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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
1. What plans he has for the future of the Land Registry; and if he will make a statement.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The findings of the feasibility study of the options for greater private sector involvement in the delivery of Land Registry services have now been reported to Ministers. Given the registry’s importance in the housing market, we must give thorough consideration to those findings before making any decisions or announcements about its future direction.
Liz Kendall
The Land Registry provides a state guarantee of title for land ownership covering registered property worth more than £2.5 trillion across England and Wales. Can the Secretary of State confirm that previous reviews conducted by both Conservative and Labour Governments have found the registry’s public sector status to be crucial to the impartiality and integrity of its work? Will he agree to meet me to discuss the future of this vital service, which is a cornerstone of the housing market and the wider economy?
Mr Clarke
I agree that the registry’s state guarantee of title to land and property is essential, and that it must be retained in any arrangements that we make. Previous investigations of the registry have featured all the options that we are considering now, including the possibility of involving private sector partners—indeed, I have the original operational efficiency programme for 2008, which refers to private sector opportunities. We will, however, proceed with great care.
I know that the hon. Lady has a constituency interest because there is an important branch of the registry in Leicester. I, or one of my colleagues, will meet her in due course, once she has given us a little time to consider the findings of the feasibility study.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I recently met local representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union from the Nottingham branch of the Land Registry. Unsurprisingly, they expressed concern about not only their own futures but the future of the service. What discussions is the Secretary of State having with staff trade unions to ensure that their valuable expertise and experience are taken into account in shaping the future of the service?
Mr Clarke
We will certainly take account of all staff comments, and we hope to include the staff in our consultations. If there were any question of any change in the registry’s status, we would embark on a full and careful consultation before taking action. We are pursuing the same objectives as the last Government: guaranteeing title, improving efficiency, lowering costs, and taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the Land Registry system to offer further service to the public.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to increase educational opportunities in prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Together with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Ministry of Justice has undertaken a review of offender learning. Our proposed new approach has received strong support from the heads of learning and skills in prisons, and I hope that when we publish the results of the review, which we will do shortly, my hon. Friend will share their enthusiasm.
Tony Baldry
Does my hon. Friend agree that punishment is the deprivation of liberty, and that we should all try to ensure that when people leave prison, the time that they have spent there makes them less inclined to reoffend? Education is an important part of that. The position is very straightforward. When my hon. Friend’s proposals are made public, I hope that they will present opportunities for a substantial increase in educational opportunity in prisons.
Mr Blunt
I share my hon. Friend’s view. It is important for the pathway that leads the offender through the custody system—and, indeed, the supervision system in the community—to assist his progress towards rehabilitation, and that must be done through the delivery of learning and skills and education. Prisoners should be given effective work that enables them to make proper recompense to their victims, and learning and skills associated with that work will be an important rehabilitative tool.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
While in government Labour increased the offending learner budget by 300%, and I am pleased to hear that the Minister is building on that. Does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who on 9 March was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that offender education was
“yet another example of gold-plated rights for convicted criminals”,
and that prison education
“sends out the signal that crime pays”?
Mr Blunt
The reason for the review of offender learning is that, as usual, the last Administration spent a vast amount of money and secured precious little extra output for it. The hon. Lady has made the case very clearly. I am satisfied that we will largely protect the budget for offender learning and that people will leave prison with skills and training, better equipped to be contributing members of society following their release.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
The Minister will know that Reading young offenders institution received a dreadful report on its education service from the independent monitoring board, particularly the part of the service that is run by The Manchester College. What action is the Department taking to deal with the shortcomings of the college, and to give more power to prisons to opt for excellent local education provision?
Mr Blunt
My hon. Friend has been assiduous in holding the offender learning contract to account in Reading prison, and the Skills Funding Agency has completed an investigation into the allegations made against The Manchester College in respect of its education contract there. The report of that investigation is being finalised, and I am not able to comment on it until it has been completed, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must get the heads of learning and skills in the prisons much more clearly in charge of the direction of the skills training in their institutions.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
3. What the evidential basis is for his proposals on the future of universal jurisdiction.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Requiring the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions before an arrest warrant can be issued does not affect in any way the principle of universal jurisdiction or the Government’s commitment to that principle in the future. The reason for making this change is that at present a warrant can be issued where there is no realistic prospect of a viable prosecution.
Yasmin Qureshi
As the Lord Chancellor will know, universal jurisdiction is an ancient civil right: it is the right of an individual citizen to take court action against somebody suspected of committing a war crime. In the last 10 years, only 10 such applications for arrest warrants have been made, and only two of them were successful. As the Lord Chancellor will be aware, these arrest warrants are issued by the chief district judge for the London petty sessional area. In light of the fact that only two of these applications have been successful, why are the Government considering abolishing this ancient principle?
Mr Clarke
It is not being abolished. First, universal jurisdiction is not as old as suggested, but we welcome the application for, and enforcement of, universal jurisdiction here just as much as the previous Government did. The trouble at present is that the test for issuing an arrest warrant is so low that it is possible for a warrant to be issued when there is not the faintest chance of any serious prosecution going ahead. While I understand the feelings behind some of the applications, there is no doubt that publicity is being sought rather more than a prosecution, and the likely targets are people such as Israeli or Sri Lankan politicians coming here whom dissident groups want to be arrested. The DPP can act promptly, and we will enforce the law when there is a genuine case for a prosecution. Indeed, one Afghan warlord has been successfully prosecuted in this country and is currently in prison.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
In the DPP’s evidence to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, he said about assessing such applications:
“We have people who can work around the clock and we have enough trained people so that someone is always available.”––[Official Report, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2011; c. 126, Q241.]
Can the Lord Chancellor confirm that it will be possible for cases to be submitted in advance of a suspect travelling to the UK so that decisions can be made in time to act?
Mr Clarke
I will check with the DPP, but I am almost certain he will confirm that that is the case, because I have had assurances from his officials that they are ready to act very quickly. In a proper case, they should act quickly and a warrant should be issued, but at present the fact that warrants can be comparatively easily sought and occasionally obtained is deterring people from coming to this country who are politically controversial but probably not guilty of any war crime or crime against humanity. Indeed, over the years attempts have been made to arrest people such as Henry Kissinger.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary gave a very direct answer to my question last week on the same subject. He explained that the Government are changing the law in order to be able to talk to the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni. Does the Justice Secretary really think the request of one foreign Government is a good enough reason for changing the entire law in the UK?
Mr Clarke
The case of Tzipi Livni is a very good example of why the law needed to be changed. She was the leader of the opposition when an attempt was made to get an arrest warrant. It was believed she was in this country, but in fact she was not. However, she was a leading Israeli politician coming here for political purposes, and it is in the interests of our country that we have negotiations and discussions with a wide range of political representatives from many countries. If guilty of war crimes, they will be prosecuted, but we put people off coming here if they are liable to have publicity-conscious arrest warrants served on them.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
4. What plans he has for the use of innovative community sentences as an alternative to custody; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We are examining ways of making community sentences more clearly associated with the principles of sentencing, not least so that those elements relating to protecting the public, such as residence, reporting, and curfew and tagging requirements, and those relating to punishment—fines and unpaid work—carry greater public confidence.
Stephen Gilbert
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. Is he aware of the “Community or custody” inquiry commissioned by Make Justice Work, which has found that schemes offering tough and effective alternatives to short prison stays are facing funding cuts? Does he agree that that would be a step in the wrong direction?
Mr Blunt
We are trying to ensure that funding decisions are delegated more effectively locally, so that where decisions have been taken for alternatives to custody pilots to be mainstreamed or for alternative funding to be found for them, and they are found to be of value at a local level, they should be able to be protected at a local level.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that any alternative to custody must contain the essential element of punishment for the crime, as well as rehabilitation, in order to prevent a recurrence?
Mr Blunt
I wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is very important that community sentences reflect the principles of sentencing—I made that point in the original answer. If they do not carry credibility in respect of punishment and protecting the public, people will rightly expect us to make a greater use of custody. As we know, short custodial sentences are not always in everyone’s best interests.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Given that the probation service says that there are already 6,600 high-risk or very high-risk people serving community sentences, and that the reoffending rate on the intensive supervision and surveillance programme in recent years has ranged from 74% to 92%, may I urge the Minister to ignore the siren voices of those on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and perhaps even in his own Department, who are calling for more community sentences and fewer people to be sent to prison? What Conservative Members want is more robust sentencing and more people sent to prison.
Mr Blunt
I know that my hon. Friend agrees that what we want is what works, and we want to ensure that there are fewer victims of crime in future. When our policies deliver rehabilitation far more effectively than those of the previous Administration, we will have protected the future victims of crime, and I know that he will—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful to the Minister, but we must move on. I am afraid that these answers are rather long and they need to get a bit shorter.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
5. What level of resources his Department plans to provide to the Prison Service in 2011-12; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The resource budget for the National Offender Management Service for 2011-12 is £3.679 billion, £2.181 billion of which relates directly to expenditure incurred in prisons.
Graham Jones
If, as the Secretary of State predicted in The Daily Telegraph on 11 February, crime increases under his Government, will he reverse his prison closure policy and undo the scaling back of the prison building programme? If not, what will he do with the criminals?
Mr Blunt
I am not entirely sure that my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments bear that interpretation, but what we have to do in the Ministry of Justice is ensure that we successfully imprison those people sentenced to prison by the courts and not get ourselves into the state of affairs that occurred under the previous Administration, whereby people had to be let out early because they had run out of space.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The shadow Justice Secretary has argued:
“Playing tough in order not to look soft made it harder to focus on what is effective.”
Given that, does the Minister agree that despite record spending and the record prison population, Labour failed to improve public safety?
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but on several occasions I have had to say to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) that questions must be about the policy of this Government, not a previous Government. I think we will leave it there. I call Lorraine Fullbrook.
Mr Speaker
I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon. In dealing with that matter, I failed to allow him to make his contribution from the Opposition Front Bench, as he is, of course, entitled to do.
Sadiq Khan
I have a question for this Government. Given that the prison population is rising—it was 82,991 on 7 January and last week it stood at 85,454—and that, at the same time, this Government are closing prisons and slashing the prison building programme, what is the Minister going to do if the number of people who should be in prison exceeds the number of places?
Mr Blunt
Unlike the previous Administration, we will not get ourselves into that position. As the shadow Secretary of State will know—he will be well on top of his brief—there is a seasonal rise in prison numbers following Christmas. I am happy to say, however, that our policies are already having an effect. The prediction we inherited that we would end up with 96,000 prisoners by 2014-15 is unlikely to come true.
Sadiq Khan
Those of us who stayed awake for the entire Budget know that the Chancellor has no plan B and I am afraid that the complacency of that answer shows that the Ministry of Justice has no plan B. If crime goes up, as the Secretary of State predicts it may well do, and if the prison population continues to rise, the Government will have no choice but to release offenders who should be in prison without due process or to use police cells. Which will it be?
Mr Blunt
As of now, we have an overhead in managing the prison estate of about 3,000 places. We will manage the estate to ensure that we sustain an overhead and do not get ourselves into a position whereby we run out of space, as the last Administration did. It is basic administration. We will keep a very careful eye on the prison numbers and ensure that we have sufficient capacity.
Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)
6. What proportion of the cost of accommodating foreign national prisoners awaiting deportation after serving their sentences is provided by his Department.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
Currently, about 40% of the cost of accommodating foreign national prisoners who have completed their sentence and are awaiting deportation is borne by the Ministry of Justice.
Lorraine Fullbrook
The Prime Minister has, on a number of occasions, expressed his desire to see such prisoners deported after serving their sentence. Why are they not then transferred to secure immigration centres in readiness for their immediate deportation after their sentence is completed?
Nick Herbert
I agree with my hon. Friend that that is what we should be aiming to do. Wherever possible, detainees should be transferred to immigration removal centres. We are opening a new centre and the majority of detainees are already in those centres. We want to ensure that that number increases.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
7. What plans his Department has for the future of the probation service.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We will fundamentally reshape probation services to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, empower front-line professionals and make them more accountable. Probation staff should be able to spend more of their time working directly with offenders; we are lifting the burden of bureaucracy that has hindered them from doing that.
Andrew Gwynne
I agree with the Minister that our probation service does a magnificent job in very tough circumstances and, under his self-styled rehabilitation revolution, should have an even greater role in successfully returning offenders to society. Will he therefore explain to the House how he can possibly square the increased work load and responsibility with cutting 3,000 experienced and front-line probation staff as a result of his Government’s spending cuts?
Mr Blunt
That is not a result of our Government’s spending cuts. The efficiency savings for the probation trusts for next year are largely the plans that those trusts had for the transfer from board to trust status, which was inherited from the previous Administration. The National Offender Management Service is taking 37% out of its headquarters’ overhead precisely in order to protect the front-line professionals in the probation service in delivering effective offender management.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Are probation trusts going to be providers of services, commissioners of services or both? If both, is there a conflict of interest?
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister tell me how much work is going on in our probation services with violent offenders, particularly those who have been violent in domestic circumstances? Tackling the issue is enormously important in preventing future offending.
Mr Blunt
I agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of addressing the issue of domestic violence. Every probation trust I have visited has had programmes to address it. It is a particular priority and we will want carefully to examine the delivery of interventions and programmes to ensure that they are sustained. I accept that that is an area of priority.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
What help can the Minister give to probation trusts to enable them to compete on a level playing field with the large private sector contractors that might be doing a lot of the work they are currently doing?
Mr Blunt
I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the competition for community pay-back. The first competition will be for the London area, where the boundaries overlap precisely with those of the London probation trust. That will give those probation trusts that need to get together to make a collective public sector bid involving a number of trusts the time and opportunity to put an effective bid together.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Is the Minister aware of the evidence that was given to the Select Committee on Justice about the whole issue of competition and/or commissioning providers and so on? Those points have been very well made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Minister aware that if there is a conflict of interest then, prima facie, the whole system will be unlawful? Does he realise how important it is to separate those functions, because the probation trusts do not have a clue where they are going?
Mr Blunt
This is an area of change for probation trusts, and the competition for community pay-back, which we inherited from the previous Administration, is an exemplar of that. I look forward to the opportunity to review all the evidence that has been given to the Justice Committee and I shall come to a view on the basis of the evidence that has been received. I will give my own evidence and take questions in due course in the Committee, presumably at greater length than is allowed here.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
8. What progress he has made on his proposed reform of legal aid.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
15. What progress he has made on his proposed reform of legal aid.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
The consultation for the reform of legal aid closed on 14 February and we have received some 5,000 responses from members of the public, lawyers and their representative bodies, advice providers, charities and many others. We are continuing to review all the representations received and we hope to publish our finalised proposals, which will include plans for implementation, after the Easter recess.
Mr Djanogly
We do not accept the figures provided by Citizens Advice, but we do recognise that early advice can certainly be helpful in a range of contexts. Often, people need general advice on welfare benefits or debt rather than legal advice.
Kate Green
The Government are announcing a huge programme of welfare reform, which means that, at least for a time, there will inevitably be confusion and uncertainty about entitlement. Will the Minister explain how it can be right to consider removing funding for legal aid for welfare benefits and social law matters right now? What guarantees will he give about continued funding for such advice?
Mr Djanogly
There is never a right time to do these things, but we feel that legal aid needs to play its part in reducing the deficit and that is what we propose to do. In terms of benefits, there could be an issue with more benefit claims coming through from the Department for Work and Pensions and we are working closely with that Department to ensure that we maintain a smooth service.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposed reforms will have a disproportionate impact on women—I declare an interest as a legal aid family lawyer—especially in the categories of employment, family and housing?
Mr Djanogly
Not necessarily. It is true that individuals featuring protected characteristics are over-represented in the civil legal aid client base and as such any reform to civil legal aid is likely to have a greater impact on those groups when compared with the population as a whole, but that is a function of demographics. When affected clients are compared with unaffected clients, proportions are very similar.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend take on board all the careful representations he has received about the potential problem of using domestic violence as the criterion for granting legal aid in family law cases?
Mr Djanogly
The Government’s position is that domestic violence should be the gateway to receiving legal aid in relation to family law. However, my hon. Friend has asked specifically about the definition and I am pleased to tell him that many representations have come in on this issue and that we are going to consider them very carefully when we make our final report.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
What the Minister told the Justice Committee is at odds with what he has said to the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) today. He said that he wanted legal aid to be directed towards the most vulnerable, but every authoritative voice the Committee heard, and even his Department’s impact assessment, said that the opposite will be the case and that the most vulnerable will be disproportionately hit by his cuts. We will see tomorrow, when the Committee publishes its report, whom it found more credible, but may I offer him the opportunity today finally to accept the overwhelming evidence that his cuts to social welfare legal aid will hit the most vulnerable the hardest?
Mr Djanogly
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman mentions social welfare and misses criminal legal aid, because when it comes to eligibility and defining who is vulnerable, it was the previous Government who decided that criminal legal aid would be means-tested. We are not addressing that, but in relation to civil legal aid, yes, we do believe that the eligibility tests need to be looked at, and that is what we are doing.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
9. Which organisations he has met to discuss the draft Defamation Bill.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Prior to the publication of the draft Defamation Bill, my Department carried out informal consultations with a wide range of interested parties. Since the draft Bill was published on 15 March my right hon. Friend Lord McNally has held meetings with a number of these parties to discuss their initial reactions to the draft Bill, and further meetings will take place during the consultation period.
Jessica Lee
In explaining the difficulties of defamation litigation to my constituents in Erewash, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Phillips, who stated that when defamation cases can be so complex,
“jury trial simply invites expensive interlocutory battles”?
Mr Clarke
I agree with my hon. Friend and her quotation. Jury trial is rarely used in defamation cases, but it greatly adds to the length and the cost when used, so there is a wide consensus that it is not usually appropriate. It also cuts out the ability of the judge to settle a lot of preliminary points before going on to the full hearing, in a way that cuts down costs and speeds up justice for all parties. So far, there has been a favourable reaction to our proposals that in defamation cases there should be a presumption against jury trial. That has nothing whatever to do with the coalition Government’s commitment to the use of jury trial in criminal cases.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
But does the Lord Chancellor accept that one organisation that he will not be able to meet is the organisation of the little man and the little woman, because it does not exist? They are the ones who most often face defamation and malicious or inaccurate comments and reports, as do even right hon. and hon. Members occasionally, difficult as that may be to believe. Do we not need a small claims court for libel cases which could quickly and expeditiously, at a low cost in damages and expenses, deliver remedial justice, apology and correction?
Mr Clarke
I think we need low-cost, quicker, simpler and more efficient procedures in most of the civil justice system. The statement that I hope to be allowed to make at half-past 3 will take that further in various ways. Defamation has never been eligible for legal aid, but anything that simplifies the process and gets more matters treated as preliminary questions will make it more accessible to the ordinary citizen when his reputation is unfairly tarnished.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
10. How many foreign national prisoners he expects to have repatriated in 2011.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
In 2010 about 5,000 foreign national prisoners were removed or deported. However, the number transferred through prisoner transfer arrangements is too low. We expect to transfer about 50 prisoners this year. The Government believe that foreign national prisoners should serve their sentence in their own country, and we are seeking to secure further compulsory prisoner transfer agreements wherever possible.
Lindsay Roy
I thank the Minister for his detailed answer. Can he explain why that small number differs so markedly from the autumn predictions of the Prime Minister that thousands would be repatriated? What is holding things up, or was that just a wild estimate or a rash promise?
Nick Herbert
As I said, more than 5,000 prisoners have been removed. Of course, the situation will change in December when the EU prisoner transfer agreement comes into force. As a consequence of that, we will be able to remove many more prisoners to serve their sentence in other countries.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I thank the Minister for his robust answer. Of the nearly 200 countries in the UN whose citizens could potentially be here in prison, do the Government have any targets for the number of additional agreements we expect to implement outside the EU, or in particular to implement with those countries whose citizens constitute the largest number of prisoners in this country when they should be somewhere else?
Nick Herbert
We have to negotiate this with individual countries. We cannot simply remove prisoners to countries to serve a sentence there unless those countries accept it, but we can compulsorily remove prisoners if the countries agree. We already have agreements with Uganda, Rwanda and other countries, and an agreement is being negotiated with Nigeria. We would like to negotiate as many more arrangements as we can, but some countries simply disagree.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
11. What discussions he has had with representatives of the Serious Fraud Office on his proposed guidance in respect of the Bribery Act 2010.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
The Serious Fraud Office has been fully involved in the preparation of the guidance under section 9 of the Act about commercial organisations preventing bribery, as indeed has the Crown Prosecution Service.
Mr Bailey
I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. He will be aware that the continued delay in the publication of the guidance is causing considerable confusion and concern within the business community. Can he give me assurances that the guidance will be consistent with that for other OECD countries and that it will be published and issued quickly?
Mr Clarke
I am as committed to the Act as anyone else. The UK should remain at the forefront of the fight against corruption and bribery internationally. The delay, as the hon. Gentleman calls it, has been the result of consultation to ensure that legitimate business is not faced with additional costs and burdens that are not necessary for the implementation of the Act. We will announce the results of our consultation and information on when we will implement the Act very shortly.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The United States has expressed concern about guidance watering down the Bribery Act. The OECD is concerned that Britain will be weak on corruption. Business is rightly worried about London’s reputation, as shown by the letter from investment fund managers in today’s Financial Times. Even the Ministry of Justice must be concerned, as it still has on its website an announcement that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is the anti-corruption champion. With the head of the Serious Fraud Office warning about weak guidance, will the Secretary of State now wake up to the seriousness of the issue and, with the eyes of the world on him, draw up robust guidance that protects Britain’s reputation and British business?
Mr Clarke
I have been in touch with the United States Attorney-General and with Angel Gurría, the secretary-general of the OECD, and reassured them that Britain’s commitment to the anti-corruption drive internationally is not remotely in doubt. I am happy to join the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as his successor as a champion against corruption. We are introducing the Act in a way that will enable us to modernise the law and catch corruption without putting burdens and costs on legitimate businesses, which are easily frightened by some sections of the compliance industry into believing that millions of pounds need to be spent on complying with it and that perfectly ordinary hospitality has to be banned. It has other fears that we hope to be able to dispel.
Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)
12. What progress he has made on reform of legislation on squatting.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The Government take this issue very seriously and are therefore exploring options for strengthening the existing legal framework and its enforcement. We hope to be in a position to announce our plans soon. In the meantime, we have published guidance for home owners about the steps they can take to regain possession of their properties.
Mike Weatherley
I thank the Minister for his reply. In my constituency of Hove and Portslade we are often plagued by serial squatters, who cost the city and taxpayers many tens of thousands of pounds. Will the Minister confirm that the proposals he is considering will be a sufficient deterrent to these well-organised squatters?
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
13. How many prisoners convicted of violent offences and released under the early release scheme between 2007 and 2010 have since been returned to prison.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
Over 80,000 prisoners were released under the end of custody licence scheme. Over 16,000 of these were violent offenders, of whom 494 were recalled to custody during the ECL period. It is not possible to calculate how many were recalled or imprisoned for a new offence after the ECL period.
Karen Lumley
I thank the Minister for his answer. Will he inform me of his plans to avoid a repetition of the shambolic and incoherent justice policy that saw a mass early release of many prisoners, many of whom went on to commit new offences and were returned to jail?
Nick Herbert
I can reassure my hon. Friend that we will do everything possible to avoid a return to the scheme that was cynically stopped by the previous Government just before the last election, but not before they had released over 80,000 prisoners. There were 1,600 alleged offences committed by the prisoners who were released early, including six serious further offences and one murder. The Opposition should certainly not be lecturing us on that area.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
14. What steps he is taking to support drug rehabilitation in prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We are working with the Department of Health to reshape drug treatment in prisons to sustain a better path to abstinence, not least by addressing a transition from prison to the community. Our proposals to improve the rehabilitation of drug-misusing offenders were published in the Green Paper, “Breaking the Cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders”, in December 2010, and they include piloting drug recovery wings, supporting the Department of Health in developing payment-by-results drug recovery pilots and reducing the availability of drugs in prison.
Margot James
I visited Winson Green prison last month and was shocked at the number of drug-addicted prisoners being prescribed methadone. In our system, almost 24,000 prisoners are now maintained on methadone. Does my hon. Friend agree that that undermines opportunities for effective drug rehabilitation in prison?
Mr Blunt
I share my hon. Friend’s concern about that issue. Methadone has been used increasingly to tackle heroin dependency, and the number of clinical interventions has gone from 21% in 2007-08 to 39% in 2009-10. Although we do not dispute that methadone has a role to play, we agree that drug treatment in prison ought to have a greater focus on recovery and should provide a clearer route to abstinence either in prison or when offenders return to community, and preferably on a pathway that includes both.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I very much welcome the announcement this week about funding for the national liaison and diversion service, which will try to divert people with mental health issues from the prison system. Does the Minister think that, in time, that model could be used to divert people with drug addiction from prison, too?
Mr Blunt
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her endorsement of our policy on addressing mentally ill offenders and delivering on that very substantial element of the Bradley report. There will not be quite the same method of having a liaison diversion service at courts and in police custody suites, but we will be looking at the drug recovery pilots as the model for the future, with local assessment and referral centres that identify the appropriate place for people to get drug treatment in the community.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
16. If he will assess the extent of regional variation in the rate of custodial sentencing of offenders under the age of 17; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
There is regional variation in the proportion of 10 to 17-year-olds who receive a custodial sentence of between 4% and 8% of those sentenced. There are national guidelines to promote consistency in sentencing, but levels will vary for reasons such as offence seriousness, local practices and criminal justice agency relationships.
Mr Blunt
What we want to do is to begin to transfer responsibility to local authority areas, so that they begin to appreciate the cost of custody. At the moment, youth custody is extremely expensive, but it comes as a free good to local authorities. We want to incentivise them to deliver earlier intervention to divert people away from custody and, indeed, from youth crime in the first place.
Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
17. How many prisoners serving indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection have been released to date.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
As at 17 November 2010, 187 prisoners had been released into the community from indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection or detention for public protection, including offenders who have subsequently been recalled to custody.
Mark Lancaster
I am grateful for the answer, but it highlights the logjam that IPP prisoners are causing in our prison system, so how does the Minister intend to address that problem?
Mr Blunt
When those sentences were introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and implemented in 2005, the then Government estimated that there would be 900 such prisoners; there are now more than 6,000, and more than 3,000 of them are beyond tariff. [Interruption.] I can understand why the shadow Justice Secretary is ashamed of the record in that area. That is why there has been an increase in the size of the Parole Board; and that is why we are consulting on proposals to raise the tariff to a 10-year determinate sentence before an IPP can be enforced, and to examine the Parole Board test. Those are the proposals in the Green Paper on which we are consulting.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
18. How much was paid to convicted criminals by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in (a) 2008-09 and (b) 2009-10.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority paid £6.9 million in 2008-09 and £12 million in 2009-10 to people with unspent convictions. These figures reflect only cases where the CICA reduced the award due to unspent convictions, which the current compensation scheme says it must do. However, there are still cases being considered under previous schemes that did not make such reductions compulsory, so the real figures are likely to be higher.
Mark Menzies
Does the Minister agree that it is slightly perverse and repugnant to be paying out compensation to criminals who have often caused severe injury and offence to their victims?
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
19. What progress has been made on proposed changes to the payment of fees to criminal law barristers through the Legal Services Commission.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
The processing, validation and payment of claims under the advocates graduated fees scheme is being transferred from Her Majesty’s Courts Service to the Legal Services Commission. The transfer is taking place on a phased basis between 7 February and 18 April of this year.
Anna Soubry
I know that it is not proper to talk about lawyers and fees in the same sentence, but this is an overly bureaucratic system that does not pay out, as may be familiar to many Members of this House. There are criminal barristers who have not received fees for many, many months after they have completed their work. Does the Minister agree that that is plain unfair?
Mr Djanogly
If my hon. Friend would like to contact me with specifics, I would happily take them up. However, the responsibility for processing claims began to be passed to the LSC only on 7 February, so delays of six months are impossible. Properly completed claims are currently being processed within two weeks.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
In recent years, the threat of costly libel actions has begun to stifle scientific and academic debate and impede investigative journalism. I have therefore published proposals for long-overdue reform of our defamation laws. The draft Defamation Bill will fulfil the coalition’s commitment to protect free speech and restore important civil liberties after a decade of neglect under the last Government. It will mean that anyone who makes a statement of fact or expresses an honest opinion can do so with confidence, but it will also restore a sense of proportion to the law, ensuring that people can defend themselves against untrue allegations and that a fair balance is struck between freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. I welcome hon. Members’ views on the draft Bill and on the wider issues raised in the consultation.
Mrs Hodgson
Yesterday in the other place, Members voted through an amendment to the Public Bodies Bill to remove the Youth Justice Board from the list of organisations to be scrapped. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he will accept that defeat? Will he also confirm that he endorses the excellent work of the Youth Justice Board and will no longer seek to abolish it?
Mr Clarke
Another place is taking a very long time to discuss this, quango by quango, and it is rescuing several of these bodies. There is an enthusiasm for outside public bodies in the upper House that I am not sure is totally shared here. We will of course carefully reflect on the debate and vote in another place on the future of the Youth Justice Board. Since it was created—it did a very good job at first—time has moved on; peers kept referring to circumstances that they remember before it was created. We now have youth offender teams who do not need the level of supervision that they are getting from the Youth Justice Board. However, I will see whether any of my former friends and colleagues, and current hon. and noble Members of the upper House, have persuaded me to reconsider the policy.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
T3. The Minister may be aware that the Gaddafi house is a high-profile squatting incident in my constituency. Just this week, we have had two further squats. Will he meet me and my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) to discuss this pressing issue?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
I will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss squatting. I would hate to think that anyone would use the example of the Gaddafi house as any excuse for this pernicious offence.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Justice Secretary is not afraid to speak his mind, and he has many fans on the Labour Benches as a result. Does he agree that there has been a great deal of confusion on the Government’s policy on the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Bill of Rights? Can he explain in plain, simple English whether his Government are in favour of abolishing, or in favour of keeping, the Human Rights Act, which brought into domestic law the European convention on human rights?
Mr Clarke
I would welcome vigorous attacks from the Opposition on any of my policies. The lack of such attacks might undermine my credibility with certain sections of the House and the outside world.
We have carried out the coalition commitment to set up a commission to investigate the case for a British Bill of Rights. Of course the Government accept the commitments and obligations under the European convention on human rights. The commission will look at the whole range of issues in this subject. Personally, I would like the debate to concentrate on what is more immediately attainable, which is sensible reform of the Court in Strasbourg. That is much overdue. I think that we could command a wide range of support from other member states of the Council of Europe on such reform. Perhaps we might decide on subsidiarity, and on the role of the Court vis-à-vis the Parliaments and courts of member states.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T4. Will my hon. Friend inform me of whether the principles of joint enterprise will remain after the sentencing review, as they were instrumental in bringing successful prosecutions against a number of people who were involved in the murder of the son of a constituent of mine?
Mr Blunt
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that there are no plans to consider the joint enterprise principles in the sentencing review. The existing law ensures that if a person commits an offence as part of an agreed plan or joint enterprise, all parties to the enterprise may be guilty of the planned offence. That factor indicates higher culpability and justifies a tougher sentence than would otherwise be imposed.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
T2. In an earlier answer, the Minister acknowledged the role played by offender learning services in prisons in preventing reoffending. Given that about 60% of young offenders have communication difficulties so severe that they cannot benefit from such services, will he give an assurance that he will talk to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists to ensure that the service is in no way damaged as a result of public spending cuts?
Mr Blunt
I think that the hon. Gentleman might be confusing what happens in the adult estate and in the youth estate. However, his substantive point stands and I accept it. I am happy to talk to the Royal College, because I accept that communication is an extremely important tool in addressing offending behaviour. In many cases, a lack of communication skills leads to offending in the first place and, if it is not addressed, leads to reoffending.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
T5. When I was a member of the independent monitoring board of a young offenders institution, I was often concerned about the underuse of the sports facilities on site. The reason that was sometimes given was that there were stringent rules on who could supervise them. Will the Minister consider those restrictions so that there is more sport and less television watching?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Earlier, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) referred to the Government’s policy on drug rehabilitation. Like many Members, I am concerned about the availability of drugs in prisons. What new steps will the Secretary of State take to ensure that drugs are not available, and that the road that starts people on drugs is curtailed?
Mr Clarke
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern entirely. There are people who enter prison drug free and leave with a drug problem. Drugs are more expensive in prison, but sometimes they are more widely available than in the outside world. We are therefore taking steps urgently to introduce the first drug-free wings. Alongside our rehabilitation programmes, we hope to get people off drugs and thereby perhaps get them away from crime, rather than introducing people to drugs when they go to prison.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
T8. Given the great work that West Mercia probation trust does in Redditch with the payback scheme, which I know the Minister has also visited, will he reconsider the new form of payback contracts, which cover large parts of the country but not necessarily our local communities?
Mr Blunt
Although I have seen that good work and applaud it, I will have to disappoint my hon. Friend. There is no prospect of our revisiting the contract arrangements that have been briefed out and presented to probation trusts and the private sector. That competition will progress.
Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)
T7. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the tightening-up of no win, no fee arrangements will deliver lower insurance premiums, not higher insurance company profits?
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Given the misery that is caused by the drug trade, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that all those who choose to play a part in drug distribution networks should face a custodial sentence, not least because those who play even what is termed a subordinate role are often indispensible to the making of large profits by drug barons higher up the chain?
Mr Clarke
I agree with my hon. Friend that any connection with the drugs trade should be dealt with by the courts with considerable severity. I invite him to have a look at the Sentencing Council guidelines put out today, which I think he will find are more balanced than some of the reports have suggested. They will actually increase the sentence for the more serious dealers and retain the right to imprison anybody involved.
Some of the comments that have been made have arisen because sometimes very low-level runners, often women, who are themselves drug abusers, are used as carriers by serious drug dealers. The judges and the Sentencing Council have addressed that point. They are consulting and we will consider our reaction, but the guidelines are produced by an independent body, and underlying them continues to be the principle of dealing severely with those responsible for the trade in illicit drugs, about which my hon. Friend and I agree.
Mr Speaker
In addition to the pleasure of hearing the Secretary of State’s voice, it would be a joy to have the pleasure of seeing his face as well.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why the Government have yet to put into practice the provisions of the Crime and Security Act 2010, leaving victims of overseas terrorism such as Will Pike without the compensation that they expected to receive?
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
If it is the case that squatting has been made illegal in Scotland, will the Justice team look favourably on the Scottish proposals and make it illegal in this country as well?
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice mentioned the repatriation of Nigerian prisoners and the contract that is being signed. Will he tell the House, following three years of discussion by the previous Government, how many prisoners from Nigeria have been repatriated this year and how many more he expects to repatriate next year?
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
The Nigerian Government and Parliament have to agree to it, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, and we are awaiting that.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Morale among the prison officers in the two prisons in South Dorset is at an all-time low. Will the Minister reassure me that their rights will be upheld as well as the prisoners’ rights?
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Forensic Science Service provides impartial evidence to the courts. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with it to secure its future and ensure that its primary duty remains to the court, not to shareholders?
Nick Herbert
As the hon. Lady will know, there have been considerable difficulties in relation to the Forensic Science Service, and we have been in extensive discussions with it about how we can ensure the future provision of forensic services.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Prison Minister is being very quick in his answers. Could he be very quick in answer to this question? Will he confirm that Wellingborough prison is not to close?
Mr Blunt
There is a continual review of the whole prison estate to address precisely the issues that the shadow Secretary of State mentioned. It would therefore be wrong to confirm that about any prison in the system, because there is a process of review to ensure that we have sufficient prison places to jail those sent to us by the courts for the term of their sentence. The last Administration did not achieve that.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Government are proposing to remove legal aid for all asylum support law cases, while retaining it for other asylum matters. Why is the Minister drawing that distinction, when the vulnerabilities involved are surely the same?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
The fundamental principle that we are following is that when security or liberty is at risk, legal aid should be provided. That is why we propose to maintain legal aid for asylum cases, but not for asylum support.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
A report last year from the Prison Reform Trust found that children with developmental disorders were being processed through the criminal justice system without their having much understanding of what was happening to them. As a consequence, they were more likely to have a custodial sentence imposed upon them than those who were more articulate and more able to defend themselves. Does the Secretary of State believe that that situation exists, and if so, how does he propose to remedy it?
Mr Clarke
I certainly agree that that is a very serious problem, and we intend to address it. I had a meeting yesterday evening with the Prison Reform Trust, the Women’s Institute and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary. Our two Departments, together with the Courts Service, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, hope to set up diversion route services for those who in fact require treatment for mental illness. Often, those people should be diverted out of the prison system and the criminal justice system altogether, both for their good and the good of society.
Prison is often not a suitable place in which to treat mental illness. I am told that no fewer than 3,000 prisoners appear to be in prison largely because that is the most convenient place to hold them while attempts are made to get them care and treatment for their condition.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
When the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr Howarth) and I were in Dartmoor prison together, we noticed that the second most popular prisoner workshop produced excellent plaster garden gnomes. In view of the great and burgeoning success of the film “Gnomeo and Juliet”, will the Minister have a word with the governor of Dartmoor to see what advantage can be taken of that serendipitous circumstance?
Mr Blunt
I am delighted to answer that question and to refer to my niece’s part in “Gnomeo and Juliet”. I was in Dartmoor last week. I did not see the garden gnome factory, but I did see the some of the gardens, which make up for an otherwise bleak place. Prison industries are a very important part of the future development of our prisons strategy to ensure that, in future, prisoners have wider employment and work than they have now.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Government have decided to close a number of magistrates courts in this country, as a result of which, many valiant volunteer magistrates will travel far longer distances and incur additional costs. What action will my hon. Friend take to ensure that people are properly compensated for their time and travel costs?
Mr Djanogly
Our proposals will adequately compensate magistrates by aligning magistrates’ subsistence and travelling allowances with those of the salaried judiciary and, indeed, Members of Parliament. The proposed travel allowances will align with rates commonly used across voluntary, private and public sectors. It is estimated that these changes will save Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service £3.2 million a year.
Reforming Civil Justice
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement. I have today laid before Parliament two documents—the Government’s response to our recent consultation on Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations for reforming no win, no fee arrangements, and a fresh consultation document on proposals further to overhaul the civil justice system. Copies of both documents will be available in the Vote Office and on the Ministry of Justice website. I hope to bring forward legislation on the Jackson reforms as soon as parliamentary time allows.
To many people in this country, the prospect of legal action is an expensive, daunting nightmare. One of the worst features of our compensation culture is that our justice system has increasingly become closed to vast rafts of the ordinary public by legal costs out of all proportion to the dispute or the claim. The proposals that I am announcing today will, I hope, begin to restore proportion and confidence in our system of justice, for both claimants and defendants.
First, following careful consideration of the consultation responses, I have decided to reform no win, no fee arrangements to stop the perverse situation in which fear of excess costs sometimes forces defendants to settle, even when they know they are in the right.
