all this in an easily assimilable form. Your Lordships' House might suggest that after listening to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, it is quite difficult to feel that it would be easy to produce an easily assimilable form.
The second thing I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea, is very important. It is always true that the poorer you are, the more heavily any imposition weighs upon you. It is not new to say that a particular sum is heavier on somebody who has a small income than on somebody who has a large income. That is why it is very important in the way in which we deal with these matters to see that it falls as lightly as possible on those who are least able to bear it. To spend a great deal of time producing this material in a form that I fear will not be easily assimilable and will probably not be read by the very people for whom it is intended does not help this issue. This issue is that in everything the Government do, in everything the coalition do, they have to seek to do it in a way that is as equable as possible. I say to your Lordships that we are already placing huge responsibilities upon the system of government, and to add to those this very detailed, extremely expensive and, I have to say, probably not used collection of new statistics without any real indication that it is going to be of any practical value is unnecessary not only at this stage of the Bill but at any stage of the Bill.
Finally, the thing we should be concentrating upon is enabling individuals to influence their spending. That is what matters, not what the Office for National Statistics says. Individuals should be able to see how much energy they are using, how they can best prevent that energy being used, how they can opt-in to the Green Deal and how they can make their lives more comfortable and happier. That is what we should be concentrating on. We should be moving away from this determination constantly and centrally to mull over, reproduce, redo, represent and reargue all these cases and get down to the real issue. How does Mrs Jones do something about her own energy use? How does she make her home more energy efficient? How does she know when she is using that energy? How is she able to take advantage of lower tariffs by, for example, doing her washing at a time that is not a peak time? All those things demand the fast installation of smart meters. I hope they will not be prescriptive but will merely say what they are supposed to do rather than how they do it. I hear some rather unnerving information from the ministry that sounds as though it wants to be terribly detailed about it. I hope it is not going to be like that. That is what we should be emphasising: helping individuals to make choices that benefit them rather than providing a lot of statistics that I suggest will be read by nobody. If they will be read by nobody, they will do nobody any good.
Lord Oxburgh
My Lords, I, too, have some sympathy with the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, in proposing this amendment. However, I, too, do not feel that this is the way forward. This is a very big matter and requires very careful consideration. At this point, I think I have an opportunity to offend all political parties in the House by saying that within the energy industry there is bewilderment that pretty much all the political parties believe that energy poverty should be treated separately from every other sort of poverty at the expense of distorting our energy market and our energy costing. In the view of many outside, it would be much more sensible to let energy prices do what they must. It is inevitable that we go into a more expensive energy world and handle the whole poverty problem together.
Lord Teverson
My Lords, I, too, sympathise with a number of the themes that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has brought forward, but I remind the House that this is Report stage and, to be honest, I find this amendment quite muddled. I find it very difficult to understand its detail or even what it is trying to achieve in terms of its words. I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Lea, what he is trying to achieve, but I am not even sure that if we put this into the Bill it would achieve that. Subsection (1) of the proposed new clause refers to a range of things including quasi-fiscal instruments. I do not know whether that is a technical Treasury term that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has got from his friends in the Treasury, but I do not understand it.
I seriously do not understand what proposed new subsection (2) means. It seems to connect carbon budget periods, which as we know are five years, with annual assessments, and I am not sure what it is trying to do. The list in proposed new subsection (2)(a) to (c) exclude the industry that paid for my mortgage in the first 20 years—the road freight industry—inland waterways and shipping, and I am not sure that its purpose is comprehensive.
Proposed new subsections (3) and (4), again, come back to statistics that I think are generally available. It has not been difficult for me to find most energy statistics that I have tried to find.
I agree that we have an issue with the amount of money that ROCs and feed-in tariffs actually cost consumers, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding reminded us, and with the way in which these charges affect groups in fuel poverty differently. However, I honestly do not feel that this amendment achieves what we want to achieve within a reasonable understanding of what this amendment actually says. For that reason, I find it impossible to support it at this stage of the Bill.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, this has been a fairly substantial debate that justifies at least one decision which the House came to the other evening: that we would not be able to rush consideration of this and the other amendment and deal with them within the time limit that we had at that time. I am grateful to my noble friend for having generated quite a significant debate on the issues.
It is a little unfair to suggest that this amendment comes somewhat late in the Bill, as we discussed it extensively in Committee. I indicated from the opposition Front Bench that we did not find parts of it entirely acceptable at that stage. In particular, we could see Treasury colleagues bridling at the concept of hypothecated taxation, which is an additional complicating dimension to the proposals. My noble friend Lord Lea has worked hard, and harder, to take out that part of his amendment and still retain the merits of the original amendment.
This amendment has come in its proper place in our consideration of the Bill. It is not as though we are at the last stages of our consideration of this Bill in Parliament. The Bill started in this House, and our job in a sense is to clarify the issues and to make amendments where we think amendments should be made so that our colleagues in the other place can address the Bill with the benefit of the considerable expertise that this House brings to bear on matters of this kind. We therefore owe my noble friend a considerable debt for having raised these issues.
Does this matter fit within the Bill? I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, but I fear that that point can be made about every Bill that is likely to come before the House. I can think of Bills that relate to energy, Bills that relate to the environment and green issues, and Bills that relate to a Treasury position. All will say that their Bill focuses on particular issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, spelled out accurately, and that we should not try to drop a load of matters into it that are not extraneous but that bring other dimensions into the Bill that are not its primary purpose.
Lord Marland
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has yet again provoked a substantial debate—43 minutes on Report so far, and an hour and 15 minutes in Committee—on a very complicated subject. He identified in his speech the complications of getting to grips with this. To some extent—and I will make a partisan point here—we have in his view inherited a complicated situation that could perhaps have been solved over previous years but that is so complicated it is probably very difficult so to do. In fact, he has spent time with our officials, and with Treasury officials whom we put at his disposal, discussing this matter and, I hope, better understanding the complications.
The noble Lord is perhaps concerned that there is not enough information. Well, there is the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is the National Audit Office, which produces annual statistics. There is our own departmental publication, our annual report, which produces the statistics that are being mentioned. We have the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics and an annual publication on energy prices. I could go on.