I can therefore announce that the Government will seek legislation to return the no win, no fee system to the first principles on which it was set up. We plan to end the recoverability of success fees and insurance premiums that drive legal costs; to award claimants a 10% uplift in general damages where they have suffered loss; and to ensure that they take an interest in controlling the bills being run up on their behalf by expecting them to pay their own lawyers’ success fee. We will also bring forward our plans to encourage parties to make and accept reasonable offers, to protect the majority of personal injury claimants from paying a winning defendant’s costs, and to allow claimants to recover the cost of expert reports in clinical negligence cases.
I am also publishing a consultation paper that I believe paves the way for the more efficient and effective delivery of civil justice after 15 years of stagnation. The current system is slow, stressful and expensive, and change is long overdue. My aim is to help people to avoid court wherever possible, while reducing costs where that is unavoidable. We are proposing that small-value cases should automatically be referred to mediation so that many people are able to avoid the experience of court entirely; and that the maximum value for small claims be raised from £5,000 to £15,000 to enable more cases to be heard through the simple small claims process rather than a more costly, complicated trial.
We are also proposing: to increase the value below which claims cannot be brought in the High Court to £100,000 so that the county court jurisdiction is extended and the High Court is reserved for only genuinely complex or high-value cases; new measures that will improve the ability of courts to tackle those who evade payment of their debts even though they have the means to do so, while ensuring that those who cannot pay continue to be protected, for example by setting a minimum level of consumer debt at which property could be put at risk for non-payment; and the extension of a successful online system to cut waiting times and legal expenses in personal injury cases, as recommended by my noble Friend Lord Young of Graffham.
We have a duty to deliver a civil justice system that is more equitable, accessible and just. Resorting to the law need not be the long, drawn-out and expensive nightmare that so many people experience today, but could become a sensible and affordable way of resolving disputes in a proportionate manner. I believe these reforms, on which we are now consulting, will help to restore those fundamental values of proportion and fairness in our civil justice system, and I commend this statement to the House.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his usual courtesies and advance sight of his statement, which, on face value, is difficult to disagree with. We accept that the issue of costs in civil proceedings is worth investigating, and did so in government. I note that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is in his place. Those suffering injury through the negligence of public and private bodies who cannot afford to fund actions privately must have recourse to the civil justice system. There is a fear, however, that these plans go so far in trying to keep down costs that some claimants with meritorious cases will find it difficult, if not impossible, to find a lawyer to take on their case.
I am afraid that the devil will be in the detail of today’s announcement. I have a number of questions for the Justice Secretary that I hope will tease out some of the detail. He referred to the Lord Justice Jackson report to justify his announcement. However, has he taken into account Lord Justice Jackson’s view that his proposals are a package and should not be subject to cherry-picking, and will he take into account Lord Justice Jackson’s desire to retain civil legal aid for criminal negligence and housing cases currently under threat from the Government?
The Justice Secretary proposes that claimants’ solicitors will be able to recover up to 25% of their costs from the damages that a claimant recovers. He will be aware that the increase in compensation from defendants to claimants will be only 10%, not 25%, and will apply only to general damages, not to total damages. Why should someone who has suffered the trauma of an injury at work be told that the money they have justly received as compensation will go to their lawyer?
Has the Justice Secretary had a chance to assess the road traffic accident portal scheme, which was introduced by the last Government to reduce costs? The scheme uses fixed fees and efficient processing to limit costs, and came into force in March last year. Does he accept that it has reduced costs by half in 75% of personal injury cases? Does he agree that expanding the scheme to personal injury claims would save costs?
The Government have said that one aim of the reform is to reduce the costs that defendants have to pay. Many defendants are insurance companies. In light of that, can the Justice Secretary say what reductions he expects in insurance premiums? Can he confirm whether an impact assessment has been conducted on how the changes affect access to justice, cost to defendants and reductions to insurance premiums? Is he concerned that, although there will be limitations on a claimant’s ability to bring a case and the costs incurred by their solicitors, there will be no such controls on a defendant in defending a case, raising concerns about the inequality between the two sides?
Finally, a fundamental principle of our justice system is proper access to justice. I agree with the previous Government, who agreed with senior judges such as the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, as well as Lord Justice Jackson and others, that the costs of civil litigation were sometimes excessive. We would all like the costs of litigation to be reduced and alternatives to it found wherever possible, but the effect of the proposals could be to restrict access to justice, particularly for those who do not have their own means of funding. It will be on this key issue that we will hold the Government’s actions to account.
Mr Clarke
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s agreement with me on the importance of tackling cost. He has focused principally on the conclusions that I have announced today of the Government’s consideration of the consultation on Rupert Jackson’s proposals, which I accept were initiated by my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), under the previous Government. We are trying to get the cost of litigation down.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about access to claims. We are going back to no win, no fee arrangements of the kind that existed when they were first set up by my noble Friend Lord Mackay in the mid-1990s. It was the changes made at the turn of the century that led to the cost escalating to such an extraordinary extent. Among other things, in many cases the legal fees paid by a losing defendant now far exceed the damages paid to the claimant. Indeed, it can be an extremely profitable area of practice if people have some successes. We will keep no win, no fee on the basis of the kind of arrangements we used to have—the kind that are familiar in most jurisdictions. The arrangements that we are proposing to sweep away are unparalleled in any other country and are making litigation too expensive for those faced with it.
The right hon. Gentleman then asked about the cost that can be borne by the plaintiff out of his damages. As he quite rightly said, the 10% enhancement to the level of damages that can be awarded is designed to help plaintiffs and claimants, but it will be confined to general damages, otherwise the figure could be astronomical in some cases. However, the costs that can be recovered—the success fee or bonus paid to a solicitor who has won a case—will be limited to 25%, so they will be kept in proportion.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the road traffic accident portal scheme, which has certainly speeded up and helped many personal injury cases. We are indeed proposing to extend the scheme to other personal injury cases, as he suggested.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me what would happen to insurance premiums. The answer, of course, is in the hands of the insurance industry and the competitive market in which it works. We all think, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter: it’s only the insurance company that is paying colossal legal fees”—on top of damages—“in no win, no fee cases,” but that could be one explanation for why car insurance costs have leapt to such an extraordinary extent in this country. I hope to see insurance premiums come down.
Impact assessments were produced at an earlier stage, after Sir Rupert had received wide representations from all sides. We have taken quite a long time getting to this point, and we are pretty clear on what the impact will be. On balance, I think it will be highly desirable. [Interruption.] I cannot read my notes on the last question that the right hon. Gentleman asked.
Sadiq Khan
It was about cherry-picking, and clinical negligence and housing cases.
Mr Clarke
Yes, the right hon. Gentleman raised an important point about clinical negligence cases, which can be very expensive to start. We are therefore making an exception in regard to the non-recoverability of insurance premiums. We will allow the recoverability of such premiums when they are used to cover the cost of expert evidence in clinical negligence cases. We are, however, working with the NHS Litigation Authority with a view to getting the NHS and other defendants to co-operate with claimants to produce joint medical reports. That should narrow the dispute and cut the costs for all parties, making justice more easily attained.
Mr Speaker
Order. I emphasised yesterday and I repeat today that, in accordance with long-established convention, Members who came into the Chamber after the Secretary of State started his statement should not expect to be called.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Given the Lord Chancellor’s characteristic willingness to take what in “Yes, Minister” would have been called “courageous decisions” about success fees, insurance fees, after-the-event insurance and the scope of the small claims courts, will he tell us what he thinks about referral fees and claims farming, which are probably major contributors to the compensation and litigation culture?
Mr Clarke
The Legal Services Board is looking into that whole area. My right hon. Friend Lord Young of Graffham has referred to this as well, and it is an important area that we should look at. We are all in favour of no win, no fee; it has been introduced and no one is ever going to get rid of it, but a rather extraordinary form of practice has now developed at the margins. Claims advisers advertise for people who have had an accident to bring a claim; we see their advertisements on the backs of buses. They pay people to give them their claim if it looks good, and they then sell the claim to a solicitor. Solicitors may then trade the claims between themselves, before bringing a no win, no fee action. If they are successful, they get very high costs and a kind of bonus, called a success fee, on top. That is what makes these actions so expensive. I understand why, in response to consultation, some people defended that system vigorously, but I believe that the whole thing needs examining from beginning to end. As Sir Rupert Jackson’s report made clear, this explains why the whole process has become so frighteningly expensive for so many litigants.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
May I add to the broad welcome from my Front Bench for the decisions that the Secretary of State has announced today? I also add my thanks, as I am sure he does, for the extraordinary work of Sir Rupert Jackson, which underpins them. I should like to pick up on the point raised by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). Is the Secretary of State aware that, in my constituency and in many others across the north-west, car insurance premiums for decent, honest drivers with impeccable records have rocketed, despite the fact that the number of accidents and thefts from vehicles has gone down? That is because of the work of those parasitic claims management companies and because the insurance companies, who are complaining about the costs, are themselves guilty of selling on personal data, including the facts relating to a claim, to those companies, often without the agreement of the insured person. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to close down those claims companies altogether? They are parasites milking the system. I apologise for coming late to this decision; I should have taken it when I was in his seat. Does he also agree that we should use data protection legislation to ban insurance companies from selling on personal data?
Mr Clarke
When I took over the right hon. Gentleman’s desk and chair about 11 months ago, one of the first things I picked up was the Jackson report, which he had commissioned. As he says, it was on his desk, but he had not had time to implement it. I was immediately attracted by its approach to cutting costs, so I am glad that he and I continue to agree on that. I am astonished to hear his description of insurance companies selling claims, although I have come across it. They do not all do it, but this just adds gloss to the strange way in which this has all developed. I am also struck by the huge cost of these practices for institutions such as the national health service, which, in a bad year, can spend about £400 million—little short of half a billion—on legal fees. In many areas of practice, the legal fees are the biggest bill for the defendant. They often exceed the amount of compensation paid to the claimant. The right hon. Gentleman was obviously anxious to reform the system, and I am anxious to do so as well. I am glad to have taken up the baton.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee received considerable evidence that the massive increase in the cost of libel actions that can result from the use of conditional fee arrangements is having a seriously chilling effect on investigative journalism? Does he accept that the measures he has announced this afternoon are in some ways even more important for sustaining investigative journalism and scientific debate than the measures contained in his draft Defamation Bill?
Mr Clarke
I think that is right. This will have a big impact on defamation cases where people threaten the publisher of something they do not like with enormous costs if they want to defend the action. This is having, to use the jargon phrase, “a chilling effect” not only on scientific and academic work, but on proper investigative journalism. When we put the draft Defamation Bill together with what we are proposing to do in the light of Rupert Jackson’s proposals, the way in which we are setting up no win, no fee generally and the announcements I have made about the jurisdiction of the courts, I think we will make a significant impact on lowering the costs of all this litigation to the advantage of plaintiffs who have a legitimate grievance and of defendants. We are going to stop the whole thing being a high roller’s gamble, which is what it is at the moment, as to whether the other side dare face the risks of the huge costs being piled up the moment a claim is brought.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
Whilst welcoming anything that will reduce the unnecessary costs to lawyers and others, will the Justice Secretary give a reasonable guarantee to constituents like my own, who are generally among the poorest people in Britain, that they will still be able to find legal assistance? The obvious problem with the 25% rule is that it might drive people below the threshold at which lawyers would be prepared to take the cases on. Will anything in the proposals deter people from obtaining proper expert evidence when that is necessary for them to fight their claim?
Mr Clarke
I think that people will think twice, as it were. At the moment, they are lured into making a claim by an advertisement on the back of a bus or in some local office. There are many people with perfectly legitimate personal injuries claims and the method I would wish them to pursue is to go to a solicitor who will consider the reasonable prospects of success and take it on on a no win, no fee basis—on the sort of terms that were always envisaged when we introduced the system into this country in the 1990s. People will have to think more carefully; there will be fewer purely speculative actions; and there will be fewer actions brought in the hope that the size of the legal costs is so great that the other side might be bullied into making an offer of settlement, regardless of their chance of success. I hope, however, that legitimate claims will prosper under a no win, no fee system, which is much closer to the lower-cost systems that other jurisdictions operate.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Thanks to the blame culture that developed under the last Government, one school in my constituency deemed it necessary to concrete over a very shallow paddling pool, in case a child had an accident and the school were sued. Another school considered cutting down all its trees in case children were to fall out of them, injuring themselves so that the school might be sued. I hope today’s statement will be the start of a fresh approach to this compensation culture.
Mr Clarke
I feel strongly, as does my hon. Friend, that we have an unacceptable compensation culture in this country. Like him, I notice it in my daily life. I think that doctors, teachers, policemen and most professional people are constantly concerned about the possible risk of litigation when they do perfectly ordinary things in the course of their daily lives. I dare say that the kind of submissions coming to Ministers are, in comparison with when I first received them, now so full of concerns about judicial review, the Human Rights Act and other legal constraints on what can be done that we are getting further and further away from common sense whereby people can exercise their judgment and, of course, be accountable to the law when they are at risk of breaking it—but only when they are at risk of breaking sensible law and might face litigation at reasonable cost.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I think that what the Lord Chancellor has said today has cross-party support. May I take him back to his comments about mediation? Is he suggesting that there should be mandatory mediation for very small claims? If he is, we have a problem with the number of qualified mediators. Will he look at this issue because it is all very well referring these cases, but we need the mediators to be able to deal with them?
Mr Clarke
We will make mediation an automatic part of the process if the result of the consultation supports such a move. Of course there will be cases that mediation will not resolve, and in those cases people will undoubtedly have the right to go to court. In the small claims courts we are already seeing a rapid extension of very successful mediation, often by means of telephone conference, which is resolving the smaller disputes.
As for the county court, following our extension of its jurisdiction, we will expect people to go along and be introduced to the prospect of mediation. We are consulting on the kind of people who will be required to conduct mediation sensibly, because, as the right hon. Gentleman says, a certain amount of skill and experience will be required for the process to produce the right results.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Has the Secretary of State had time to consider the possible implications for the overall number of county courts of the proposal to rationalise the county court by, for instance, allowing back-office functions to be combined?
Mr Clarke
We have just completed a consultation on our estate, and we have announced the closure of a number of courts. We aim to reduce back-office costs and the unnecessary expense that flows from different jurisdictions. Obviously we keep the proper usage of our estate under continuous review, but I do not expect the proposal to have any significant effect on the future of the courts that survived the consultation that we carried out a few months ago.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I accept the need for rationalisation of the jurisdictions of the county courts and High Courts. I also accept that, ultimately, mediation will be a good thing. However, evidence from the Access To Justice Action Group provides numerous instances in which poor people will be excluded altogether following the change in the no win, no fee arrangements, and I am desperately worried about that. The evidence contains no special pleading. It is excellent evidence, and I ask the Ministry to re-examine it in due course. If something is not done, this will prove to be a benefit match for the insurance companies only.
Mr Clarke
We considered very carefully the large number of responses to the consultation document, many of which opposed changes based on Sir Rupert’s proposals. Most of them came from plaintiff solicitors, but I do not dismiss them on that ground, because I share with those solicitors an interest in proper access to justice. We considered whether modified no win, no fee arrangements could be justified in that context.
There are two questions to be asked: have we affected people’s access to justice, and have we affected the profitability of practices that engage in no win, no fee with a reasonable level of success? Most of the responses that we received dealt with much more complicated questions, but I believe that we have retained proper access to justice while lowering the costs—and therefore, unfortunately in some cases, the profit margins—to more reasonable levels.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Some of us spend a large part of our professional lives trying to persuade litigants to accept reasonable offers. It is often difficult to explain to them what is a realistic quantum of damages in personal injury cases. Surely, with all the technology of the 21st century, it must be possible to devise a public website that could be updated with whatever decisions the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, the High Court and other courts have made in personal injury cases. That would provide a much more accessible and transparent explanation of the quantum in such cases at any given time, enabling litigants to assess the probability of a successful claim and the level of damages that they were likely to receive.
Mr Clarke
If my hon. Friend looks at our proposals, he will see that we intend to provide greater incentives for the settlement of cases. We also intend to impose cost penalties—beyond those that already exist—on those who either refuse good offers or do not meet the reasonable first demands of their opponents, but settlement is always preferable when it is possible.
I think I shall have to discuss with the judiciary the question of whether wider circulation could be given to recent awards of damages. However, I agree that in this day and age it ought to be possible to move on a little from the old days when gossip among members of the Bar about what they considered to be the current tariff for a particular injury was the best way of spreading knowledge about the direction in which the figures were moving. I will discuss my hon. Friend’s proposal with the Lord Chief Justice and others.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will know the situation facing families with household savings of less than £15,000, and that families with savings of over £16,000 are ineligible for benefits. Does he not think that raising the bar for access to justice through the small courts from £5,000 to £15,000 may be seen as rough justice for the many poorer families who might want a proper hearing for their case? It will have a massive impact on their household budget, and a much greater one than a larger amount for a richer family.
Mr Clarke
This has sometimes been looked at, hence it has been possible to raise these levels by quite large amounts as they have not kept in line with inflation for the last 15 years. What we are doing in respect of the small claims courts should be of assistance to people of low means, because the small claims courts have been quite successful as a reasonably informal, very low-cost way of resolving simple disputes or collecting straightforward debts which people cannot recover from those who owe them. It is right to extend that jurisdiction so that people are not faced with the daunting prospect of appearing before a judge in a formal court setting, and possibly having a lawyer on the other side and so forth, which comes at the next stage up, at county court.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
On the small claims courts, it is interesting that we are increasing the limit from £5,000 to £15,000. Will personal injury cases now be included, and will the recovery of legal fees be precluded in all cases up to £15,000?
Mr Clarke
We are only consulting, so we are open to arguments about whether or not £15,000 is the right figure; we might put it up further, or we might be persuaded to take it down. I personally think that extending the small claims court jurisdiction is a very desirable thing to do, but it will not be extended to personal injury cases, because the small claims court is intended for quick and easy disposal of fairly straightforward cases. Too many personal injury cases would clog up the system which is meant to be quick and relatively informal and for straightforward disputes.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Can the Justice Secretary assure the House that all the proposed changes will safeguard the innocent, protect the vulnerable and ensure that access to justice remains the cornerstone of our society?
Mr Clarke
Well, I hope I can answer yes to all those questions. We are talking about civil jurisdiction here; there is no criminal jurisdiction. I think civil justice should be quick, efficient and accessible to most members of society. As the hon. Gentleman will know, most ordinary people regard any question of being muddled up with litigation, or having to go to court, with mortal dread. Middle England—or middle Ireland—feels itself completely excluded from a civil justice system that exists for the very poor, the very rich or the big corporations. We are, I hope, moving in the direction of enabling the ordinary citizen to make some use of the civil justice system again, and without quite as much fear as most people have of it at the moment.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
Although I think there will be a general welcome for the 10% uplift in general damages, which should help to cover the payment out of success fees by claimants, does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that in a small number of cases where special damages form the lion’s share of an award, there is still a live issue as to the potential erosion of the value of the damages awarded by the payment out of success fees to lawyers?
Mr Clarke
The cap of the success fee—which is a kind of bonus to a winning lawyer who has taken a no win, no fee case—will not be applied to special damages. As my hon. Friend rightly says, special damages can be enormous, such as in cases where the plaintiff has been disabled for life, and if the so-called success fee—the bonus—is taken as a percentage of that, it could be colossal, even though the size of the award might not reflect the complexity and difficulty of the case, but just the fact that the plaintiff was very severely injured. We are increasing damages by 10% of general damages, and we are capping the success fee that the plaintiff will have to meet at 25% of the general damages. Special damages will not be affected.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that the online road traffic accident scheme will be expanded to cover employers’ liability, public liability and personal injury claims up to the value of £50,000?
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
The tentacles of the compensation culture have wrapped themselves around British life for far too long, and I congratulate the Secretary of State on his proposals. Local authorities and public bodies face paying out more and more, so does he see his proposals as the first step towards a semblance of normality in this area?
Mr Clarke
I hope so. Let me make it clear that I am in favour of people who have suffered injury because of the fault or negligence of somebody else receiving proper compensation. In all those cases, people should have access to the courts and the right to have their case argued in the normal way, but what has happened is that this has become a widely publicised, rather commercial activity, which is having a considerable effect on the way in which many people lead their ordinary day-to-day lives. Let us go back to a sensible system of civil justice which does proper justice to both the claimants and the defendants, and get away from this rather extraordinary way we live at the moment, whereby huge sums can be made, mainly in legal costs rather than in damages, by bringing speculative claims against defendants who cannot afford to defend them.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
As those of us still practising can tell my right hon. and learned Friend, the costs associated with civil litigation are of just as much concern in higher value claims as they are in lower value claims, particularly to British businesses which need their rights adjudicated upon. In many jurisdictions, including some in the United States, mediation is compulsory in all civil cases. Will he consider ensuring that that is the position in England and Wales as well?
Mr Clarke
I will certainly consider that, and I am interested to hear about my hon. and learned Friend’s knowledge of the American experience. We are certainly seeking to extend mediation considerably, and we are consulting to see how far we can go in getting people to contemplate mediation before deciding which cases cannot be resolved that way and so have to go to ordinary litigation. I am glad that he welcomes that; we certainly wish to see a considerable extension of mediation and we will go as far as is sensible.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
I declare my interest as a family lawyer.
Constituents involved in these proceedings are often frustrated about the length of the court process. They can be involved for a long time only for the case to be settled at the door of the court. Will my right hon. and learned Friend set out the steps being taken to case-manage matters at the earliest opportunity?
Mr Clarke
The new portal process should significantly speed up a very high proportion of cases. We will certainly continue to address the real point that my hon. Friend makes as we go on to consult. Quite apart from the dread of the cost, the main experience members of the public have of the courts, be they criminal or civil, is the astonishing amount of time they are likely to waste in abortive visits during a slow-moving process. They will often have to attend the court building needlessly on occasions when the court is adjourned before they can get to be a party, a witness, a juror and so on. I therefore appreciate the spirit of my hon. Friend’s question and we are certainly seeking to address it in this consultation process.
Children (Access to Parents)
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require courts, local authorities and other bodies, when determining or enforcing issues of residence and contact, to operate under the presumption that the rights of a child include the right to grow up knowing and having access to and contact with both of the parents involved in the residence or contact case concerned, unless exceptional circumstances are demonstrated that such contact is not in the best interests of the child; to create an offence if a relevant body or person does not operate under or respect such a presumption; and for connected purposes.
There are 3 million children who live apart from a parent in the UK, about 1 million of whom have no contact with the non-resident parent three years after separation. We know from the statistics that the number of court applications is rising. In 2005, it was 110,330 and in 2009—the most recent year for which the figures are available, I understand—it was 137,480.
We also know that the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service case load has been rising sharply. In 2007-08, there were 39,432 cases, and in 2009-10 there were 44,722. That was the subject of a recent Public Accounts Committee report and a National Audit Office investigation, which found that CAFCASS is not timely and that eight out of 10 Ofsted cases are failed. That is not good enough and as a result we have a massive delay in the court system. Even after a contact order is granted, as we all know from our surgeries it is all too often ignored, not enforced and not dealt with. The situation is simply unacceptable.
I am promoting the Bill today because I believe that there is a better way. First, we should reform things so that we have mediation rather than endless court cases. On average, mediation costs £752 a case whereas court proceedings cost £1,682 a case, and mediation takes 110 days whereas court cases take 435 days—more than a year. Some 95% of mediations are complete within nine months whereas only 70% of court cases are complete within 18 months.
Secondly, we need to reform and enforce contact properly. We need to place a duty on all involved. Too often, people say it is about mums’ rights or dads’ rights, but actually it is about the rights of a child to know and have a relationship with both their parents. That is the nub of what the Bill is about. It is not right that parents should sink their children’s right to know them in a sea of acrimony when they split up.
There are those who would say, “That doesn’t happen. The Bill is not necessary; it is a waste of parliamentary time. It’s not an issue. Why is Mr Elphicke bothering to do this?” Let me give some case studies. Mrs A, of Wootton in my constituency, wrote to me about her son’s experience with his children. She said:
“Each time a visit is due their mother creates a great deal of hassle—never being able to give a precise date etc. and has twice prevented the visit completely.”
The son went off to court to get a contact order. The letter went on:
“He has been in front of several different judges and every one has refused to do anything at all—just shrugging their shoulders, treating my son like a criminal, not even looking at the paper work and evidence. They just say there is nothing they can do.”
Mr G of Dover writes to me:
“I understand as they are my children I should help towards their upbringing, but surely this should not just involve paying my ex money and only speaking to them on a Sunday morning for 30 mins.”
Some people might think that this is all about dads. No, it is not. Let me give an example. Kenn Griffiths of mychildcontact.com sent me details of a case involving a mother who was divorced several years ago. The father has residence and the mother tells a moving story about how the father has been poisoning her children against her, telling them that she is ill and will never get better and that if they live with her they will make her even more ill. He has been saying the same to the CAFCASS representative. The only information the CAFCASS representative had in front of her was the father’s allegations, and she recommended that the mother see the children every other weekend in a contact centre, not for half the time as she does at the moment. Surely that cannot be the right way forward.
Let me give another case from just last week, of Tommy, a soldier from Coventry. He has a six-year-old daughter who lives with her mother. Court proceedings started last year. There was contact until January of this year, when the mother ended it. There was a court hearing and it all kicked off because CAFCASS could not get its ducks in a row until October of this year, but there is an issue here. Tommy is a soldier and he is about to be deployed to Afghanistan at the end of this month—this week, he will go to Afghanistan.
In January, Tommy applied for a specific order so that he could see his six-year-old daughter and take his leave of her before he went to serve his country—and, possibly, did not come back. He applied to the court. Was the judge at the hearing sympathetic? Did he allow Tommy to take leave of his six-year-old daughter before he went off to war? The judge said that it was unreasonable of him to ask to see his daughter and he should wait until October 2011 before the court would resume proceedings. This is a man who is off to serve his country. I wholeheartedly condemn that judge at Leicester county court for living in an ivory tower and having no idea about the real world and the parents’ feelings about seeing their children.
Let me detail the case of an alienated mother in which the father has the residence order for their two boys. They had 46 hearings between 2000 and 2006 before contact was finally achieved, by which time the damage had been done and the children were so alienated that they had no relationship with their mother. How can that be right? This is the existing law that we have to contend with.
Then there are the blackmail cases. Danny saw his six-year-old daughter every other weekend and on Wednesday evenings. He pays his ex-partner’s mortgage and he pays maintenance through the Child Support Agency, but one Friday before he was due to make a visit, mum said, “I need a new bed; if you don’t buy one, you won’t see your daughter tomorrow.” That was two years ago and he has not seen his daughter since because the judiciary will not enforce the contact orders. The system is stacked against him.
The reason I am putting this Bill before the House is to ensure that there is a clear and enforceable right of the child—a clear presumption in law—that will send a clear message to all those involved, including CAFCASS and all the weak-kneed judges who will not make or enforce any orders. To the parents who have residence orders and should know better, I want us to send the message that this is not about their rights: it is about their children’s rights to grow up knowing both their mother and their father.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I rise to oppose the Bill and declare that I practised in family law as both a solicitor and a barrister for about 35 years. I therefore draw on a number of years’ experience in the courts. I believe that the motion has been made with the best possible intentions, but if the Bill was passed, it would fall foul of the law of unintended consequences.
In all cases in which decisions are made regarding contact arrangements for children, paramount consideration must always be given to the welfare of the child, as required under the Children Act 1989 and article 3 of the UN convention on the rights of the child. Thus far, the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and I agree. Sustaining meaningful relationships with non-resident parents and other carers such as grandparents, whether male or female, is important for meeting a child’s emotional needs. Thus far we still agree. It is often in the best interests of the child to ensure that contact with both parents and other carers is maintained. Again, we agree.
However, many organisations, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, do not support any measures that seek to alter the paramountcy principle defined in the 1989 Act, which ensures that the welfare of children overrides all other considerations. That is a view with which I entirely concur. There is evidence to suggest that the paramountcy principle might be undermined by informal arrangements. Research published by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of court administration shows that courts already operate with an informal presumption of contact despite there being no legislation to require that. HMICA found that this informal arrangement has had the effect of undermining the safety of children who were at risk by focusing courts’ attention on contact rather than on the welfare of the child. More research is needed to assess the extent and impact of the informal use of presumption of contact in family courts.
Fewer than one in 10 cases in which parents divorce or separate comes before a family court for decisions to be made or disputes to be settled regarding contact arrangements involving children, but it is important to appreciate just how regularly the risks to a child’s welfare need to be actively considered by judges when ruling on parental access in family courts. Research for the Ministry of Justice in 2008 on applications for child contact across 11 courts found that the majority of cases included serious welfare concerns about the impact on the child of domestic violence, parental mental health issues, parental drug or alcohol misuse, a parent’s learning disability or the likelihood of a parent abducting the child. Only 37% of applications did not contain any serious welfare concerns which might affect the child. The most frequent welfare concern was domestic violence, which affected 154 of the 308 case files reviewed. Domestic violence is widely recognised as a major child protection issue, with 750,000 children witnessing domestic violence annually.
Victims of domestic violence face greatest risk post-separation, and research shows that children ordered by courts to have contact with a violent parent are likely to be abused themselves and, in the most extreme cases, killed. In 2005 HMICA published a report on the handling of safety in family proceedings. The research found that courts already operate with an informal presumption of contact, even when there is nothing in legislation to require this. The report said:
“The presumption of contact was evident in all the practice sessions observed during this inspection and there was consistent evidence that inappropriate assumptions about contact were made, rather than assessments about whether there was any risk associated with domestic abuse cases.”
More research needs to be carried out by the Ministry of Justice. The forthcoming interim report from the Family Justice Review, likely to be published by the end of this month, may address the matter and its findings should not be pre-empted.
The issue of parental contact was debated in detail in the 2005-06 parliamentary Session during the passage of the Children and Adoption Bill. The resulting Children and Adoption Act 2006 amended the Children Act 1989 to allow greater flexibility for courts facilitating contact and gave courts powers to require parents to undertake a contact activity, such as attending a parenting programme or information session. Following that Bill’s passage, the then Government committed to carrying out further research on parental access issues. Any further consideration to alter the current arrangements should result from evidence-based research and further study of the effects of contact on the welfare of the child.
I will offer one case study, that of Vivian Gamor. In 2007 a judge criticised decisions which allowed a mentally ill woman access to her children, whom she subsequently killed. Vivian Gamor, 29, beat Antoine, 10 years old, and suffocated Kenniece, three years old, in east London, in January 2007. The judge, Peter Rook QC, said that in retrospect Gamor should not have been given free access to the youngsters. The serious case review highlighted many problems. It showed that despite reports of some successful contact visits by Ms Gamor and her plan to have the children live with her, further efforts should have been made to contact the children’s father, with whom they had been living, to assess the situation before deciding whether to support Ms Gamor’s request for further contact. Judge Rook said that
“this terrible tragedy could have been avoided if Gamor had not been allowed unsupervised access and the children’s father’s grave concerns had been given weight.”
Ms Gamor was sectioned for serious mental illness in early 2006 and the children moved in with their father. However, she was later released from care after doctors concluded that she posed no risk to herself or others. Following her release, she was gradually granted supervised access to the children in November 2006, and then, on three occasions, unsupervised access to her children. It was on the third occasion of unsupervised access that Ms Gamor killed her children during the night at her flat, just two weeks after overnight contact had begun.
In conclusion, we should be very wary of diluting the paramountcy principle because it is clear that in any family breakdown, the most vulnerable players are the children. We must continue to have their welfare in mind first and foremost, and nothing that I have heard today or witnessed in the family courts persuades me that a change in the law is required.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Charlie Elphicke, Penny Mordaunt, Priti Patel, Charlotte Leslie, Kwasi Kwarteng, Margot James, Caroline Dinenage, Chris Heaton-Harris, Tracey Crouch, Nadhim Zahawi, Karen Lumley and Jane Ellison present the Bill.
Charlie Elphicke accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 May and to be printed (Bill 174).
Points of Order
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are certain politicians who arouse very strong feelings both in favour and against their political initiatives. One such politician is Lord Tebbit. I wonder whether there is any way within the rules of order that we may place on the record our appreciation of his long political career on this his 80th birthday, noting that he has gone from bovver boy to blogger in successive generations.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Although you are impeccably impartial, I know that deep in your heart there still lurks a little Tory. You will know the love and esteem in which Lord Tebbit is held on these Benches. May we not have some suitable memorial erected to him—perhaps a bicycle draped in the Union flag and carved in solid British oak?
Mr Speaker
The House should hold to the phrase “impeccably impartial”. I say to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) that the short answer to his question whether that could be done within the rules of order is no. However, he and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) have found a disorderly but very far from disagreeable way to pay tribute to their illustrious colleague. I think that I can safely say that the remarks of both hon. Gentlemen will be appreciated by the noble Lord’s admirers and detractors in this House, the other place and around the country on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Ways and Means
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Amendment of the Law
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
21:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 327 / Noes: 250 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:15 - The House divided: - Ayes: 334 / Noes: 13 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:28 - The House divided: - Ayes: 333 / Noes: 236 - Question accordingly agreed to.
22:41 - The House divided: - Ayes: 330 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Speaker
I must notify the House that motion 12, which relates to tobacco products duty rates, has not been printed correctly on the Order Paper. The correct version has appeared on the Order Paper on previous days and is available today on a separate sheet. A large number of Members wish to speak in the debate and a time limit of six minutes on Back-Bench speeches has been set. I remind Members not to approach the Chair to inquire where they are on the list. The Chair will do his or her best to accommodate Members in the course of the afternoon, but it will not be assisted by people making inquiries.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
In concluding the Budget debate, and recognising what you have just said, Mr Speaker, I will take interventions. However, I will try to make some progress, as many Members wish to get in and many of the points have probably already been made.
I think that it has been an excellent Budget, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. The Chancellor is to be congratulated on focusing on his priorities, which he stated clearly, for rebuilding the shattered economy that we inherited. Let me remind the House that when Labour came to power in 1997 they received a golden economic inheritance, the like of which few Governments since the war have received, which gave them money to spend. Despite that, the painful scar of youth unemployment hardly changed, some 4.5 million were stuck on out-of-work benefits, 1.4 million had never worked at all and we had the largest structural deficit of any G7 economy. Intriguingly, the worst thing is that that point was reached even before the recession had started.
After that, things just got a whole lot worse: 5 million on out-of-work benefits; working-age poverty up; youth unemployment at a record high; more children in workless households than the rest of the European Union; and the largest budget deficit in the UK’s post-war history, of more than £150 billion. That deficit is for one year, piling on top of the outstanding debt mountain, and £120 million is spent on interest payments alone—every single day. There was even talk of an International Monetary Fund bail-out, bringing alive memories of the dark years of the late 1970s—and, of course, the House knows who was in power then.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that two thirds of the deficit—£84 billion—was due to the financial crisis, and that the Budget’s overall fiscal tightening is £98 billion? Does he not agree that he is going too far, too fast, savaging whole communities, choking growth with cuts and stoking up inflation with VAT? Is that not completely wrong? That is why so many people marched against it.
Mr Duncan Smith
That gives me an opportunity to put the shadow Chancellor right. He said in one of the Budget debates last week that the structural deficit was low as we entered the recession. We had the highest structural deficit in the whole developed world, and intriguingly he is in denial about that, so whether he talks about debt or deficits, in reality as we entered the recession, the economy had been badly run, leaving us with a record structural deficit.
Importantly, what has been Labour’s response as a result of that? Acceptance that it had lost control; perhaps even a little humility? Not a bit of it. Instead, we have seen a desperate scramble to find almost anybody else to blame for the problems, and it appears, even today, no attempt to make any amends publicly. In the Labour playbook, the previous Government were just innocent bystanders in somebody else’s evil game. Poor old Britain. Apparently, we were just minding our own business when along came some nasty industrialists and bankers who ganged up on us in some international capitalist conspiracy. It is like some ghastly, poor script. It really does read like some really poor script from an Austin Powers movie, and I am pretty sure that any minute now the shadow Chancellor is going to try to blame Dr Evil and bring him into the script as well.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
Is the right hon. Gentleman suffering from some kind of amnesia? Has he forgotten that, after some 20 years of the previous Conservative Government, we had almost 3 million people unemployed? In two of my inner-city wards, I had 50% male unemployment and 75% youth unemployment. Is the right hon. Gentleman about to embark on the same mistakes that caused such massive unemployment after 20 years of the previous Tory Government?
Mr Duncan Smith
It is always a pleasure to give way to the right hon. Lady, because if anything she is always honest with her own side. I understand that quite recently she said that her own party had been pretty much unrealistic about the situation, and I seem to recall that she even said that it should be more specific about what reductions it would make. She was a part of a governing party that left this country with the worst recession, the worst deficit and massive debts, so I do not need to explain where we were in ’97; she needs to explain why we got to where we were at the last election.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend think that it is actually the right hon. Lady who is something of an amnesiac? She seems to have forgotten the £5 billion a year taken out of pensions, and the fact that Labour sold the gold.
Mr Duncan Smith
Indeed. My hon. Friend is, as ever, right.
It is worth reminding—
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Duncan Smith
No. I am going to make some progress, because Mr Speaker has already told us that we need to let others speak.
Let me remind Labour Members that they were the ones who let the bankers rip as they pleased, leading to a 10-year spending spree that sent personal debt to the record level of £1.3 trillion. They let public spending rip, too, but Members should not take my word for it; strangely, Tony Blair—not now spoken about much on the Labour Benches—said that
“from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit.”
Insufficiently vigorous? That is possibly the biggest understatement that I have ever read. The reality is that they did nothing at all about controlling the deficit, so it is small wonder that the No. 1 priority for this coalition Government was to get the finances straightened out, and my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary are doing just that.
Mr Duncan Smith
I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I am going to make some progress.
Emma Reynolds
Why, then, did the right hon. Gentleman’s party pledge to match our spending plans right up until the start of the financial crisis?
Mr Duncan Smith
What we are dealing with here—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I will tell Labour Members what the big “Ah!” is. It is “Ah, who were in government for the past 12 years?”, it is “Ah, who left us with the worst structural deficit?”, and it is “Ah, who left us with massive debts, rising youth unemployment and a total shambles from which we are going to have to pick up the pieces?”
One of our biggest challenges was getting to grips with the welfare system, which many Members on both sides of the House will recall. Spending on working-age welfare increased by some 50% under Labour, from £48 billion to £73 billion in real terms. People talk about the problems of increasing welfare spending in difficult times, but let me remind the House that that increase took place during a period of growth. Notwithstanding that extra spending, improvements were quite poor. The universal credit is about getting the incentives right. That is the sort of reform that we have to bring through, recognising that people have to see the financial benefits from taking up employment, and simplifying the byzantine benefits system that we inherited. Alongside it, the Work programme is about supporting people to be work-ready so that British business no longer has to look abroad when it wants to commit to bringing in employees.
We are finally getting to grips with a housing benefit system that has been allowed to run out of control. The failure to reform housing benefit has left us in the absurd situation whereby some benefit claimants can claim up to £100,000 a year to live in large houses in expensive areas. The local housing allowance formula was behind all this madness. I remind Labour Members that it was their Government who introduced the local housing allowance, which pumped fuel into that growth. The difference between the average award under the LHA and under the older schemes for private deregulated tenants that it replaced was an additional £10 per week, or about 10%. As a result, the costs of housing benefit rocketed from £14 billion in 2005-06 to £21 billion in 2010-11. Left unreformed, the housing benefit budget was projected to reach £24 billion in 2014-15. That is, frankly, unsustainable and unacceptable to hard-working British taxpayers.
Housing benefit is an issue on which Labour Members have shown themselves at their very worst. First, we got ludicrous claims about social cleansing from central London, whipping up fury and fear. [Hon. Members: “That started with you.”] No, it started with them, and I know exactly who it was. Then, on top of that, we were told that the real reason was that we are a Government bent on some kind of plan for ethnic cleansing. Labour Members are not averse to a bit of dog-whistle politics when it suits them, scaring some of the most vulnerable people in society and leading them to fear what is coming next.
The problem is that the Labour Government had over 10 years to get to grips with the welfare system, and literally nothing was done about it—it was fiddle, more fiddle, and more expense. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that as a result of the changes to expenditure that we brought through, we remain on track to eradicate our structural deficit over the course of this Parliament.
It is important, too, to reflect on how the Budget for growth has gone down with people. Sir Martin Sorrell says:
“The coalition from the very beginning had said it was crucially important that Britain had a competitive tax landscape. They've gone further than I expected on corporate”
tax
“and also on personal taxation.”
He went on to say that
“it looks as though we will make that recommendation”
to return his company’s headquarters to the United Kingdom. That is a real endorsement.
A letter in The Daily Telegraph yesterday from 39 leading venture capitalists stated:
“These changes are a shot in the arm for enterprise. Thanks to them Britain is being positioned as a world-class place to launch new businesses. Now British entrepreneurs and those relocating to Britain will find it easier to raise the funds they need to do what they do best: create and expand world-beating businesses.”
John Cridland, the CBI director general, said:
“This Budget will help businesses grow and create jobs. The chancellor has made clear the UK is open for business.”
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has seen the latest statement from the Institute of Directors, which says that 58% of company executives are now more confident about the long-term economic outlook, and that just 9% are less optimistic.
Mr Duncan Smith
I am bowled over by that—what can I say? That was a timely intervention by my hon. Friend. I apologise for not producing that point myself. It is yet more evidence that this Budget, which was shaped by my right hon. Friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to ensure that Britain is open for business, has opened it for business. That is what business men are saying.
I want to bring one more person to the attention of the House. This tribute is perhaps more difficult for the Opposition to cope with. It is from none other than Duncan Bannatyne—a great name. He said:
“This Budget has convinced me that George Osborne is serious about growth and enterprise.”
I remind the Opposition that he was a huge and strong supporter of the previous Government. Even when almost every other business man had deserted them, he still supported them. To use his own wise words, he has said, “I’m in!” I think that the rest of the country is too.
Getting to grips with the public finances is just the starting point, not the destination. Of course we have to balance the Budget, but this Government are about much more than that. Our ambition is to make the next decade the most dynamic and entrepreneurial in Britain’s history. That is why we have set out plans to create the most competitive tax system in the G20. That is why we are reducing the rate of corporation tax yet further from 28% to 26% in 2011-12, and crucially, all the way down to 23% from 2014-15. That will give the UK the lowest rate of corporation tax in the G7. I thought that I would hear a cheer from the Opposition for that, because they must surely want that to happen. Perhaps they do not.
That ambition is why we are making the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business. We are supporting small firms with a moratorium on domestic regulation, which will give them a real chance to plan and to get going. We are investing £100 million in science capital development. That ambition is also why we are encouraging investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy. We are setting up 21 new enterprise zones with superfast broadband, lower taxes and low levels of regulation and planning controls.
From our perspective, we can see that even as the economy grew under the previous Government, too many people in this country missed out. More than half the additional jobs that were created went to foreign nationals. It is therefore hardly surprising that youth unemployment was higher when we came into office than when Labour took power. As growth picks up again, we have to ensure that this group does not miss out once more. Some 900,000 additional jobs will be created over the course of this Parliament, and our welfare reforms are about ensuring that our people are ready and able to take them.
The previous Prime Minister spoke about British jobs for British workers, but the reality is that most of the jobs did not go to British workers. That point is not about immigration, but about supply and demand. We have to ensure that British workers are ready and able to take the jobs. That is why this Budget introduces new and hugely welcome measures to provide extra support for young people. They will be helped to find sustainable jobs in the private and voluntary sector. We will fund an additional 50,000 apprenticeship places over the lifetime of this Parliament, and importantly, 40,000 of them will be targeted at the young unemployed. That is on top of the 75,000 places announced last year.
Overall, with the new measures in the Budget, the Government will deliver at least 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years compared with the previous Government’s plans. Those apprenticeships will be very valuable, because they will give young people in particular, but others as well, real training, real skills and a proper job at the end of it.
Alongside that, we are aiming to assist in the process of getting apprenticeships by providing up to 100,000 work experience places over the next two years. Those placements will last a minimum of eight weeks, rather than the two weeks made available under the previous Government. We will also offer employers an extra linking month when it will provide a route into an apprenticeship. If an employer says after the eight weeks that they will put a young person into an apprenticeship, or even into work, we will be prepared to give the young person an extra month of work experience so that the employer can sort out whatever is necessary without having to let them drop out of the company.
That work experience will be a crucial head start for young people. As David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce said in January:
“Employers will be key to getting young people into work. This programme is a way of not only providing quality work experience but also of introducing individuals to the modern world of work.”
The programme has also got the backing of Hayley Taylor, star of Channel 4’s “The Fairy Jobmother” series, whom I saw the other day—a great woman. She has said:
“It’s hard to get a job with no experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. That’s why this work experience scheme is a really good idea.”
However, this Budget is not just about securing the position of workers today; it is also about securing their position in the future, as they enter retirement. We have done a great deal for current pensioners. We have restored the earnings link and given a triple guarantee that the basic state pension will rise by the highest of the growth in average earnings, the prices increase or 2.5%.
Mr Duncan Smith
Yes, exactly. That will provide a really generous state pension that gives a firm financial foundation. Someone retiring today on a full basic state pension will receive £15,000 more over their retirement than they would have done under the old prices link. We have also permanently increased cold weather payments from £8.50 to £25.
Notwithstanding the prospects of today’s pensioners, the prospects for the next generation are very different. I hope that Members of all parties will recognise that those who are not near to receiving their pension, and who perhaps are just starting their career, face a very difficult time indeed.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
On the subject of pensioners, was the Secretary of State as disappointed as I was that the Chancellor did not have the guts to mention in his Budget statement that he was reducing the winter fuel allowance from £400 to £300? His decision not to continue with the £400 payments comes after he said they would be protected and permanent in future. Some 12 million pensioners will be upset by the Government’s policy not to continue with them at a time when bills are going up year on year.
Mr Duncan Smith
I am interested that the hon. Gentleman raises the matter, because it was originally mentioned in the comprehensive spending review. We have stuck to the last Government’s plans on the winter fuel payment. In fact, I was intrigued by the issue so I looked up what the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who is in his place, said when he was Chancellor. He said a lot of straightforward things, and I congratulate him on that. He said about the winter fuel payments that they
“were temporarily increased to £250, and £400 for the over-80s…I will guarantee this higher winter fuel payment for another year.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 263.]
When we look at the Red Book produced at the time, we find that there was no allocation for any more winter fuel payments. We stuck to the last Government’s plans. Perhaps the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) should ask his right hon. Friend why he did not plan for more. We did exactly what we said we would do.
The real problem is that 7 million people are not saving enough for the retirement that they want, and few will be able to rely on a guaranteed income in retirement, because the numbers saving in defined benefit schemes in the private sector have more than halved in the last 20 years. In fact, less than half of the entire working-age population is currently saving in a pension at all.
Our plans automatically to enrol all workers in a pension scheme will make a real difference—we have continued the work started by the previous Government—but my hon. Friend the Minister and I do not think that auto-enrolment will work unless it pays people to save, which is why we have determined finally to get to grips with the state pension. As all hon. Members know, not only is the state pension extremely complex, leaving millions of people unsure as to what they will receive in retirement, but it completely fails to reward those who make the effort to save but who do not quite get there.
Too many people reach state pension age having scrimped and saved all their life to find that others, who have not saved or who have made no effort to save, get the same income as them through pension credit. The Budget is about rewarding those who do the right thing, which is why we will shortly publish a Green Paper on state pension reform, with an option for a single-tier state pension, which will provide a clear foundation for saving. We currently estimate that it will be set at around £140 a week, which is above the level of the means-tested guarantee credit, but we must send out the clear message across the welfare and the pension systems that people will be better off in work than on benefits, and better off in retirement if they save.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
If the change in the pension system is to benefit the whole country and all pensioners—current and future—why have the Secretary of State’s policies targeted specifically women born between ’53 and ’54? They expected to retire, but now discover that they must work at least four years longer. That does not strike me as a policy that benefits the entire population.
Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Lady’s comment on working four years longer is simply incorrect, but I take what she says. The reality is that the Government are doing what we were asked to do—equalise the ages—and increasing the age to 66. I recognise the group she mentions, but they will be covered and supported in other ways anyway, so this is not a loss—
Mr Duncan Smith
It is not a specific group in the sense that they were targeted. That policy is part of trying to get the pensionable age up first to 65, and then to 66.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
The House will be pleased that the Government want to move to a standard pension of about £140 a week, but how will that be paid for? Will it be by pooling the contributions of those who have already paid under the national insurance and state earnings-related pension schemes? If so, how many will lose out, and what sort of message would that send to people about saving?
Mr Duncan Smith
First, we will publish the Green Paper very shortly. We are finalising it, so I do not want to get into the full detail now, but I promise the right hon. Gentleman that we will answer all such questions. Less means-testing is the key. I leave him with that thought, but I will tantalise him not much longer: there is some really good stuff coming in the Green Paper, and I am sure he will find every reason to support it, given that he has been so positive about pensions for many years.
Alec Shelbrooke
Like many hon. Members, I have received representation from constituents who wonder why there is a two-year jump in the pensionable age. Will the Secretary of State outline why that must be done?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is to do with the process of equalising, which we are doing slightly faster. It is in the interest of the nation and individuals for us to do that. If we do not do it, there is a cost implication, which could be as high as £10 billion. I say simply to my hon. Friend that if the Opposition and others do not want to do that, they should please let us know where they think the money will come from.
We are making responsible choices for the British economy. I am particularly proud of the decision we took with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the potential for a single-tier pension. That is in stark contrast, I think, to the mess we saw from the previous Government. What is interesting is that the Labour party has been out of power for 10 months, but listening to what Labour Members say about the current situation, one would think that it has been more like 10 years and that they had nothing to do with it. They do not know whether they are coming or going. Interestingly, half of them seem to support the Darling plan, and the other half do not. For the shadow Chancellor, it rather depends on who asks him, when they ask him, and what time of day it is.
It seemed that the Labour party would not cut, but then we heard that theoretically it would. More frightening still, it has made it clear how it would spend more of our money. Notwithstanding the plan set to start on 1 April, in the past month or so, the Opposition have made some £12 billion of unfunded spending commitments, which actually makes their spending profile even worse. They will tell us that it would all be funded by an extra tax on the banks. Oh dear! I remember that they used to attack the Liberal Democrats for making a similar claim over the extra 1p on income tax. They said, “This is the longest p in history.” Well, this is now the biggest, longest tax in history. It would have to be raised at least six times to pay for the sort of commitments they have engaged in. However, we should not be surprised to discover that fiscal mathematics is not Labour Members’ strong point.
Now we see the Leader of the Opposition joining a march for an alternative solution. I personally hope he has found it, but I do not think he did on the podium the other day. Instead, we see that he is now linked with some of the great names of history: the suffragettes, the anti-apartheid movement and Dr King in America. I am pleased that the Leader of the Opposition also has a dream, but for us it is not having a dream that matters, but that soon enough he should wake up and smell the coffee. The reality is that this Government are sorting out the deficit; this Government are getting Britain back to work; this Government are dealing with the mess that Labour left; and meanwhile they are in denial.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I know that the Secretary of State learned some time ago that attack is the best form of defence, but I expected him to do a better job of defending the Budget that we heard last week. The Budget debate started with no acknowledgement that growth was coming down—and the same is true of its conclusion. The right hon. Gentleman refused to admit that this so-called Budget for growth has knocked 0.5% off the rate of growth this year and next, put unemployment up by 200,000, and is putting the benefits bill up through the roof—and he seems to think that we are the ones in denial.
A fortnight ago, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who has responsibility for work, was rolled through the television studios and asked to give his progress report on how well the Chancellor had done in his first year. He was asked to report on how good a job the Chancellor was doing of getting the country back to work. Fifteen months after the end of the recession, the House could be forgiven for expecting unemployment to be falling rather than rising. However, at the very point when unemployment should be falling, the Minister was forced to report that it was actually rising. He decided to choose his words very carefully. He said that the jobs market was “stabilising”.
Last week it was left to the Chancellor to tell us that the jobs market was doing nothing of the sort. He did not dare spell it out, but in the fine print of the Budget we learned the truth: this is not even the beginning of the end. His first year has gone so well that unemployment, which should be falling, is set to rise until the summer. In fact, it is not expected to fall below 2.5 million until way through next year. Now we face the prospect that unemployment is not going to fall below 2 million for the rest of this Parliament.
Kwasi Kwarteng
Will the right hon. Gentleman remind the House which member of the previous Cabinet wrote a note saying, “There’s no money”?
Mr Byrne
I would rather have written a bad joke in public than a bad Budget in public.
Now we know—and now the Secretary of State has been forced to admit—that unemployment is not going to fall below 2 million. He will remember, just as we remember, the last time that happened. For those with long memories, what has happened is all too familiar. The last time the Tory party was in office, it took a couple of years to get unemployment above 2 million, but after that it did not fall below 2 million for 18 years, until the Labour party was elected in 1997. Now the Government have decided that that record of the 1980s is worth a rerun, or something of a repeat, because there is one thing that has not changed: the Conservative party still believes that unemployment is a price worth paying.
Alec Shelbrooke
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I am listening carefully to him. While we are discussing the figures, does he welcome today’s news that construction grew by 2.3% in quarter four, and that productivity was also up?
Mr Byrne
Of course, and the hon. Gentleman will also recognise that, despite the fact that we are some way out of the recession, today’s figures also confirmed that in the last quarter for which records are available, the economy shrank. I am not sure that that is a record of which he can be proud.
In the circumstances, I would have thought that the House could expect to hear rather more from the Secretary of State about what the Budget would do to get people back into work. The Office for Budget Responsibility is well aware of the Secretary of State’s Work programme and the Chancellor’s tax breaks on offer for business, yet its conclusion was the cold fact that unemployment will continue to rise. Every time the Chancellor stands up at the Despatch Box to deliver a Budget, he revises down his forecast for growth and revises up his estimate for the number of unemployed people in our country. He is costing this country a fortune.
What, then, did this Budget offer for jobs? Incredibly, it said that by the first quarter of 2013, unemployment would be 200,000 higher than was forecast just last October. What a triumph! Under the circumstances, we could have expected a rather bigger push from the Secretary of State and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to get people back to work. After all, his Minister for the unemployed, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, told the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on 14 March:
“If there was a very substantial change in the labour market, one way or the other, frankly, that is the kind of circumstance in which we might need to revisit some of the assumptions.”
Well, 200,000 more people on the dole sounds like rather a substantial change to me.
What is the Government’s response? Some £20 million for work experience. This morning I had a look at the Secretary of State’s accounts for January. It would appear that his new work placement scheme, which was so proudly trumpeted this morning, will cost less than his Department spends on stationery every year. At the very least, we would have expected more resources for the Work programme. The Prime Minister is fond of telling us that the Work programme is
“the biggest back-to-work scheme this country has seen since the 1930s.”—[Official Report, 16 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 951.]
In fact, as the BBC has shown, there are 250,000 fewer places on it than Labour had last year, when unemployment was lower. The association of bidders for the Work programme now has so much confidence in the Secretary of State’s plans that it says:
“the design of the Work Programme is fraught with risks which may impact significantly on the number of unemployed people who can benefit from it”!
That is hardly a vote of confidence. When my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) asked the Secretary of State how much extra he had received from the Treasury to get people back to work, he refused to give her a straight answer, and we all know what that means: that he asked for nothing and he got nothing. With unemployment now forecast to rise, the very least that we could expect from this Secretary of State is to stand up for his Department, fight his corner and get some extra help to get this country back to work.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman understands that whoever had won the last election would have had to introduce some tough measures, and we are experiencing those now. Bearing in mind that all other recessions have seen unemployment rising, is he genuinely telling the House that if Labour had won the last general election, unemployment would be continuing to fall today?
Mr Ellwood
The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, but this is an important point. Labour was in denial before the election about introducing major measures to bring the economy under control. Labour now knows—as we have known—that important measures needed to be introduced after the election. That is what is causing the difficulties now. He is now saying, “Yes, you’d be able to bring those measures in without having any effect on employment.” That is completely wrong; he misleads the House.
Mr Byrne
Well, let us go through it, shall we? The deficit plan that we put in place would have involved £57 billion-worth of discretionary action—[Interruption.] Will the Secretary of State just pause for a moment? I know that he has read all 40 pages of chapter 6 of the Budget that was published in March last year, but let me just remind him of their contents: £57 billion-worth of discretionary action; £19 billion-worth of tax rises; and £38 billion of cuts, £18 billion of which would have fallen on capital, and £20 billion of which would have fallen on current expenditure, of which £12 billion would have fallen in Whitehall, £5 billion would have fallen on lower priority projects and £3 billion would have been achieved through a pay freeze and asking public sector workers to—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I just want to clarify that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) meant that the right hon. Gentleman was inadvertently misleading the House.
Mr Duncan Smith
Now that the right hon. Gentleman is into the Darling plan, will he specify what those cuts are, what he supports right now, and therefore what the plan really is? After all, it was due to come into force three days from now.
Mr Byrne
I have just gone through them. They involved £57 billion-worth of discretionary action—[Interruption.] The difference between us—[Interruption.] Well, let us take the Secretary of State’s own Department. Regarding the £18 billion savings in annually managed expenditure, we said that where there is a temporary switch from RPI to CPI for the next three years, we will support that; where there is a need to reform the disability living allowance, we will support it; and where there is a need to introduce new limits on employment and support allowance, we will support that. We do not think, however, that the Government should introduce reform simply by cutting. They should couple some of those reforms with the need to look again at the support that working families actually need.
Mr Duncan Smith
Okay, now we are into this specifically. DLA reform has a line item in the Budget of about £1.4 billion in savings. Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that to be a reduction that he supports?
Mr Byrne
The Secretary of State put in place a programme to make the cut before he figured out what reform was actually needed. He is under such pressure from disability groups because he is not listening to the voices of disabled people in this country telling him what kind of support they need in order to live full and fulfilling lives. That is because he is locked into a programme that is putting more people on to the dole and sending benefits bills through the roof. He is beginning to fracture the bonds of support between the Government and the people in this country who need extra help. He should not be abolishing DLA; he should be reforming it. He should also start listening to the needs of disabled people.
Mr Duncan Smith
I am intrigued by this. The right hon. Gentleman now seems to be at odds with his shadow Chancellor, who in his opening speech in the Budget debate last week, in response to a specific question about what spending cuts he wanted in the coming year, said:
“We said…that we would go ahead with the disability living allowance gateway reforms.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 1142.]
That involves £1.43 billion. Does the right hon. Gentleman support that now?
Mr Byrne
No, because we have not specified—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] We have not specified the level of cuts or savings that we think should come from DLA. The Secretary of State knows as well as I do that we believe that a gateway should be introduced for DLA—[Interruption.] He should listen to this, because it speaks to the concerns of millions of people with disabilities. He has said that he is going to cut £1.4 billion from DLA, and, in written answers to the House, he has said that 170,000 fewer people will receive that benefit in the future—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State might just want to listen to the implications of this. It is a bit late for him to be getting a briefing on his DLA reforms from his own Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller). If he is cutting DLA for 170,000 people and cutting £1.4 billion from that benefit, £8,500 will be cut from each of those 170,000 families. Will he intervene on me again and tell me whether he understands that that is the implication of his benefit cut?
Mr Duncan Smith
I have a very simple question. The shadow Chancellor said that he supported the reform, which has a very simple line item in the Red Book. The right hon. Gentleman now says that he does not support it. This is the problem: the Opposition have no idea what they are doing. No wonder the British public are fed up with them.
Alec Shelbrooke
The right hon. Gentleman is most generous in giving way. I have just listened, as has the rest of the House, to a whole host of numbers that he reeled off relating to where cuts would be made, but he has not said where those cuts would be made, or what exactly would be cut. Will he enlighten the House?
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my astonishment that the Secretary of State can produce savings figures, yet when we put specific questions to him we are told, “This is a matter for review”?
Mr Byrne
Precisely right. Indeed, the Secretary of State presented to the House of Commons a Bill that would abolish DLA before he had even bothered to finish consulting people up and down the country about what the reform of DLA should look like.
One of the greatest failures stemming from the Secretary of State’s inability to extract further money from his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is, of course, the failure to get young people back to work. I met a delegation of young people from my constituency this morning and I asked them what they thought of the Government’s plans. Their thoughts were very simple: it just seems, they said, that the Government are stopping young people being what they could be. I could put it no better myself. Youth unemployment is now approaching 1 million. The Secretary of State likes to pretend—he did it again this afternoon—that this is somehow a problem that he inherited. [Interruption.] What he fails to remind us is that in the final nine months of our term of office, youth unemployment was falling by 67,000.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is fond of quoting figures that do not include the number of people in higher education, for example. Fine: let us look at what the figures tell us. Since the election this is what has happened: after nine months in which youth unemployment was falling, it is now going up by 60,000—and that when the economy is supposedly growing. All the good work we did is now completely undone.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman said that if Labour had won the last election unemployment would, of course, be falling. He raised the issue of youth unemployment, so will he inform the House whether youth unemployment fell or rose during the period of the last Labour Government?
Mr Byrne
All unemployment fell. Then, once the scale of the global recession we confronted became apparent, it of course went back up again. What we never had under a Labour Administration is unemployment going up through the 3 million mark—not once but twice, as it did under the Conservatives. Every job lost is a tragedy for one family, and all the jobs lost are a tragedy for all of us—and, indeed, for the Exchequer. Lost jobs mean not only that our performance as a country cannot match our full potential, but that a bill is created that we all end up paying.
The Governor of the Bank of England has warned us of what is to come. He says that we now confront the biggest squeeze on living standards since the 1930s, and that because this Government’s economic plan is creating so few jobs, there is less and less demand for workers. Now there are five people chasing every job and the growth in people’s pay packets and wages is slow. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts 2% earnings growth this year, 2.2% next year, but when prices are growing by more than 5% this year and 3.6% next year, the squeeze on family budgets is now all too obvious.
In the circumstances, one would have thought that the Government would step in to help. Not a bit of it. Next month 10 Tory raids on the family budget get into full swing: tax credits cut for families earning more than £40,000; tougher criteria on families wanting to claim family support; reducing the income disregard; freezing basic rates of working tax credit; removing the baby element of child tax credit; reducing payable costs of child care; abolition of grants for pregnant mums; £500 taken away from families with more than one child; child benefit increases ruled out for another three years; and cancelling the child savings accounts.
This Government are proud of some of the measures foisted on them by Liberal Democrat Members. I am sure that is right. Once we take this list into account, however, £1.1 billion is going to be stripped from family budgets starting from next month, with another £300 million coming from children. By the end of this Parliament, £16.5 billion will have been taken out of family pay packets.
Mr Byrne
No.
Why are the Government not doing more to help? Because the cost of economic failure is sending the benefits bill through the roof. Last week we learnt from the detail of the Budget book just how big that bill has now become.
This afternoon the Secretary of State liked to boast about his reforms of housing benefit, but forgot to tell the House that the housing benefit bill is projected to rise by more than £1 billion in the next few years. In the small print of the Budget we saw something more: his benefits bill over the next few years is now projected to increase by £12.5 billion. That is £500 for every household in the country.
Almost as shocking is what will happen to the unemployment bill as a result of the Secretary of State’s great endeavours to get so many extra people back to work. When the Chancellor came to the House last year, he somehow forgot to tell us that as a result of his Budget higher unemployment figures would increase the dole bill by £700 million. Now we learn that it is going to go up again, by another £1.9 billion. In other words, since the Government came to office they have put the unemployment bill up by £2.6 billion. That is an indictment of their record in getting people back to work. In fact, £2.6 billion is the same amount that the Government are cutting from tax credits for people with children. The right hon. Gentleman is cutting support for our children in order to pay the bills for his economic failure.
What does this mean for the average British family? A single earner family with a child and an income of £23,000 will lose £400 a year. The Secretary of State may not care about what is happening to ordinary families, but I assure him that plenty of people are interested in the bills for his economic failure. Households with child care costs will be hit even harder. A family with average child care costs will lose nearly £500 a year, and for some it will be even worse. A single earner on the minimum wage with two children will lose more than £2,000 a year—6.5% of his or her income. Even for low earners, any gains that they make as a result of changes in income tax and child tax credits will be wiped out by the VAT rise. The Secretary of State is squeezing Britain’s families harder than ever to pay for his failure to get the country back to work. Does that not sound all too familiar?
Stephen Lloyd
In my constituency, the average family household earns £27,500. According to the BBC’s calculator, if the household contains two children under 16 and both parents are working, the family will be just over £700 per annum better off as a result of the Budget.
Mr Byrne
But the challenge from this Budget is that there are simply not enough winners, because the bills for sending people to the dole queue rather than back to work are now going through the roof. Surely the hon. Gentleman recognises that more than £2.5 billion in extra dole bills does not constitute a wise use of public money. If only the Chancellor would do more to get people back to work, the squeeze on working families would not be anywhere near as hard.
Finally, we must ask what the Budget means for some of the most vulnerable people in our country—the people who are in need of help from the wider community, and those who need extra support in order to live a full life in one of the world’s biggest economies. I know that, like me, the Secretary of State believes that a country as rich as Britain should have high, not low, standards of civilisation and compassion—but the Chancellor is pressing ahead with measures that will deny thousands of people their independence. The question that the House must ask is: what is the Secretary of State doing to stop it?
The right hon. Gentleman told the House yesterday that after his review of DLA had been completed the mobility component for people in care homes would still exist, but he still cannot explain why the Chancellor announced that he was taking £400 million more out of the mobility component than previously planned. The Budget confirmed that he would press ahead with his abolition of DLA. I repeat that we support the right kind of reform of DLA, but no matter how he tries to dress it up, he is taking £2.9 billion out of a well-targeted benefit, and he himself is saying that 170,000 fewer people will receive the benefit by the end of the Parliament. That is £8,500 per family. With figures like that, surely he can understand why so many people with disabilities up and down the country are so worried.
Finally, it was confirmed in the Budget that the Government are pressing ahead with their plans to limit employment and support allowance to just one year. The Secretary of State has a chance to fix that in Committee on the Bill, but the Budget confirmed an ambition to save £3.5 billion from people on ESA. However, he knows as well as I do that many people do not recover from cancer in under 12 months, and he also knows that cancer charities up and down the country are now asking him to think again.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Byrne
No, because I want to make an important point to the House. The Minister’s Department knows that three quarters of cancer patients still need ESA after one year. The message from the charities to the Front-Bench team was blunt. They say:
“this proposal, rather than creating an incentive to work, will lead to many cancer patients losing their ESA simply because they have not recovered quickly enough.”
Will the Minister confirm that he will withdraw this terrible measure?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He tried to frighten disabled people by saying the average DLA loss was £8,500 per year. Does he think that figure is right?
Mr Byrne
Well, the Minister will know as well as I do how much he is cutting from DLA, and he knows as well as I do how many people he anticipates will receive the benefit in the future. He can do the maths as well as I can. The obligation is on him to come clean and be straight with people with disabilities. What will the reform of DLA mean for them? Will he drop this measure from his Bill?
This afternoon we have heard a pretty poor defence of a Budget that puts more people out of work, fails to deliver on ambitions for our young people, and hits families harder than ever to pay the bills of economic failure. Worse still, it begins to endanger the contract of a proud and civilised country with the people who need help most. This is not a big society; it is a society in which the bonds that tie us together are weaker and weaker. This is not a Budget that is working; it is a Budget that is hurting—and the Chancellor should think again.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please resume your seats. As Members can see, more than 40 colleagues have applied to take part in today’s debate, so there is a six-minute limit on speeches, with the usual injury time for two interventions. As happened yesterday, persistent interveners will be moved down the list. I also remind Members of Mr Speaker’s instruction to them not to approach the Chair during the debate to find out where they are on the list. Those who can finish their speeches in less than six minutes will be helping colleagues. I call Mr Peter Lilley.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on sticking to his plan to reduce the Budget deficit. Far from these cuts being too much, too deep, too soon, I believe that what he has proposed is the minimum over the longest credible period that we can reasonably expect will enable us to avoid the sort of financial crisis that has hit many neighbouring countries.
I want to address an illusion. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), whom it is normally a privilege to follow, based his speech on it, and it permeated the speech of the Leader of the Opposition at the weekend when he addressed the large rally on cuts. It is the illusion that we can have something for nothing. We live in a world of finite resources. If we spend more on one thing, we have to spend less on another. If we spend more now, we must expect to spend less—substantially less—in future, when we repay our debts with compound interest. The Opposition do not seem to realise that. I would be more than happy to engage in debate with either of them if when they advocated the restoration of spending in one area, they simultaneously spelt out the additional cut they intended to propose in another area of spending, but they never do so and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill did not do so today. As long as hon. Members refuse to spell out alternative cuts to those that they reject, rational debate in this place is simply impossible.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I know that you are well aware that the ancient states of the Peloponnese resolved these problems by rules of debate that required those advocating increased spending on programmes that would require extra taxation or more borrowing to stand up in the public forum on a platform and argue their case with a noose around their neck. If they succeeded in persuading their fellow citizens of the need for increased spending and taxation, the noose was removed, but if they failed, the platform was removed. I understand that this healthy discipline meant that those states remained solvent for centuries on end.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The slight problem with that is that if we had a similar system here, under whichever Government, there would be no Members of Parliament left.
Mr Lilley
That is slightly unworthy of a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, who at least would remain, if in solitary glory.
A related illusion that the Opposition purvey is the call, frequently made by the Leader of the Opposition, for the Government to prepare a plan B in case the economic road gets rocky—a plan B would, by implication, involve higher spending and borrowing. Of course it is a bit rich for the Leader of the Opposition to ask for a plan B, given that he has not yet spelt out a plan A, but the reality is that if we abandon the plan set out by the Chancellor, we will get a plan B, but it will not come from the Opposition or from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor—it will come from the savers and pension funds whose money we would need to borrow to finance that increased borrowing. If we did bottle out of what we have proposed, they would demand deeper cuts over a shorter period and they would require us to pay a higher rate of interest. The net result would not just be deeper cuts in the public sector, as we have seen the markets impose on Portugal, Greece and Ireland; those higher interest rates would kill off and abort the recovery in the private sector on which we depend to create the jobs to take up the people not employed in the public sector. So it would be a disaster for this country if we were to go down that route.
The third illusion that some Labour Members purvey—perhaps the more honest elements among them—is the belief that we could avoid public spending cuts if we were prepared to put up taxation. But who would pay those higher taxes? Ultimately, taxes are always paid by individuals and if the squeezed middle are not going to pay them—they have been precluded from bearing a higher burden of taxation by the Leader of the Opposition —either the poor or the rich must do so. I would not put it beyond a party that sought to double the burden of taxation on the lowest paid by removing the 10p tax rate to seek extra revenues from the very poor, but that would not yield much money so Labour must look to the very rich for it. I just remind Labour Members that if they read the Red Book, they will see that the top 1% of income tax payers in the coming year are expected to pay no less than a quarter of the entire revenues of income tax—last year, the top 5% paid more than half of all income tax. We are reaching the point at which any further burden of taxation on those people would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In the words of my old friend, the sadly now deceased Lord Harris of High Cross, punitive taxes beyond a certain point do not redistribute income, they redistribute people. We have reached that point and we would go beyond it if we accepted the advice of the Opposition.
I urge my hon. Friends to support the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in what he is doing at the Department for Work and Pensions and to ignore the blandishments and illusions of the other side.
Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
In the short time available, I shall not follow up on any points made by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), except to say that when he talks about any element of fairness in the Chancellor’s last Budget and this Budget as regards those on the top incomes, I think he will find that some of the things he talks about have more to do with measures that were announced by the previous Government than with those announced by this Government.
In many ways, the Budget is an annexe to last June’s Budget, which set the direction for this Government and the tone for this year’s Budget. I want briefly to consider how that will impact on this country as well as what is happening in other parts of the world. Although it does not quite fit the Tory story, what is happening to our economy will be very much influenced by what is happening in other parts of the world.
In some ways, it is quite remarkable that the global economy is growing at all. Three years ago, when the International Monetary Fund reported for the first time that it had stopped growing, it was possible that we were in for a serious downturn. It is now growing, but it is a two-speed recovery that is strong in Asia and far less so in the west. In Europe, we see strong growth in Germany and far less growth in southern Europe in particular. Here at home, manufacturing is doing well because the pound has depreciated, but the service and business sectors are not doing so well at all.
The recovery in this country and in Europe is fragile. We saw the economy grow more strongly than we expected in quarters two and three—the summer and autumn of last year—although again that had an awful lot more to do with measures that were implemented before rather than after the general election. We saw a sharp slow-down after that, which was largely brought about by people’s fear of what was to come. People are losing confidence—we saw the confidence survey published just after the Budget last week—and that should worry any Government. If we continue to get sluggish growth, the risk is that we will bump along the bottom and we will not get the jobs or growth on which this country depends.
Incidentally, I followed with interest what the Secretary of State said but one question that he failed to answer was that put by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds): if our spending was so wrong, how come the Conservatives supported it right up until the end of 2008 and the Liberal Democrats supported it until a week after the general election, when they promptly changed their minds? The Secretary of State has revealed this afternoon that he is not quite the details man I remembered, but he might care to note that our structural deficit in 2006, according to his Government’s own measure, was 0.4%. It is simply not true to suggest that all our problems today are the result of spending. The main problem that we faced was an acute banking crisis that hit us and hit other countries in the world. That is why we are not the only country to have a very large deficit.
Mr Duncan Smith
I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman with great interest and respect, but I want to get this absolutely straight because one of his right hon. Friends said this the other day. The OECD measurement of the UK’s structural deficit in 2007 was 3.9% of GDP, the highest in the G7. Can he confirm that?
Mr Darling
The structural deficit was 0.4%. Throughout the past decade, we were spending money, but I must say, as a Minister in that Government, we were greeted with calls from the then Opposition not to spend less but to spend more on just about every occasion. They cannot have it both ways.
What worries me is that as we look forward, we face a number of pressures that are a threat to sustained recovery in this country. We, along with most other European countries, are following a deflationary policy and we are doing it together. This is not like Canada or Sweden 10 years ago, who reduced their deficit on the back of rapidly expanding neighbouring economies. That will have an effect. America, sooner or later, will have to deal with its very large debt problem that has been overhanging that country since the Bush years. That is not a recent phenomenon but it will have to be dealt with and it will have a knock-on effect on the rest of the world’s economies.
On inflation, for 10 years we in the west have lived off cheap goods coming from the far east. Now what is happening, as one would expect, is that those economies are growing and there are inflationary pressures. Commodity prices are increasing and wages are starting to go up, so those days are finished for us. It worries me that we are likely to face deflation as a result of Government policy with inflation as well. All that will result in lower growth, which is exactly what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that many measures in the Budget will stimulate growth in future?
Mr Darling
I think there are many measures in the Budget, such as the reduction in corporation tax, the reform of planning law—if the Government can see that through their Back Benchers and councillors—and some others that will be helpful, but the thing that drives whether companies set up, take on more people or put in more investment is whether they can sell their goods and services. For as long as companies doubt that that is the case, we are going to have this problem with lack of confidence and we simply will not get the levels of growth that we expect.
That is why the story of this Budget was in many ways what the OBR—now independent of Government, which is a good thing—had to say. For the third time in 10 months it has downrated the growth that it expects in this country over the next couple of years and that should worry us. Yes, it picks up after that, but I suspect that is a function of the model that the OBR adopts: if growth is depressed in the short term, it is automatically assumed that growth comes back. However, I cannot see any evidence of where that growth is going to come from, either in the world economy or in Europe, especially if the eurozone insists on following what I regard as punitive policies towards those peripheral countries that are getting into trouble—visiting on Greece and Ireland conditions that I do not think they will be able to meet. Sooner or later, they will have to renegotiate or default, and the eurozone countries—principally Germany, which is the main driver of what is happening in the eurozone—will have to rethink the policies they are currently adopting. Otherwise, there will be a risk not only that Europe will fail to grow but that parts of it will go back into recession. That would be an absolute tragedy for the people living there and would also be extremely bad for us.
I have mentioned the uncertainties in the United States, but here at home we still have problems with the banks and their inability to lend. I recognise all the difficulties in that regard. I endured much criticism from the parties now in government when I was in charge of these things, but interestingly they have come up against exactly the same problems that I did, which is why their attempts to make the banks lend have had exactly the same reception as mine did. Next month, we will have the Vickers report into the future of banking but there is a risk that if we spend a long time discussing these matters and there is a lot of uncertainty about what should happen with the banks, that uncertainty will lead to lending being depressed. I hope there will be a full debate on the Vickers inquiry after the Easter recess, but I hope also that the Government will move to a conclusion one way or another in reasonable time. There is still uncertainty about banking regulation, particularly in Europe, and I regard the stress tests now being put in place as wholly inadequate and repeating the same mistakes that were made last summer. It is high time that we got to grips with this problem, which has not yet been resolved.
On the financial services sector, there is a lot of talk about rebalancing our economy and I am in favour of that, but we need to make sure that we build up other sectors of the economy and that we do not end up inadvertently running down one sector, which happens to employ more than 1 million people in this country.
Finally, it is important to recognise that in 2008 and 2009 international co-operation managed to prevent our collapsing into the abyss. There is a limit to what can be done through international agreements but they do matter when we are dealing with currency imbalances, trade talks, energy and so on. I hope that the Government will re-engage in that regard and will recognise that the policy they are currently pursuing within the United Kingdom runs the risk of derailing the recovery, meaning a long, slow recovery that will not bring the growth and jobs we need.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I begin by paying tribute to the Budget that was delivered by the Chancellor which has been warmly welcomed in many parts of my constituency. It was particularly warmly welcomed by the people involved with the Staffordshire air ambulance, who feel that they will benefit greatly from the changes to charitable giving. As the president of the East Staffordshire Community and Voluntary Service, I have been contacted by many charitable and third sector groups that believe this is a real way for them to build for the future and offer more help and support in the community.