My noble friend Lord Deben makes an extremely good point. How much continual burden of statistics and information are we going to put on people, which they would have to digest in order to work out what is going on, in the name of transparency? As we have agreed through these debates, transparency is fundamental. That is one reason why we are bringing the smart meter into people’s homes to make readily available the information on the electricity that they will be spending. We have discussed throughout the merits of smart meters, a fundamental platform for this Bill.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, it is fundamental that we have better public understanding of the cost of electricity and it must be the aim of the Government to do that. Not for one moment do we not accept that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, makes some important points, but we cannot sort this out in nine months of government or, with a click of the fingers, in the short period of time that has been available to this Bill.
However, it should be reviewed and we should look at it. We should embrace it in our electricity market reform programme, which is under consultation, and we will consider it through that process. Perhaps appropriately, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, suggests, it will be part of a Bill that looks at this area and not be part of one which has fundamentally been driven by the Green Deal, admittedly with a few add-on bits. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, recently proposed an addition in an excellent amendment.
The Government do not feel that this is an appropriate amendment for this Bill. We believe that it is something that we should consider. Like the previous Government, we constantly believe in transparency and helping the general public to better understand this complicated issue of energy and electricity prices. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords that we are committed to this. On that basis and with that assurance, and in recognising the important and great value that this amendment has brought to the debate, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, will withdraw his amendment accordingly.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I hope that I do not have to come back in three years’ time because there are riots in the streets and name all noble Lords who said that this did not need to be done. There will be great anxiety in the everyday lives of people because matters will have got mixed up in their minds about the obligation. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is now so intellectually confused that he does not remember that it was he, following Kyoto, who brought in a degree of hypothecation whereby we are transferring funds to mitigation in Bangladesh and so on. These are all part of the deal. It involves a huge amount of money, which soon will approach $500 billion a year. Therefore, people should have a chance to understand.
I am afraid that everyone from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on has contradicted themselves and has made totally inconsistent remarks. It seems that if people do not understand the statistics, presumably that is their fault and the poor dears will never be able to understand them. We should put the statistics in a form that people can own and understand, giving them a picture of the problems, and reasons for the price increases, that they can accept. I do not know whether the noble Lord thinks that he is living in ancient Athens, but we have a wider electorate than they had there.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
I think that the noble Lord has totally misunderstood what I said. I went to great pains to indicate that I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, had raised a number of extremely important points. My only argument, which has been supported by other speakers around the House, is that this is not the right Bill in which to do it. There needs to be much more discussion and probably a separate Bill—perhaps the next energy Bill.
Lord Lea of Crondall
On that point we can both read tomorrow’s Hansard to check who used which argument. Certainly, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, deployed the argument—no doubt one of them will put their hand up and say whether it was them—that this is an expensive statistics-gathering exercise. I do not think that we are talking about gathering more statistics, which are very expensive to produce. We are talking about £60 billion or £80 billion. What a ridiculous argument.
I hope that Ministers will think about this proposal before the Bill goes to the Commons and that our opposition colleagues in the other place will want to take it forward. We are moving into a dangerous area of potential misunderstanding. We have a huge spike in the world oil price and on top of that an alternative between a carbon floor and a carbon tax—not exactly the same thing—both of which will be regressive.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, is no longer in his place because he made a sweeping statement of socioeconomic doctrine that we should achieve all this through original income distribution and not try to help people with their home heating Bills. I do not know what responsibilities he has had in the world of meeting actual citizens—he is a very distinguished scientist—but we have to look at the wider public interest and the acceptability of peaceful governance of this country. I think that there is something like that in one of the prayers that the right reverend Prelates read from time to time. Something along those lines at least is in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. That argument is a total red herring at this stage. It has been put down as an amendment just like the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. We will have to consider what to say at Third Reading.
Things are changing fast. In another astonishing aside, the Minister said words to the effect that we are rushing things. For a coalition, which has an agreement to change the world, the constitution, the Parliament, the way in which we elect people, this dog’s breakfast of the Public Bodies Bill, and a long list of other things coming forward, such as the health services Bill, to say that we cannot take these measures in this sort of timescale is not a very telling argument.
In my opening remarks, I made the point that this is not a partisan amendment at all. I am very sorry that the Minister felt that he had to say that this mess, or words like that, has been inherited from the Labour Government. That is ridiculous. Things are happening all the time. We have the world oil shock and the new EU framework, which I understand is about transparency and subsidies as regards renewable energy. All these things are happening and we are trying to get ahead of the curve. All that I can say to noble Lords is “Mark my words”. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Marland
“( ) section (Acknowledgment of green deal plan in connection with other transactions etc)(3) (further provision made in regulations for acknowledgment of such a plan);”
“( ) section (Acknowledgment of green deal plan in connection with other transactions etc)(4) (further provision made in regulations for acknowledgment of such a plan);”
Lord Marland
“( ) section (Acknowledgment of green deal plan in connection with other transactions etc)(4) (further provision made in regulations for acknowledgment of such a plan);”
Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Continuance in Force of Sections 1 to 9) Order 2011
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Neville-Jones
That the draft order laid before the House on 3 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)
My Lords, the purpose of the order before the House today is to renew Sections 1 to 9 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 pending their repeal and replacement with an alternative regime. These sections expire after one year unless renewed by order subject to the affirmative resolution of both Houses. The effect of this order will be to maintain the control orders powers until 31 December 2011, and I emphasise that this is a limited and temporary renewal. As the Home Secretary said on 26 January in another place, this allows us to bring forward the legislation introducing a replacement system. In due course the House will obviously be able to debate the new legislation in detail.
By way of a preliminary I should like to set out the context for the proposal before the House. Sadly, I have to say that the threat to the United Kingdom from terrorism is as serious as we have faced at any time, and it remains assessed by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre as “severe”. Since the beginning of the year, there have been a number of major terrorist attacks that have resulted in the deaths of many innocent people. These attacks have occurred in different countries from Russia to Afghanistan to Yemen and to the Philippines, and they show that a large number of fatalities still result from terrorist attacks. This country has been well protected, but nevertheless in the UK we have witnessed a number of significant terrorist plots that have been uncovered over the past year, and recent investigations and trials show that terrorist networks are continuing to plan and to attempt to carry out attacks. The threat we face continues to evolve, and I do not think that it is going to diminish or change to any material extent in the near future. That is the background against which we have to look at the temporary legislation and the new regime.
The coalition’s commitment to redress the balance in our counterterrorism powers was made in the run-up to the election and we therefore conducted a review of the counterterrorism and security powers. That review included consideration of the necessity, effectiveness and proportionality of control orders. On behalf of the Government I thank the independent oversight given to that review by the noble Lord, and now my noble friend Lord Macdonald. The review underlined that the Government’s absolute priority is to prosecute suspected terrorists in open court and that imposing restrictions on suspected terrorists who have not been convicted in open court should be the last resort. I want to emphasise that prosecution is our objective. Where restrictions are required they should, as far as possible but given the need to protect the public, continue to support the primary objective of prosecution.
The review concluded that for the foreseeable future there is likely to continue to be a small number of people in the United Kingdom who pose a real threat to our security but who, despite our best efforts, cannot be prosecuted or, in the case of foreign nationals, deported. Our reluctant conclusion is that there will therefore continue to be a need for a mechanism to protect the public from the threat of such individuals.
Noble Lords may be aware that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, reached the same conclusion in his most recent and, indeed, his last independent report on control orders, and the other statutory consultees support the proposal to renew the control order powers. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and I am sure that other noble Lords will want to join me in this, that the Government thank him for his very thorough work over the past 10 years on the review process. His reports have been a model of clarity and succinctness and a great aid towards everyone’s understanding of what was at issue.
I am aware that a number of Members of this House and members of committees have said that they would have liked to have been able to see, at the time of the renewal of this order, the legislation that we are going to bring forward. I have to say that we will bring forward that legislation as soon as we can. We regard it as extremely important to get it right. We do not want to get ourselves into a position where subsequently we are reviewed and changed in our intentions through court action.
However, it is only right, as we have already done, to give the highlights of the provisions that we intend to bring forward, which mark real changes in the regime. It will provide, among other things, a two-year maximum time limit on the measures, which will clearly demonstrate that these are targeted and temporary. It will be possible to impose a further measure on an individual only if there is evidence of new terrorism-related activity after the original measure was imposed, which of course is different from the current situation. Measures will have to meet the evidential test of reasonable belief that a person is or has been involved in terrorist-related activity, and this of course is a higher threshold than the test of reasonable suspicion of such involvement, which of course exists under the current control order regime.
The police will be under a strengthened legal duty to inform the Home Secretary about their ongoing review of a person’s conduct with a view to bringing a prosecution. A more flexible overnight residence requirement will replace the current curfew arrangements. Forcible relocation to other parts of the country will be ended. Geographical boundaries will be replaced with a power to impose much more tightly defined exclusion from particular places only. There will be no power to exclude someone, for instance, from the totality of, say, a London borough. Individuals will have greater freedom of communication, which will include access to a mobile phone and to a home computer with internet access, subject to certain conditions such as providing passwords. They will have greater freedom to associate. For example, there will be no blanket restrictions on visitors or meetings. They will be prohibited only from associating with people who may facilitate terrorism-related activity. And of course they will be free to work and to study, subject again to any restrictions necessary to protect the public.
These changes will allow individuals to continue to lead a normal life as far as possible, subject only to the restrictions necessary to prevent or disrupt involvement in terrorism-related activity. We are clear that the more limited restrictions that may be imposed may indeed facilitate further investigation as well as prevent terrorism-related activities. The new regime will be accompanied by an increase in funding for the police and the Security Service to enhance their investigative capabilities. That is an absolutely key part of the new measures. We intend to bring forward legislation to this effect shortly and, as I have said, it must be properly prepared so that it may be properly scrutinised by this House. We welcome the support given by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to these measures and, indeed, the comments that have been made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its recent reports. The committee has expressed some welcome, even if perhaps only cautious, to the new system. The Government will of course reply formally to the detailed recommendations that have been made in those reports.
In the mean time, the Government are clear that it would be irresponsible to allow the current regime to lapse in the absence of alternative measures and while the investigative capabilities of the law enforcement and security agencies remain to be developed. As I say, that is a key part of the new regime. It is therefore important to underline that, for the time being, control orders should remain legally viable. While they may be imperfect, they have had some success in protecting the public and they are fully compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is sometimes asserted that controlled individuals do not know why they are subject to a control order. I remind the House that, as a result of the Law Lords judgment of June 2009 in AF and others, this is no longer the case. That judgment specified that controlled individuals must be given sufficient information about the case against them to enable them to give effective instructions to the special advocate.
Pending the introduction of the replacement to control orders, we believe that it is right, proper, proportionate and essential that these powers continue to be available in order to protect the public. As I have said, we are currently preparing the legislation to introduce the replacement system, which we will bring forward in the coming weeks. I have no doubt that noble Lords will want to give the new measures thorough scrutiny and we must have time to do that. While that process is under way, it would not be responsible for us to leave a gap in public protection. Therefore, we believe that it is right to ask the House to renew the powers for this temporary period, the alternative being a situation in which those who pose a threat to our safety could go about their activities with far too great freedom.
This is the last occasion on which the House will be asked to renew these powers. Before transition to the new regime is complete, the risk to the public would be grave indeed were the control order powers not to be renewed. I therefore ask the House to approve the renewal of the powers for the transitional period. I commend the order to the House.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, as all your Lordships know, control orders were introduced in March 2005 as an emergency measure. We in this House, after an all-night sitting which I shall never forget, insisted that the Government should have to come back after 12 months in order to justify the extraordinary powers which had been conferred on the then Home Secretary. They were indeed extraordinary powers, because they enabled him, on suspicion, to impose what amounted in effect to house arrest on an individual who had never been charged with any offence. Yet here we are, six years later, being asked to renew those very same powers yet again.
In a powerful briefing note which I am sure the Minister has read with care, Liberty describes the control order regime as being “completely discredited”. It would be difficult indeed to disagree with that view. However, Liberty is equally critical of what is now proposed in place of the control order regime, the so-called terrorism prevention and investigation measures —TPIM for short. We do not, of course, know what the Bill will contain, and it is the greatest pity that we do not have a draft of the Bill before us today. When we do get it, I hope that it will be subject to pre-legislative review.
The present indications are that the Bill will contain many of the objectionable features of the existing control order regime. Indeed, Liberty describes the new regime in its briefing note as simply control orders under a different name. Whether or not that is right is not a question for discussion today; that will be a matter for great debate when we see the Bill. No doubt the Government will then argue—as the Minister has indicated already—that there is a real difference between the Home Secretary being required to believe that a person is a terrorist and the Home Secretary being required to suspect that he is. Similarly, the Government will no doubt argue that the overnight residence requirement is much less restrictive than the curfew, which is to be abolished, and no doubt they will argue that the TPIM will allow access to the internet and much greater freedom to communicate and associate with others.