The Budget was also well received by businesses in my constituency. The changes to corporation tax will be a big boost to growth. Businesses were delighted to hear talk of manufacturing, which they feel has been overlooked and forgotten for so long in this country. To hear a Chancellor and a Government talk about manufacturing was a boost for businesses and they are excited about the future.
The Budget was welcomed by families in my constituency. The poorest families were pleased that many of them will now be taken out of tax completely. More importantly, it was welcomed by many in my constituency who feel that it reinforces what many of them consider the most important plank of what we as a Government are trying to achieve—that is, to make work pay. The decision within the changes to personal taxation to make it more rewarding to go out to work and to support people back into work has been welcomed not only by those who do the right thing, pay their taxes and work hard, but by many people who are desperate to get back into work and feel that this is a great opportunity which will make it more financially viable for them to do that.
However, there is one element of my constituency where the Budget was not so well received. It is fitting that the former chairman of the all-party parliamentary beer group should be in the Chair when I make these points. I must declare an interest as the MP for Burton, the home of British beer—the home of Marston’s Pedigree and Carling Black Label, and Punch Taverns, the largest pub company in the country. Brewing and the future of pubs are hugely important. This is an issue on which there is usually agreement across the Chamber. The need for us to support the brewing industry and pubs is recognised in all parts of the House.
We regularly have debates, particularly in Westminster Hall, about what we can do to support pubs and the brewing industry, and there is general support across the House, even from the shadow Minister with responsibility for pubs, the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who in a recent debate admitted to us that not only was he teetotal but that he did not use pubs very often. Even he recognises the need for us to support pubs and the brewing industry.
I recognise that the Chancellor was hamstrung when he inherited a massive deficit—£120 million a day in interest payments alone—and a decision to increase beer duty by means of the beer escalator by 7.2% this year. It was somewhat unfair of the Chancellor to say in his statement that there would be no changes to beer duty in the Budget. Whether it was his fault or not, we will see an increase in beer duty equivalent to about 10p a pint. That will impact on brewers across the country and on publicans in each and every one of our constituencies.
We all support the community pub. We all recognise that a pub is a safe environment for us to enjoy alcohol and for us to encourage young people to drink safely and responsibly. Increasing beer duty by 7.2% is a major problem, particularly because beer duty in the UK is already 7.9 times greater than in France, 12.4 times greater than in Germany and 12 times greater than in Spain. We have the second highest beer duty in Europe. I hope the Government will look again to see what they can do to support brewing and the beer industry in this country.
For instance, the Government could look at the inequality between cider and beer. Why is it that a pint of cider attracts half the duty that is charged on a pint of beer brewed in my constituency? I welcome the Government’s decision to reduce tax on beer of 2.8% strength. That is very useful, but I urge them to go to Europe, fight the case on behalf of British beer, and raise that 2.8% to 3.4% or 3.5% so that we can have some great British beer and support our pubs in the process.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
This is a Budget for growth: growth in insecurity, growth in inequality and growth in unemployment, which was up by 27,000 in the west midlands last month alone. It is not a Budget for economic growth, which was down last and this year and will be down next year, as are living standards. Not only is unemployment up, but so too are borrowing, inflation, debt interest payments and higher debt interest, which is up by £17.8 billion. Yes, the Budget contains some modest measures, but despite evidence that the economy is getting into choppy waters and despite the widespread concern being expressed, the Government remain lashed to the mast, rejecting any but plan A and sailing on regardless, oblivious to the consequences of their actions.
I want to focus on the consequences for the people of Erdington and Birmingham of the Budget measures of the past nine months in relation to the public, private and voluntary sectors. In the public sector, this Friday 1 April we will see the biggest cut in local government history—£212 million. It is a Budget launched by a laughing Conservative leader and supported by a Liberal Democrat deputy leader who only 24 hours earlier had been one of those who wrote to The Times to protest about the scale and speed of the cuts being imposed on local government.
The consequences will be felt by everyone, whether they are three, 13 or 73: three-year-olds who go to one of Birmingham’s excellent children’s centres will find the centres’ budget cut by 16%; 13-year-olds who go to one of Birmingham’s 60 excellent youth service centres will see many of those centres face closure; and 3,500 73-year-olds, those who built Birmingham and Britain, face losing their care packages altogether, which for them make the difference between a decent life and a life on the margins.
Jack Dromey
Bankers’ bonuses and, as our Front-Bench team proposes, among other things, we would have a sensible programme of investment, just as we invested in the construction industry to get it going at a time of recession, providing 110,000 homes, 70,000 jobs and 3,000 apprenticeships. We would invest now in a fresh stimulus package of much-needed social housing, creating jobs, apprenticeships and hopes. That is what we would do, and that is the difference between them and us.
The police, too, are feeling the consequences. This Friday 300 of the most experienced police officers in the west midlands will be forced out under regulation A19. I was with five of them this morning. They included an inspector, the national champion of designing out crime, who on one Birmingham estate achieved a 97% reduction in crime levels; a sergeant leading an excellent team of neighbourhood policemen; and a detective constable, the specialist in robbery, who has put away those who robbed old people at cash points and those who robbed shops with a machete. They all now face having to leave the force against their will. The Government have said to them, “Thanks for your past loyalty, but here’s your notice.” Governments should cut crime, not the police.
With regard to the impact on the private sector, 1.2 million people in that sector depend on public expenditure, particularly the £38 billion spent on local government procurement. If local government budgets are cut by 28%, major job losses in the private sector are inevitable. The estimate for the midlands is that 67,000 jobs will go as a consequence of what is happening in local government.
On rebalancing the economy, the Government have abolished the most successful regional development agency in Britain—Advantage West Midlands—and put in its place local enterprise partnerships that have no money, no power, no statutory basis and no power over skills. The planning proposals are a cocktail of confusion and the regional growth fund has only a third of the funds that were available to the RDAs. Incidentally, the RGF is the most elastic fund in history, designed to cope with all sorts of applications according to the Government.
Then there is the impact on the voluntary sector, the good society. Billions will be lost to the voluntary sector, including, in Birmingham, the oldest citizens advice bureau in Britain and 13 advice centres—all facing closure. The CAB was founded in 1938 and is the quintessence of the good society. Excellent people give first-class advice with an army of volunteers, but, just when the people of Birmingham need their support and advice most, those centres are facing closure.
My constituency of Birmingham Erdington is one of the 10 poorest in Britain, but it is rich in talent, with young people who are deeply aspirational and want to get on. What now haunts the people of Erdington is the spectre of the 1980s and TINA: there is no alternative. I know families in Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale, where excellent men and women in the 1980s were made redundant two, three, four, five times. Some of them never worked again, because they gave up hope. The idea that once again the spectre of mass unemployment should haunt north Birmingham is absolutely wrong.
Stephen Lloyd
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, after 13 years of Labour Government, there are 2 million children in households where no one works?
Jack Dromey
We acted, by way of a range of measures, to help the poorest families, including the poorest families with children. It is a record of which we are proud.
There is a fundamental difference between the Government and this Opposition, not just on economic strategy but on this point: for us, unemployment will never, ever be a price worth paying.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
The cornerstone of this Budget is undoubtedly the need to tackle the deficit. Spending £50 billion a year just on debt interest, which is double what we spend on transport, was clearly intolerable and could not go on. If we had not tackled the deficit, we would have found that an Irish, Greek or Portuguese economic future awaited us all, meaning more cuts, more public billions down the drain and higher interest rates, which would have hit everyone with a mortgage, everyone with an overdraft and every business dependent on bank borrowing. There is no point pretending that the cuts are not painful, but interest rates of 7%, 8% or higher would have been extremely painful, too, so I am glad that the Chancellor did not take that risk.
I am also very glad that the Chancellor is well on the way to fulfilling a Lib Dem election pledge to take more than 1 million people out of income tax, benefiting 24 million more by raising the income tax threshold. That will take nearly 2,000 of my constituents out of income tax altogether and benefit nearly half the population of the town.
There are also many welcome measures in the Budget for business and for investment. The cut in corporation tax will help small businesses in my constituency; I hope that we will benefit from some of the 40,000 new apprenticeships for young people not in education, employment or training; and it would be churlish of me not to mention the redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line, which will be good for Cheltenham, good for business and good for the environment.
Good for the environment, too, will be the tripling of the endowment to the green investment bank to £3 billion, and the news that that bank will in due course be able to borrow on its own account. That is an important signal to green investors, and it will help us to lay the foundations of a low-carbon economy. So, too, will the commitment to a floor price for carbon, and, although £30 a tonne by 2020 is a pretty modest ambition, it gives an underlying message and confidence to those investing in green industry and green jobs.
I hope, however, that the measure will not lead to an accidental, back-door subsidy to the nuclear industry—not just to new nuclear but to the existing nuclear industry, which already costs us £1.5 billion of public money a year to clean up and close down. That is important, because any subsidy to the nuclear industry would run counter to specific pledges made in opposition by both Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen, and I know because I was one of them.
I have a few other slight worries about the Budget. Not all red tape is bad, and I am concerned about the relaxation of the rules to be able to request flexible working. In my experience as an employer, I found that flexible working generally increased staff commitment and productivity. Progressive and innovative companies are trying to do more of it, not less.
My biggest worry about the Chancellor’s speech is about planning. He said that
“we will introduce a new presumption in favour of sustainable development, so that the default answer to development is yes.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 956.]
It may have been a shame that he did not have the space or time to explain that statement more fully, because, on the face of it, it is rather alarming. Not all development is sustainable, so how can the default answer possibly be yes?
I hope the Chancellor was guilty of no more than radical oversimplification, but one or two other statements in “The Plan for Growth” give cause for alarm. It states that the Government will enable
“businesses…to bring forward neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders.”
There are many definitions of a neighbourhood, which was not clearly defined in the Localism Bill, but I am pretty sure that a business is not a neighbourhood.
“The Plan for Growth” states also that the Government will
“localise choice about the use of previously developed land, removing nationally imposed targets”.
I do not welcome nationally imposed targets, but it is important that localities are able to prioritise brownfield sites over greenfield, and any qualification of that ability would not be helpful.
Possibly the most alarming news of all in “The Plan for Growth” is:
“Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) will be able to play a vital role in supporting local authorities plan for key sub national infrastructure… providing a powerful voice for business in the planning system”.
My constituents generally think that business has a pretty powerful voice in the planning system already, as it usually deploys battalions of barristers and consultants, but “sub national” worries me, because it has unfortunate echoes of Labour’s old regional spatial strategies.
People in the parish of Leckhampton with Warden Hill in my constituency know a bit about regional spatial strategies. They fought a battle against the south-west RSS for many years, and they are still fighting to protect the last substantial green space in the parish from disappearing almost completely. Such green spaces next to urban populations are vital for people’s health and physical welfare. They are opportunities for recreation; important for local food production; they absorb carbon dioxide and particulate pollution; and they are the most visited parts of the country and treasured by local people. Once lost, they are gone for ever, but they are exactly the spaces being targeted by developers, who in the past were supported by Labour’s myth that endless growth in urban extensions was sustainable. It simply was not.
The Localism Bill offers local communities real hope and the prospect that they will have a voice in the future of their own areas—
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
I was hoping and praying that this Budget would offer some employment chances for the people in my constituency. It has done nothing for employment chances in Vale of Clwyd; in fact, it has increased the chance of unemployment there.
There are 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK, and of the top 50 for percentage of jobs in the public sector—including Edinburgh South with 67% and Swansea West at No. 50 with 41%—76% are Opposition constituencies and only 24% are Government constituencies. That speaks volumes. The policies that the Government are drawing up are policies not for Britain, but for the Tory and Liberal Democrat areas of Britain, and that is not one-nation conservatism. We are seeing on the economy the same partisanship that we saw on constitutional issues.
There are 13,000 public sector workers in my constituency.
Chris Ruane
I am not giving way.
There are 10,000 public sector workers in the neighbouring, Conservative constituency of Clwyd West. [Interruption.] I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Martin Horwood
Does the hon. Gentleman think that the policy of the pupil premium, which is gearing education funding towards schools supporting the least well-off families, will support more Conservative and Liberal Democrat constituencies than Labour ones?
Chris Ruane
I will deal with that shortly; the hon. Gentleman does not have to worry about that.
In my constituency, there are already six people chasing one job. If the Government implement these 10% to 25% cuts in the public sector, another 2,000 to 3,000 people will become unemployed, with 20 people chasing each job. The Government state that they want the private sector to take up the slack of jobs in the public sector. What have they done to promote that in my constituency? Nothing. One of the biggest employers in north Wales is Sharp, which has the biggest solar panel factory in the whole of western Europe. There is also Kingspan in Delyn. In my constituency, we have the Technium OpTIC centre, which has the biggest solar panel in the whole of the UK. The changes to the feed-in tariff that the Government have announced will mean that these sectors are hit, and there will be job losses, not job expansions, in my constituency. An article in today’s edition of The Guardian stated that the UK had gone from third to 13th in green technology jobs in one year. This is not a green Government.
Young people in my constituency were looking to the Chancellor to help them to gain employment. They had help from the previous Government—a Labour Government. In my constituency, the Rhyl city strategy put 450 young people back to work in the space of 12 months. They were given hope; they were given a wage packet; they were given a future. All that has ended. The last day of the future jobs fund is tomorrow; after that, there will be nothing like it in my constituency.
Another article today in The Guardian mentioned that seaside towns and communities have the worst deprivation in the country. This Government did nothing to help those seaside towns; in fact, they worked against them. The changes that they have made to housing benefit will mean, as Boris Johnson has said, a Kosovo-style clear-out of the inner cities, especially London. Where will those people go? They will go to houses in multiple occupation in towns such as Weston-super-Mare, Hastings, Margate, Jaywick, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Blackpool. They will be moved from areas of employment to areas of unemployment, where slum landlords will make money out of misery—helped, aided and abetted by the Conservatives, who are altering the rules and regulations on the licensing of slum landlords.
Stephen Lloyd
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that according to figures that I received last week on Eastbourne, which is of course a splendid seaside town, the unemployment rate for February 2011 was down by 340 compared with February 2010? We welcome anyone to whom we can hope to give jobs in Eastbourne, which has a successful economy.
Chris Ruane
What will the figures be in February 2012?
I speak from the perspective of a Welsh MP in a seaside town in an area with high public sector employment. We had made progress under the Labour Government, who created an extra 7,000 jobs over a 13-year period, with 3,500 in one business park alone—St Asaph business park, built by the Tories, empty under the Tories, and full under Labour. We were able to achieve that because we engaged with Europe. We applied for objective 1 funding—something that the Tories never did in their 18 years—and we got it. In my county of Denbighshire, we have had £124 million over the past seven years to create jobs, and we have done that. We have engaged with the Welsh Assembly Government; I give some credit to Plaid Cymru in this regard. Plaid Cymru and Labour, in a proper, working coalition, have pumped £38 million into five principal seaside towns along the north Wales coast: Prestatyn, Rhyl, Towyn, Kinmel Bay and Colwyn Bay. We have engaged with the Department for Work and Pensions in running national pilots in Rhyl—the Rhyl city strategy and Fit for Work.
We have put hundreds of people back to work, not by shaking a big stick at them but by engaging with them. I am talking about drug addicts, alcoholics and ex-prisoners who are now making honey on a farm in Wales. I am talking about Rhyl football club, which is using football as a means to connect with parents and children. I am talking about Rhyl college and the Hub young people’s centre, which has 1,000 young people engaged with the back-to-work agenda. We have made progress, but all that is under threat from the Budget that we have witnessed.
We saw the Tories at work in the 1980s. We have seen what they did to coal, steel and inner-city communities. Remember the riots; remember the closure of the pits and the steelworks. That legacy is still being felt in many of those communities today. I make a prediction: if specific help is not given to areas with high public sector employment, then we will be looking at those areas as the new coal, steel and inner-city communities of this Parliament. Specific help must be given; otherwise, it will be back to the future—back to the 1980s.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important and wide-ranging debate. As many people know, I come from a small business background, and so I take an active interest in the health of our economy and companies of all sizes. I was absolutely delighted to hear last week’s statement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, who put growth very much at the heart of his agenda to support businesses. He has very little wriggle room—we recognise that—but the creative approach that he adopted to try to demonstrate his support for businesses, large and small, and to help companies start on the path of creating jobs again, was welcome up and down the country.
We have to contrast that with the landscape that we inherited from our Labour colleagues. I do not quite know how to put it—whether it was neighbours at war or a family in crisis—but the situation was very much that they had maxed out the credit card and ceased to open the post. Time and again, I hear a degree of denial from Labour Members saying that we do not face a real problem, but we know that we do, because when we got round to opening the post, what did we find? A message stating that all the money had gone. That is what we have to deal with.
When I talk to people in businesses around my constituency and the south-east of England, all I hear is that they understand the need for the measures that we are taking, but they want us to remind them, the public, again and again of why we are having to do this—the fact that we are paying £120 million a day in interest alone and having to borrow £400 million a day to keep the country afloat. It is against that background that we have to find a way of balancing the books. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor started that process last week. Many organisations, such as the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce, agree. They all welcomed the measures, in part, because they understand the problems.
I want to focus on three areas. First, there is the support for business. The cut in regulation is welcome as a stated aim, as is the focus on better skills for our young people so that we can have a well-trained work force. Secondly, I welcome the support for entrepreneurs, because it is they who will take a small business and grow it into a big business so that it pays its tax and employs, we hope, many thousands of people. Thirdly, there is the simplification of the tax system.
However, the people to whom I speak also express some concerns. At a recent meeting of influential businesses in south Essex, they were worried that a degree of gold-plating still goes on with regulation. We all accept that some regulation is needed, but please let us make it fair, even and easy to understand. They also express concern—I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has looked into this—about the scrapping of the default retirement age. They have used it, rightly or wrongly, to manage their work forces, and are concerned that raising it will create greater problems for them in the future and stop new openings being created in their organisations.
I also ask that we look at how we classify truly small businesses. This Budget uses the number 10, but businesses with 20 and perhaps even 50 employees are small businesses as well. They need a greater degree of support than the previous Government gave them and than we are currently proposing to give them.
Finally on the business side, we know that we need to grow our exports. We need to reach out and trade across the world. I heard the statistic recently that there are now 350 million people in India who describe themselves as middle class—people who have disposable income. We need to reach out and show them that British companies and products can address their needs and wants. However, we need to provide some security for those companies. I have a constituent who has been trading in north Africa. He is concerned about whether he will be paid for work that he has undertaken. He is a small business man. Perhaps we should consider how the Government can support businesses that are trading abroad in places where there is not total confidence and security that they will be paid. I welcome the support that we showed for science and technology, because it is companies with innovative and technology-based ideas that will drive growth in our economy.
Of course, I also welcome the help that was announced for families, such as the raising of the tax threshold, the council tax freeze and the 1p cut in fuel duty. Although that 1p on its own may not be significant, the scrapping of the 5p escalator is significant. It means that petrol will be 6p cheaper next month than it would have been under the previous Administration.
Above all, that tax cut and the other measures announced in the Budget demonstrate that this Government are willing to listen and to adapt to the changing landscape. I hope that we will continue to do that, and that we will continue to listen to our residents, individuals and companies, and work with them to create growth.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
I listened to the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) with interest. The Budget has not been as well received in my constituency of Rochdale as it clearly was in Burton. I am not sure whether that is to do with the amount of beer that is consumed in Burton compared with the amount that is consumed in Rochdale. However, like him, I will concentrate my comments about the Budget on my constituency.
One of my central concerns since the coalition announced its programme of spending cuts has been that we will end up with a jobless recovery. I suspect that that is exactly where we are going. I understand that the Conservatives are motivated by their ideological belief in small government. They cut Government spending and public sector jobs because they believe that it is the right thing to do. Once upon a time, the Liberal Democrats agreed with Labour. Before the general election, they led voters to believe that they were a party of the centre left. I know that that is hard to believe now. Page 13 of their manifesto stated:
“If spending is cut too soon, it would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs.”
That is what is happening today.
The Budget provided the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and his colleagues with the chance to use their influence in the coalition Government to help constituencies such as Rochdale that suffer from chronic unemployment. Rochdale’s unemployment statistics make worrying reading. Currently, 8.6% of the town’s active population is claiming jobseeker’s allowance, with almost 15 claimants per vacancy at the jobcentre. No doubt the 4,000 unemployed people in my constituency were unimpressed to hear the Chancellor increase his unemployment forecasts. Those forecasts tell them not only that it will be a long time before they will have an opportunity to gain employment, but that more people will be joining them on the dole queue—and all because the Chancellor will not change his course.
Rochdale is heavily dependent on the public sector. We face £64 million of cuts from this Government’s Budget just in local government. That will force even more people in Rochdale on to jobseeker’s allowance. The Government have long argued that they will create the conditions for the private sector to sweep in and create the jobs that are needed. Let us look at the reality in Rochdale. In many respects, the Chancellor has only increased Rochdale’s disadvantages. The enterprise zone at Manchester airport will continue the worrying trend of investment being drawn away from Rochdale to other, often more prosperous, parts of Greater Manchester. The new enterprise zone will create a disadvantage to Kingsway business park in my constituency. What is more, the Centre for Cities report shows that every job created in an enterprise zone costs more than twice as much in real terms as a job created by the future jobs fund, and more than four times as much as a new deal job. The Chancellor has made much of his tax incentives to encourage businesses to create jobs. However, the research and development tax relief for small businesses will help less than 1% of those businesses.
In conclusion, we have learned nothing new about the Conservative party. We have known all along that it would prefer to give tax cuts to bankers than invest in the future jobs fund or in manufacturing. However, the Liberal Democrats once portrayed themselves as the defenders of places such as Rochdale. They should be ashamed of what they are party to. This Budget shows that they are unable to stick up for their ideas and for the people they purport to represent. It is no wonder that this weekend, yet another Liberal Democrat councillor in Rochdale announced that she would not renew her membership of that party.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Given the restrictions on time, I will focus on the Government’s plan to achieve long-term sustainable economic growth. I welcome their commitment to make that their biggest economic priority.
I welcome the Chancellor’s clear signal that Britain is open for business, and the steps that he has taken to revitalise the country’s enterprise culture. Reducing corporation tax by a further percentage point to just 23% in 2014 is another boost to business and will help to establish the UK again as a great place to do business. Like many Government Members, I welcome the Chancellor’s move to increase tax relief on new business investments to support our entrepreneurs and wealth creators. That will help to grow businesses across the country, including those in Rochdale. Yesterday’s StartUp Britain launch will encourage more people to create their own companies.
Businesses like what they see. It was good to hear from the Institute of Directors today that 70% of businesses surveyed believe that the Budget will have a positive impact on the economy. The incentives that I have mentioned are vital in recreating the enterprise culture. Many small businesses in Macclesfield tell me that they want the Government to break down the barriers that have built up progressively and which, collectively, block businesses from expanding. I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to reduce the burdens on business by looking at planning, tackling excessive health and safety regulations, and, importantly, simplifying the tax system.
The Chancellor’s approach to deregulation, as set out in “The Plan for Growth”, is very pragmatic. It will support industry sectors that are critical for the economic growth that we need. Those industries rightly include advanced manufacturing, digital and creative industries, and life sciences and health care.
Macclesfield is home to one of AstraZeneca’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturing sites, so I was delighted to see that David Brennan, its chief executive, had given his support to Government plans and said:
“We welcome the package of measures announced by the Government…Those on clinical research and the environment for undertaking clinical trials represent a powerful statement of intent about the government’s determination to maintain the attractiveness of the UK as a centre for R&D activity.”
That is a ringing endorsement from one of our most important pharmaceutical companies. My request to the Chancellor is that he break down the barriers to business success with the same energy and pace that he has shown in so many other areas of economic policy. It is an urgent priority.
We can learn a lot from Macclesfield’s proud entrepreneurial tradition. The local economy was built on silk, and Macclesfield became the world’s largest producer of finished silk. Since that time there has been an entrepreneurial thread running through our economic development. Silk led to dyes, and dyes brought ICI to Macclesfield after the second world war. Today we benefit from AstraZeneca’s strength in pharmaceuticals, and that entrepreneurial tradition is still alive. We have higher than average business start-up and survival rates. We are proud of that tradition, but in the current challenging economic climate, no one is taking growth for granted.
One of the most rewarding parts of my job is being able to work with local businesses and community groups to make Macclesfield a stronger destination and to help boost the local economy. We have made big strides, and working with the support of Cheshire East council, we have created regular business breakfasts for Macclesfield’s businesses to have their say on the local economy. They wanted a clear action plan, so with their support we have created a Macclesfield economic forum, which will steer a course towards stronger economic growth. We are building on that momentum, and the proposals that have been put forward in this Budget will help us with that task.
It is often said that two “Eds” are better than one, but based on what we have heard from Opposition Front Benchers, it is clear that that is not always the case. [Interruption.] It took a while for some people to get that. It seems that the Opposition are suffering from a number of seemingly delusional conditions, which are getting progressively worse. It started with the credit crunch, when they had a bad case of what Lord Turnbull has called “wishful thinking”. They thought that they had put an end to boom and bust, but all too clearly, they had not.
Then came a well-documented case of deficit denial. The Opposition blame the deficit on the economic crisis, but they are unable to face the fact that they ran cyclically adjusted deficits in each of the six years to 2007-08. Sadly, in more recent days, Opposition Front Benchers have started to exhibit signs of a new condition—alternative avoidance. The symptoms are there for all to see. They say they have an alternative and tell millions of people that they have one, but they are completely incapable of articulating what it is.
The Labour party has no alternative. In stark contrast, the Government have set out a positive plan to tackle the deficit and put the UK back on the path to sustainable long-term economic growth. I commend the Budget to the House.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I begin where I ended my speech a few weeks ago on Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill—by referring to the Government’s approach to disability living allowance. It is always helpful after a Budget to have a look at the Red Book, and on that subject, as on others, I have done so. I found that the Chancellor of the Exchequer states that the Government intend to recoup about £470 million during this Parliament as a result of removing the mobility component of DLA.
This debate gives us a wonderful opportunity to clarify a subject that has been discussed again and again, but which has led, even today, to sheer confusion. For some 80,000 disabled people, the planned removal of the mobility component of DLA from people living in residential homes is causing great concern, and the issue is clouded by the obfuscation that we have heard from the Government, including from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions today.
Last week the Prime Minister claimed that the Government did not plan to remove the mobility component, even though again and again at the same Dispatch Box, the same Prime Minister had compared the people involved with patients who are in hospital for two or three weeks. Whatever the Government say—I hope we will get some clarity from them tonight—clause 83 of the Welfare Reform Bill, which is being discussed in Committee as we speak, will legislate precisely for the removal of that benefit. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) has pointed out to the House that 2,000 disabled children could lose out.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
indicated dissent.
Maria Miller
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. I point out to him that clause 83 of the Bill is about overlaps. He will have heard the Prime Minister make it very clear from the Dispatch Box that we do not intend to remove the mobility component of DLA from residents in care homes from 2012. We will, however, as he would expect, examine all DLA recipients as we move forward with the reform—with which, as we have heard from the Labour spokesman today, the Opposition agree.
Mr Clarke
I heard the Prime Minister, and I have heard the hon. Lady on numerous occasions. I even had a private meeting with her, along with Lord Rix, who co-chairs with me the all-party group on learning disability. She has not once said that there will be a change to the money that the Red Book anticipates will be saved by the removal of the benefit, or that the Government are changing their mind. If the Minister who winds up tonight’s debate says that, there will be joy among thousands of disabled people and their carers, but it has not been said yet.
What we are being told is that the Government inherited a financial crisis. I consider the views of my constituents on that and other matters, but the fact is that they are bored stiff with the blame game. They know about the deficit, but they also know about growth. They know that the Government said precious little about growth in the Budget, as has also been the case today.
Take, for, example, fuel. I argued that the VAT increase should be reversed, but the Chancellor expects drivers to be grateful for a 1p cut in fuel tax when VAT is going up by 3p in the pound. That will not allow the Government to ingratiate themselves with people who can no longer afford to fill up their tanks on the forecourt. If Government Members have some doubt about that, may I refer them to, of all newspapers, yesterday’s Sun? It indicated that one fifth of people had given up driving. If that represents growth, I do not understand the meaning of the word.
A woman in my constituency, a nurse called Sandra, does a round trip of 80 miles a day to do her job. She fears for the future and, like me, regards the energy regulations in the Budget as being too little, too late.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman says that the measures are too little, too late. Why did his party set a 10-year target in 2000 and then miss it in 2010, only to set in 2009 a far more ambitious target for 2020 that no one expects any Government to reach?
Mr Clarke
If I had another six minutes I would be very happy to answer the hon. Gentleman, but if he does not mind, I will just make my own speech.
There is profound disappointment with the influence of regulators, particularly in the energy sector, for gas, electricity, oil and the rest. We are seeing the impact of that influence in what people are actually paying day by day, and in the job losses being experienced as a result.
As I said, my constituents are well informed, as the House would expect them to be. Mrs Agnes Baillie, from the lovely little village of Auchinloch, who is 85, knows what the change in the pensions inflation link from retail prices index to consumer prices index means, even if the Secretary of State does not—he skipped over that in his speech. She knows that from 2011 that change will apply to state second pensions, public service pensions and some private occupational pensions, that RPI is not CPI, and that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats gave firm pledges in their election manifestos that they would not change the existing arrangements—they certainly did not say that they would change things to the disadvantage of current and future pensioners.
The Secretary of State scoffed at the mention of the banks, which is both astonishing and disagreeable. The banks’ behaviour is at the heart of the all the problems that we are dealing with, and we will not get the economy right if we do not address that; instead, we will get stagnation and lack of growth. Firms will be unable to get off the ground and young people will be unable to get on to the housing ladder if the banks are not challenged more profoundly than they have been so far.
The last words of the Chancellor’s Budget statement were:
“We have put fuel into the tank of the British economy.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]
Is that at the expense of 80,000 people, including 2,000 disabled children who live in residential care homes? If so, it tells us a lot about this coalition Government and the values that they hold.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
First, further to a number of the speeches from Labour Members, including the hon. Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who I am pleased to see are still in the Chamber, I shall first suggest that the difference between the parties is less than is claimed. Secondly, I shall highlight the fact that significant waste remains, and that waste cannot be cut too fast or too deeply. Thirdly, I shall highlight the disconnect between the House’s responsibility for setting a Budget and debating it, and the information available for effective scrutiny.
Is the gap between the parties as wide as Opposition Members claim? All parties would have spent beyond their means in this Parliament. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that under the coalition, national debt will be £1.31 trillion at the end of this Parliament. Had Labour remained in office, national debt would have been £1.38 trillion. A difference of £62 billion is not insignificant, but to put that in context, it is less than we will be spending in a year on debt interest by the end of the Parliament. It is therefore not credible to say, as a number of hon. Members have done, that public services will be put at risk. After all, the Government will spend £700 billion a year, which is 40% of gross domestic product—more, in fact, than Tony Blair was spending when he left office.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify that point? Does he not recognise that one crucial difference is the configuration of spending under Tony Blair? That spending went mainly on services, but under this Government, the money will be spent on massive unemployment.
Stephen Barclay
Had the hon. Gentleman bothered to be here for the whole debate he would have heard some of the points made by my colleagues, including the fact that £42 billion is being spent on debt interest this year alone.
The hon. Gentleman is quite right to ask where the money is going, which brings me to my second point: waste in spending. The focus is often on top salaries in the public sector, but in Cambridgeshire there is one station manager, or a more senior officer, for every four full-time firefighters, one police sergeant for every four constables, one inspector for every three sergeants, and one chief inspector or above for every inspector. There has been huge inflation in management costs.
Opposition Members may chunter, but let us look at what many of those managers do. The Ministry of Justice asked local authority youth offending teams to collect more than 3,000 bits of data on process, and yet outcomes were still not measured, so the YOTs still cannot say which prevention schemes work. There has been an inflation of management salaries, but often the same people are paid for the same performance. The chief fire officer of Cambridge earns £190,000—£60,000 more than the chief constable—and has three deputies on £150,000, £140,000 and £130,000 each. Perhaps Opposition Members were marching on Saturday to protect such salaries, but we need to look at productivity, and at what we get in return for those salaries and that inflation in management spend.
Jack Dromey
On productivity, the Prime Minister hailed local government as the most efficient part of the public sector. Can the hon. Gentleman square that with demanding up-front, front-loaded 28% cuts, the consequences of which are being felt in my constituency?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Gentleman mentioned productivity, but I urge him to read what the independent National Audit Office says about the health service. Spending doubled, so of course waiting lists went down—we would expect that—but the NAO found that health productivity fell dramatically. The spending fell to many of the best-paid staff such as consultants, so productivity did not match funding.
On procurement waste, the NAO says that Firebuy, an arm’s length body set up by Labour, cost twice as much to set up and run as the savings that it made. On NHS procurement, the NAO found that
“NHS…trusts pay widely varying prices for the same items.”
One NHS trust bought 177 types of surgical gloves.
The huge waste in the opaque spending in local budgets needs to be addressed. For example, Cambridge fire service spends £1.77 million, an increase of £600,000, on what it defines as “other services and supplies”. It cannot explain what that spending is. Cambridgeshire police define £7 million of spending as “other”.
Stephen Barclay
I would attribute it to a number of factors. Let me give an example. I have mentioned local spending in Cambridgeshire, but a national organisation, Ofcom, is an arm’s length body run by a former adviser to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He was paid £1.5 million over the last four years, and he reduced his head-count but managed to increase his staff budget. Last year he spent £9.8 million on 180 different consultancy providers. Ofcom even managed to spend £200,000 on newspapers and magazines, but it has only 800 employees, which works out as more than one free newspaper a day for every member of staff. Seven Ofcom staff managed to claim in expenses more than the average wage, with one racking up £5,500 on taxis. I do not know whether they took taxis to the protest on Saturday, but that is the waste that we hear about.
My local police bought six Land Rover Freelander cars for senior officers at £28,000. Bobbies on the beat are far cheaper than the management tier, and I suspect that they make more arrests. We should look to protect front-line services, not to make cuts in them when there are other significant costs.
My final point is on the disconnect in terms of the information that the House has when it sets Budgets. I do not believe that we are effectively scrutinising what happens. In 2009-10 we spent £1.5 billion on consultants and £700 million on arm’s length bodies, without any central data being collected. So we know there is waste. Gershon, Green and many others have looked at the matter, and I welcome the steps taken by the Front-Bench team in setting up the Major Projects Association, even if at the moment it only has 38 members of staff. In 13 years in office, however, the Labour party did not even define what a major project was, which is why we have such wide variations in Government.
Despite all the differences in the headline figures and some of the scaremongering we have heard, I hope that we do not lose sight of how money is spent. We cannot cut waste too fast or too deeply. It is clear that there is waste in our system, and unless we have good-quality data with which to benchmark, standardise and give visibility to the problem, our debates will end up returning to the soundbites that we have heard too frequently over recent days.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
There seems to be agreement across the House that one of the main lessons of the global financial crisis is that we need to rebalance the economy. In my view, the major objective for the Budget should have been precisely that, because it is the only way to drive sustainable growth and job creation. There are two major ways to do that, and correspondingly two tests that I set the Budget. First, it should rebalance the economy away from an over-reliance on financial services, and secondly, it should reduce the regional economic disparities in our country.
On the first test, we should recognise that our country has a proud history of making things, and we remain the sixth-largest manufacturing country in the world. Manufacturing growth is currently outstripping growth in the service sector. In my constituency, which is part of the black country—once the beating heart of the industrial revolution—manufacturing still accounts for one fifth of jobs. The aerospace cluster in my constituency is thriving, although against a backdrop of a worrying overall rate of 8% unemployment. One company in that sector, Goodrich, is currently on a recruitment drive, creating 100 new jobs. At the end of his Budget speech, the Chancellor said that he wanted to give meaning to the words, “Made in Britain”, but if the Chancellor wants goods to be made in Britain, why did he slash capital allowances in his emergency Budget in June and use the £2.7 billion to deliver a cut in corporation tax, as set out on page 44 of the Red Book? This transfer will disproportionately benefit the banks at the expense of manufacturing. How is that consistent with the Chancellor’s desire to prioritise manufacturing?
The tax reliefs that the Chancellor announced last week are a flimsy sticking plaster for the much deeper wound he left in June. In the words of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Chancellor is
“giving with one hand and taking away with many others”.
The same is true of the Government’s local enterprise partnerships, which they trumpet as an innovative scheme. I want to pay tribute to those businesses in the black country that have successfully formed an LEP, but again the Government have given a false prospectus to these businesses. They tell people to apply for the regional growth fund, but it is a tiny pot of money—one third of what was available for regional development agencies—and is said to be over-subscribed by 10 to one. The Government know that it will leave many more disappointed than successful among those who have applied.
The regional growth fund comes nowhere near filling the hole left by the very successful regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). Once again, the Government give with one hand, but take away with the other. I would like to think that the enterprise zones will in reality deliver what the Government claim they will deliver, but I am worried because even the Conservative Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), warned last week that they risk distorting activity and adding no new jobs. The risk is that they will simply incentivise existing businesses to move into a low-tax zone without employing more people. Britain needs job creation, not job relocation.
On the second test, there needs to be a rebalancing of economic wealth across our nation as a whole to reduce growing regional disparities. Globalisation has brought many opportunities to the UK, but all too often the communities in the midlands and the north have borne the brunt of the risks and insecurities of globalisation, while the rewards have tended to flow to London and the south-east. Unemployment in my constituency is 8%—double what it is in the south-east—and we are losing 300 jobs at New Cross hospital and 500 jobs at Wolverhampton city council. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Chancellor is taking a reckless gamble by expecting the private sector to pick up the pieces of his massive public sector cuts. He is driven by an ideological commitment to a smaller state. The Budget crucially fails to redress the growing economic disparity between the south-east and the rest of the UK. Areas such as the west midlands need more stimuli for the private sector than other areas. For example, the decisions about the regional growth fund need to prioritise areas hit hardest by the global financial crisis.
The Budget fails both my tests: of rebalancing the economy towards manufacturing, and of redressing growing regional disparities. We want to see more goods made in Britain, but the Chancellor’s actions do not match his rhetoric, and in fact run contrary to it. With growth down, unemployment rising, youth unemployment at a record high and consumer confidence sinking, households are seeing their living standards falling as prices outstrip wage increases. The Chancellor should have had the humility to realise that his cuts are too deep and too fast, and that his massive private sector gamble simply is not working. My constituents are bearing the brunt of his reckless Budget.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
We have heard a lot this afternoon about the serious deficit left to this Government, but there is another aspect of the economic legacy referred to by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds): the incredible imbalance in our economy between London and the regions in the north, Wales and the midlands. At the tail end of the previous Government, gross value added in London per head was accelerating away from the rest of the country and now is approximately double what it is elsewhere. That is an awful statistic. In no other country in the world does the capital city dominate the economy to that extent. It is not a natural situation. It does not happen in France, Germany, Holland or anywhere else, but it happens here.