Lord Judd
My Lords, we all recognise that this is an immensely difficult issue. Before I say anything about it, I take this opportunity to yet again express, without qualification, my admiration for Ministers, the security services and the police in the heavy responsibilities they carry on our behalf in protecting society. I hope that anything I say today will be seen in the context of that sincere recognition of what is being done on our behalf and will be constructive.
The Minister referred to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and I shall concentrate on its report. She said that there will be a government reply to the Joint Committee. However, the Joint Committee serves and reports to us and it is not satisfactory for us to consider the report in the absence of the detailed ministerial response to it, because we ought to be able to take that into account in evaluating the observations of the Joint Committee. I pay tribute to the hard work which is done consistently by the committee on these matters.
Without any observations of my own, I shall concentrate on highlighting what the Joint Committee has said. I thought the Minister was a little ungenerous in her comment on its comment. I read as quite positive its remark that,
“we welcome the Government’s commitment to repealing the control order regime and its renewed commitment to the priority of criminal prosecution”.
Those are splendid words from a committee which is not renowned for making observations of that kind and I endorse them wholeheartedly.
The report then, of course, introduces the word “however” and questions,
“whether the renewal of the control order regime through the draft Order is consistent with the recommendations of the Government’s Review of Counter-Terrorism and Security Powers”.
In the committee’s view,
“the Government should urgently review all existing control orders to ensure they are compatible with the findings of the Review of Counter-Terrorism and Security Powers. Where the Review found that certain requirements cannot be justified because they are too intrusive, those obligations in existing control orders should be removed or reduced so as to be no greater than those which will be permissible under the proposed Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures regime. This should also apply to any new control orders made under the existing regime if it is renewed”.
The Joint Committee then goes on to make some specific recommendations. The Government should explain to us—in this debate, presumably—
“why it is considered justifiable to maintain control orders on individuals for more than two years in the absence of any new evidence of their involvement in terrorism and whether TPIMs will be imposed on persons already subject to control orders for two years”.
It also recommends that:
“The Director of Public Prosecutions should be asked to consider whether a criminal investigation is justified in relation to each of the eight individuals subject to existing control orders and whether, in each case, everything possible is being done to investigate and gather evidence with a view to such prosecution”.
The committee then makes a very important point about which I am quite concerned. Until a few years ago I was a member of this committee and I remember coming up against it even then. It recommends that:
“The Minister should meet with representatives of the special advocates to discuss their continuing concerns about the fairness of the special advocates system”.
This troubles me because, when I was on the committee, the special advocates shared their concerns with us. They said it was very stressful being expected to operate in a way which was quite alien to their professional training and the way in which they normally would expect to conduct themselves in court and in the fulfilment of their professional responsibilities.
This brings me to why these matters are so important not only in terms of abstract principle but in practical terms. First, we say that we are protecting society with all these measures, but what are we protecting? Our system of law is absolutely crucial to what makes Britain a society worth defending, and I am always anxious that, inadvertently, over a long period of time, we are eroding the quality of that law and undermining the professional commitment of the people within it by what they are expected to do with the special arrangements in place.
Secondly, we are, in a sense, in this dreadful ongoing challenge that confronts us, also involved in psychological warfare. In psychological warfare, highly manipulative extremists are always looking for opportunities to exploit doubts or misgivings. Therefore, our ability to demonstrate that we are doing things transparently and keeping within the law as it has always operated in this country is terribly important to winning the battle for the minds of people. This gives poignancy to the recommendations of the Joint Committee.
The Minister referred to her commitment to pre-legislative scrutiny before the new arrangements are brought into play. I am glad that she did so because there is evidently a misunderstanding. In its report, the Joint Committee draws attention to the fact that, in giving evidence, the Minister did not seem to suggest that pre-legislative scrutiny would be appropriate. To have that reassurance from her tonight—I would be grateful if she could underline it in anything she says later—is important.
Another point on the findings of the Joint Committee which should be emphasised is that it also recommends that,
“the Government publish a summary of the views of the Crown Prosecution Service, the police, the security and intelligence agencies and Government departments on the Review of Counter-Terrorism and Security Powers, to facilitate parliamentary scrutiny of the Review; and a summary of the views of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Director-General of the Security Service about the proposed renewal of the control order regime”.
I do not want us ever inadvertently to give a victory to the extremists and terrorists. If we are not to do so, a resolute commitment to transparent justice—to people knowing why they are being held and the reasons for it—is absolutely essential. If we are not doing that, then all kinds of genuinely concerned, not sceptical or cynical, young people—and not only young people—in society will be very anxious and will not be full-heartedly behind the Government in the responsibilities that they are trying to discharge on our behalf.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
My Lords, I declare an interest as the independent overseer of the review of counterterrorism and security powers. Like the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its recently published report, I strongly welcome the Government’s conclusion that the current control order regime can and should be repealed, consistent with public safety. It is obviously essential that it is replaced with something that is very different in character and not simply a pale imitation. We shall have to look closely at the legislation that comes forward to ensure that that is not what the Government have in mind. The review has clearly shown that the present regime is inefficient, grants excessive power to the Government, and undermines traditional British norms and respect for the rule of law. This may not be surprising. It was introduced by accident, following a series of court judgments adverse to the last Government. It has been a bad mistake.
I also strongly welcome the Government’s renewed and strengthened commitment, expressed in their response to the review, to the absolute priority of criminal prosecution. Where people are involved in terrorism they must be detected with all the considerable power at the disposal of the state, then prosecuted and locked up. It is not just public confidence that demands this but also our traditional common-law attachment to the supremacy of due process in criminal justice and our courts. The fact is that the evidence gathered by the review has made it clear that the present control order regime acts as a fundamental impediment to prosecution. This is because the restrictions placed upon controlees forbid the very contact and activity that, under proper surveillance and investigation, lead to evidence fit for prosecution. It is also because far too many controlees are simply warehoused under the supervision of the security services, beyond the scrutiny of criminal investigation, and therefore beyond any real possibility of prosecution.
For good reasons, the instincts of the security services are protective rather than prosecutorial in nature but this practice, and the Security Service’s primacy within it, means that some serious terrorist activity remains completely unpunished by criminal law. This is a serious and continuing failure of public policy. Any new scheme introduced by the Government must not replicate this failure. To give reality to the primacy of prosecution, which is the Government’s stated aim, it should clearly become an intrinsic part of any new regime that restrictions placed upon individuals should be linked to a continuing criminal investigation. After all, if the Home Secretary, under the new regime, is to go to the High Court to assert her belief that an individual is involved in acts of terrorism so that she may obtain an order placing restrictions upon that person, it would be quite absurd for there to be no active criminal investigation into the individual in question attendant upon the Home Secretary’s application. Yet that is the position that we are in at the moment.
Of course, if there were always such an investigation in progress, court-approved restrictions mandated for the duration of that investigation, up to a maximum period of two years, would become much more constitutionally acceptable—a form of pre-charge bail. I have no doubt that such a reform would garner broad support for the Government’s new regime, including among those most bitterly critical of the current arrangements. This reform would encourage evidence gathering and therefore increase the likelihood of prosecution. It would bring the new regime much closer to criminal justice, which is an obvious good in itself with all the protections that criminal justice implies for suspects. The Government should urgently reconsider their preliminary view on this issue which, frankly, has been hostile.
Again frankly, any Security Service opposition to intense police activity around controlees should not be a trump card. The public interest is wider than the instincts of the Security Service. In fact, the trump card should always be found in locking up those people who want to wreak violence upon our communities and putting them in prison cells for long, long years. This is the true deterrent and it is also the process that truly protects the public in a way that control orders never have.
There is a separate issue. A further conclusion of the review was that relocation—the practice under which people were forced to move to other parts of the country away from home, family and friends—should be abolished, and that long curfews should go. These were among the most bitterly resented aspects of the old regime and for good reason. They were also the most offensive to our traditional norms, imposed as they were without prosecution let alone conviction, and without the controlees being told any more than the mere gist of the allegations against them. Whoever would have thought that in Britain we would have a form of internal exile without prosecution or conviction?
The Government have now agreed that these provisions are excessive, disproportionate and, unnecessary—and I would add offensive. We do not need them, as the Government have now determined. They intend to abolish relocation and long curfews under their new regime. In those circumstances, they should do so now. How can it be right for this House to be invited to extend powers that the Government themselves have conceded are wrong in principle and excessive in practice, particularly when those powers impact so vividly upon civil liberties? I invite my noble friend to consider a way to proceed that does not include renewal of these quite excessive and, as we now know, unnecessary intrusions. Those subjected to them should not have to labour under these oppressive measures any longer. There can be no conceivable public interest in obliging them to do so when the measures themselves are serving no useful purpose.
Finally, it will be critical for this House and the other place to examine with great care the legislative proposals that come forward. It is always tempting for the bad old stuff to slip back into a piece of draft legislation. We must not end up in the position of approving a system later this year or early next year which is a form, as some people have put it, of “control order light”. We need real reform in this area. If there are to be restrictions, they must be coterminous with criminal investigation. There must be no restrictions which destroy the ability of the state to obtain evidence against people who might have been involved in terrorism, which is precisely the effect of the present regime. It has failed and must stop.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I will be brief. First, I suspect I am one of few people in the House who has been involved in some of these cases in the courts. I have seen them at close quarters.
Many noble Lords will also remember that I was one of those on the Labour Benches who strongly opposed the Labour Government introducing control orders. I opposed them then and ever since. I welcomed the fact that noble Lords on the other side of the House, whose faces are familiar, all went through the Lobbies with me opposing control orders. Now they are sitting in government and I want to remind them of the principled stand that they all took on control orders. It is easy, once in government, to hear poured into their ears the position taken by the security services that somehow this is the only way forward. With regard to the issue of dealing with persons suspected of links with terrorism where it would be difficult to bring them to trial, I have always advocated that surveillance, the use of intercept and so on can be done, but without interfering with liberty in the excessive way that control orders have meant. I am saddened and disappointed that the siren voices of the security services have persuaded the Government that something not very different from control orders should be the way forward. I am sure that I will be one of the people who take part in the debates when the legislation is presented to this House, and I will rigorously test some of the suggestions that have been made.
I strongly support what has been said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald: given the principled position that the Government are going to do away with control orders, and even if the position is that something else will come in of a lesser order but somewhat similar, it is quite wrong at this moment to keep the thing that they have criticised for so long with regard to the eight people currently subject to the level of suspicion that we have heard about. It cannot be right to continue that until the end of this year. At the very least, the Government should be reducing the constraints upon liberty to the standard that they are intending to introduce, and then that can be revisited in December. However, it cannot be right for them to continue with control orders when they so bitterly opposed their existence once they had been introduced by new Labour in government. I ask that, in the spirit not just of decency but of appropriateness, the cases that we have spoken about and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, mentioned be revisited.
I reiterate what my noble friend Lord Judd has said: one of the jewels in our crown, one of the great limbs of our democracy, is the way in which we interpret the rule of law. I am a proud champion of the common law. We have always believed that due process was vital before we in any way encroached upon the liberty of human beings. That is a proud tradition here and it is a sort of ceding to the terrorists if you abandon those values, which are so precious in our society. I strongly urge that we do not go down the road of introducing something similar, because it is a poison in the system. It is a way of saying that it was not just a temporary measure; somehow we have bought into this idea, and an alternative to the things that we have always believed in can now be introduced. I urge that we think again about that.
I was interested to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, said that there are alternatives, and I hope that in the months to come the Government will look again at what they are intending to do.
Baroness Afshar
My Lords, I add my thanks for the decision by the Minister to abandon forced relocation. However, I have been given to understand by Liberty that this weekend a young man with a young family was forcibly sent off. I want to highlight the law of unintended consequences: a young family is left behind that will be deprived of rights that this very same young man is going to have in the very near future. That means that a child will be raised apart from the care of the father of the household, but that child has committed no crime. My understanding was that the House has always agreed that the interests of children should be put first. It surprises me that at this stage we still are forcibly sending off young people who may or may not be guilty and punishing their family in the process.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her earlier statement. I join her in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for his stewardship of what has been a very sensitive area.
I am reminded of when control orders came about, how they were introduced and the sense of the terrorism that gripped our very shores. I remember 7/7 vividly for various reasons: first, as someone who was travelling at that time; secondly, as someone who would have been impacted directly through both friends and family; and, thirdly, because of what happened in the aftermath when it was perceived that a particular faith or a particular community had indulged in, or been involved in, those acts. For all those reasons, a chill went down my back. It was important at that time that action was taken.
Britain, as many noble Lords have said, is a place of great liberty and freedoms, and that is right. However, the people who enact these crimes or even conceive of them do not respect that. They do not respect these laws, freedoms and liberties. Somewhat ironically, it is the very freedoms that are provided by our country that allow them, not to act, but to conceive of acting in that way.