I disagree with the hon. Lady. I think that the Budget has started to deal with the legacy left to the Government. One thing that the Budget has to do is tackle the problem I have outlined, and I am delighted to say that we have started to do that. The Budget has developed 21 regional development areas, one of which I hope will end up in Warrington. One policy developed before the Budget was the national insurance holiday for start-ups in the regions, and I was genuinely disappointed that Labour Members voted against it, in favour of a different proposal that, by the way, would have simply put more money into London. We have to address the imbalance, and that is what we will do. The Budget has started to do it already.
There are three other areas in which we have to make progress. We have not talked during this debate about energy policy. Energy is a regional issue. One unit of GDP growth in the regions is more reliant on energy than it is in London and the south, because in the regions we manufacture, whereas London and the south tend to be more financial-services oriented. Energy prices matter, but I am concerned that we are sleepwalking into becoming a high-energy economy. I support the announcement of a carbon floor price in the Budget. It is right to have that stability, because we have to invest in power stations, but I am concerned about the haemorrhaging of money that is costing industry a great deal. I am talking about some of the renewables investment we are having to make.
Thanet wind farm was a stunning technical achievement, but it requires a subsidy of £1 billion over its lifetime. We cannot just keep doing that. If we are going to meet our climate change commitments by moving industries from the north of England and the midlands to India and China, it will not be a great success.
The other aspect of economic policy that matters to regional rebalancing is infrastructure, which generates jobs and transfers wealth between locations. I make no apology for heavily supporting High Speed 2. The economic case and business case for it are strong, and I hope that we make progress on it quickly. KPMG has estimated that High Speed 2 on its own will bring 40,000 further jobs to the north and to Yorkshire. Those are jobs that we need very much. I understand if Members on both sides of the House—and certainly Government Members —are sceptical about aspects of that or if they question the business case. If the business case needs to be questioned, it is right that we should do so; I just note in passing that the business case for neither High Speed 1 nor Crossrail was questioned in the same way.
My final point about building regional strength involves skills. I was pleased that the Budget had more money for science—and in particular more money for Daresbury, although I will be churlish and say that I was disappointed that Harwell got more. I am also delighted that we continue to make progress on apprenticeships. However, that is not enough by itself: we have to build a technology-based economy. That will be the only way in the future. A shocking statistic is that, despite increasing the number of graduates by a factor of five over the past 25 years, we now have fewer people studying engineering at university than we did 30 years ago. That is not how we will build technology-facing companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Yahoo!, which did not exist 15 years ago and which, had they been in this country, would frankly have wiped out all our unemployment in one go.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East. The Budget has made a start to fixing the appalling legacy of the misbalanced economy that we have been left. It is a long, hard road, but we have to start somewhere.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Many of the people affected by last week’s Budget were in attendance in Hyde park on Saturday. Some 500,000, I believe, were there, marching against the Government’s cuts. It was a privilege and an honour to stand shoulder to shoulder, along with many Labour colleagues, with so many people in the UK—nurses, doctors, teachers, policemen, prison officers, council workers and trade unionists, among many others, including many people representing local charities, community groups or professional organisations. It was an absolute credit to the TUC and Brendan Barber that they organised such an historic event. Those 500,000 people gave a clear message to the Con-Dems about last week’s Budget and the cuts agenda, which is going too far, too fast. The Budget again hit the less well-off, not the more affluent people in this country—not the millionaires on the Government Benches.
I want to focus on two issues. The first is the Chancellor’s announcement last week about the carbon tax—or the carbon floor price. It could have a devastating impact on Rio Tinto Alcan, which is the biggest private sector employer in my constituency; in fact, it is the largest in Northumberland, employing 600 people and probably serving more than 1,000 people indirectly in the community. Alcan has put £100 million into the local economy, which is something that we greatly need. However, last week’s introduction of the carbon floor price, in addition to the EU’s emissions trading scheme, means that nearly a third of Alcan’s running costs are due to legislation. It simply cannot sustain that. I am concerned that if we do not look at that, Alcan—a huge employer—might consider closing the plant. The Budget announcement certainly threatens the progress of what has been a tremendous employer. I would ask the Government to rethink their policy on the carbon floor price; and if possible, I would like to discuss that with the Ministers concerned.
Last week’s forecast showed that growth figures had been cut, with inflation up, borrowing up, unemployment up and youth unemployment up to record levels. Again, that is extremely concerning. They say that the devil is in the detail. I would refer to the Deputy Prime Minister, who has established a record in betraying the young people of our country. Perhaps he should have read the Red Book, as probably we all did. If he does, he will realise that the coalition Government did not announce from the Dispatch Box last week that they were reducing winter fuel payments to pensioners. It is an absolute disgrace that no one had the guts to stand at that Dispatch Box to tell the House and explain to the country that the Government were reducing winter fuel payments to people aged between 70 and 80. That is another broken pledge—another broken promise—from a broken man who is completely out of his depth.
Ian Lavery
No.
Quite frankly, the Deputy Prime Minister is controlled like a sycophant—a political Buzz Lightyear—by the very hands of the Prime Minister himself.
The other issue is the significant changes to the Health and Safety Executive and the Lord Young review—which was implemented last week in the detail of the Budget—which will cause huge problems for workplace inspections across the country. That is a great concern, because many people are still being killed in the UK or contracting illnesses or diseases as a result of working in industry. Again, I would like that reviewed. We should be proud of our health and safety culture—Opposition Members certainly are, but I am not so sure about Government Members.
Last week’s Budget did nothing for the hard-working people of this country—some people describe them as the squeezed middle. There has been an attack on pensions, pay and conditions, rights in the workplace and health and safety. No wonder 500,000 marched so proudly against the cuts and the Budget on Saturday. The coalition Government would do well to listen to those people, rather than the inane ramblings of Batty Boris, the Mayor of London.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I am pleased to see so many hon. Members who also want to participate. I have done my best to speak in other Budget debates, and I am under no illusions that this speech will be read or listened to any more than my previous contributions.
This year’s debate has a different atmosphere from previous years. In 2007 and 2008, there was a sense of denial. In 2009, there was a period of inertia as we waited for whoever was going to win the general election—either Labour or Conservative—to grasp the nettle and make the decisions that the country needed. Finally, in 2010, we saw the launch of the long overdue plan. It is only this year, 2011, that we are really experiencing that pain, which has been debated at length today and in the past four days.
The state of the economy clearly dominates our lives. It is complex: like the cockpit of a 747, there are many buttons, switches and levers. Knowing when to pull a lever and for how long affects the overall performance, the direction of travel and the comfort—or, indeed, the displeasure—of the passengers, who rely on a duty of care. There are four principal levers that we have for the economy: fiscal policy, which determines the management of our deficit and our debt; monetary policy and interest rates, which are now set independently; the regulation of the financial sector and the relationship between the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the financial and business sectors; and finally, micro-economic policies—how we approach education, how to get a competitive tax system, and so on. We need to decide how to use all those levers at this delicate time, as we try to mend the economy. We can be dedicated and vigilant pilots, but we will have our work cut out if we are handed a machine that has been battered and bruised by the previous owner. It is exactly the same with the economy.
We have had five days of debate on the provisions in the Red Book. I will not go into the details of all the issues that have been raised. At the weekend, as I was thinking about what to say in my speech today, I watched the rally that was taking place in Hyde park. I saw all the banners; it was like a summer camp for the unions, like a revival for them as they all called for more money for their own area. They wanted more money for pensioners, for health, for education and so on, but no one said where the money was going to come from or how it was going to be generated, and we have heard no such explanation from Opposition Front Benchers today.
The rally said a lot about Labour, in that the Leader of the Opposition is now firmly embedding himself with the unions. Incidentally, I think he was unwise to make comparisons with previous struggles, such as those of the suffragettes or the US civil rights movement, or with the fight against apartheid. It would also have been nice to hear a bit of mea culpa, a bit of recognition that Labour was partly to blame for what is going on.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the issues to which the Leader of the Opposition referred all had one thing in common with the rally on Saturday—namely, that no Tories took part in any of them?
Mr Ellwood
I did not receive my invitation. Perhaps I shall find it in my office when I go back there.
The bottom line is that we inherited an economic nightmare—the worst of the messes in the G20. The gap between the richest and the poorest had grown since Labour came to office, and the size of government had bloomed. In the past decade, the civil service had grown by an additional 800,000 people. I have no idea what those people actually did, but they were in addition to those who were running the country a decade earlier. That is the bloated government that we need to try to get rid of. There was also a culture of encouraging people not to work. It was never easier than under Labour to do nothing and get paid for it. Those are the kinds of issues that we need to tackle.
The number of regulations introduced under Labour was astonishing. We are now faced with about 21,000 regulations, of which about 10,000 were created by the last Government. As I said earlier, Labour was planning huge cuts, had it won the election; it just did not say where they were going to be made. Had it won, it would have received a lot of the grief that we are receiving today, because it would have had to implement very much the same measures that we are implementing.
Looking back at the legacy that we left Labour, we can see that there was an unbroken period of growth from 1992 to 2008. We had growth up to the economic downturn in 2007. The deficit in 1997-98 was £15 billion. By 2007—before the economic downturn—it had already increased to £33 billion. We were not living within our means.
Emma Reynolds
I want to put the same question to the hon. Gentleman that I put to the Secretary of State. Up until 2008, his party backed our spending commitments, so is there not a little bit of revisionism on his side of the House?
Mr Ellwood
I was not in government then. The spending commitments that we backed did not take into account the state of the economy at the time. They were the plans for the future, but they did not take into account the money that had been spent.
The point that I was trying to make was that, from a deficit and a debt perspective, the previous Government wasted money during the boom years. They lived beyond their means, which placed us on the back foot when the economic downturn came. Again and again, we hear Labour say, “It isn’t our fault. It was an international issue. It was the Americans. It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was the sub-prime market.” Well, that was possibly the case at the start, but in 2007, 2008 and even 2009, I could have gone to Bradford & Bingley and picked up a 125% mortgage. That was simply wrong. We were still not in control of the situation well after we knew that things were going down the pan.
The Opposition’s approach is now based on several themes. They tell us that, 12 months ago, unemployment was falling, growth was rising and inflation was low and stable. However, unemployment was higher when Labour left office than when it came in. In fact, that has happened every time Labour has been in office. No emergency measures had been put in place. Unemployment goes up in every recession; that is one of the impacts. It was wrong of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) to suggest that if Labour were in power now, unemployment would continue to fall. That is completely incorrect. The Opposition also talk about growth, but it is actually continuing to rise. It rose by 1.3% last year, and the figure will be 1.7% this year. That is not what we expected, but the economy is still growing faster than the EU average. Of course, 2011 is going to be a year of pain. Urgent measures have been introduced, and the VAT rise will hit us.
I do not have time to go through all the other aspects of the situation, but I will end by saying that the Budget is all about continuing to bring spending under control. It is about gaining sustainable revenues from the banks and protecting the most vulnerable in our society. It is also about a shift from big government to small government, and about providing businesses with the tax breaks and incentives to expand, to compete in new markets and to tackle the expected rise in unemployment. History will show that we came close to the economic abyss, but that this Government took the tough decisions necessary to build a strong and stable economy.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
In the debates in the run-up to the last general election, I was in the habit of saying that there would be four ways of dealing with the deficit. The first would be to make cuts. The second would be to introduce tax increases. The third was the method that dare not speak its name but which would be employed by every Government around the world: inflation, which would involve paying money back at a lower value than that at which it was borrowed. The fourth would involve growth. This Government have been pretty good on the first three, but they have been very poor on growth.
The Government are now, as ever, turning their attention to holding down the living standards of people on middle and lower incomes. There is now talk among the Tories about restricting the legal rights of people at work and of paring back the minimum wage. There is also talk of reducing job security, and they have certainly done that for practically everyone in the country. We have also heard them say today, and yesterday, that they want to slash regulation, because it is a burden on business. In fact, good regulation is vital. It protects employees, consumers, the environment, public health and the taxpayer. Some regulation is unnecessary, and some of it is out of date. Some of it is cumbersome and time consuming, and some of it is out of proportion, but we have to accept that virtually all of it has been passed by this House, so we should not go blaming other people; we have introduced it over the years.
Another argument put forward by the Government is that British business is over-regulated. The Chancellor was quoting the OECD with approbation in his Budget speech, but he obviously does not read, or approve of, everything that the OECD does. It produces a league table of employment protection. Are we, according to that league table, the most over-regulated country in the world? No, we certainly are not. The United States is the least regulated country. Canada is the second least regulated, and the United Kingdom is the third least regulated. The Chancellor also referred favourably to Germany, so I looked Germany up in the league table. It is the 19th least regulated country. The German economy is far more regulated than ours, yet it is recovering more quickly. There has always been higher investment in plant and equipment in Germany than in this country, and a lower turnover of employees.
What we really need is better regulation, and, in some cases, more and newer regulation, particularly to help agency staff. Let us look at how the Tories are always trying to create a great fuss and fear. When the great Michael Foot introduced health and safety measures, which I have to say were welcomed from the Front Bench by that decent old Tory, William Whitelaw, there were dire predictions from a lot of Back-Bench backwoods Tories that it would lead to all sorts of terrifying consequences. Well, there has been one massive improvement. When people talk about reducing the “burden” of regulation in health and safety, I point out that before the Health and Safety Executive was set up, 651 people were killed in accidents at work; the comparable figure is now 152—and it ought to be lower still.
It was obviously good for employees that there were fewer injuries and less pain and suffering, fewer people suffering from bad health and fewer people losing income because they were out of work as a result of what had happened to them. However, it was also good for employers. The employers did not lose vital staff to accidents; they did not lose the value of the training that vital staff had received before they were injured; they did not lose a great deal of production; they did not lose money; and if they obeyed the law, they were not in a position of facing court action.
The health and safety regulations were also good for taxpayers, because they reduced the demand on the national health service and meant that benefits did not have to be paid. People were not off work so they continued to pay tax and we did not lose production in the British economy. I hope that the Tory party, including the Prime Minister, will therefore stop all this scaremongering about regulation and health and safety, and take a much more careful and thoughtful approach to the problem. Conservative Members should try to make sure that when people are working in this country, they are safe from accidents and safe from illness caused by the conditions in which they work.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
I am glad to have been called—a happy outcome for me.
It seems to me that Labour Members are ostrich-like inasmuch as they are not aware of what is going on or of what led us to the position we are in. There is always a context, and we appreciate that savings had to be made in Government spending. Everyone knows that. When we ask ourselves why we are in the position we are in, we get conflicting answers. As Government Members have said, Labour Members suggest that it was the fault of American bankers, of evil people in the City of London who were making too much money and of international business. I think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and pensions even suggested that at some point they would blame Dr Evil. None of those reasons, however, is remotely relevant to the deficit or the fiscal situation we are in.
The simple fact is that we had a much larger deficit than any other country in the G7. These facts are known to the world. Labour Members have to accept that when they came into office in 1997, there were balanced Budgets. For four years, the then Chancellor of Exchequer essentially balanced the Budgets and it was a matter of deliberate policy in 2001 when the Labour Government turned the taps on and presided over a massive engorgement of the public sector.
It was that decision in 2001-02 that led to the position we are in now. The cause was simple: the last Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, believed in his hubris that he had abolished boom and bust. He thought that the economy would keep on growing and that he could then use tax and other income to fund his bigger national projects and his huge public spending. What happened, of course, was that the economy stalled. The income receipts to the Exchequer stopped coming in, so we were left with this massive deficit of £160 billion—the largest in peacetime. The coalition Government came in with the principal purpose of dealing with the deficit. That has always been this Government’s purpose. It was almost a Government of national unity, with two historic parties with different views and different traditions coming together to sort out the mess that the Labour party had left behind.
It is a very simple narrative, but because of all the obfuscation and the deliberately misleading comments of Labour Members, all that has been forgotten. My constituents are all too well aware of the mess that Labour made. In fact, one man said to me, “Well, we have seen it all before; exactly the same thing happened in the 1970s. Labour comes in and makes all sorts of spending commitments, and we run out of money.” It was that simple—and exactly the same thing has happened in Labour’s last two years in power. Blaming the global crisis for what was essentially decisions taken by the Labour party in government is entirely wrong.
Emma Reynolds
Does the hon. Gentleman blame Labour Members for the recession in Germany, for the recession in France, for the recession in the United States and for the recession in other parts of the world? How can he stand up and say it was all our fault? It was a global financial crisis.
Kwasi Kwarteng
Let me point out to the hon. Lady that in Germany the deficit to GDP ratio was 3.3%; our deficit to GDP ratio was 12.8%. That differential had nothing to do with the global crisis; it had everything to do with spending commitments made on the Treasury Bench when the hon. Lady’s party were in government. It is a deliberate obfuscation to try to blame the sub-prime crisis in America and all the rest of it for decisions taken by her party in government. It is like a magician’s trick: one always tries not to let the audience focus on what is actually being done. That is what magicians do, and it is exactly the sort of tactics that Labour is employing. As I say, it is trying to obfuscate and shift the blame for decisions that it made.
I think it is a scandal and an insult to the intelligence of Members generally that Labour Members are still in denial about the mess they created and the errors they made, which were based on hubristic assumptions about the economy growing for ever and ever. We all remember the former Prime Minister himself saying that there was an end to boom and bust. What does that mean? Anyone who says “an end to boom and bust” genuinely believes that there will be no downturn and so makes spending assumptions on the basis that money from income receipts will keep coming in. That is absolutely crazy.
Emma Reynolds
I ask the question for the third time in this debate, as I have yet to receive an answer from Conservative Members. Why on earth did the Conservative party back our spending plans right up to the start of the global financial crisis? This is revisionism by the hon. Gentleman’s side; it is his side that is being ostrich-like, not ours.
Kwasi Kwarteng
With respect to the hon. Lady, that is entirely irrelevant. Her party was in office; her party had the ultimate responsibility for the government of this country—not only in 2007, but for the 13 years before the last election. It is a strange paradox that when Labour Members got into power in 1997, they did the right thing. They balanced the books; for four years, we were not running deficits, as they stuck to our spending plans. The Chancellor was prudent; “prudence” was his favourite word. Then, all of that was deliberately swept away, and they went on a mad spending spree, which directly caused the deficit and the savings that have to made now.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the honest answer to the question put thrice by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) is that if we were guilty of anything, it was to fall for the same lie that the British public fell for—to believe that new Labour had become the party of economic competence and that in government it could be trusted with the public finances?
Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend is exactly right. I think there was an element of delusion in the country inasmuch as people believed that Labour could be trusted with the economy. That was clearly not the case. Older voters I speak to in my party association and more widely in Spelthorne remember the appalling legacy of the 1970s, when exactly the same thing happened. None of this is new; we have seen it all before. Exactly the same thing has happened 30 years later: Labour came into power, made all sorts of spending commitments with the best intentions, but found that we had run out of money. It was that simple. On that note, I urge the House to vote in favour of the Budget motions.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Labour Members have already expressed the deep anxiety that is felt in not just Labour households but many households in the country about what the future holds for them. At the end of my short contribution, I shall return to a refrain that the Chancellor used at quite an early stage in his introduction of measures intended to rebalance the economy. We all know that we are experiencing immensely difficult times, but the Chancellor told us that we were all in it together. The question to which I intend to return is this: are we sharing those sacrifices fairly or not? However, I also intend to describe the challenges that the economic situation has posed both to the country and to the political parties.
Let me deal first with the question of national debt. Given that we hope to win the next election, I want to consider the position that we will inherit if we are entrusted with power by the voters on that occasion. Comment has already been made about the size of the national debt when the Government came to office. It was £760 billion then. We are told that we are now experiencing an extreme programme of cuts the like of which we have never seen before, and that at the end of this Parliament the national debt will stand at £1,400 billion. In other words, it will have doubled.
Our views cannot entirely be explained away by the fact that we disagree with the Government’s policy of allowing unemployment to rise and the effects that that will have on Exchequer costs and revenues. Already, a third of the money that we borrow each year is to service our debt. The level of our long-term interest rates is therefore crucial and fundamental to our survival. It is difficult to see how we can come out at the other side as a great industrial and trading country if we lose our current rating and costs rise.
I have three more points to make, one to my own side and two to the Government. This is the first. Before the last election, we had a clearer view of our cuts programme. At this stage of a Parliament it is easy to blame the other side and to oppose all cuts, but the next election may be closely contested. We will have to account for our behaviour in this Parliament, and my plea to my party’s Front Benchers is that we regain the clarity that existed before the last general election about where we would cut, where we would not cut, and where we would fight cuts.
My second point concerns inflation. Although what we have is not wage-induced inflation but inflation that is imported, the Bank of England has been directed to reduce inflation to below 2%. The Government’s current strategy for growth is based on a tough fiscal stance and a loose monetary policy. My worry is that in abiding by that inflation target, we might encourage the Bank of England to drive up interest rates in a vain attempt to control inflation. We know that that policy will not work, but it might satisfy those who feel that we should make more of an effort to reach the 2% target. It is impossible for Governments, once they have set themselves such targets, ever to abandon them, but this Government need to take such action if they are to safeguard future growth.
My last point is the one about our all being in it together. I have never known a Parliament in which the changes came so fast and were plainly so important, and I have no clear view on who is getting off lightly and who is not. A few weeks ago, in a letter to the Prime Minister, I wrote that I would be very surprised if I were the only person in the country who wanted all of us to be in this together but wondered whether we were. I suggested that he set up, in public, a committee whose remit was to examine that very question: are we all in it together?
If we are concerned about families, we should bear in mind that families, both rich and poor, have taken a significant beating from the Government. Obviously, however, my concern is not only with them but with the poor in general. I do not believe that any Minister on the Treasury Bench could stand up and tell us honestly that we are all in this together, and I consider that appalling. I think that the Government ought to take measures enabling us all to be better informed about the question on the occasion of our next major debate.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who made some very measured comments.
I am delighted to be able to contribute to the debate, and to welcome a number of measures that will be good for Manchester and good for the people of Manchester. I must confess that I approached the Budget with a certain amount of trepidation because of the difficult decisions that the coalition Government had already made in order to deal with the mess with which the previous Government left us. However, I was also well aware of all the work done in the Treasury and between Departments to produce a Budget that would stimulate growth and help to kick-start the economy.
The question is whether the Budget has delivered for Manchester. Before it had even been announced, Manchester Labour councillors tabled a motion which is to be dealt with in the council tomorrow, stating that the council
“notes the damaging impact of George Osborne’s budget on the people of Manchester.”
It was pretty clear that, regardless of what the Chancellor announced, Labour would try to spin it as terrible for Manchester, just as it has tried to absolve itself of any blame for the financial mess in which the country finds itself and the unnecessary and vindictive political cuts that it has proposed in Manchester.
Of course, we would expect the Liberal Democrat opposition in Manchester to take a more positive view of the measures in the Budget. We would, perhaps, expect Simon Ashley, the leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on the council, to say something like
“This is good news for… Manchester.
It’s a double win because not only does it give incentives for new businesses to develop at Airport City, it also generates income we can use to encourage development across the whole of Greater Manchester.”
However, he did not say that, although he has warmly welcomed the good news of the enterprise zone for Manchester. That comment was, in fact, made by Richard Leese, the Labour leader of Manchester city council, who, interestingly, is one of the signatories to the Labour motion that condemned the Budget even before the Chancellor had come to the Dispatch Box to deliver his speech. Yes, even the Labour leader of the council has been forced to admit that the Budget has delivered good news for Manchester.
Under the last Labour Government, private sector job growth in Manchester lagged massively behind that in the rest of England between 2003 and 2008, at less than half the average percentage. That is set to change under the coalition Government. Manchester airport was a beneficiary as one of the first enterprise zones, and up to 13,000 new jobs will be created in the city—more than five times as many as there are unemployed people in my constituency. At the same time, the Chancellor has given the go-ahead for the Ordsall Curve rail project, which will increase rail capacity and improve journey times and encourage investment, growth and job creation in Manchester. During 13 years in government Labour failed to deliver that vital infrastructure project, but it has been delivered in fewer than 11 months by the coalition Government, which is proof of the Government's commitment to investing in our rail infrastructure. Moreover, an extra £873,000 will come to Manchester to help to repair our damaged roads. That will go a long way towards dealing with the thousands of potholes in our streets.
All those measures will help to get people in Manchester into work and protect existing jobs, and the additional 40,000 apprenticeships that have been announced will help more Manchester residents to gain the skills and experience that are needed to grow the economy further.
What about those surviving on pensions? One of the lasting memories of the previous Labour Government was the derisory 75p rise in the state pension. For all their talk, the last Labour Government failed to deliver for pensioners. When the coalition Government were formed, there was a real commitment to give a better deal to pensioners. Pensions have been re-linked to earnings—which was unaffordable, according to Labour—and the triple-lock guarantee will ensure that there is never a repeat of the disgraceful 75p rise. Instead, as a result of this Budget, pensioners will receive an extra £4.50 a week, taking the pension above £100. That is in addition to the decision to make permanent the increase in the excess cold weather payment to £25 for every week of excess cold in the winter. My only objection is that the Chancellor has decided to follow Labour’s plans and not to make permanent the temporary increase in the winter fuel allowance. In my view, that is a mistake and should be looked at again.
Finally, the Budget has also delivered on the coalition promise to take some of the lowest-paid out of paying tax altogether. The increase in the personal allowance by £1,000, and the announcement of a further increase next year, will scrap income tax for more than 1 million of the lowest-paid people. That puts the coalition on track to deliver a key Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment: to increase the personal allowance to £10,000. That has been welcomed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as “progressive” and by The Times leader column for increasing “the incentives to work.” These changes mark a stark contrast to the Labour Budget that abolished the 10p tax rate, increasing the tax burden for some of the lowest paid.
Overall, the Budget is good news for Manchester—
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
Last week, the Chancellor delivered a Budget and promised a plan for growth. There is no doubt that we in the north-east need growth, and it must be growth that creates jobs. The fact that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth forecasts have had to be revised downward yet again is therefore deeply worrying for people across the north-east. In my constituency, there are currently 8.8 jobseekers per advertised vacancy, and in some parts of the north-east—mainly on Teesside—there are more than 19 jobseekers for each job available. Those figures are alarming, but we should compare them with the figures for the constituencies of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which are, respectively, 1.9 and 1.6 jobseekers per vacancy. That makes it clear that we are simply not all in this together. Moreover, these are the figures for the period of time before many of the Government’s spending cuts have started to bite; about 50,000 jobs in both the public and private sectors are expected to be lost across the north-east.
The Government believe that the private sector will move in to fill the gap, but I believe that is misguided. The abolition of One North East has left a gaping hole in the capacity of the north-east economy to drive growth, and there is genuine and widespread concern that many of the opportunities for growth in the region could be lost due to the lack of properly funded and co-ordinated structural support. I hope I am proved wrong for the sake of our region, but this Budget and the downgraded growth forecasts do not fill any of us with much hope.
The Chancellor announced in his speech last week the creation of 21 new urban enterprise zones, and he stated that one of them would be located on “Tyneside”. Although I have grave doubts about the overall policy, I acknowledge that we need swift action, clarity and leadership in implementing it if it is to deliver the positive impact the Government intend. Yet how do the Government intend to ensure that the policy does not simply lead to jobs and businesses moving from one part of Tyneside to another? How will they guarantee that it genuinely creates new jobs? Serious thought will need to be given to how these zones will contribute to a genuine rebalancing of the economy, when so many zones have been announced across the country, including in London. That view appears to be shared by the North East chamber of commerce, which last week expressed its concerns that
“the plan for 21 across the country smacks of spreading a policy too thin.”
Ever since I was elected to the House, I have been campaigning for apprenticeships. The benefits are clear and widely accepted. Apprenticeships provide a structured career path for young and older people alike, while also helping to develop the skills that UK plc needs if our economy is to move back into growth and compete effectively on the global stage. Expanding the number of apprenticeships is vital for employers and employees, and for the country as a whole. I therefore believe the Government should be doing everything in their power to increase the number of places available.
That is why I introduced my Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill, which seeks to increase the number of apprenticeship places by making that a requirement of public procurement. I have had a number of discussions about my proposals with the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, and I thank him for his positive response. He recently confirmed to my local paper that he is
“a strong advocate of the use of public procurement to support our objectives”,
and I have no doubt that his support and persistent enthusiasm have been very influential in securing the further 50,000 apprenticeship places that have been announced for the next four years. I am concerned, however, that the Minister has a real challenge ahead to ensure that all of his colleagues are singing from the same hymn sheet on this issue, particularly as Construction News recently quoted the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General as stating that the Government would not be backing his idea because the use of public procurement to stimulate the creation of more apprentices was simply not appropriate.
Governments cannot create apprenticeships; businesses do that. Government must provide support for businesses by helping with training costs, incentives and encouragement, but without growth in our economy, real, new apprenticeship opportunities will not be delivered.
The Secretary of State outlined earlier a chicken and egg situation: young people are unable to get work experience and therefore unable to get a job, and as they are unable to get a job they are unable to get work experience. The same applies to apprenticeships. Businesses are required in order to create apprenticeships, but they will not have the confidence to provide those opportunities if we do not have growth. Therefore, although I welcome the positive moves in this Budget in relation to apprenticeships, providing funding for places is not enough. Government must take the lead, and be seen to take the lead, by using all available levers to increase both the number of apprenticeship places available, and the number of apprenticeships completed. I truly believe that one of those levers has to be the use of public procurement, for Government to lead the way for businesses.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and her comments about the importance of apprenticeships are right, of course. I want in particular, however, to congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). In the past he chaired the Select Committee on Social Security, and I was proud to serve on it with him. He gave the best speech of the debate—with the exception, of course, of the contribution from the Secretary of State; I will be in trouble if I do not say that. The right hon. Gentleman was realistic about the position we are in. I do not want to say a great deal about the structural deficit; we all know it is there, and how much it is. We all know the political imperative behind the Labour party campaign against the cuts. We also all understand that it is in the interests of the Government to play up that campaign because it makes them look stronger and more determined. It is therefore in the interests of both parties to talk about this topic in that way.
The right hon. Gentleman highlighted a point that I want to emphasise too: we have yet to turn the tide against the culture of spending and the fix of borrowing. We are going to borrow £485 billion over five years. That is more than our total public debt in 1997. The annual interest repayment on the UK debt for last year alone was £42 billion. I know the public cannot visualise what £42 billion is, but if we consider that we are spending more on simply repaying the interest on our debt than the entire amount we spend on educating our children, that should bring home the scale of the crisis facing us.
I am not a very party political person, so I am not very good at apportioning blame. We all know the last Government had to go through a massive international crisis, but we also all know that there was an underlying structural deficit that they did not deal with. The key question, however, is: what are we going to do now? I want to take as my text what the TUC has been talking about, because I would like to bring a few Opposition Members with me. The TUC asks how we are going to deal with this deficit without making cuts in public services, and it says there is £13 billion-worth of tax avoidance by individuals and £12 billion-worth of tax avoidance by corporations. Let us assume for a moment that that is true. How are we going to deal with it? If we follow the TUC line, the only way in which we can deal with it is through a radical simplification of how tax is raised and how the Government spend it.
The Chancellor made one historic announcement that has not been discussed much today, on the merging of national insurance and income tax. I urge him to continue with that theme, despite the siren voices that we have already heard, including that of a former Chancellor, who has said that it will result in winners and losers. The Chancellor must embark on this essential crusade. It may take many years, but it is vital, because simplification of the entire tax system lies at the heart of how we are going to deal with the deficit, with tax avoidance and with tax evasion.
The UK tax code has more than doubled in size since 1997 and it is now the world’s largest, recently surpassing even that of India. The only way to achieve simplicity in taxation is through a gradual move towards a much flatter rate of tax for both personal and corporate income, while eliminating the complicated system of loopholes, deductions and exemptions. Thus we would, eventually, have a system whereby we would set a single exemption for individuals, so that low-income earners would pay tax only if they earned more than a determined level of income. Many countries have already taken such an approach, including nine in eastern Europe, Hong Kong and Russia, the largest country in the world.
On defending the poor, I say to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead that it is not in the interests of the poor to have a so-called “progressive” income-based tax system. Such a system is structurally biased against them because they do not have the same access as the wealthy do to accountants and lawyers, and so cannot be instructed by them in the complex methods of tax avoidance. The poor are also caught in the poverty and unemployment trap. Many scenarios and Treasury models can be used, but it is estimated that if we had a flat tax rate of 22% with a £15,000 tax-free allowance, about 10 million of the poorest taxpayers would see their entire income tax burden disappear.
I know that people will say that the wealthy must pay more, but every time the top tax rate has been significantly reduced anywhere in the world, the wealthy have increased the proportion of tax income that they contribute. Under Mrs Thatcher’s Government, the top tax rate declined from 83% in 1979 to 40% in 1990, but high-earning individuals paid 35% of the total in 1979 compared with 42% in 1990. So it makes sense to have a much flatter rate of taxation—it makes sense for the economy and for the poorest in society, and it makes sense in terms of re-creating a sense of enterprise in the nation.
Once we dramatically simplify the tax system and get rid of all those loopholes and deductions, we will be able to explain the whole Budget process so much more easily to Parliament. At the moment, the Budget process is largely incomprehensible. I have been involved in the “Clear line of sight” project, and we want to simplify the whole process so that we know, line by line, what we are spending on behalf of taxpayers and how we are trying to get the nation moving forward again. I urge the Chancellor to be vigorous and brave in this debate.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Presiding Officer. [Interruption.] I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker; I knew I would do that one day. I have just left the Scottish Parliament, so I should have been slightly more careful in ensuring that I got the terminology right.
People I have met on the doorstep in my constituency are pretty clear about why they did not vote for either of the parties that make up this Government—it was because they remember what happened the last time there was a Tory Government. In Kilmarnock, people recall the loss of the factories that made the town well known worldwide: BMK carpets; Glenfield and Kennedy; and others. In the Irvine valley, the textile industry was all but destroyed as cheap imports produced in sweatshop conditions flooded the market. And in the former coalfield communities of Auchinleck and Muirkirk people remember how Tory policies deliberately and systematically killed off the mining industry, leaving a generation of people on the dole for the long term.
My constituents resent getting lectures on a big society from people who have never had to worry about whether their weekly income is going to stretch to the extras that others take for granted, be it the school trip for the kids, the birthday present, or the day out to try to give the family some respite from the daily grind. They are angry that their public services are being slashed and that the voluntary sector is being left to pick up the pieces without proper funding. Over the years those former industrial communities have tried hard to stand on their own two feet. They looked to the Government for a hand up, not a handout, and we got people back to work during Labour’s years in government.
Although people in my constituency did not vote for this Government, some of them perhaps had at the back of their mind the vain hope that maybe, just maybe, these Tories would be different, and would deliver a Budget that would bring some hope for hard-pressed families already worried about their jobs and keeping the roof over their heads. What did they get in reality? The facts are simple: unemployment forecasts have risen; inflation forecasts have risen; the growth forecasts have fallen; an increase in the personal allowance threshold was cancelled out by an increase in the cost of living; the cut in fuel duty was swallowed up by the increase in VAT; and the rise for pensioners was wiped out by the small-print cut in the winter fuel allowance.
The people on the Government Benches can have their private conversations, they can laugh and they can sit and smile—they can do what they like—but behind the figures we have heard about today are real people whose real lives are being affected now. The number of unemployed claimants in my constituency in February was more than 3,500, which represents a rate of 8.1%. Those people, who are desperately trying to get a job, feel that the Tories are reverting to type; they do not feel that the revised projections of unemployment rising are a price worth paying, but it is clear that the Tories do.
In Scotland Labour has pledged that there will be a Scottish future jobs fund that will create real jobs and provide training for about 10,000 young people, and for others who have been unemployed for six months or more. It will be supported by up-front and flexible funding for businesses to create those jobs. By contrast, the Tory Government here have announced only an extra 40,000 two-month work experience placements a year, and only 12,500 more apprenticeships a year.
I heard the Chancellor say in his Budget speech that the Government would consult the Scottish Government on how a new set of enterprise zones might operate north of the border. I welcome that. But before he does that, I want him to think about some of the criticisms of the previous incarnation of enterprise zones and ensure that his proposals do not fall into the same traps. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland has pointed out that although 63,000 jobs were created in the enterprise zones between 1981 and 1986, only 13,000 of those were new, the rest had simply been displaced. That will not do in the future. It will be important for those initiatives to be backed by significant infrastructure investment, and there must also be engagement with local authorities to build on economic regeneration work already under way. I am pleased that my constituency has just received the news that we are to get £2 million in European regional development fund money, but we need more help from the Government to back that.
In conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker—I got it right that time—when I was elected I pledged that I would work with anyone who had the best interests of my constituents at heart, even if that meant putting aside political differences. That is exactly what I have done in my support for the “Make it Kilmarnock” initiative, because East Ayrshire council, which set it up, is of a different political persuasion from me. But sadly, what will define this Budget in history will be the economic mindset of a political class that is walking in Margaret Thatcher’s footsteps but has failed to learn the lessons of taking the wrong path on the economy.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson).
Every Budget is a step along the way in implementing the strategy of any Government. Part and parcel of the strategy that the Government have chosen to follow is wholesale welfare reform, which I welcome. A plethora of benefits are being simplified, people are being taken out of taxation, and the central issue at the heart of that strategy is that work should always pay. In this country—including London—today, I could take hon. Members to places where there are three generations of people who have never worked. They feel that it is better to be on benefits than to work, and we have to change that fundamental view in society.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned in his opening speech the scandal that is housing benefit in society today. It has fuelled rental rates and has got totally out of control. The squeals from Opposition Members when we try to implement fairly simple and straightforward reforms to housing benefit are legion. The housing benefit reforms are long overdue, and I welcome them.
Last year, after the general election, we had an emergency Budget that set out the emergency position that had to be implemented to counter the inheritance that this Government received. Some tough decisions had to be made at the time, and we were all warned that they would have a catastrophic effect on the economy. Clearly, the financial markets and every sane and sensible individual in this country could see that those decisions had to be taken, for the long-term benefit of this country.
We then had the comprehensive spending review, which set out tough targets for public expenditure over a range of years. There was tremendous consultation, certainly among Government Back Benchers, to ensure that the decisions taken were in the long-term interests of this country. Now, of course, we have the Budget for growth. That is the third part of the story.
It is clear that we must have private sector growth that generates job opportunities for the people of this country. Governments do not create wealth-creating jobs; it is up to the private sector to do that, but it is Governments’ duty to ensure that they create the environment in which the private sector can invest. The problem we inherited was that over the last 10 years of the Labour Government, the growth in employment all came in the public sector. Unsurprisingly, we hear from Labour Members about the percentage or number of people in their constituency employed in the public sector. We need to rebalance the economy completely to make the private sector predominant, and that is clearly where we are going.
The Opposition have two mantras: “It’s hurting but it isn’t working” and “The cuts go too far and too fast”. I detect the whiff of fear from Opposition Members that the Government’s strategy will work, and that by the next general election the public will realise that all the tough choices the Government have made were in the best interests of the economy and that the Opposition were wrong, and Labour will be defeated heavily at the polls as a result.
The Budget has brought in long overdue planning changes. I am concerned, as I do not want local people to be overridden, but I want business to have certainty about the decisions that are taken. Decisions on planning will be taken within a 12-month window that allows businesses to plan for the future and allows everyone to express their objections and comment on areas of uncertainty.