We have heard from many noble Lords that control orders are not the perceived way forward. The Government accept that; indeed, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has said that quite clearly. However, I am concerned. Until the revisions are introduced, what is the option? What do we do in the interim? The threat of terrorism is alive today. If we cast our mind across the world to Pakistan, in Faisalabad today there has been yet another terrorist attack. As the Minister has said, this is not a threat just to the UK; it is a threat internationally, and we must react to it. Britain is a great place for civil liberties and freedoms, but equally the first responsibility of the Government must be to the citizens and residents in this great country—to protect their freedoms and their rights, yes, but also their safety and security.
While the extension of control orders is not perceived in this House as welcome, until we fill that vacuum there is an absolute need to ensure that our citizens are protected. I am sure that as the new legislation comes forward there will, with the wisdom possessed by this House, be robust debate. For tonight, though, I support the Minister in ensuring that control orders are extended to protect that majority. It is the exception who fall victim to control orders, but the majority must be protected. I lend my support to the extension of these orders, with the hope that the new legislation that we will see will be right for Britain and will continue to protect the residents and citizens of our country.
Lord Bew
My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, for introducing this statutory instrument, which has of course a narrow, technical and short-term focus. In doing so, she displayed her customary vigilance in these matters. I am happy to support the instrument and, indeed, the Government’s plans for liberalisation in this area. Like other noble Lords, I particularly welcome the decision to increase access to internet and mobile phones under certain conditions for those affected by these orders, and I am glad, too, that the ability to relocate terrorist suspects in new areas will in all likelihood go. These are necessary, explicable and entirely defensible liberalisations.
We have heard much tonight about the case made by Liberty in a very fine document sent to many noble Lords, but I simply want to make one point on the other side of the argument regarding the extent to which all of this is shrouded in mystery. I simply think that it is possible for all of us to read some of the open-source evidence, including the High Court documentation, on these matters. If one does so, it is much more difficult for one to say that what is at stake here is a mystery of some sort. In fact, there is a significant amount of evidence in the public domain. Perhaps this bears on the argument about the role of the security forces in making a case behind the scenes—no doubt that goes on in all Governments—but, even without access to that sort of information and discussion, which most of us do not have, there is none the less a lot of material in the public domain that the Government have to take seriously. That is a balancing point that is worth making.
I am happy to support this temporary instrument as a necessary measure for public protection.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Minister started by giving the context for this order; my personal context falls into two parts. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the events of 7 July 2005 had an enormous impact on me personally, as much as on anyone who was not actually on one of the tube trains or on the bus. In addition, I am hugely aware of the capacity for restrictive measures to act as a recruiting sergeant for actions that seek to achieve destabilisation and that rack up calls for more measures that are contrary to our democratic principles. I have said that because I do not want what I will go on to say to be thought of as being a sort of hearts-and-flowers approach.
The points made in the report done by my noble friend Lord Macdonald of River Glaven and in the recent report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights are issues that I hope the Government take on board in the next stage of dealing with these matters. I hope that both reports will feed into the final design of the measures. Like others, I will not attempt to cover all the ground tonight, but I will make a number of points on which I personally feel particularly strongly.
Respecting the principles of the rule of law and, to the greatest extent possible, applying the normal principles and processes of the criminal law and the criminal justice system are to me, as to other noble Lords, fundamental and indeed essential. I mention simply these requirements: due process within the criminal justice system; judicial, not executive, action; special advocates—the noble Lord, Lord Judd, talked of how what they are required to do is alien to their professional training, but I suspect that it is alien to their instincts as well; the role of the DPP; and that the new measures should be a point on a road to prosecution rather than an end in themselves, which the Minister this evening has confirmed is the objective.
On the issue of curfew, as my noble friend’s report recommends—I will put it more crudely than he did—giving those who are suspected of terrorist activity enough rope to hang themselves is in itself very persuasive, quite apart from the other issues. On the objections to curfews, both in principle and in practice, I have to say that I have never been persuaded that ordering someone to stay at home for up to 16 hours a day would deter him if he was determined to commit terrorist actions. Like others, I am pleased to hear that relocations are to cease. Can the Minister tell us any more about that? A residence requirement, which I hope will mean a requirement just to have a normal residential address, is not a curfew and I hope that such a requirement will not come anywhere near being a curfew.
It is important that, as far as possible, the new measures allow the person subject to them, and, importantly, his family, to get on with life. I have read comments by someone who was subject to a control order saying that the arrangements for signing in at a police station could not have precluded work or study more, and that they made normal life completely impossible. Points have been made around the House about the Government reviewing the current orders now and relaxing the regime to one that they have already decided is appropriate. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, asked the Minister whether it is the case that a young man and his family have been relocated in only the past few days.
In evidence to the JCHR the Minister argued that, despite there being lower numbers of controlees compared with the past, resources for surveillance are not currently adequate to reduce numbers to the level that several noble Lords have described. That may be something that the independent reviewer will be able to consider. No doubt there will be a review before we get to the end of this process. Like others, I hope that there is wide consultation on the legislation and the draft emergency legislation, which the Government propose to create and keep on the stocks in case it is needed. Confining consultation on that to the Opposition on Privy Council terms would not garner the expertise that is available to the Government.
Lord Judd
On one point that the noble Baroness has made, would she not agree with me that the special emergency measures are absolutely a priority for scrutiny because of their very nature? The way that they will be used in an emergency means that it is terribly important that Parliament should look at them thoroughly and think through in advance what their implications will be.
Baroness Hamwee
I almost always agree with the noble Lord; I certainly do on this point. If they are to be introduced as a matter of urgency—no doubt in a climate in which calm judgment will be difficult—that in itself argues for calmer judgment at an earlier point.
The current system is hardly perfect. I recently met someone who had been controlled, although the control order had been quashed. He said that all he understood of the reasons for the order was that he had been assessed as having been trained in countersurveillance. What techniques did he have? He was on the top deck of a bus with his son and turned his back on the CCTV camera. The Minister has anticipated this, but I have recounted the tale because it is part of what we are considering. It indicates how we need to move forward. The controlee does not want his name to be mentioned. I found his story and the comments of Dr Michael Korzinski—the psychologist and clinical director of the Helen Bamber Foundation, whose client he was—profoundly affecting. He talked about the practical, legal, health, emotional and relationship issues and the impact on his family. Dr Korzinski talked about how social isolation, ostracism and stigma affect the brain, saying that his client “was essentially driven mad”. I understand from him that there has been no mechanism for oversight or review of the impact of the orders on the mental and physical health of the individuals and their families. People who have been seen at the Helen Bamber Foundation have developed serious mental health problems as a direct consequence of control orders.