The council tax freeze has, without a doubt, already worked. Every council in England and Wales has frozen its council tax this year, and the Government have provided additional funds to ensure that services are provided by local authorities. I look forward to the Government, next year and the year after, providing a similar type of grant to freeze council tax again, so that instead of council tax more than doubling, as it did under Labour, it is frozen under the coalition agreement.
We clearly need a work force who are fit for purpose and apprenticeships that are available. I welcome the decision to fund more apprenticeships and training and to ensure that the work force are ready for the jobs as and when they are created. That is a key part of the strategy. The challenge now, after this Budget for growth, is for the private sector to start to create the jobs that the Budget wishes to see.
There is also a challenge for the Opposition. There is a potential alternative: we could borrow more money, increase taxation, increase interest rates and get into a position where there is more bust in society. I am sure the whole House will take the view that the Government have embarked on the right strategy and the right course, and will endorse the Budget tonight.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker—although I am from Scotland, I can get your title right.
The Budget has been billed as the Budget for growth and jobs, yet many right hon. and hon. Labour Members have already demonstrated ably why it has failed to live up to its billing on growth. It is also crystal clear that it is not a Budget for jobs either. Unemployment continues to rise, reaching a higher level than at any point under the previous Labour Government, yet the Chancellor’s Budget did next to nothing to address that serious issue.
The Government, like all previous Tory Administrations, basically believe that rising unemployment is a price worth paying. When they say that we are all in it together, we know that what they really mean is that the vulnerable, the unemployed and the poor are all in it together as they will bear the brunt of the Government’s reckless policies.
Labour’s priority in responding to the recession was to keep people in work. The previous Labour Government were determined to prevent the same devastation to families and communities that the Tories presided over in the 1980s and early 1990s, when unemployment rose to more than 3 million. Labour’s strategy was working and unemployment was falling, but now, less than a year into the life of this Government, unemployment is rising again, reaching its highest level for 17 years. That should have put jobs at the forefront of the Chancellor’s plans last week, but the evidence from his statement proves otherwise.
The £20 million funding allocated next year to support initiatives aimed at creating jobs is a pitiful amount in the grand scheme of things and the centrepiece of the Government’s plans for promoting the creation of new jobs, the establishment of 21 enterprise zones in England—not applicable in Scotland—simply takes us back to the failed past of the Thatcher and Major years. Indeed, entrepreneur William Chase, founder of the Chase distillery and Tyrrells crisps, described the plan for enterprise zones as a “criminal waste of cash”. He said:
“The Thatcher government wasted huge amounts of cash on enterprise zones in the eighties. They didn’t work then and I don’t see any reason why they should work now.”
According to a recent Centre for Cities report, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) mentioned earlier, the cost to the public purse of each additional job created in an enterprise zone during the 10 years of the programme was estimated at £17,000 at 1994-95 prices or £26,000 at 2010-11 prices, yet Labour’s future jobs fund cost only £6,500 per job created and the new deal for young people just £3,500 per job.
Stephen Lloyd
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that recent research showed that 50% of people who had been placed through the future jobs fund were unfortunately back on benefits seven months afterwards? Does he agree that that shows that it might not have been money well spent?
Graeme Morrice
And 50% of those people continued in full-time employment.
The Centre for Cities report also said that most jobs had simply been displaced from elsewhere and so they may bring short-lived prosperity to one area at the expense of another. That point was ably made earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). Given the Government’s professed enthusiasm for efficiency it seems bizarre that they should pursue such an inefficient means of creating new jobs, but when it comes to unemployment the Tories continue to be stuck in a time warp. They believe that the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s are the solution to today’s job crisis, but we know they are no more the solution now than they were then, when millions were left on the unemployment scrap heap.
The most alarming aspect of unemployment today is the UK’s high level of youth unemployment. As Members will know, the number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds increased by 30,000 in the last quarter to reach nearly a million—some 20% of all young people—which is the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992. The Government have been pretending that this is somehow not their problem and that they are not responsible for that record high, but let us look at what they have done since taking office last year. They have axed Labour’s future jobs fund—a criminally short-sighted decision—they have axed the education maintenance allowance, thereby disincentivising young people to stay in further education and improve their skills, and they have axed other employment schemes that were aimed at supporting into the workplace young people who have been out of work for more than six months. Let there be no doubt that this Tory Government and their Lib-Dem pals are the ones who are responsible for the record levels of our young people out of work.
Youth unemployment in my constituency stands at nearly 1,000, which is certainly not the worst figure in the country by any means, but every unemployed young person is one too many. I know from speaking to young people in my area that many feel a sense of hopelessness about their situation. They feel that little is being done to support them, that no one in Government cares about their plight and that their future is bleak. Once again, a whole generation of young people is being cut adrift by the dogmatic policies of the Members on the Government Benches.
The Government’s work experience placements will not improve young people’s employment prospects in the same way that six months of real work would. The Department for Work and Pensions has already said that
“the target group for work experience will be a very small proportion of young claimants aged 18-21”
and that it is not about guaranteeing young people a permanent job. The extra 12,500 apprenticeships a year announced in the Budget are woefully inadequate given that nearly a million young people are out of work and need help.
The Federation of Small Businesses has said that the Chancellor’s Budget did not go far enough to incentivise job creation, so action on job creation is another clear dividing line between the Government and the Opposition. The Government stick with their reckless cuts and do nothing to address the record level of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, that they are presiding over.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me the opportunity to speak in this Budget debate, which affects each and every household in the country. The Budget presented last week was unique in post-war British history because the country has never found itself in more difficult times and the level of borrowing is at an all-time high in modern memory. We needed to face that challenge. Real politicians do not come into politics to be popular—they come to do what they believe is right. Politicians need do what is right for the country and that is why the Government have taken some very difficult spending decisions. We need only look at Portugal, which has singularly failed to implement a credible plan to deal with its budget deficit, to see why we need to continue with our plan to get our country back on track. We need to continue to deal with the deficit while also ensuring that the conditions for economic growth are in place and I commend the Chancellor on a job well done in achieving the balancing act referred to by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The Budget is first about promoting business growth, as we have heard already, secondly about helping households and families and thirdly about dealing with the tough issues that need to be addressed. First, on business growth, one aspect that stood out in the Budget was the measures to encourage business growth. The Prime Minister recently spoke of his desire to implement the
“most pro-business, pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda ever unleashed by a government”
and I believe that the Government will achieve that.
How will we rebuild our economy? The new, low rates of corporation tax will help our home-grown businesses and will encourage new investment from overseas companies. Other measures include the entrepreneur’s tax relief and new finance available for small and medium sized firms, the simplification of the tax system, the removal of red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy, the extension of the small business rate relief holiday and the increased funding for work placements and apprenticeships, which will encourage investment and trade, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) has said. There is also the support for science and technology that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) mentioned. Those measures and others will help to stimulate business growth.
The reaction to the Budget from business has been favourable. The CBI’s director general John Cridland has said:
“This budget will help businesses grow and create jobs. The chancellor has made clear the UK is open for business.”
I have been speaking to businesses in my constituency to get their views on the Budget and how it will impact on them. Frank Wingate, the chief executive of West London Business said that his company
“welcomes the measures aimed at stimulating business growth—particularly lower corporation tax, enterprise zones, fuel price caps, reduced red tape and simplified planning processes. They will all help.”
Mike Freely, the managing director of design firm Octink, who recently met the Prime Minister to discuss how the Government could help small and medium-sized enterprises, said:
“There is a lot in the Budget for Small and Medium Enterprises like ours and a feel good factor that should inspire more confidence throughout our sector”.
The Budget has a lot to offer businesses both large and small. My constituency is full of successful and aspiring entrepreneurs and I hope that some of the measures in the Budget will encourage new business start-ups and continued expansion and investment. I am particularly interested in encouraging women who would like to start their own business, because a recent Federation of Small Businesses report has suggested that women could contribute far more to the UK economy if they started up more businesses. If we had the same level of entrepreneurship among our women as there is in the US, there would be 600,000 extra female-owned businesses contributing an additional £42 billion to the economy. We also need to get more women on boards. I refer hon. Members to the recommendations in Lord Davies’ report that FTSE 100 companies should have 25%-female boards and that companies should publish and disclose the number of women at all levels in their organisation. I believe that that would help to create growth, improve performance and make use of the great skills that are available to us in this country.
Secondly, the Budget will help households and families. The oil price, the scrapping of the fuel duty escalator and the cutting of duty have already been mentioned. I am also delighted that the Chancellor has announced the next step in increasing the personal tax allowance, as was mentioned earlier. Also, the announcement of £250 million to help first-time buyers will directly benefit many young people and will help on to the property ladder people who would not otherwise have been able to get on it.
Thirdly, the Budget is about dealing with tough issues. The Government have proved that they are not afraid to deal with difficult issues and the Chancellor has shown that he is willing to be resolute in fighting the deficit.
In conclusion, the Budget is one for business growth, helping households and families and continuing to face up to and deal with tough issues. We have a job to do and we are getting on with it. This country of ours has a genius for invention, industry and trade. There are great and powerful forces awaiting liberation in our economy—the forces of commercial creativity and innovation. Entrepreneurs just need to have their hands untied so that they can create wealth for this country. The Budget supports aspiration, will help many people to achieve great things for themselves and will create a stronger, sustainable and stable economy—a better future for us all. I commend the Budget to the House.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to say that this morning we had a coalition ground force moving into Swansea in a dawn raid at 8.30 am, with the Business Secretary alongside the Secretary of State for Wales talking in the chamber of commerce, and they had a great deal of local resistance from people with placards and the like. In Swansea, 40% of people in public services are facing cuts and unemployment, and we have been denied electrification by the Government, which would have meant inward investment in Swansea. In addition, Tata Steel has just had a bomb dropped on it about the new carbon tax, which will focus only on its facility in the UK and not on those in any of the other 20 countries in which it makes quality steel. Obviously, it is a very valuable employer in the area.
The people resisting the Secretaries of State this morning were similar to the hundreds of thousands who marched in London on Saturday. Who were those people? They were nurses, doctors and teachers—people who keep our work force healthy and educated. They were tax collectors who face losing their jobs—people who are supposed to be collecting tax more efficiently. They were police officers, who are meant to patrol and police, as well as look after the riots and protests being incited by the cuts. They were small business people who are clearly concerned that the Government’s attitude to small business is, “If you make a loss, sell your tools,” as opposed to achieving growth through increased sales. They were service users—people who face cuts in libraries, leisure centres, pools, centres for the elderly, Sure Start and so on. The people on the march had one common cause—that there should be an alternative mix of growth, tax, cuts and timing that is optimal to confront the deficit before us.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the deficit did not come out of some sort of Labour inadequacy. It was the price paid to avoid a depression caused by the banks. Two thirds of the deficit—£84 billion—has been evaluated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others as being the impact of the financial disaster that we imported from sub-prime debt. The fiscal squeeze on which the Government have embarked is about £98 billion, more than the overall financial crisis. That is to take place over four years. The question is whether, if there is a massive outside impact on the country’s financial deficit, we can hope to get rid of that and more within four years without disrupting our economic capacity and social fabric. Should it be the case that three quarters of that is cuts and only one quarter is tax?
The OBR has reached its verdict. It has had to change the growth forecast from 2.6% to 1.7%, which shows that less revenue will come in from people working, and the Government will have to rely more and more on savage cuts. There is an alternative, the Labour alternative—to halve the deficit in four years rather than get rid of it completely, and to use three methods instead of just one, cuts. The three methods are to focus on growth, make the bankers pay their fair share and make savings over time. Germany, for example, is clearing its deficit through export-driven growth, rather than focusing on cuts.
I was over in Germany. I went to UK Trade & Investment, which markets Britain for inward investment. There are lots of German companies queuing up to invest in Britain. Those offers were put on a computer platform for regional development agencies to draw down, but because the RDAs have been abolished, those inward investments are not being taken up and are going to other countries. German regions, let alone the whole country, have offices in Seoul and other emerging markets and are trading and getting inward investment there, and we are not. We are undermining our ability to grow. Instead of a budget for growth, we have cuts.
Growth went negative in the last quarter of last year. Why? Because consumer confidence, the inclination to spend, and investment confidence were washed away by the talk of austerity and the reckless, breakneck speed at which the cuts were made. In addition to the 300,000 people who are to be sacked from public services, PricewaterhouseCoopers says that another million jobs will be lost in the private sector, costing around £7 billion in lost tax and benefit costs per year. Add to that the £4 billion that we have to spend on restructuring the NHS to help privatise it, and the other costs of unnecessary structural change at a time of shrinking budgets, and we can see that this is economic incompetence at its worst. It is not necessary in its current contortion, it is not fair and it is not sensible.
The key issue on banks is that they need to provide liquidity to small business as the engine for growth. We all heard about Merlin, but the question is whether that will be delivered. Sadly, a person in my constituency is on hunger strike over the issue. Finally, people may not have noticed the 3p reduction in inheritance tax given to bankers, who are now paying a smaller proportion. If they give money, for example through works of art, we can see from the fine detail—
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and other Members who have spoken so well.
May I begin with a story? It is about a family brewery in Blandford, which is not in my constituency, but in the neighbouring one. The brewery was run by one of my closest friends, David Woodhouse. Tragically, he died prematurely of a heart attack recently, aged only 49. His brother, Anthony, now runs the business, which employs 1,500 people, and he plans to invest £5 million in a new brewery. When David was alive, he and I used to speak regularly about taxes, red tape, bureaucracy. His bugbear was the duty on beer. “Do they realise,” he used to say, “what politicians impose on our business every single year?” Our conclusion was that they—the politicians—did not realise, because so many have not operated in a business.
Now it is Anthony’s turn and he is aghast that the beer duty, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), has risen by 10p for no reason other than the nature of the product he produces. Why do we go on punishing this industry, year in, year out? Is it to discourage drinking? If it is, there is no logic in punishing publicans who serve, in the main, law-abiding citizens in a safe environment. The lager louts get their beer from cheaper sources, not least the supermarkets.
On that subject, Mr Woodhouse makes an additional point. Pubs have to pay VAT on food, while supermarkets which sell prepared meals—often full of salt and preservatives—do not. This inequality is crippling the pub business. On the continent, VAT has been reduced on eating out—what an excellent idea and incentive.
The only other reason for this annual tax raid is to fill the Treasury’s coffers. And this from a Government who want to encourage the private sector. Let us stop targeting the brewers, remove the escalator and allow a vital UK business to survive. On the subject of removing burdens, surely the Budget was a wonderful opportunity for boldness. Conservative economic principles—I emphasise “Conservative”—are simple: low taxes, the minimum of red tape and bureaucracy, fair and balanced employment law, and freedom from unaccountable institutions like the EU.
The EU is one of the main handicaps to business in this country and to growth and prosperity. We can talk until we are blue in the face about deregulating, removing taxes and all the rest of it, but unless we leave the EU and renegotiate a trade agreement, business will never truly be set free. The EU superstate will fail, as sure as eggs are eggs. The question is are we bold enough to lead the way to pastures new where our economy can thrive and our people prosper?
Let me dwell briefly on personal taxes. Why have we kept the 50p tax rate? I agree that we should all pay our fair share, but surely a ceiling of 40% is more than adequate. Taxes are not there to punish people who aspire, work hard and contribute enormously to their country. Regrettably, and all too often, it appears to many that taxes imposed by the Opposition were based on envy. Our coalition partners are no better. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills suggested a mansion tax. That suggestion was spiteful, vindictive and regressive. Let us lower personal taxes. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that such a move increases the tax take.
Finally, let me touch on Saturday’s march. It proved to me and many others one point—how effective the Opposition had been in 13 years. Why? Because they effectively bought the electorate and created a bloated and unaffordable public sector. For those who are losing their jobs, I have every sympathy. We do not enjoy sitting on the Government Benches watching people lose their jobs, contrary to what many Opposition Members say. That is disingenuous of the Opposition. Now, as we have seen, tens of thousands of people are paying the price for Labour’s ideology. Wealth, which pays for the public sector, must come from the private sector. It is here that we must be bolder and far more far sighted.
The Government must free us from the EU yoke, lower and simplify business and personal taxes, review employment law and create a leaner public sector that we can afford. Let us finally take politics and politicians out of the economy and allow our business men and women get on with it. The Budget is a small beginning, but more boldness is needed in the years ahead.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I apologise to the House for my brief absence from the debate, which was caused by my attendance at a meeting that I had requested in a previous debate. After I intervened on the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), he said that I had not been here for the duration, so I would like to make that clear for the record.
I believe that a major focus of the Budget should have been the inclusion of measures that would boost growth, stimulate the economy and increase employment opportunities as a result, but what we have seen yet again from the Government is a set of ideologically driven and politically based measures, rather than anything based on practical economics. Fundamental to the Government’s entire approach is the belief that cutting the deficit deeply and quickly will stimulate growth in our economy. The very cornerstone of this approach is wrong. A year ago a Member of this House responded to the previous Labour Government’s Budget by declaring:
“We must not cut Government spending too soon and risk plunging a fragile recovery back into recession. Cuts without economic growth will not deal with the deficit”.
The Member who said that is now the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.
It seems that the Office for Budget Responsibility agrees with the Business Secretary. It has shown that growth is down for this year and next year. This revision of the figures is a sad reflection of the fact that the Government have got it wrong. It appears that the Government do not realise that if the economy is not growing, thousands more people will lose their jobs, fewer people pay tax, more people claim benefits and it becomes harder to get the deficit down. That is what we mean by cutting too fast and too deep, and I think that it is reasonable for us, as the Opposition, to ask the Government what their plan B is if the downward trend continues.
The lack of growth is the central story of the Budget, but the Chancellor did announce some measures aimed at mitigating this and they are worthy of consideration. Enterprise zones look interesting, but we will need more details of their resources. As a Greater Manchester Member, I am willing to give them a cautious welcome, given our inclusion in the initial list of zones, but I heed the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) and for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) about the problems the zones might cause.
I had been hoping to hear more about improved resources for the regional growth funds, which seem to have modest budgets for what is expected of them. I worry that with the loss of the regional development agencies we in the north-west have lost more from this Government than we have so far gained. The Northwest Regional Development Agency was not a perfect institution, but research shows that it brought to the region more than £5 for every £1 it invested. I am not certain that local enterprise partnerships, which have more restricted powers and limited coverage, will be able to match that success.
I also welcome the Chancellor’s comments on manufacturing. I represent a part of the world where manufacturing is still very important and am often frustrated by comments in the House to the effect that there is almost no manufacturing industry left in the UK. Such comments are very misplaced. The UK is a world leader in a number of high-value manufacturing sectors, including pharmaceuticals, life sciences, advanced engineering and aerospace. Although we cannot deny that the number of people employed in manufacturing has been in steady decline for 30 years—people in my area know that only too well—the British Chambers of Commerce states that output and value have risen throughout that time, hitting an all-time high in 2007. Manufacturing will never return to the share of the economy it had in the 1980s, but there is a real potential for growth. There was an excellent meeting of the associate parliamentary manufacturing group this morning, where we looked at finance for small and medium-sized enterprises. I hope that the Government will engage with the group and look at some of its work.
I also note with interest the measures in the Budget that are designed to make the planning process simpler. I welcome any changes that would stimulate economic growth, but the biggest barriers to growth in some areas come from a lack of powers for local authorities to deal with planning blight. I have been working with local businesses in Stalybridge. I am passionate about retaining our town centre and the sense of identity it gives our community. Traders tell me how their businesses are often affected by the number of empty and unsightly properties around them. In some cases, these are large buildings with absentee owners who are unwilling to sell in the present economic climate, yet their very presence deters new investment from coming into the area. In one specific case, a consortium is interested in buying a building that is falling down, but complying with the legislation to use compulsory purchase orders and the powers to force a sale are difficult for local authorities. Piloting the relaxation of some of those regulations would be welcome, and I would be very pleased to see such developments.
I also want to say something about investment in infrastructure. I welcome the £85 million investment that the Government have promised in the Budget for a link between the Victoria and Piccadilly railway stations in Manchester, which will have a positive impact on journey times. I sincerely hope that in due course the Government will support the rest of the northern hub proposals, which would have a significant impact on economic growth in the area. In particular, I think there is a lot of scope to boost growth by improving transport links between the north-west and Yorkshire regions, and with that in mind I hope the Government will reinstate the planned Mottram-to-Tintwistle bypass through my constituency.
In many of the speeches made in the response to the Budget, Members have highlighted the impact of the Government’s agenda on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. I will never abrogate my responsibilities to speak for these people and I endorse what has been said, but I also want to speak for the thousands of my constituents who may not be the most vulnerable but who are still struggling to get by. These working and middle-class people are the backbone of Britain, and right now they are finding life hard. Rising fuel prices, the increase in VAT and changes to tax thresholds, particularly the changes to indexation, will increase the pressure. Next year, families with incomes as low as £26,000 will lose their tax credits entirely, and the year after l.5 million families will lose all their child benefit, which will be deeply felt.
For many of my constituents, the decisions taken by this Government are really hurting. With revised figures pointing to lower growth, higher borrowing and higher unemployment, there is no evidence that their approach is working. Is the Budget so ideological that the Government cannot see the danger signs staring us in the face? What we really need instead is practical and pragmatic economic leadership.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
“Rescue, rebalance and recover”. No, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have not got hold of a copy of the late George Best’s doctor’s notes, nor a copy of the advice from the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) to his younger brother after a mauling at Prime Minister’s questions. I refer to the three words that the Chancellor used at the beginning of his Budget statement last week, which are so important in setting out its significance: “rescue” because the coalition has had to rescue the British economy from a debt crisis that would have seen our interest repayments rising to £70 billion a year; “rebalance” because the Labour party has tested to destruction the thesis that a modern economy can be driven through public spending and an unsustainable boom and bust; and “recover” because without a private sector-led recovery, we are condemned to a decade of stagflation.
Having listened to the debate yesterday and today, I must say that Opposition Members still do not seem to have got the two real golden rules of modern economics. The first is that every pound they commit at the Dispatch Box, claiming it as their own, has to be earned by the private sector before it can be spent on public services. The second golden rule, which we proved in the ’80s and must now prove again, is that cutting taxes on business increases the amount of money available to us in this House.
The truth is that, like a gambler forced to come home one day and ’fess up to his sad family that he has not been working but living off debt and gambling with his credit card, the British economy must now be weaned off the unsustainable boom that was fuelled by cheap credit under the Labour party. As in our personal lives, crises are always opportunities. The Budget was significant to me for this reason above all: it set out carefully the steps towards a sustainable recovery and the rebalancing of our economy. “What”, I hear Opposition Members ask, “will this rebalanced economy look like and where will the jobs come from?” Let me try to explain.
The Budget again contains the seeds of the recovery: in the enterprise investment scheme reforms, in the venture capital trust reforms and in the encouragement for investors putting their own wealth at risk to start small companies, it will first be an enterprise recovery. In the emphasis on the clean economy, high-technology jobs and life sciences, it will secondly be a smart-growth recovery. And in the emphasis on corporation tax reductions and sending a signal around the world that this country is open for business, it will be a global and export-driven recovery.
Nowhere will that be cheered more loudly than in my constituency, Mid Norfolk, and my region, East Anglia, a region that for 30, nay 40, years has been treated by London Governments as nothing more than a commuter reservoir to feed the London economy. Our area has huge resources in offshore energy, in high-tech engineering at the Hethel centre, in the headquarters of Lotus, in Norwich research park, a global centre of food science and agriculture, in the university of East Anglia, a leading, world-class centre of climate science, and 40 miles down the road, in what the Americans would term one cluster, Cambridge university, with all its strengths in science and research. How woeful that over the past 30 or 40 years we have treated the area as a commuter reservoir.
Well, the people of East Anglia are ready to rise to the challenge, and with the investment in infrastructure that this Government have laudably managed to secure from a difficult financing settlement, in terms of dualling the A11 and the money announced last week for regional rail, we finally have some hope that our area will be able to stand again and lead the economic recovery as we have in the past.
Norfolk, as Members will remember and not need me to remind them, was the county that gave us the agricultural revolution, our finest military hero and our first Prime Minister, but it is a county that has been left behind and failed by the model of state dependency which the Labour party has pursued. In championing the high-technology and life science potential of our area, I draw attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am proud to have entered the House after a 15-year career helping to start some of those businesses and to help entrepreneurs to take the risk of creating new businesses.
In closing, I want to concentrate on the laudable support given to the life sciences. As we think about the markets throughout the world in which we have the chance to grow our economy, we should look no further than the recent Foresight report, which drew attention to the fact that the world’s population will rise to 9 billion. With that rise will come huge markets in food, medicine and clean energy. Those are the markets of tomorrow, the markets in which this country has the potential to lead; and those are the markets for which this Budget will begin to sow the seeds of a sustainable recovery.
The significance of that point is not just economic. The Budget last week set us on the road to a recovery that we can be proud of—a recovery that will give this country back a sense of purpose throughout the world. What finer mission is there than to be a small nation putting its experience in science, trade and enterprise to the benefit of people in the developing world, giving them the hope that there is a model for them and that they do not have to take 200 or 300 years to reach the privileged position that we have reached? It is therefore with huge pride that I support the Budget and commend it to the House.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
I want to talk about work, the value of work, the economic necessity of work and the consequences of millions of people being without work.
Work is more than what we do; it goes to the very heart of who we are. When we meet people, what is the first question that we ask? “What do you do for a living?” In the early 1980s in Salford, in my city, we had two really deep recessions, high unemployment and flight from the city, leading to a completely unbalanced community, low self-esteem particularly among our young people, very high crime and antisocial behaviour and lots of family breakdown. Again, in the 1990s, after almost 20 years of Conservative government, I had 50% male unemployment in two of my inner-city wards and more than 70% youth unemployment. That scarred our city, and it has taken us a whole generation to recover, and I am very worried that we are about to repeat some of the mistakes that we made then.
Unemployment has risen to more than 2.5 million, the highest since 1994; youth unemployment is almost 1 million, up 70,000 since the Government took office; and almost 30% of unemployed people in Salford and Eccles are between the ages of 18 and 24. But every statistic, every number, is a real person and somebody’s life. Just in the past three days, I have been contacted by a young man called Jack, who is about to graduate in criminology. He has been a special constable for the past three years and is desperate to become a police officer, but he has very little chance of that now, with the cuts to our police service. I have also been contacted by Tracy, a young mum with three children, who went out and became qualified as an adult residential nurse, but again, we are making redundancies in the hospital, and she has very little chance of getting such a job.
The increase in apprenticeships in the Budget is of course welcome, but it is simply not enough. The future jobs fund would have given 150,000 opportunities to our young people, and in Salford and Eccles alone 800 young people secured opportunities through that fund and many have full-time work.
The enterprise zone at Airport City is also very welcome, but all the evidence, including from IPPR North in a good report by Ed Cox, shows that the previous enterprise zones were far more about displacement than about creating new jobs—and what we really need are those new jobs.
We find that some people are juggling two or three jobs on very low pay. They are desperate to make ends meet, they see little of their families and they have no leisure time. Others have no work at all; at least 10 people are chasing every vacancy in my area. Just last week, a charity shop opened on our local shopping precinct, and 200 people queued up for it to open. That is an incredibly grim existence—a really depressing life and no money to enjoy anything else. I remember the days when we talked about the future and how it would mean a decent home, a decent job and lots of leisure time. It was like a painting of utopia—we would have time to go to the theatre and have arts, beauty, culture and all of that. What we are left with is a reality where people have very little money and no time with their families, and cannot enjoy that better life.
If we are going to get through this undoubtedly difficult time and get our country on to a better footing, then we all have to pull together and do our bit. There is a big, resounding silence at this point. Yes, we need more volunteers, and public services do need to be more efficient, but if we really are all in this together, business has to step up to the plate, think hard and change the way it operates. Old-fashioned capitalism that simply maximises profit and squeezes its workers is exactly that—old-fashioned, out of date, and not always even very efficient. It is time to think hard about a new capitalism that is socially responsible, respects those who work and contribute, and makes good economic sense rather than one that is based on a race to the bottom with people competing for the lowest wage.
The best, most modern and most forward-looking companies “get it”, whether it is Google or Microsoft. Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, said in the papers at the weekend:
“I really believe one of the reasons we’ve seen an erosion of trust…in big companies is they’ve allowed themselves to be seen as being detached from society and they will float in and out of societies according to what the tax regime is...isn’t it better to be in a country and say ‘let’s try and work through the difficult times and get to the good times’?”
That is the kind of company that we need—one that is dedicated to this country and recognises the value of its workers. The Co-operative bank has increased its dividend payments by 16%, and it has had a 38% increase in the number of current accounts and 140,000 extra customers. That is because it operates ethically. It did not take the high risks that many other banks took, and therefore it has a sense of trust and reliability. That is the kind of new industry that we need.
The new model for successful industry is to embed companies in the UK. We should not close our borders through protectionism, but want them to come here and stay here, creating the conditions for growth and—dare I say it—a true sense of corporate social responsibility, not a bit of charity at the end of the year. That will not be achieved by limiting rights to request flexible working or limiting maternity and paternity leave. That flies in the face of a proper joint enterprise. This is a moment when we should take a step back and realise the damage that has been done to our economy and to our people primarily by the actions of greedy, risk-taking banks selling loans that could never have been repaid. Let us say, “Never again.” We want a responsible capitalism that recognises the interdependence of those who finance the wealth and those who produce it.
The future looks very bleak for many people in Salford and Eccles who have little or no shelter from the storms that are heading their way—people without savings who struggle to pay the rent and have an insecure job, and hundreds of thousands who have little hope of any job at all. The economic numbers are appalling, with unemployment going up, growth down and inflation up. I believe that this Government will live to regret the political choices that they have made with our economy.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
It is a real privilege, as ever, to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who spoke so movingly and who is prepared and brave enough to set out an alternative—something that her Front Benchers are not courageous and bold enough to do.
I want to deal with the issue of poverty and the least well-off, and what this Budget does for people who struggle and do not have a lot of money. The previous Government were like a game of two halves. First, when Tony Blair was in charge between 1997 and 2001, they were a responsible Government who were quite effective in many ways, particularly when it came to fighting poverty. However, after that period, as the former Prime Minister increasingly got his hands on the levers of our public finances and wider economic policy, things started to go wrong.
It is against that backdrop that I am particularly keen to see the measures in this Budget succeed. It is not good enough that the 60% median for child poverty—relative poverty—went from 3.6 million in 2004-05 to 3.9 million in 2008-09, or that the number of those in deeper poverty went from 2.3 million to 2.6 million in the same period. That rise was really disappointing considering that the previous Government had pledged to take positive action on that problem. The problem is not just with child poverty; it is wider than that. The figures for all individuals show that 13.4 million people were worse off than the 60% median in 2000-01, and that in 2008-09, that figure was stuck at 13.4 million. To me, that is a real disappointment.
In this afternoon’s debate in the Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, I raised what has happened to those who are of working age and are in poverty. According to the relative poverty measures, in 2000-01 6.5 million such people were in relative poverty, and that had risen to 7.8 million people by 2008-09. The second half of the game of two halves that was the previous Government was not a ringing endorsement of how we look after the least well-off in our communities. As we all know, the rising inequality in that period between those in the bottom quintile and those in the top quintile was a great shame. Over the whole period, inequality rose. That is a great shame.
I therefore welcome the measures in the Budget that aim to make work pay. That is the key message that we need to send. We are taking 1.1 million people out of tax altogether by increasing the personal allowance. We are helping and understanding by engaging in the issues of fuel duty and introducing the fair fuel stabiliser.
The most important measure is the universal credit. I am pleased to see from chart A.5 on page 78 of the Red Book that there is a clear plan that in 2012-13 the distribution will be such that the least well-off will be protected from expenditure decisions. I am pleased to see that the universal credit will make work pay. That is focused not on the middle classes who are on the fifth or sixth deciles, and who are frankly quite well off, relatively speaking, but on the least well-off, who are on the bottom two deciles. Too often under the previous Government, those people were sadly neglected. Those are the people who really need help and on whom we should focus. Those are the people for whom we should make work pay through incentives to enter work. What I particularly like about the universal credit, which is shown on pages 80 to 81 of the Red Book, is the real help for lone parents and first earners that was not there before. Those pages also show that the marginal withdrawal rate is under control, and that it will broadly incentivise work and make part-time work more possible and practical.
To conclude, I welcome the measures that should provide help on the issue of child poverty. The Budget measures are aimed at reducing child poverty by 50,000. That is really positive. I hope that as we come out of recession and out of the difficulties, things will start to improve for everyone across the board. However, we really need to look after the least well-off as best we can.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
The Government’s main jibe at the Opposition throughout this debate has been, “What is the alternative to the cuts?” I will spell out what I think that alternative should be. Of course the deficit has to be brought down —we all agree on that—but slashing public expenditure by £80 billion in four years is probably the most risky and counter-productive way of doing that. The Chancellor has largely ignored the other three ways.
First, there are the proceeds of economic growth. The estimate of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility for growth over the next five years, albeit recently scaled down, has growth at 1.7% this year, 2.5% next year, then 2.9%, 2.9%, and 2.8%. That means that, on the Government’s own estimates, there will be an increase in the national income of £185 billion. Governments always take about 40%. That means that there will be extra Government revenues over the next five years of £74 billion. That is half the current Government deficit of £146 billion, and nearly three quarters of the Government’s estimated structural deficit of £109 billion. Therefore—on their own estimates, I repeat—the Government would halve the budget deficit in five years without making a single public expenditure cut. I am not against such cuts, and I think there should be some, but I am simply pointing out that there are alternative and far better ways of dealing with the problem.
The reason why the Government have chosen to focus obsessively on benefit and public expenditure cuts is not because they are economically necessary on the scale that they say, but because of their overriding ideological objective of chopping back the welfare system and shrinking the state. That is what it is really about.
The second way to reduce the deficit is obviously through tax increases, but the Government have chosen to minimise that option and maximise the cuts option—the balance between the two is 77% and 23%. Thatcher never went beyond 50:50. The Chancellor has ostentatiously avoided any tax rises that might disturb the rich. The non-dom loophole has not been closed; it would bring in an extra £3 billion. The promised £2 billion to be saved in tax avoidance is really pretty small beer, given that even Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs admits that avoidance will cost £16 billion this year and most independent experts think that the figure will be £50 billion. The tripling of the Government’s bank levy, which was recommended by the International Monetary Fund and would bring in another £6 billion, has simply been passed over.
Moreover, the Chancellor has simply turned his eyes away from any fiscal innovation that might produce a fairer Britain where all of us are in it together. A financial transaction tax at a modest rate of 0.05% would raise about £30 billion. An empty property tax would raise £5 billion, and a land value tax, which would be a great deal fairer than the council tax, which it could replace, would raise more than £30 billion. A minimum tax levy on high earners would put a cap on avoidance and raise more than £10 billion.
The Chancellor really ought to be less timid. The public want taxes that will hurt the rich, and particularly bankers. I do not think the Government realise that. Any permutation of the taxes that I have mentioned could raise at least £30 billion a year—probably rather more if the Chancellor chose, but of course he will not, because the Tory party gets half its funding from the bankers.
Then there is the third option for reducing the deficit, which is a jobs and growth strategy. The cost of putting a million people on the dole, which is what the Government are planning to do, is probably about £6 billion depending on the level of benefits involved. Instead of throwing a million people on the scrapheap, which will substantially worsen the deficit, the Government could invest in a million jobs to provide the social housing and transport infrastructure that are so desperately needed; to develop the green technologies that the green investment bank was supposed to fund if only the Government had not shrivelled its powers; to deal with the rising child protection case load; to train a more skilled work force; and to care for a growing ageing population, to mention just some of the service jobs that could be provided. There would be a significant net gain in deficit reduction for many reasons, not least because of instead of a million people being a drain on the Exchequer, they would contribute to it.
The real cause of the financial crash has not been addressed at all. It is astonishing that three years on, nothing has been done to address the massive flaws in the banking system’s structure and its use of derivatives, bonuses, lending practices, offshoring and speculation. The Budget sets out £80 billion-worth of spending cuts that are not economically necessary on such a scale, will do lasting damage to the social fabric and do not deal with the real—
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I have listened to this debate with growing incredulity this afternoon and for some hours yesterday, as speaker after speaker on the Labour Benches has risen to deny that the last Government’s profligacy could in any possible manner have had an effect on the economic situation that we now find ourselves in.
We need to remind ourselves that we have a £150 billion deficit, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) pointed out, represents about 12% of GDP. Back in 1976, when another Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, went cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund because we were bust, that figure was only 7%. Our economy has been completely and utterly out of balance. We spend £43 billion on interest alone, which is more than we spend on education, and more than we spend on defence, the Foreign Office and overseas aid combined. That is an absolute disgrace.
There is no doubt that the previous Government brought us to within a scintilla of being where Greece is. We would have been there, if we had had a credit downgrade and our interest rates had gone up. That is where we would have been headed if Labour had won the election.
The previous Government presided over a halving of the manufacturing sector in this country, a fall in our share of world trade, and an expansion of the gap in prosperity between the north and the south. We should take no lessons on economic management from Opposition Members.
I welcome the Budget, which is a Budget for growth and jobs, against a tough background. Nobody enjoys figures such as the 0.6% contraction in the last quarter, or the OBR’s downgraded forecast of 1.7% growth for this year, but equally, nobody who looks at the previous Government’s record can imagine that under Labour, those figures would be anything but worse.
Labour Members offer no constructive alternative. Instead, they offer opportunistic objections to every sensible suggestion by the Government about saving on expenditure. Every time an Opposition Member stands up and says, “No. We don’t want this measure on tuition fees and we don’t like moving from RPI to CPI in pensions,” and so on, they are really saying, “We’re going to increase expenditure, and we’re going to increase either the deficit or taxation as a consequence.” That opportunistic approach is at odds with their rhetoric of prudence, which is in turn at odds with the marchers’ placards on Saturday calling for no cuts whatsoever. That did not stop the Leader of the Opposition strutting his stuff on the stage in Hyde park and trying to assume the mantle of Martin Luther King. He had the dreams, but he did not have the detail or the substance.
Tax for corporations will be reduced under this Government to 23%, which is 16 percentage points lower than the rate in the US. On the radio the morning after the Budget, Sir Martin Sorrell told us that WPP, the largest advertising agency in the world, would relocate to this country from Ireland. On that subject, even when suffering and having to go to the IMF, what is the one thing that Ireland holds on to and defends above all else? It is its low corporate taxation rate, which, at just 12.5%, has enabled that country to attract double the average level of EU inward investment. We need to bring taxes down.
I welcome the fact that small business taxes will be reduced to 20%, and that we will support entrepreneurship by doubling the enterprise allowance to £10 million, so that those who go out and create businesses and wealth for themselves are encouraged to do so. In the process, they employ people, generate wealth, and pay the taxes that pay for the front-line services that we all want protected.
I was astonished by what the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who I am pleased to see is in his place, said. He regaled us with all the benefits of red tape and told us all about how regulation was such a marvellous thing. In the real world of business, not a single business person would ever say that. I have not heard one business person further that argument.