It occurs to me that the role of the independent reviewer, with access to an expert panel of mental health and other relevant professionals, could be extended to ensure proper monitoring and review in this regard as well as others. We must be very careful how we treat individuals and how—here I think that I echo the noble Lord, Lord Judd, almost word for word—we protect our society from becoming a society which we as citizens would not in our turn wish to support.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I will be extremely brief on this issue. It is very clear that everyone in this House is opposed to terrorism but the question we must ask is how effective the control orders have been. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, asked what their impact had been on those who have been affected by them, not simply those who are subject to the orders but their families and those who suffer the effects of these exclusion orders. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, referred to alternative forms of investigation and surveillance.
One of the consequences of not using powers of surveillance and investigation in Northern Ireland to the extent that they led to prosecution was that we saw a development in criminal activity. I am not suggesting that the control orders would lead to that but one of the consequences of repressive anti-terrorist legislation is that it grows the terrorism which it seeks to defeat by virtue of the impact it has on the communities on whom it is imposed and on which it impacts. The evidence is very clear that legislation which is neither proportionate nor necessary has the effect of growing resentment in those communities, and that that resentment can lead ultimately to people becoming involved in, or possibly supporting in some very minor way, the very terrorism which it seeks to defeat. Is it not possible for the control order to slip into oblivion, for the new measures to be introduced in December, and in the mean time to make use of the very extensive powers of investigation and surveillance available under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and other legislation?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, for introducing the order. I echo my noble friend Lord Judd in thanking our security services and police for their co-ordinated work in keeping us safe. We know that plots have been foiled recently. It is clearly our duty to provide the police and security services with the tools and procedures that they need to do their job effectively. As we have heard today and in previous debates, that sometimes means walking a very difficult line in balancing individual freedom with collective safety—the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, put that very well—with the rights of the wider community sometimes outweighing the rights of the individual. Control orders have been the tool for that and I thought that the Minister said that they had had some success. In an ideal world we would not wish to use control orders. It would be greatly preferable if our criminal justice system could deal with terrorists who wished to cause us harm but the view was taken by the previous Government and previous Home Secretaries that control orders were a necessary evil.
The order before us provides for the continuation of the power to make a control order against an individual when the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the individual is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity. I echo the noble Baroness’s tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for the work that he has done. We know that eight people are subject to control orders at the moment. My understanding—perhaps the noble Baroness will confirm this—is that some of these orders have been made since the coalition Government came to power. The implication of what the Minister has said is that the Government recognise that a number of people pose a real threat to our security who cannot be prosecuted or deported. Therefore, the Government have come face to face with reality in recognising the need for a mechanism to protect the public from the threat that such individuals pose. The Sixth Report of the Independent Reviewer states clearly:
“The control orders system, or an alternative system providing equivalent and proportionate public protection, remains necessary, but only for a small number of cases where robust information is available to the effect that the individual in question presents a considerable risk to national security, and conventional prosecution is not realistic”.
It looks like the Government have gone through a steep learning curve in the past few months, but one of the results is an absurd situation whereby the order on 28-day detention was allowed to lapse without the draft emergency legislation being in place. Legislation has now been published but, as yet, we do not know when Parliament will discuss it.
A number of noble Lords referred to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that examines whether Parliament should be given the opportunity to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed emergency legislation. The noble Baroness will know that the Select Committee said that it does not accept the Government’s reasoning for not providing this opportunity and recommends that the legislation should be published and made available to Parliament for pre-legislative scrutiny. I invite the noble Baroness to comment on that specific recommendation. I also echo the point raised by my noble friend Lord Judd, who referred to the recommendation in the committee’s report that the Government should publish a summary of the views of a number of the agencies involved in counterterrorism in order to facilitate parliamentary scrutiny of the review. I accept that the report was published only a few days ago and I would not expect the Government already to be able to come to your Lordships’ House with a full response. That would be unreasonable. However, the noble Baroness should be able to say broadly whether she accepts those recommendations and can respond to them.
It is noticeable that the proposed new control order regime pays particular attention to surveillance. We are told that sufficient finance will be available to the police and security services for that resource-intensive proposal. Will new money be made available? The noble Baroness owes it to the House to inform us as to how continuation of the current control order regime will be dealt with, given the financial cuts that the police and the security services are facing. I pray in aid to the noble Baroness the report published today that details some of those cuts.
Will the noble Baroness inform the House about the impact on the capability of our counterterrorism work of the changes proposed in the Police Reform Bill that is now in the other place? That is highly relevant to this order and to what is likely to take place over the next few months. I have great reservations about the proposal to impose elected police commissioners on our police forces. I have no doubt whatever that it risks politicisation of our forces and inevitably corruption. That is a debate for another day, but I am concerned about the impact on national strategic policing issues, which are relevant to this debate.
There can be little doubt that police commissioners will be elected on manifestos that are bound to focus on local policing issues. I suspect that it will be a question of which candidate proposes more bobbies on the beat. That is fair enough, but what if these elected police commissioners neglect their national responsibilities? What if they do not make appropriate resources available for counterterrorism work? The noble Baroness speaks with great authority on this issue. Is she convinced that there will be sufficient intervention powers at a national level to ensure that elected police commissioners do not inhibit national security work in which the police have a major role to play? I assure her that we will come back to that issue.
These are not easy issues. As every noble Lord who spoke today said, we in this country have a long tradition of individual rights and freedoms. We are all very proud of that. As the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said, we have responsibilities for the safety and security of the public in very challenging times. It is a very difficult balance to achieve. The Official Opposition support the extension of the order this evening. We look forward to the new legislation on how we can scrutinise what happens. I hope that we will be able to reach consensus that meets the requirements of individual freedoms while keeping the safety of our country to the fore.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I thank the House for the thoughtful tone of the debate that followed my opening remarks. It demonstrated, not surprisingly, that there is a range of views on these issues. There are strong principles involved and I do not resile in any way from the principled stand that I took in opposition. However, I always said—and it is still the case—that one has to measure what one does against the security needs of the country, and what one does must be consistent with those needs. It is a matter of regret that we came to the conclusion that we cannot simply revert to a situation in which we can rely on open and normal prosecution through the courts. It is much to be desired that that is where we will come to. However, after detailed examination—this was a very thorough process—we came to the reluctant conclusion that we could not dispense entirely with the measures that lie alongside the normal judicial system.
I am grateful to noble Lords for many of their remarks. Perhaps I might have wished that more recognition had been given to the differences that exist between the measures that we are proposing and those that exist at the moment. We had regard to what was said, in particular about the psychological effects of relocation; we took a view on the necessity of a very long curfew; and we did our best to create a situation in which normal life will be open to those who are under restrictions and they will be able to work. Many of them do not, but we would like those who have work to be able to do it. We are trying extremely hard not to distort the lives of those individuals who are under restrictions any more than is necessary.
There will be an opportunity for scrutiny of this legislation. That is one reason for wanting to have in place a temporary regime. I was asked about pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government have no problem with this. It is partly a question of the amount of time available to do various things. I am sure that the House will attach importance to us not continuing the existing control order regime longer than we need to. We must allow enough time for scrutiny on the Floor of the House, not only of the TPIMs but also, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, remarked, of the emergency provisions. I take his point and put it to noble Lords that we need to be practical about how we go about giving the scrutiny that this House and the other place will want to give to this legislation. I am not saying that the Government see an obstacle to it in principle; it is simply that we have doubts about the practicality.
I was asked whether there will be new money for the extra surveillance. The answer is yes, and I shall come back to that in a moment. I was also asked whether we will give information about, or publish, the evidence given by some of the services in the process of the review. I am not going to promise that. I think it will be perfectly understandable to Members of this House why it is necessary to keep the confidence of the security services, in particular, but also the police in this matter. We will do our best to—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
The Select Committee’s report came out only a few days ago. Is that a considered response in the light of the report? I entirely understand the point that she is making but I wonder whether the Government need to give a little more time to that.
Baroness Neville-Jones
As I said, I am not going to make that promise. I was about to add a sentence when the noble Lord rose. We will take this under advisement and see whether we can give some kind of summary, but if the noble Lord does not mind, I do not want to give a totally definitive answer to that point this evening.
I was asked a number of detailed points and I shall try, without detaining the House for too long, to go through some of them. Right at the beginning, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, asked a number of questions which I think bear on points made subsequently in debate. The implication of his remarks was: would we honour seriously what we have said about the importance of continuing to seek prosecutions? I have three things to say about that. One is that the CORG which he mentioned will conduct serious work. I think that it has always been a serious body but the Government are going to make absolutely certain that the conduct of the CORG—the review body that keeps these cases under continuous and pretty close scrutiny—is serious. We have, I hope, created a situation in which there will be greater possibilities for prosecution. I stress to the House that I think it is only fair to say that the primary purpose of these measures is still protective. Nevertheless, within the scope that is offered, we will certainly be looking at the possibility of continuing and bringing prosecutions. Indeed, the operation of the TPIMs themselves may allow that to happen.
I was also asked why, if we believe that the control orders are imperfect—as, indeed, I said myself—we do not abolish them straightaway. I was asked whether it would not be right to do just that. I remind the House of the condition which is very important to our ability to move to a looser regime, and that is the surveillance that needs to be put in place in order to provide the public with the necessary security. That surveillance does not exist at the moment. Individuals have to be recruited; people have to be trained; and we have to have extra capacity and capability in that area, which we do not have at the moment. I do not think it is reasonable to say that you should be able to abolish the existing regime for the individuals who are currently under control orders in the absence of the necessary conditions for a new regime. Having said that, clearly the current control orders come up for regular review. We shall be reviewing them and of course we will be looking at individuals’ cases in the light of their situations. As I have said, there is clearly a transition to be undertaken. I do not think that I can go further than that at the moment. I understand perfectly well the point that has been made but I hope that noble Lords will also understand the constraints that we are under in moving quickly from one regime to another.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, perhaps I can deal with the issue of moving people to places like Leicester or up to Norfolk and so on. We have decided that that is abhorrent and that it will not be sought by the Home Secretary. Therefore, can we not now bring back from exile the people who have been put on those orders?
Baroness Neville-Jones
When the circumstances are in place and we have the necessary surveillance and protection for the public, we will be able to do so. First we must put in place the conditions that will enable us to operate the new regime.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is absolutely right to say, as I should have said, that the Government are extremely pleased that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has welcomed the change. He will also have observed that I did not miss the fact that there were some qualifications in the views expressed by the committee. We shall certainly take those seriously. In particular, he mentioned the unhappiness about the conditions under which special advocates have to operate. In the report there are one or two instances of the special advocates’ conditions of work being eased. It is a big issue and it goes wider than control orders. That will be taken up and examined, and part of the Green Paper that the Government are to bring forward will be devoted to the use of special advocates and the conditions under which they should be able to work for their clients.
I would like to reiterate my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. He did us the honour of saying that he felt that the process had been an honest and thorough one. I am extremely grateful for that, as it is valuable to have that endorsement. I have to be honest and say that there is some light between us on the balance to be struck between protection and prosecution. That is an issue that we shall want to explore further in debate. We entirely agree with him about the supremacy of due process and I do not deny at all that the control order regime inhibits prosecution. We are trying to strike a balance that will enable us to have greater emphasis on the prosecution side of things. However, I cannot conceal from the House that the protective element in the TPIMs is a primary objective.
I believe that I have covered most points. One noble Lord mentioned the role of the reviewer. We now have a new statutory reviewer and, having met him, I have total confidence that he will do an extremely thorough and careful job. I think that he will be a safeguard against the danger to which the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, pointed—the difference that turns out to be not a difference but a continuation of the existing situation. I do not believe that that is the Government’s intention or the effect of implementation, but there will be that safeguard. He will also report on individual cases. It is right that we should leave that role to him; I do not want to do that role myself.
I hope that I have covered the main points raised in the debate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the noble Lord opposite tried to get me on to the effect of the police reform Bill. I remind him that the budget for counterterrorism is protected. There will be more information about the whole role of the National Crime Agency. I assure him that the national functions of the police will be just as protected as our desire to ensure that the accountability to local authorities on the part of the police and crime commissioners is also a feature of modern policing.
Given the prospect of scrutinising the new regime with the thoroughness that I know this House will wish to apply, and with the clarification that I have been able to give, I hope the House will agree that the order can be renewed, and I commend it to the House.