I welcome the fact that we will implement Lord Young’s review in full, and that we will ensure that companies that employ fewer than 10 people and genuine start-ups will be exempt from domestic regulation. That is a step forward.
I also welcome the support that we are providing for the young. There will be 50,000 new apprenticeships, increasing to 250,000 over the period of this Parliament, and the work placement schemes—the 80,000 places that we heard about earlier. We will also double the number of university technology colleges from 12 to 24.
I am pleased that something was done on fuel, particularly for rural areas such as mine in Central Devon, and I am particularly pleased about the rise to 45p of the tax-deductible mileage allowance, which will help many voluntary organisations that rely on voluntary drivers. I also welcome the fact that the Budget is fair in raising the tax threshold, because it means that we will take more of the poorest hard-working people in our land out of tax altogether. That is the right and the decent thing to do. I shall conclude now—because I am aware that others wish to speak—by saying that this is a Budget for growth, it is a Budget that stands for enterprise, and it is a Budget to which Labour Members have no answer.
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
As we debate the Budget it is deeply disappointing, but not a bit surprising, that Labours Members are once again forced to highlight the impact that the Government’s approach is having in our communities. The Budget was more of the same. The Chancellor has confirmed that he will not alter his course, in spite of the pain it is causing to ordinary families. The Government’s cuts are too deep and too fast, and they are hurting. In my West Dunbartonshire constituency the jobless total is at its highest for well over a decade, and the predictions are that many more people will lose their jobs.
Pensioners are feeling the pain of the VAT rise and now, thanks to the Budget, will be hit with another attack on their income, because the Government are doing what they promised they would not do and slashing the winter fuel payment. Shame on them. And let us not forget that pensioners will lose thousands of pounds through the Government’s plan to link public sector pension rises permanently to the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index. The Government say that that is necessary to reduce the deficit, but pensioners now, and those who will collect their pensions in years to come, will continue to see the value of their pensions slashed long after the deficit has been paid off. That leads us to conclude that the changes are an ideological measure intended to make pensions much less generous.
The Government say that it is okay to cut public sector jobs because the private sector will fill the gap. Perhaps that will be achievable in some areas—I really hope it will—but in my constituency there are 35 unemployed people for every job vacancy. The Government’s approach, therefore, is breathtakingly complacent and reckless as far as my constituency is concerned. The fact that in many parts of the country there are such high numbers of people out of work compared with the number of vacancies goes to show just how out of touch the Government are, if they think that the private sector will come to the rescue.
Furthermore, the Government’s plans to equalise the state pension age earlier than previously planned and at a greatly accelerated rate means that hundreds of thousands of women in their mid-50s will lose thousands of pounds. This change is fundamentally unfair on women who have planned carefully for their retirement. It cannot be fair that with just seven years to prepare and plan, they find that they must work an extra two years before being able to draw a state pension. In contrast, men of a similar age have been given eight years’ notice of a one year change. On Friday in Dumbarton I met a woman who said that she could not continue to meet the physical demands of her job for that extra time. What is the Government’s response to such women? They are not arguing that the state pension age should not be equalised, and neither am I, but the Government are going about all this the wrong way.
The cuts will impact hard on vulnerable people. I support the basic principles of welfare reform—trying to simplify the benefits system and doing all we can to help people into work where they are able to work—but the Government are going too far. Imposing an arbitrary 20% cut to the bill for disability living allowance proves that the Government’s approach is ill considered, and by publishing the Welfare Reform Bill before they have finished consulting, they cannot even pretend that they have taken into account the impact on the vulnerable people who will be affected by these changes. Scrapping the mobility component of DLA for people in residential care shows pure indifference to the needs of millions of people with disabilities who need vital support. It is an outrageously unfair cut that will leave many disabled people trapped in their homes. We had an intervention earlier from the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), but we still have not cleared up the confusion on this issue. Earlier the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), who is not in his place at the moment, said from a sedentary position, “Stop frightening disabled people.” Let me be very clear with the Government Front-Bench team: it is their reforms that are frightening disabled people.
I have been contacted today by a number of individuals and charities that fear that the new work capability assessment will discriminate against many seriously sick and disabled benefits claimants, including, for example, blind people with guide dogs. The Government need to think again before rushing through any changes in that area.
The Government’s cuts are fundamentally unfair and completely contradict the claims that we are “all in this together”. They are driving up unemployment, cutting lifeline support for ordinary families and pensioners, and targeting women and vulnerable people. In response to a point made by the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), let me say that public sector workers pay taxes too. It is ridiculous to suggest that they do not contribute to the economy of this country. Ordinary people are being forced to pay the price of the excesses of the bankers, while the banks themselves have been given a massive tax cut by the Government this year. The huge march in London at the weekend showed that the mainstream majority across the country want the Government to change course. Sadly, the Budget was just more of the same.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
It is a great honour to speak in this important debate. I am mindful of the contribution made by the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who talked about the importance of growth. He recognised that the economy would start growing soon and suggested that this would yield a considerable amount of additional money for us to spend. He is quite right, and I welcome that admission. However, he is completely wrong to think that growth will simply happen without our tackling the deficit. That is what we must do, which is why the Budget is essentially fiscally neutral: we have already set out plans lasting for four years that will deliver the outcomes that we need for growth. That is why the Budget is all about growth, and I want to focus on those important issues.
First, one reason why I was not marching in London on Saturday—although I would not have done it anyway—was that we were celebrating the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement of massive investment in infrastructure in my constituency, with the Stroud to Kemble redoubling. That kind of development really matters. My constituents are delighted to know that we will have a better way of getting to London. Businesses are already gearing up for more investment, and there is a general feeling that the scheme will lead to more prosperity. That stands in sharp contrast with, for example, the haphazard way in which the regional development agency attempted to promote growth in our area. Indeed, it was more likely to end up building houses than promoting factories. I welcome the fact that the Government have invested so wisely, and they are doing so elsewhere in the country too.
The second important thing is the announcement about the green investment bank, with £3 billion to start with. That is a great start, and is exactly the sort of investment that we need—certainly in my constituency, but across the board too. I look forward to the day when the green investment bank can start raising capital on its own. I understand why there is caution about that, but we have made an excellent start and the green investment bank will deliver some important things.
The third important thing—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned this in his opening speech, and I will develop it—is giving people the opportunity to get to work. Once people are in work, we need to ensure that they benefit from appropriate training, which is why I welcome the emphasis on training and apprenticeships. For far too long under the Labour Government, we were effectively training people up to a standard that was good, but not good enough: it was just level 2, and we want level 3. We should learn a few lessons from Germany’s export-led recovery, one of which is that good training matters. I therefore celebrate the Government’s efforts to deliver really good training for our young people.
It is important to mention planning, too. We need a more flexible and collaborative planning system, involving those being planned for—home owners and local communities—businesses and local authorities. We should see more agreement at an earlier stage, so that things happen more smoothly. We do not want to see the kind of attitude that we have seen in the past, which at worst has involved planning by appeal— and, sometimes, not a huge amount getting done. I welcome those changes.
I also welcome the measures on fuel. I have had a lot of complaints from my constituents about the rising cost of fuel, and I understand them. We are in a rural area, and we have a large number of haulage firms. For them, the changes in taxation will be welcome. We must stick to a fiscally responsible approach to public expenditure, but we need growth, and we need to be active in promoting it. The right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton was correct in saying that growth would go up, and that it would do so on the basis of investment, good training and a sensible taxation strategy.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Like others, my speech will focus on people. The number of unemployed claimants in my constituency is now 3,812, which is 9.2%. In the north-east of England, despite the progress made over the past 12 years in diversifying our industrial and business base, we still have the highest rate of unemployment in the whole country, at 10.2%. Even more worrying is the fact that 23% of our 16 to 24-year-olds are out of work. It is against that backdrop that I want to speak today.
The worst of the cuts are yet to come. Thousands of public and private sector workers are set to lose their jobs, and the cuts are being front-loaded, leaving local authorities with no choice but to make quick savings by making staff redundant. My own very efficient local authority, Stockton borough council, is faced with having to make savings of £29 million over the next four years. The Chancellor is effectively throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, but he is passing the axe to the local authorities and leaving them to do the chopping.
Let us not forget that recent analysis published by the TUC found that there were almost 10 applicants for every vacancy in Labour-held constituencies. The figure in Tory constituencies was 4.5, and in Liberal Democrat areas, it was 6.1. That is because the cuts are hitting the poorest communities the hardest. Recent research into the impact of the cuts reveals that all but two of the 20 worst-hit councils are in the bottom 20% most deprived council areas in England. It cannot be fair that low and middle-income neighbourhoods should carry the heaviest burden because of the Government’s choices.
We are told that there is no alternative, but there is a choice being made by the Government to cut far too fast. Under Labour, the economy was heading in the right direction. It was growing at 1.2% when Labour left office. In the last quarter of 2010, however, it had shrunk by 0.6%. So, under this Tory-led Government, growth has gone down last year and this year, and it will go down next year. The Chancellor blames the poor economic performance on the wrong type of snow, yet Germany and the US suffered from similar Arctic conditions last winter and their growth figures are not so grim.
Inflation is up, and unemployment is up. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Tory-led Government’s plan for the economy is, yes, hurting but not working. Yet we are repeatedly told that there is no plan B. What we have instead is a real-life economic experiment, and the disgraceful thing is that it is completely politically motivated. The coalition hopes to get the worst of the pain out of the way before the next general election. What an irresponsible way to deal with our economy, and with people’s jobs and lives.
What is the Government’s response to this bleak outlook? We have had the announcement of the local enterprise partnerships, but with no money. The Budget announced 21 enterprise zones, including one in the Tees valley. I hope that both those projects flourish and create much-needed new jobs, but the reality is that their funding is a fraction of the funding that was available for regional growth through the now abolished regional development agencies.
What are the Government doing to address the fact that almost 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds are out of work today, the vast majority of whom are desperate for a job to kick-start their adult lives? The budget announced just 40,000 two-month work experience placements a year, and an extra 12,500 apprenticeships a year. That will not deal with the tip of the iceberg. I fear that there will be a lost generation, which will cost this country a great deal, economically and socially, in the years to come if we do not tackle the problem head on. The Government’s Work programme also gives me cause for concern. Every person who receives incapacity benefits is to get a medical reassessment, and huge numbers face being moved on to the jobseeker’s allowance, losing a third of their payments, if they are found to be fit enough to work. Many of them might not be.
As a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, I recently visited Burnley, where we spoke to people who had been part of a pilot for these assessments, and some of the stories we heard were very worrying. The test has been severely criticised by groups such as Citizens Advice and some argue that it is not fit for purpose. I look forward to the Committee’s further inquiry into that matter.
Clearly, the proof will be in the pudding, but even if these people are moved on to jobseeker’s allowance and are able to get the comprehensive support they will need to make them job-ready, they then face finding work in a tough environment, competing against people who might recently have been made redundant and against all those young people for fewer and fewer jobs. This will be tough enough in Tory constituencies, never mind those like my own in Stockton North and throughout the north-east. The Government need to think again about providing realistic incentives to create jobs and help people back to work, while still protecting the most vulnerable.
The real spending cuts are only just starting to hit people. My real fear is that we are facing a jobless recovery. This would be a disaster for Teesside and the north-east, which, as I have already said, suffers from the highest unemployment rate in the whole country. The Government must do much better.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am delighted to contribute to what has been a quite well-subscribed Budget debate, particularly because this Budget outlines how Britain can earn its way in the modern world. It is a Budget that seeks to reform the country’s economy and regain the ground that Britain has lost in the world economy.
Ministers on the Treasury Bench should be congratulated on bringing forward a package of measures that, against the backdrop of the most corrosive structural deficit on record, will provide practical and lasting measures to support hard-pressed families and people back into work, to help businesses grow and to stimulate long-term economic growth.
At the heart of this Budget is a clear message to make Britain a better place in which to do business. From the biggest multinational companies to the newsagents, convenience stores and beauty salons on all our high streets, which all employ our constituents, the Budget has recognised the insurmountable burdens that they have faced year on year with an unequivocal aim to give business the long boost that it needs to invest in jobs and grow in Britain. With the Government now accounting for half of our economy, we need a new economic model underpinned by investment, manufacturing and exports.
In my view, this Budget has kick-started the reform with an essential tax cut to business, rate relief for small firms, a doubling of entrepreneurs’ relief and more support for research and development. There are now clear plans to scrap the burdens of regulation that have cost business billions every year. It is absolutely right that we have brought in a moratorium on all new regulations for our smallest companies. I put out a challenge to the Treasury Bench right now: the Government should host a bonfire of the excessive regulations, including many of the gold-plated regulations emanating from Europe as well as those that hinder employment opportunities and stifle enterprise and opportunity across our country.
In the Witham constituency, more than 82% of jobs are in small and medium-sized businesses. That equates to more than 25,000 local people and their families who are dependent on the prosperity of thousands of businesses in high streets, town centres, industrial estates and in the rural communities. The recession has hit them all really badly, but many have survived through their own dogged determination, and it is the inherently Conservative policies of the Budget that provide the light at the end of the tunnel for them.
I know that businesses in my constituency will relish the additional opportunities to tap into the new apprenticeship schemes that are coming on board. With more than two thirds of all apprenticeships in small firms, I can assure this House that businesses throughout Witham and Essex are ready to respond to the Chancellor’s call to action and to take on more new apprenticeships. Young people are looking for work and by creating these apprenticeships and the right conditions for growth, local jobs will certainly be created.
Finally, Labour has left the British economy unbalanced, with far too much reliance on debt, household borrowing and the City of London and far too little emphasis on manufacturing, exports and balanced growth across the country. The creation of the new enterprise zones will, in my view, drive growth and new jobs everywhere. I have to say that I am tremendously disappointed at the negativity coming from Labour Members about the enterprise zones. If they do not want them in their constituencies, I can tell them that the county of Essex will welcome them with open arms.
The new zones will be targeted at areas with high growth potential, and the House may be not be surprised to learn that I know of one such area. Essex—including my constituency—would benefit from an enterprise zone, because it is a county of entrepreneurs. We not only work hard but save, and we have real drive, entrepreneurial spirit and flair. Our county consists of both urban and rural communities. Surely the point of enterprise zones is that while we should not focus disproportionately on urban centres, we should recognise that the urban parts of our communities offer much in terms of innovation and employment opportunities. There is a significant skills base that we must tap into. My constituency contains businesses ranging from window and glass makers to chocolate and jam makers to high-tech sat-nav companies.
I commend the Budget, which is not just good for jobs and growth but good for my constituency.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I must tell the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) that her speech was a bit like “all our yesterdays”. The one thing that she did not seem to think would create jobs in this country was slashing the national minimum wage, and I was surprised that she did not suggest that.
Today’s debate opened with one of the most lamentable speeches that I have ever heard the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions deliver, in which he presented—as have other Government Members—the rosy view that the Government’s proposals will automatically create jobs, that there will be people who will be qualified to fill them, and that the future will be golden. If we look at the Red Book, which Government Members have waved in our faces on many occasions, we see that what the Government are setting in train is a Budget that will create a vast increase in unemployment. Unless they intend to abolish the whole benefits system at a stroke, an astronomical amount will have to be spent on unemployment benefit and passported benefits—although, of course, they may wipe all those out as well.
Government Members have the audacity to accuse us of frightening some of the most vulnerable people in our society, but it is not us who are frightening them. In my constituency and in those of Government Members, it is the Government who seem to look at nothing but the bottom line. It is they who introduce swingeing policies which, nine times out of 10, do not mesh, and the Secretary of State responsible for delivering those policies does not know what impact they will have on the ground.
A precise example from today’s debate was what I understand to have been the initial proposal from the Department for Work and Pensions in regard to jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit. It was proposed that 10% should automatically be slashed from the housing benefit of anyone who had failed to find a job after 12 months on jobseeker’s allowance despite doing everything demanded by the Government—and that is housing benefit which is being capped.
It is to his shame that, in his opening speech, the Secretary of State ran again with a canard that he is on record as saying he hoped would not be fulfilled: that the majority—he did not use the word “majority”, but it was implied—of people on housing benefit are living in properties where the rent is £100,000 a week. Everyone in the House, and certainly the Secretary of State, ought to know that the majority of people claiming housing benefit are pensioners, people with disabilities, or people on very low pay.
Many hard-working families in this country are entirely dependent on housing benefit. Nowhere is that more marked than in constituencies such as mine in central London, where housing, travel and training costs are vastly above the national average. However, nothing in the Budget appears to acknowledge regional variations, which will of course affect the potential for people to find jobs even if the private sector is capable of providing them.
Another remarkable feature of many speeches from Government Members was their contempt for public sector workers. It seemed that none of them wanted additional nurses in their hospitals, additional doctors in their surgeries, or additional teachers in their schools. Certainly we know that they do not want more policemen, because their numbers are being slashed all over the country, as will be the very people on whom the most vulnerable in our society depend.
That, of course, is the other great canard. This Government came into office saying that they would take tough decisions. They said the road was bumpy, but that they would protect the most vulnerable. They have betrayed the most vulnerable, however—the very young, the very old, people with disabilities. Women are a marked target for this Government. We women are clearly expected to have the broadest shoulders in the country because the cuts will fall on us. The Government are expecting women to go back to work—if there is a job to go to, of course—while at the same time taking away child care support, which is the absolute bedrock that enables a woman with children to go back to work.
The Government have markedly failed to think through their grievous policies. This is not a Budget for investment or growth. Rather, this is the Budget of a group of people who have markedly failed to understand the realities of the situation facing millions of people in this country who do want to work, who wish to take this country forward, and who have optimism and believe in all of us. The people who do not believe in the people of this country, or indeed in this country itself, are the Conservatives.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
One more Member wishes to speak, but unfortunately I cannot call him. I apologise for that. The Chancellor has also sent an apology, as he has been called away to the G20.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I am gutted that the Chancellor is not present to listen to the winding-up speeches on his Budget.
In the Budget, the Chancellor had the opportunity to help millions of British people and families who are being hit hard by the biggest squeeze in their living standards for 80 years. He also had the opportunity to admit that ploughing full-steam ahead with cuts at the speed and on the scale that this Government have planned is about to have a devastating impact on people and communities up and down the country. People wanted some hope for the future from this Chancellor and this Government, but what they got was a Chancellor and a Government on autopilot. They got a man who refuses to see that the economic storm clouds are gathering around us once more; they got a man who will not admit that his cynical electoral strategy of scaremongering about a sovereign default has collapsed consumer confidence and weakened our prospects of recovery; and they got a man who has been so boxed in by his own political strategy that his only resort is to glory in the folly of sticking to his plan A, even if all the economic indicators show that it is hurting but it is not working.
Of course we accept that the deficit has to be reduced, but we disagree with the sheer speed and scale of the Government’s cuts plan. In the Chancellor’s self-styled emergency Budget last June, he embarked on a risky and extreme experiment with our nation’s future. He chose to cut the deficit deeper and faster than was economically necessary; he chose to cut it faster than any other major economy; he chose to order the largest spending cuts since the second world war with a nasty ideological relish; and he was cheered to the rafters by Members of both coalition Government parties in a distasteful display of enjoyment that none of us on this side of the House will ever forget.
Some £80 billion is to be sucked out of the economy in the next four years, in cuts to services and the public sector. With tax rises included, £126 billion in all will be withdrawn from the economy by 2015. Only Iceland and Ireland are cutting faster than this Government have decided that we should cut, and now the Chancellor is claiming, with his usual modesty, that he has rescued the British economy, but aside from his own vainglorious rhetoric, what are the facts actually telling us? The truth is revealed by the Office for Budget Responsibility: there has been a significant deterioration in economic performance since the Chancellor’s slash-and-burn Budget last year. As its latest forecast demonstrates, things are getting worse, not better, and that is before most of the cuts have really begun to bite.
After just 10 months of the Chancellor’s fiscal masochism, virtually all the important economic indicators are now moving in the wrong direction. Consumer confidence is at a 20-year low; inflation is at more than twice the Bank of England’s target; the VAT rise has pushed prices up, and the OBR expects them to rise even further this year; unemployment, which was falling last year, is now at a 17-year high—in my constituency, 22 people are now chasing every job; and the growth forecast has been downgraded again and again and again.
Because of this lower growth and higher inflation, the Government have admitted that they will have to borrow £46 billion more than they planned in November. We warned the Chancellor that huge and rapid cuts in public expenditure risk choking off growth, thereby increasing unemployment, and that that might make the deficit worse rather than better. Last March—conveniently before the election—the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), now the Business Secretary, said:
“We must not cut Government spending too soon and risk plunging a fragile recovery back into recession. Cuts without economic growth will not deal with the deficit”.
I could not agree more. It is a pity that he, like the rest of his party, is now supporting an economic policy which is the exact opposite of the one that he campaigned for.
We warned the Chancellor last year that he needed a growth strategy, alongside any deficit reduction plan, if the economy was to be restored to balance without doing untold damage to our social infrastructure. We waited and waited, but meanwhile growth faltered and then stalled. The economy shrank by a shock 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010. The Chancellor crossed his fingers and blamed the snow, and the Government’s spin machine then cranked into action. Just two weeks ago, at the Tory spring conference, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor promised to make this a pro-growth Budget. The Chancellor said that it was going to be “unashamedly pro-growth” and the Prime Minister went further, by declaring that it was going to
“tear down the barriers to enterprise and be the most pro-growth Budget this country has seen for a generation.”
If we look behind all the Government hype and the propaganda, and check out what really happened last week, we see something a bit different. The Chancellor actually came to this House and downgraded the growth forecasts—they are down this year to 1.7% and down next year too. Far from being a pro-growth Budget, this is actually a no-growth Budget which puts Britain into the slow lane. To distract attention from that inconvenient fact, the Government published, alongside the Budget document, “The Plan for Growth”, a self-styled “urgent call for action”. But this much-trailed growth plan achieves nothing in the short term, when growth is in such short supply. It consists of loud invocations of motherhood and apple pie, and it rehashes the familiar laissez-faire mantras shared by the Orange Book Liberals and the Thatcherite Tories. It is nothing more than a mish-mash of reheated, failed 1980s Thatcherite orthodoxy.
The passages on the Government’s growth strategy in the Chancellor’s speech were so riveting that the Justice Secretary actually fell asleep on the Front Bench right in the middle of them. We sympathised with him, but the 50 punters who had put money on at odds of 16:1 that he would sleep during the Budget were richly rewarded. Now I hear that Ladbrokes has slashed the odds that there will be a double kip from him some time in the next year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility was almost as unimpressed as the Justice Secretary, because page 39 of its report on the Budget states:
“we judge there is insufficient evidence at this stage to adjust our trend growth assumptions in light of these measures.”
In other words, despite all the ministerial proclamations, all the Government propaganda and all the cynically pre-arranged third-party endorsements, this is still a no-growth, go-slow Budget.
The Chancellor’s extreme austerity programme will suck demand out of the economy, and if growth continues to falter the plan will be irrelevant. We know that inflation is higher than it should be and unemployment is higher than it should be: there will be 30,000 fewer jobs this year and 80,000 fewer next year, and 200,000 more people will be unemployed by the end of this Parliament. I do not know what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions finds so amusing about that.
Two weeks ago, at the same Tory conference where the Chancellor promised to make his Budget unashamedly pro-growth, he also promised to listen to public concern about the cost-of-living crisis. It is all very well listening, but it is real help that people need. Instead, we got a Budget in which the Chancellor gave a little with one hand but took away much more with the other. The well-trailed £45 tax cut next year is more than clawed back by the decision to raise national insurance thresholds only by the lower consumer prices index. That is a small-print stealth tax that, funnily enough, was not briefed in advance to the press but will raise more than £1 billion extra in income tax by 2015. The VAT rise is already costing a family with children an extra £450 this year alone. The banks have been given a tax cut while families and children bear the brunt of the spending cuts. Even the Chancellor has almost stopped claiming that we are all in this together and he can hardly keep a straight face when he does.
Pensioners were excluded from the tax cut con, only to discover that their winter fuel payment will be lower, too, by £50 or £100. The Treasury explained that that was not actually a cut but merely allowing a top-up to expire, but it seems that no one had told the Deputy Prime Minister that. He clearly had not even bothered to read the Budget that he had just signed off, because during a radio phone-in last Thursday he was questioned about this and claimed at first that winter fuel payments had been increased. He then resorted to accusing my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor of frightening people by
“throwing around a lot of…wild allegations”.
The trouble for him was that those wild allegations were actually part of his Government’s plans and, worse still, he had agreed to them. We all know that he will not accept any paperwork after 3 o’clock in the afternoon, but I really think he ought to have made an exception for the Budget. He should really learn that the pesky details in big documents can sometimes be quite important.
The headline-grabbing centrepiece of the Budget was the 1p off petrol duty announced with a great flourish and much waving of Order Papers on the Government Benches, but that is a paltry reduction when compared with the 3p a litre increase that the VAT rise has already added to fuel bills. I wonder how many Members of the parties opposite would have cheered quite so loudly if they had read the small print and understood that the Chancellor has merely delayed and not cancelled future fuel duty increases. Duty is due to rise by 3p a litre on 1 January and to rise again in August next year. VAT at 20% will only make it worse.
There is also mounting evidence that the fuel duty cut has not been fully passed on to motorists, despite the Chancellor’s pledge to watch “like a hawk” to see that it was.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
What does my hon. Friend make of today’s announcement that Statoil, a Norwegian company—from a country where tax is not exactly low—is to put on hold its £3 billion-plus North sea development as a result of the Budget increase in oil and gas tax?
Ms Eagle
This smash-and-grab raid on the oil companies to pay for the tax cut appears to be unravelling. Certainly, sudden changes to tax regimes without notice have big implications for investment. The Government need to pay particular attention to what the oil companies are saying, especially about their investment intentions. Having a North sea oil regime that can switch and is not set, because of the $75 a barrel oil price, which is going to change the regime again, may be particularly damaging. We will have to take a close look in Committee at how the Government intend to implement this mechanism.
Dame Anne Begg
The offshore oil and gas industry, which was a growing industry and could have been the driver that took the country out of recession, tells me that the one thing it needs to invest in this country is stability, but the fuel duty stabiliser will not give it that stability. Indeed, it will do the very opposite and make things even more volatile.
Ms Eagle
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We will have to look at precisely how the stabiliser mechanism will work. How long will the oil price have to be at $75 a barrel to trigger it and how will that be measured? What will be the implication for future investment decisions? We know that there is a great deal of competition in the oil and gas industry for the use of very expensive infrastructure. My hon. Friend has made very important points and we will be watching like a hawk—to use a phrase that has already been used—to see about the practicalities of the announcement.
I note that the Government are reportedly urgently considering handing out hundreds of millions of pounds in tax breaks to compensate energy companies that are apparently considering shelving existing plans for further investment in UK gas fields or raising domestic prices still further to make up for profits lost. By
“squeezing the maximum amount of tax revenue from Britain’s oil and gas assets,”
the Chancellor
“is putting further offshore investment at risk…He’s more interested in cash today than investment tomorrow.”
That was the current Chancellor speaking in 2007, but now he is in Downing street he seems to be ignoring his own advice. The truth is that this policy was cobbled together at the last minute, the OBR did not have sight of it and now it is descending into chaos. I must issue a warning to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, because I read over the weekend that he is being blamed for this incompetent piece of policy making on the hoof—apparently it was all his idea. I would be watching my back if I were him. We now see the reality that the fuel duty cut was a classic Tory con that really will not help anyone at all.
Meanwhile, the small print of the Tory-Lib Dem Budget shows that the NHS will be hit with a £1 billion cut in real terms, breaking the Prime Minister’s pre-election poster pledge that he would not cut it. The OBR’s new inflation forecasts reveal that spending on the NHS will fall for the next two years for the first time since records began—that is before the Government waste billions more on a reorganisation that nobody wants. The Tories drained the life out of the NHS in the 1980s and now they are back and are trying to do it all over again.
We were told that the Budget was all about growth and the Government promised to help Britain’s hard-pressed families with the cost-of-living crisis, but they have failed dismally on both counts and today the Bullingdon boys have sent along a Lib Dem whipping boy to defend it. If the Chancellor has “Je ne regrette rien” playing on his iPod, then the Chief Secretary has “Puppet on a String” playing on his. Just last year he promised his party’s Scottish conference:
“In our first year in government, we will invest to create new jobs and boost the recovery.”
Well, 10 months later and two Budgets in he has done precisely the opposite. The fact is that this Government’s extreme experiment with the British economy is failing and British people are suffering.
This Budget was a dodgy Conservative con that was signed off by the ever-compliant Liberal Democrats—the human shields of British politics. Far from making life easier for people, the Budget will make life tougher. The Government’s agenda of cuts, cuts, cuts is ruining lives and dividing the nation. It seeks to pit the private sector against the public sector, the young against the old, the north against the south, the weak against the strong, and the rich against the poor. We reject the politics of division. This is the wrong Budget in tough times. The Government should come back and have a second attempt which does not cut too far, too fast. That is why we will vote to reject the Budget tonight.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
There has been a good debate today and over the past four days. Today the debate was graced in particular by a contribution from the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the former Chancellor, who addressed the topic of business confidence and gave the House the benefit of his experience of issues in the world economy. He might have noticed that figures today show that business confidence is rising, but it was good to hear from him in the debate, and also from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) who, among many other hon. Members, made the point that it was important to hear from the Opposition what they would cut.
This year’s Budget is about reforming the nation’s economy so that we have sustainable growth and jobs in the future. As many hon. Members observed in the debate, none of this would be possible without the difficult decisions that we have already had to take to tackle the enormous budget deficit that we inherited—decisions that have secured our international credit rating and been praised by the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; decisions that have provided the firm platform that we need to build a strong, sustainable and balanced economy; and decisions that have brought about economic stability and confidence in Britain’s ability to pay its way in the world. That stability and confidence would be forfeit if we stepped back from our plan, as some have suggested. To do so would cost jobs and growth and would mean more cuts for more people for longer in the future.
The action that the Government have taken is allowing us to move from rescue to recovery, from a decade of unbalanced, unsustainable policy to the hard road back to prosperity, for this Budget confronts the problems that our predecessors chose to ignore. For the past decade Britain has been losing ground in the world’s economy. While other nations have reduced their business tax rates, ours have increased. While other countries have removed barriers to enterprise, ours have grown higher still. While our competitors have improved their education systems, reformed welfare and increased exports, we have had to endure the opposite. That is the legacy of the Labour Government.
That is why, in the Budget, we have set out the Government’s new vision for growth—a vision that has four key ambitions at its heart. First, Britain should have the most competitive tax system in the G20. Secondly, Britain should be the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business. Thirdly, Britain should be a more balanced economy by encouraging exports—
Geraint Davies
If the right hon. Gentleman is creating an environment for inward investment and enterprise, how does he explain the fact that when I spoke in Dusseldorf to UK Trade & Investment, which markets Britain abroad, it said that it was generating lots of leads for inward investment, but because the Government had abolished the RDAs, those were not being drawn down and all that inward investment was going elsewhere? Is that not a pathetic indictment of the Government’s failure to generate growth?
Danny Alexander
I am grateful for that intervention, but I disagree with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.
Danny Alexander
Let me answer the intervention before I give way again. We have abolished the regional development agencies, which were bureaucratic and inflexible, and we have replaced them with a localised, bottom-up process of local enterprise partnerships that are making a real difference in our economy.
Chris Ruane
I thank the Chief Secretary for giving way. Has he read the article in The Guardian today, which reports that the UK has slipped from third position to 13th in the whole world on green renewable energy technology under the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government?
Danny Alexander
I am afraid I have not read The Guardian today. I will turn to green issues later in my speech. I disagree with that assessment, although of course the hon. Gentleman is quoting one of the very few organisations that backed his party’s economic plans, if that is what they can be called.
The fourth objective of our growth strategy is to have a more educated work force who are the most flexible in Europe.
Let me turn first to creating a more competitive tax system. We used to have the third lowest corporation tax rate in Europe, but we now have the sixth highest, so from April this year corporation tax will be reduced not just by 1%, as we announced last June, but by 2%. It will continue to fall by 1% in each of the next three years, taking our corporate tax rate down to just 23% and giving us the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7.
Dame Anne Begg
Which oil and gas companies said that they would enjoy a lower tax take as a result of the Budget?
Danny Alexander
I will mention the oil and gas sector in the course of my speech, but it is worth observing at this point that, as a result of the very high oil price, oil and gas companies are expected to make £24 billion in profits over the next 12 months. Even with the tax changes that we have announced in the Budget, it is expected that they will make more profit per barrel of oil over the next five years than they did in the past five years, when the previous Government last changed the supplementary charge regime.
We are also creating a competitive tax system in relation to personal taxation. We have of course confirmed that the national insurance increase that the previous Government announced will have to go ahead at least partially, but because we have increased the threshold we are making it cheaper to employ people on incomes of less than £21,000 a year. Anyone earning less than £35,000 a year will, as of next week, be better off because of our £1,000 increase in the personal allowance that was announced in last year’s Budget, the largest increase in the personal allowance in history. That means that in real terms 23 million taxpayers will be around £160 a year better off—£200 in cash terms.
The coalition agreement also commits the Government to real increases in the personal allowance in each and every year of this Parliament. It also sets us the goal that no one earning less than £10,000 a year will be caught in the income tax net. I am happy to be able to tell the House that the £630 increase in the personal allowance announced for next year puts us on track to meet that goal in this Parliament. This is about rewarding work.
We are also reforming the welfare system, and I know that a number of comments were made in the debate on the disability living allowance regime. The right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) should look at page 55 of the Red Book for the answer to his question.
Mr Tom Clarke
I welcome the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has referred to the important mobility component of disability living allowance. Earlier today I invited the Government to take the time available to tell us whether they intend to continue with their plan to abolish that element, which would mean that many people with disabilities living in residential accommodation —82,000 in all, including children—would lose out. What exactly is the Government’s position?
Danny Alexander
As I was saying, the right hon. Gentleman should look at page 55 of the Red Book, which states:
“As announced by DWP at the introduction of the Welfare Reform Bill 2011, the Government will no longer remove the mobility component of DLA for people in residential care in October 2012. Mobility provision for people in residential care will be reviewed as part of the wider reform of DLA to be introduced from 2013-14.”
That is a clear and sensible position.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Danny Alexander
I am sorry, but I must press on and make some progress.
As well as a competitive tax system, we need a fair one, as the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) observed in his speech, which is why we have responded to the concerns of hard-pressed motorists by cancelling Labour’s fuel duty escalator for the remainder of this Parliament.
That is on top of announcing a fuel duty rebate for the most remote parts of the UK; it is on top of introducing a fair fuel stabiliser to share the burden of high international oil prices; it is on top of cutting fuel duty by 1p per litre, which is already feeding through to the prices at the pump; and it is on top of reversing Labour’s planned 5p a litre in April. So, fuel will be 6p a litre cheaper than it would have been under the previous Government.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
When might the European Commission give the green light to the rural fuel derogation for the islands of Scotland, particularly as today in Benbecula diesel is £1.52 a litre?
Danny Alexander
The hon. Gentleman and I agree about the importance of that point. We have submitted the formal application to the European Commission, and I hope that, European processes willing—as he knows, they are not always entirely predictable—we will have that permission over the next few months.
The help that we are providing to motorists has to be paid for, and it is right that we ask the oil companies to pay a greater share of the extra profits that they are making from the high international oil price. Even with those changes, the profits on a barrel of oil are forecast, as I said, to be higher over the next five years than they were over the past five, so I say to the oil companies, “We do understand your concerns, and there is plenty for us to discuss with you, especially to support”—
Danny Alexander
No, no. I am not going to give way. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”] I am not going to give way. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”] I am not going to give way.
I say to the oil companies, “There is plenty for us to discuss with you, especially to support new gas exploration through the regime of field allowances.” That is the right decision, it is fair—
Mr Tom Clarke
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will have heard the Minister refer me to page 44 of the Red Book, which I have now read. Is it in order for the Minister to refuse to allow me to respond?
Danny Alexander
The right hon. Gentleman misheard me; I referred to page 55.
It is the right decision—
Danny Alexander
No, I am sorry; I am going to press on. I referred to page 55. I gave an answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question and I must press on. There is very little time left.
Mr Speaker
Order. The right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) is well able to look after himself, but it is for the Chief Secretary to decide whether or not to give way. He is not giving way at the moment.
Danny Alexander
Our second ambition is for Britain to become the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business, and in that area there is pressing need for reform. A number of hon. Members referred to enterprise zones, including the hon. Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Witham (Priti Patel). I say to them that we have learned from the experience of previous enterprise zones, where of course there was some success and some concerns. By working with all the local authorities in the local enterprise partnership areas, we hope to ensure that we learn some of the lessons to which those hon. Members referred.
On the long road to sustainable growth, we cannot ignore the problems that businesses are facing when it comes to accessing finance. Small businesses, in particular, have been the innocent victims—
Mr Tom Clarke
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is patently obvious that the right hon. Gentleman is having trouble finishing his speech. Would he allow me to answer the point that he asked me to—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but he has been in this House long enough to know that that is not a point of order. I think that it is a point of frustration.
Danny Alexander
I am not going to give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I must press on. I have answered his point.
Small businesses, in particular, have been the innocent victims of the credit crunch. They have seen the flow of affordable credit dry up, which is why we have agreed with the banks a £10 billion increase in the availability of—
Ms Eagle
Will the Chief Secretary turn his attention to page 44 of the Red Book, and the “Measures announced at Spending Review 2010”? Measure d states:
“Disability Living Allowance: remove mobility component for claimants in residential care.”
It is scored to save £155 million in 2013-14, £160 million in 2014-15 and £160 million in 2015-16, so how could the Prime Minister say that it was not happening when it is still scored in the Red Book?
Danny Alexander
As I said in answer to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), that question is a subject of the review that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has announced and we are carrying out. We have made it very clear that we are looking at that question, and we will provide the mobility component at a level that is necessary in care homes when we have removed the overlaps and the issues quite rightly identified.
The Government’s third ambition for growth is to encourage investment in exports as a route to a more balanced economy. In “The Plan for Growth”, which we published last week, we set out specific measures to help out a range of businesses. In life sciences, which the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) mentioned, we will radically reduce the time it takes to get approval for clinical trials; in our digital and creative industries, we will improve the intellectual property regime; and in manufacturing, which the hon. Members for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and for Warrington South (David Mowat) addressed, we are launching Britain’s first technology and innovation centre for high-value manufacturing, creating new export credits to help smaller businesses, doubling the limit on the capital allowances for short-life assets from four years to eight years and investing in infrastructure, which my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) referred to. These are some of the measures that we are taking to ensure that growth is more balanced and more sustainable, and supports employment across a wide range of sectors.
On green growth, first, we have announced that we will become the first country in the world to introduce a carbon price floor for the power sector. The price will start at around £16 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2013 and move to a target price of £30 per tonne in 2020. That will provide the incentive for billions of pounds-worth of new investment in our dated energy infrastructure.
Danny Alexander
I will not give way.
The second step that we are taking is to create the green investment bank, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) mentioned. As part of the spending review we committed £1 billion to this new facility. Last week, we announced £2 billion more, funded from asset sales and underwritten by the Treasury. This is another step to ensure that we are the greenest Government ever.
Danny Alexander
I will not give way.
That leads me to our fourth ambition for growth—a better educated work force who are the most flexible in Europe.
Danny Alexander
No, I am about to finish.
Listening to many of the contributions made by Opposition Members, it seems that they are living in a parallel universe in which deficit-denial constitutes a credible economic strategy. It is a place where Labour economic plans involve cutting public spending, too, but where it is still perfectly logical to participate in an anti-cuts demonstration just as long as you never say where the cuts will fall—and we have not heard many suggestions on that point from the Government Front Bench. It is a place where Labour councils think that the responsible approach is to slash front-line services and sit on reserves just to score cheap political points. It is a place where an apology means saying—
Catherine McKinnell
On point of order, Mr Speaker. There appears to be a fundamental anomaly in this Budget, which hon. Members are expected to vote on—[Interruption.]
Catherine McKinnell
In one section of this Budget, Mr Speaker, it says that the disability living allowance mobility component will not be withdrawn, but another section—section d on page 55—clearly allows for that to happen. This is an anomaly that we are expected to vote on in three minutes.
Mr Speaker
That is a matter of debate, and it is for Ministers to decide whether and when to explain their position and in what way.
Danny Alexander
I have already explained this point in answers to interventions.
It is a measure of the Opposition’s denial about the problems that they created in the British economy that they do not want to talk about the mess they made of it. They think that the responsibility for fuelling the biggest peacetime deficit in our history is a badge of achievement. They think an apology means saying that it is everyone else’s fault. Labour Members had ample opportunity in this debate to show the British public that they had woken up to reality, but they failed on every count.
This Government are clearing up the mess that the last one left behind and putting Britain back on a path to sustainable, balanced growth. It is a hard road but it is the only one available. We will make Britain Europe’s leading destination for enterprise with the most competitive tax system in the G20, the most flexible work force and an economy that is able to compete on the world stage. The Budget will create a more balanced economy. It gives support to hard-pressed families and hope to those looking for work, and it will create jobs across Britain. It is a Budget that stands firm on our plan for the recovery. It is good for business and good for growth. I commend this Budget to the House.
Question put.
Description of wine or made-wine | Rates of duty per hectolitre £ |
|---|---|
Wine or made-wine of a strength not exceeding 4 per cent | 74.32 |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 4 per cent but not exceeding 5.5 per cent | 102.21 |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 5.5 per cent but not exceeding 15 per cent and not being sparkling | 241.23 |
Sparkling wine or sparkling made-wine of a strength exceeding 5.5 per cent but less than 8.5 per cent | 233.55 |
Sparkling wine or sparkling made-wine of a strength of 8.5 per cent or of a strength exceeding 8.5 per cent but not exceeding 15 per cent | 308.99 |
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 15 per cent but not exceeding 22 per cent | 321.61 |
Description of Wine or Made-Wine | Rates of Duty per Litre of Alcohol in Wine or Made-Wine £ |
|---|---|
Wine or made-wine of a strength exceeding 22 per cent | 25.52” |
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I propose to take motions 11 to 52 together—
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his exhortation to read out the name of each motion individually, but I shall resist.
11. High strength beer duty
12. Tobacco products duty (rates)
“Table | |
|---|---|
1. Cigarettes | An amount equal to 16.5 per cent of the retail price plus £154.95 per thousand cigarettes |
2. Cigars | £193.29 per kilogram |
3. Hand-rolling tobacco | £151.90 per kilogram |
4. Other smoking tobacco and chewing tobacco | £84.98 per kilogram”. |
Months for which licence granted | Category A | Category B1 | Category B2 | Category B3 | Category B4 | Category C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
£ | £ | £ | £ | £ | £ | |
1 | 535 | 270 | 215 | 215 | 195 | 85 |
2 | 1070 | 535 | 425 | 425 | 385 | 160 |
3 | 1605 | 805 | 635 | 635 | 575 | 240 |
4 | 2140 | 1070 | 845 | 845 | 765 | 320 |
5 | 2675 | 1340 | 1055 | 1055 | 960 | 400 |
6 | 3210 | 1605 | 1265 | 1265 | 1150 | 480 |
7 | 3745 | 1875 | 1475 | 1475 | 1340 | 555 |
8 | 4280 | 2140 | 1685 | 1685 | 1530 | 635 |
9 | 4815 | 2410 | 1895 | 1895 | 1725 | 715 |
10 | 5350 | 2675 | 2105 | 2105 | 1915 | 795 |
11 | 5885 | 2945 | 2315 | 2315 | 2105 | 875 |
12 | 6110 | 3055 | 2405 | 2405 | 2185 | 905”. |
CO2 Emissions Figure | Rate | ||
|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) |
Exceeding | Not exceeding | Reduced rate | Standard rate |
g/km | g/km | £ | £ |
130 | 140 | 105 | 115 |
140 | 150 | 120 | 130 |
150 | 165 | 155 | 165 |
165 | 175 | 255 | 265 |
175 | 185 | 305 | 315 |
185 | 200 | 435 | 445 |
200 | 225 | 570 | 580 |
225 | 255 | 780 | 790 |
255 | - | 990 | 1000 |
CO2 Emissions Figure | Rate | ||
|---|---|---|---|
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) |
Exceeding | Not exceeding | Reduced rate | Standard rate |
g/km | g/km | £ | £ |
100 | 110 | 10 | 20 |
110 | 120 | 20 | 30 |
120 | 130 | 85 | 95 |
130 | 140 | 105 | 115 |
140 | 150 | 120 | 130 |
150 | 165 | 155 | 165 |
165 | 175 | 180 | 190 |
175 | 185 | 200 | 210 |
185 | 200 | 235 | 245 |
200 | 225 | 250 | 260 |
225 | 255 | 435 | 445 |
255 | - | 450 | 460”; |
19. Aggregates levy (rate)
29. Reduced childcare relief for higher earners
39. Pension schemes
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I propose to take motions 3 to 8 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Pensions
That the draft Social Security (Reduced Rates of Class 1 Contributions, Rebates and Minimum Contributions) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 3 February, be approved.
Social Security
That the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 3 February, be approved.
That the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 3 February, be approved.
Family Proceedings
That the draft Access to Justice Act 1999 (Destination of Appeals) (Family Proceedings) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 3 February, be approved.
That the draft Family Procedure (Modification of Enactments) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 28 February, be approved.
Community Infrastructure Levy
That the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 7 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Local Government
That the draft Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, which was laid before this House on 11 February, be approved.—(Mr Newmark.)
The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 30 March (Standing Order No. 41A).
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I shall take motions 10 to 23 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Electricity
That the draft Renewables Obligation (Amendment) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 9 February, be approved.
That the draft Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 28 February, be approved.
Broadcasting
That the draft Media Ownership (Radio and Cross-media) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 14 February, be approved.
Social Security
That the draft Guardian’s Allowance Up-Rating (Northern Ireland) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 15 February, be approved.
Tax Credits
That the draft Tax Credits Up-Rating Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 15 February, be approved.
Social Security
That the draft Guardian’s Allowance Up-Rating Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 9 March, be approved.
Equality
That the draft Employment Equality (Repeal of Retirement Age Provisions) Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 1 March, be approved.
That the draft Equality Act 2010 (Public Authorities and Consequential and Supplementary Amendments) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 14 February, be approved.
Immigration
That the draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011, which were laid before this House on 10 March, be approved.
Corporation Tax
That the draft Enactment of Extra-Statutory Concessions Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 8 March, be approved.
Insurance Premium Tax
That the Insurance Premium Tax (Discounted Insurance Premiums: Higher Rate) Order 2011 (S.I., 2011, No. 661), dated 7 March, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8 March, be approved.
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),
Offshore Activities
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 14768/10, relating to a Commission Communication on Facing the challenge of the safety of offshore oil and gas activities and Addendum 1; agrees that the UK has a proven, robust offshore environmental and safety regime, and supports the Government’s intention to work closely with the Commission and EU Member States to ensure that high standards of health and safety and high levels of protection for the environment are maintained across Europe in respect of oil and gas operations.
Satellite Navigation
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 14701/10, draft Decision on the detailed rules for access to the public regulated service offered by the global navigation satellite system established under the Galileo programme, and No. 5530/11, Commission Report on the mid-term review of the European satellite radio navigation programmes; supports the Government’s aim of securing practical, proportionate and enforceable legislation that balances the need for appropriate security controls of manufacturers and users against favourable conditions in which a market for the PRS and associated equipment can grow; and supports the Government’s aim of beginning Galileo services as early as possible, albeit reduced in scope if the programme cannot be delivered within the allocated budget.
Milk and Milk Products
That this House takes note of European Union Document No.17582/10, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No. 1234/2007 as regards contractual relations in the milk and milk products sector; notes the potential for the establishment of producer organisations in the dairy sector to enhance the bargaining power of producers; and supports the Government’s view that greater clarity of existing competition law and what producers may do collectively would better enable rebalancing of negotiating power in the sector rather than the Commission’s proposed exemption from competition law and limits based upon national milk production.
Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 18101/10 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters; and endorses the Government’s decision about whether to exercise the UK opt-in under Protocol 21 to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. —(Mr Newmark.)
Question agreed to.
Sittings of the House (5 April)
Ordered,
That, on Tuesday 5 April, the House shall meet at 11.30 am and references to specific times in the Standing Orders of this House shall apply as if that day were a Wednesday.— (Mr Newmark.)
Business of the House (5 April)
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 5 April—
(a) proceedings on the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister relating to humanitarian relief may continue, though opposed, for three hours, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and
(b) notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business), the backbench business determined by the Backbench Business Committee may be entered upon at any hour, may then be proceeded with, though opposed, for three hours, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of.—(Mr Newmark.)
Notices of Questions
Ordered,
That, notwithstanding sub-paragraph (a) of the proviso to paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 22 (Notices of questions, motions and amendments), notices of questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland for oral answer on Wednesday 4 May may be given on Tuesday 26 April.—(Mr Newmark.)
Private Members’ Bills
Motion made,
That, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 14(4), Private Members’ Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 9 September 2011, 21 October 2011, 25 November 2011 and 20 January 2012.—(Mr Newmark.)
Mr Speaker
As there is an amendment not supported by the Member in charge, I will follow the practice of my predecessors and treat it as an objection to the motion. Objection taken.
Rail Engineering (Jobs)
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before I call the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), may I appeal to right hon. and hon. Members who are not staying for the Adjournment to leave the Chamber quickly and quietly, extending the same courtesy to the hon. Gentleman as they would want to be extended to them in similar circumstances?
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have a railway estate in my constituency. It was a British Rail estate constructed to house railway workers. Although many of those properties have been sold off, it still predominantly houses railway workers, many of them retired but many of them still working. As a result, I have taken an interest in the railway industry for the past 30 years. I am also the convenor of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers group in the House. We come together as a group of Members interested in the railways to receive briefings from the union on issues of the day.
One of the key issues that has been raised consistently with us over the past year has been the current and future state of rail engineering in this country. Rail engineering concentrates on renewals, which includes the installation of new overhead lines and signals and the laying of track. It is skilled work and we have a skills base of trained and experienced workers developed over centuries. It requires that skill to produce the quality of work that ensures a safe transport system for the travelling public. We have learned to our cost over the years that if there is any undermining of that skills base, it produces accidents. I lost one of my constituents in the Paddington disaster, and others were injured in Southall.
Network Rail, the not-for-profit company that was established by the previous Government, is responsible for the rail infrastructure and for rail engineering. Network Rail puts out to tender to private companies all the renewals work. Jarvis was a major contractor in the field of renewals until a year ago, almost to the day. On 31 March 2010 Jarvis went into administration. Some 1,200 workers—skilled railway engineers—across Britain were sacked. That put a large section of the rail engineering skills base of this country in jeopardy and it is still impacting on the industry.
The impact on the workers and their families was disastrous and heart-rending in many cases. They were paid only statutory redundancy. Their accrued benefits were lost, and active and retired members of the Jarvis pension scheme suffered detriment to their pension entitlement. I have met a number of the ex-Jarvis workers and it has been extremely distressing. They appealed to me to explain to the House just what had happened to them and the effect of being sacked in that way. They asked me to give a couple of examples.
I met Mick. He was one of the workers who explained that they were sacked the week that they were due to be paid four weeks’ money, and the mortgage and bills still had to be paid. The loss of his job led to a strained relationship with family members and severe financial difficulties. They were forced to sell the family car. He suffered medical problems as a direct result of the stress brought on by his redundancy. The chief grievance for him is the pain of knowing that his former work is still being done, but by someone else on less pay and with worse conditions.
I met Brian, who had worked for Jarvis for 36 years. He had been a skilled worker. He told me that
“to sign on unemployed is soul-destroying and we have to live off our savings to pay for food and bills. I have applied for lots of jobs, over 50, and have received only one reply. I was unsuccessful in that application.”
He went on to say:
“The future looks bleak. I feel very let down by Jarvis and Network Rail for putting us in this life-changing situation.”
The last individual I met, Martyn, is in work. He said that other rail contractors have taken
“advantage of sacked engineers’ desperation to find work”.
He said there are now
“low wages, poor terms and conditions; long hours; zero hours working; long driving times and a culture of keeping quiet about safety for fear of not being picked for contracts… I hope my fears about accidents and death on a railway I just don’t recognise anymore prove to be untrue.”
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on his speech. Could he explain, if he knows, why the valuable and skilled workers of Jarvis were not taken into direct employment by Network Rail at the time of Jarvis’s collapse? Clearly, all their work was done for Network Rail anyway, as there are no other railway services in Britain to work for.
John McDonnell
I will explain, but first I will give another example of what I found among ex-Jarvis workers. We met workers who are now touring the country picking up days of work. These are skilled engineers, but some of them are unable to afford proper accommodation because they are now agency workers on low wages and are having to sleep in cars and vans so that they can pick up a day’s work wherever they can.
Let me explain what happened, because lessons need to be learned from what happened for the future of rail engineering in this country. Jarvis’s bankruptcy did not need to happen. It was forced into administration because Network Rail deferred renewals work to comply with the Office of Rail Regulation’s decree that it needed to make a 21% saving over the five-year control period 2009 to 2014. Jarvis’s bankruptcy was not the result of the recession. Despite the cash-flow problems, it had £100 million-worth of work on its order book.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred to the fact that Network Rail refused a rescue plan from the administrator for Jarvis’s rail division. The administrator put forward a proposal for a £19 million investment to cover the running costs and wages for a couple of months of operation, which would have enabled the staff of Jarvis to be transferred in an orderly way to other companies that were picking up the Jarvis contracts. That was rejected by Network Rail, and the Government refused to intervene and use their legal powers under the Railways Act 2005 to treat Jarvis’s work as an essential railway activity, as that would have allowed them to step in and protect the work and the workers themselves. We now know from freedom of information requests that the Government knew months in advance of Jarvis’s imminent crash.
The lesson is that we must never again allow the failure of one company to put railway engineering at risk in this way, because the results of this fiasco are horrendous. One year on, the majority of the ex-Jarvis workers are still on the dole and Network Rail is re-letting former Jarvis contracts to agency labour. We are discovering exploitative wages and conditions. Even if ex-Jarvis workers have followed their work, they have moved across to inferior terms and conditions. There is now a fear about the commitment and quality of the work being done by the agency work force.
The irony is that we now know from Deloitte, which communicated this to Jarvis’s creditors, that the book value of the rail debts that were written off was £10.7 million, and the vast majority of the amount that was written off was owed to Network Rail. If we add to that the cost of redundancy, which fell on the taxpayer because the staff were not transferred under TUPE, and the drain on the staff funds of the benefit payments for the unemployed workers, we find that the overall cost of allowing Jarvis to collapse into administration in this way outweighs the £19 million cost of the rescue plan that the administrator proposed. It was a false economy not to accept the rescue plan, and it had a tragic outcome for the workers.
There is also a longer-term cost that threatens the future of the rail industry and safe transport, because we are undermining the rail engineering skills base that we developed over two centuries. One of our concerns is that we have a demoralised work force, many of them unemployed, and that insecure work is being offered to agency workers with no stable future. We seem also to have undermined the attraction of a career in rail engineering, thereby jeopardising the recruitment of a future generation of rail engineering workers.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware, as I am, having found out just 10 minutes ago, that there are people employed in this House—in the Palace of Westminster—through an agency that charges £20 per hour and pays them £6.15 per hour?
John McDonnell
The reason why I raise the issue of agency workers in the rail industry is that such employment practice is becoming the norm for a number of companies. It is reflected throughout industry, and if it has now invaded the House. I find that disappointing. We as Members should take it up, because it does not seem to be a particularly cost-effective way of employing staff. The agency receives a large cut, but there is very little reward for the workers themselves.
The irony of what happened to the Jarvis workers is that, during the period in which they were laid off, the previous Government and the incoming Government were planning one of the largest railway industry expansion and modernisation programmes that we have seen for perhaps 50 or 70 years. It has happened just at a time when there is a huge job of work to be done in modernising the rail network, with the arrival of Crossrail, High Speed 2 and the electrification of the Great Western main line. We need a stable and skilled rail engineering work force and a national strategy that will retain and develop those skills, so that we can complete that modernisation and renew and enhance our rail network. In the long term, if we are to ensure that stability, we should bring renewals back in-house, back into Network Rail.
The McNulty interim report demonstrated that, when Network Rail brought maintenance in-house in 2004, there was a saving of £400 million per annum. I believe that bringing the renewals back in-house would achieve the same savings, but all the potential for the development, improvement and modernisation of our rail network will be jeopardised if we go through another Jarvis-type disaster.
I should welcome the Minister addressing several issues, and I express my gratitude to the Ministers we have met in recent months. The RMT parliamentary group, RMT union officials and the TUC have discussed with Ministers the plight of Jarvis workers and the future of rail engineering, and I am grateful to the Minister of State, Department for Transport, for writing to Network Rail to urge it to work closely with the unions and to meet members of the RMT parliamentary group. We have heard that the new chief executive at Network Rail, David Higgins, has expressed a willingness to attend a round table of stakeholders to discuss where we go from here on rail engineering.
I should like to ask the Minister here tonight to look at a number of concerns about the future. First, what is to happen to the ex-Jarvis workers who are still on the dole? Network Rail could assist in resolving some of the problems of the ex-Jarvis workers by stipulating that new contractors employ Jarvis workers or at least give them first refusal in any application for jobs. Part of the problem is that it is not clear where the former Jarvis contracts have been awarded, so it would be helpful if Ministers could intervene, asking Network Rail to identify through its Sentinel system exactly how many former Jarvis workers have been employed by contractors and how many are still out of work. In that way, we could work with them to secure their re-entry into the industry.
It would be helpful also if pressure could be put on the individual organisations—the five main companies that took over the Jarvis work—to meet the unions and other representatives of the work force to ensure that we overcome some of the outstanding claims from Jarvis’s going into administration. The companies are BAM Nuttall, Babcock Rail, Freightliner, DB Schenker and VolkerRail. In the long-term interests of the rail industry, we should do all in our power to ensure that this never happens again in this industry—that we never go through another collapse of a company when all the various agencies and stakeholders just stand to one side and allow it to happen.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that what is needed is for the Government to take a direct, hands-on approach to retaining skills and ensuring that those who have lost jobs get back into work again?
John McDonnell
Certainly. I will come on to an idea that I have about that, which I think will interest the hon. Gentleman.
To deal with the more immediate questions about learning the lessons of how this occurred, one of the concerns expressed was about the failure by Government to apply the powers of the Railways Act, which would have protected not only the contract work that was being undertaken but the workers who were undertaking those contracts. It would be helpful if the Minister could offer interested Members from all parties a meeting with the appropriate civil servants to discuss the procedures and criteria for when Government can apply the powers under the Railways Act if companies are threatened or in danger of going into administration, so that at least we get those procedures clear in case this occurs again.
I also ask the Minister to look at the arrangements under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 to see how they can be amended so that we are never again in a situation in which workers are unprotected and are made unemployed, not transferred across, and then taken back on under agency conditions, and, as a result, on worse wages and with worse conditions.
I would also welcome the Minster working with us to review the protection of railway workers’ pensions. The original pension rights of those who worked for British Rail, which Members from parties across the House thought would be protected on its privatisation, have been undermined by subsequent pensions legislation—I think unintentionally so.
Jim McGovern
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a scandal that TUPE does not apply to pensions?
John McDonnell
It is a gap in the protection of workers’ living standards, and this instance is a classic example of how people’s futures have been damaged when they thought they were secure. The material that was provided to railway workers on privatisation of British Rail—the leaflets and documents that they received in the consultations that took place—assured them of the security of their pensions for the long-term. But then, as privatisation proceeded and individual companies took over individual contracts, those assurances were unfortunately not adhered to, and subsequent pensions legislation has undermined the protections that they had. Because this is not covered by TUPE, many of the workers have suffered detriment. That is something that we need to look at, on a cross-party basis, I hope.
My final point is about the long-term future of rail engineering, and it relates to the comments made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We are now facing an immense task in seeking to modernise our railways, and the success of that cannot be put at risk by the lack of a skilled engineering work force. One proposal that I have for the Minister is that he convene an urgent, industry-wide jobs seminar to examine rail engineering employment needs not only now but for the long term, so that we can work together to safeguard and enhance skills in railway engineering.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
Surely that jobs summit, or meeting, must include provision for youngsters thinking of entering the industry to assure them that they will have a stable future and will be treated properly. The sort of casualisation that we currently have in the industry is undoubtedly a deterrent to entry.
John McDonnell
I think the experience of Jarvis has sent a message right the way through the industry that this is no longer a secure job. The message from what has happened to the ex-Jarvis workers is this: “No matter how skilled you are, you will not necessarily be properly rewarded in terms of wages, decent conditions or the long-term security of your pension, regardless of how hard you work and whatever skills you have in the industry as it now stands.” That is why it is critical that we take a lead in this matter and bring all the stakeholders together.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
I have issues with Network Rail in my constituency, and I am interested to hear some of the information that the hon. Gentleman has given this evening, especially regarding the new chief executive. Does he think that the mindset of Network Rail has changed?
John McDonnell
I hope that it has. With the new chief executive, there is the potential for more openness and engagement. The previous chief executive even refused to meet a number of us on one occasion, although some of the less senior staff did.
I urge the Minister, as a matter of urgency, to get all the stakeholders in the industry together to look at the future of rail engineering and the skills base that we require. In that way, we can start planning the future of rail engineering on the basis of the needs that we now have, particularly as a result of the new investment that the Government are putting in. As I said, I think that this is a matter of urgency.
I save my last few words for the ex-Jarvis workers. I think that they have had an appalling deal and have been treated extremely badly. It behoves us as a House and those who are now in government to do everything we can to assist those workers to get back into work and to restore the dignity of work to them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I welcome the opportunity to debate in some detail the issues raised by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who spoke with his usual integrity and humanity.
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Minister of State, who has responsibility for this matter, is not able to be with us tonight, but I will make sure that his comments are drawn to her attention. I will ensure that a written response to the questions that I am not able to answer tonight is sent to him. I am grateful for his comments about her involvement. I understand that she is well aware, from the recent meeting and from correspondence, of the importance that the hon. Gentleman attaches to addressing the impact of events such as Jarvis plc’s entry into administration on the rail industry skills base and on former employees. I have sympathy for those who have lost their jobs, and for the impact that it will have on their families. It is always a tragedy when someone loses their job, and the impact is much more widespread than just the effects on the individual concerned.
The Government are progressing with an ambitious programme for rail investment, because we believe that the railway network is vital to economic growth and reducing carbon emissions. However, funding is not unlimited. We must ensure that every pound is spent efficiently, and secure the maximum long-term benefits and value for money. Of course, that includes having a safe railway.
The spending review settlement demonstrated the Government’s commitment to rail transport. We have announced that we will fund and deliver a wide-ranging programme of investment in rail infrastructure and rolling stock. As the hon. Gentleman said, the projects include Thameslink and Crossrail, and the associated 2,100 new carriages; the intercity express programme; extending the electrification of the Great Western main line to Bristol and Cardiff; and electrifying the lines between Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Blackpool. Major station development projects will proceed at Reading, Birmingham, London King’s Cross and Gatwick airport. There are a number of other projects, including those announced in the Budget last week.
The sustained financial support that we have offered now needs to be matched by a relentless drive for efficiency on the part of the rail industry. Sir Roy McNulty’s value-for-money study will have a crucial role in tackling that challenge from an industry-wide perspective. Sir Roy’s emerging findings give a strong indication of the scope for improved value for money in our railways. The potential savings of up to £1 billion that are identified in the report are efficiencies that should be achievable while keeping the same level of services. From my point of view, achieving efficiencies in the railway means making a stronger railway for the future.
One of the key principles for making those savings is much closer working and an alignment of incentives between train operators and Network Rail. Alongside the Government’s response to Sir Roy’s interim findings, we therefore confirmed plans to reform the rail franchising system to make franchises longer, more flexible and more responsive to the needs of passengers, while providing better value for taxpayers. The railway as a whole faces significant challenges in terms of costs and affordability. Finding effective responses to those challenges will not be easy in such a large and complex industry. The study team has been encouraged by the ready co-operation it has received from many people within the industry. Its aim, with their help and support, is to chart a route to a sustainable future for rail in this country.
It is widely recognised that getting better value for money is key to a sound future for rail in this country. We want rail to be in a good place to compete with other modes, not least for carbon reasons. Sir Roy’s recommendations, and the industry’s response, will shape the Government’s proposals for the reform of the industry, which we intend to set out later this year.
However, we recognise that a bigger and more efficient railway needs the very best of engineering and other skills to succeed. The industry’s success in meeting the challenge of the future will depend on the skills, motivation and capabilities of its work force. That is tied into the issue of how the industry manages its supply chain, and how we manage our investment in the industry. We have registered the widely held view that the Government should try to avoid driving peaks and troughs in demand for various skills. In the future, the industry leadership needs to be able to play a greater role in addressing the issue, and it must consider the impact that investment decisions can have right down the chain and how those decisions can be balanced to provide the best value for the taxpayer.
I am conscious that I had less than 10 minutes for my speech, but I shall try to get through as much as I can. I turn to the specific issue of Jarvis plc’s entry into administration. We greatly regret the failure of Jarvis and the subsequent loss of jobs and impact on individual families. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State welcomed the chance to meet the hon. Gentleman and others in the RMT parliamentary group on 15 February, and to hear the group’s views on the matter at first hand. Following that meeting, I understand that Network Rail’s chief executive, David Higgins, has been in touch to confirm his willingness to meet the group to discuss its concerns.
Network Rail re-let to Babcock Rail the track renewal work previously undertaken by Jarvis on the London North Eastern and Midland and Continental routes, which led to a number of staff gaining employment with Babcock Rail. However, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, the contractual arrangements for track renewal work are commercial matters between Network Rail and the infrastructure companies, in which the Government have no locus to intervene.
Network Rail has made it clear that all current track renewal work has been allocated, and that there are no outstanding contracts to be filled. It is tasked to deliver the value for money needed to meet the output and efficiency targets for the operation, maintenance and renewal of the network set out by the independent Office of Rail Regulation. The ORR’s latest industry review makes it clear that Network Rail is delivering improved efficiency through the use of new technology and improved working practices, including the use of high-output track renewal equipment and pre-assembled modular sets of points, which allow it to carry out renewal work more quickly.
The Government recognise the importance of maintaining a skilled work force in the rail sector. That is why Sir Roy McNulty’s value-for-money study is working to identify major improvements in asset and supply chain management, and to forecast future requirements for work force skills. The Government also believe that infrastructure investment is crucial for Britain’s future, so over the next four years we will provide £14 billion of funding to Network Rail to support capital maintenance and infrastructure investment.
As the hon. Gentleman will know, we support a Y-shaped national high-speed rail network from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, with connections on to existing main lines. That would release capacity to expand commuter, regional and freight services on existing lines. The benefits of that network would bring about £44 billion to the country. Building the London to west midlands line would create about 9,000 jobs during construction, 1,500 permanent jobs following completion and 30,000 jobs around the stations of the high-speed network.
The Government are determined to achieve a sustainable, efficient and growing railway. We are equally determined that no changes should be made that would jeopardise the impressive improvements in safety and punctuality achieved across the industry in recent years. We are determined to get those responsible for track and train to work together more closely, to drive down the costs to taxpayers and fare payers while improving the quality of services.
Underlying our determination is our recognition of the need to maintain a skilled and properly resourced work force in the rail industry. Sir Roy McNulty’s value-for-money study will forecast future requirements for work force skills. We will consider Sir Roy’s final recommendations very carefully when they arrive, including in relation to the matters that the hon. Gentleman raised, against the overriding need for any reform to be designed to secure the greatest long-term benefits to the fare payer and taxpayer.
Many of the specific matters that the hon. Gentleman raised are best taken forward by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, and as I said, I will ask her to write to him formally to provide a response. He suggested that the new contractors should give first refusal to ex-Jarvis workers, but I do not believe the Department should require that, because we have no locus to involve ourselves in commercial arrangements between Network Rail and those whom it seeks to employ, let alone in deciding who contracting companies take on. However, his comments have been noted, and I am sure that those in the rail industry will pay attention to them.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether it would be possible to meet the appropriate civil servants to examine the criteria for when the Department might intervene under the Railways Act 2005. That is a matter for the Department, and notwithstanding the fact that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State is not here, I will suggest to her that that might be a sensible way for the hon. Gentleman to meet officials.
Jim McGovern
The Minister mentioned billions of pounds of investment. Could he tell me, or will he meet me—
Ministerial Correction
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Assaults on Police: Sentencing
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Philip Davies
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many assaults on police officers resulted in (a) custodial and (b) non-custodial sentences in the latest period for which figures are available;
Mr Blunt
The number of defendants sentenced and given an immediate custody for an assault on a constable at all courts, in England and Wales for 2009 (latest available) is provided in table 1. This is a summary only offence which is charged where little or no physical harm is involved. Where there are more serious injuries this would result in a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and it is not possible to say how many convictions for this offence arise from assaults on police officers.
The number of offenders cautioned for indictable only offences in England and Wales, 2007 to 2009 (latest available) is provided in table 2.
Data for 2010 are planned for publication in the spring of 2011.
Statute | Offence | Sentenced | Custodial sentence | Other disposals4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Police Act 1996 | Assault on a constable | 9,201 | 1,457 | 7,744 |
1 Police Act 1996 s.89(1)—Assault on a constable. 2 The figures given in the table on court proceedings 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 it 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. 3 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their Inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 4 Other disposals include: absolute discharge, conditional discharge, fine, community sentence, suspended sentence and otherwise dealt with. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services—Ministry of Justice |
2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Indictable only | 5,371 | 1,945 | 1,405 |
1 The cautions statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When an offender has been cautioned for two or more offences at the same time the principal offence is the more serious offence. 2 From 1 June 2000 the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 came into force nationally and removed the use of cautions for persons under 18 and replaced them with reprimands and warnings. These figures have been included in the totals. 3 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services—Ministry of Justice |
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Blunt
The number of defendants sentenced and given an immediate custody for an assault on a constable at all courts, in England and Wales for 2009 (latest available) is provided in table 1. This is a summary only offence which is charged where little or no physical harm is involved. Where there are more serious injuries this would result in a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and it is not possible to say how many convictions for this offence arise from assaults on police officers.
The number of offenders cautioned for indictable only offences in England and Wales, 2007 to 2009 (latest available) is provided in table 2.
Data for 2010 are planned for publication in the spring of 2011.
Statute | Offence | Sentenced | Custodial sentence | Other disposals4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Police Act 1996 | Assault on a constable | 9,201 | 1,457 | 7,744 |
1 Police Act 1996 s.89(1)—Assault on a constable. 2 The figures given in the table on court proceedings 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 it 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. 3 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their Inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 4 Other disposals include: absolute discharge, conditional discharge, fine, community sentence, suspended sentence and otherwise dealt with. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services—Ministry of Justice |
2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Indictable only | 2,676 | 1,945 | 1,405 |
1 The cautions statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When an offender has been cautioned for two or more offences at the same time the principal offence is the more serious offence. 2 From 1 June 2000 the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 came into force nationally and removed the use of cautions for persons under 18 and replaced them with reprimands and warnings. These figures have been included in the totals. 3 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Source: Justice Statistics Analytical Services—Ministry of Justice |
Petitions
Industrial Compensation (Stanley Embling)
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
West Lothian Question
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve, as always, under your Gower chairmanship, Mr Caton. I welcome the opportunity to have this debate for a number of reasons. It gives me the chance to reflect on an issue that was important in the 10 years that I spent as a territorial Minister in both the Wales Office and the Northern Ireland Office. In the case of Northern Ireland, my job was to oversee the talks that led to the establishment of the Assembly and the Executive. In Wales, I worked with the Welsh Assembly in the first decade of its life. I have, therefore, a particular personal interest in this issue.
Secondly, the Government, it seems—I am not quite sure that I have seen the detail; I am certain that the Minister will enlighten us later—have called for a commission to look at constitutional issues, and specifically the West Lothian question. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) makes his winding-up speech, he can tell us about the nature of that commission—who will sit on it; when it will meet; whether its recommendations are likely to be binding; whether, although this would be unusual, it will be consensual—and all the details that surround the issue.
Thirdly, the constitutional issues that have affected Wales as a consequence of the Government’s policies have had little chance of being debated in the House of Commons. Those issues affecting Wales—the loss of its Members of Parliament and other issues—did not reach the stage of being debated on the Floor of the House, and as you will know, Mr Caton, we were refused a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee to discuss those important issues of constitutional change.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
On the consensual nature of the commission, what hope does my right hon. Friend hold out that it will be consensual, bearing in mind the constitutional changes of the past eight months, including the alternative vote, which is simply to please the Liberals, and the equalisation of seats, which is simply to please the Tories?
Paul Murphy
None. The Welsh dimension is important, but the West Lothian question affects Northern Ireland and Scotland as well. The issue is of particular interest to Welsh Members because, as the Chamber will know, a few weeks ago the referendum result in Wales was a decisive vote in favour of increased powers and the right of the Assembly to pass its own legislation. Of course, the West Lothian question was being debated and discussed well before that.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I have quite significant sympathy with elements of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, particularly as so many of the Welsh-related issues in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill were not even debated in the House, which was highly regrettable. Equally, surely he must understand that one of the problems with the West Lothian question is the idea of over-representation of particular parts of the UK. Does he feel that it is sustainable for Wales to be so massively over-represented in the United Kingdom Parliament, given its population? Does he feel that it would be wrong to have a reduction on a pro rata basis, to ensure that all parts of the UK were equally represented in this place?
Paul Murphy
I do not think that Wales is over-represented. I think that in the House of Commons, Wales is represented differently from England, as are Scotland and Northern Ireland. I will come to that in a moment, because the issue of how Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland exist constitutionally within a United Kingdom is very important. That is why I think that Wales’s current representation is right. When the next election comes—assuming that it will be in four or more years’ time—we will have the lowest number of MPs in Wales since 1832. The hon. Gentleman may recall that in the referendums on devolution in 1997 in Scotland and in Wales, part of the settlement on which the Welsh and Scottish people voted was the retention of the number of MPs for both Scotland and Wales. That was in order to ensure that there was proper representation within the Union. By that I mean decent representation, with advice being heard; I am not necessarily talking about numbers, though of course if there are more, there is a better voice.
Mr Field
Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that there is an equally deeply felt concern in England? Not only is there a devolved settlement that gives the Scots a Parliament, and Northern Ireland and Wales an Assembly with additional powers, but there is a relative over-representation, in the sense of fewer constituents for MPs. Does he not see that there is one leg—a rather important leg—of the United Kingdom that feels very much under-represented and unloved, and that that is one of the reasons why the West Lothian question is becoming more high-profile in England?
Paul Murphy
It is one hell of a leg, actually, in terms of its size. That is the point; 85% of MPs, 85% of the population, and 85% of the resources spent on public services in the United Kingdom are English. The voices of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, within that enormous big brother, have to be heard, because that is the strength of the Union. I am a unionist with a small “u”; I believe that the Union should be maintained, but it is best maintained by recognising the diversity of our countries and regions within the United Kingdom. A disproportionate loss in Wales of a quarter of our MPs in one fell swoop will, in my view, affect the efficacy and significance of the Union.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Would the right hon. Gentleman not accept that it is not the size of England that matters, but the counties, shires and towns? They are very important, and they are not 85% of England.
Paul Murphy
No, I do not accept that for one second, because the Union is not an union of shires. The Union is a union of countries and regions: the Province of Northern Ireland, the old Kingdom of Scotland and the old Principality of Wales make up the Union, together with England. I will come to that in a second. The problem of England is difficult—I have no doubt about that—but the maintenance of proper representation, weighted differently for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, helps to maintain that Union. I will come on to the issue of weight in a moment, because on the one hand the Government argue that there should be equal weight for Members of Parliament, but on the other, when we are elected, they argue that we have different weights in the House of Commons.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the resounding yes vote in the recent referendum showed that the people of Wales have accepted devolution and are very happy for the Welsh Assembly to have more powers, and that the process is irreversible? Would it not be possible, if we are looking at a future system for the United Kingdom, to have a system that would embrace not only independent Parliaments in Wales and Scotland, but, possibly, a newly forged link with the Republic of Ireland?
Paul Murphy
Yes, indeed. I very much accept my hon. Friend’s point about the result of the referendum. Devolution is unquestionably here to stay. People accept that devolution is the best way to deal with the issues in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.
The issue that affects us at the moment, with regard to the West Lothian question, is the so-called English question—the question of English issues. Should Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs vote on what are termed to be specifically English issues in this place? I maintain that there are no such things as absolutely English issues. In the first instance, the money that comes to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is decided by Parliament, which is overwhelmingly English—85% of MPs are English. I quote, for the convenience of hon. Members, the Kilbrandon commission, which met, as many will know, in the 1970s:
“any issue at Westminster involving expenditure of public money is of course of consequence to all parts of the UK, since it may affect the level of taxation and indirectly influences the level of a region’s own expenditure”.
Every time the Barnett formula is used, in each public spending round, the amount reached depends on the amount of money spent in England on public services that are devolved to the other countries. If health spending in England goes up, or education spending in England goes down, that has complete consequences for the budgets of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Financially, there is no such thing as an English issue—they are British issues.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
On that point, would the right hon. Gentleman accept that English constituencies feel that there is great unfairness? We feel under-represented but over-taxed. For example, we wonder why we are subsidising university education for Scottish pupils, and free prescriptions.
Paul Murphy
The whole business of the devolution settlement is that devolved areas can decide what they spend their money on. It could equally be argued, incidentally, if one lived in north-east England, the midlands or the north-west, and if one were to divide England into regions, that certain regions do better than others. That is a matter not for today’s debate, but for future financial policy. I merely say that when the Barnett formula is applied to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is applied on the basis of whether spending in England goes up or down.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
May I add a further complication to my right hon. Friend’s argument? He knows that I represent a Welsh border constituency. One third of my constituents use the Countess of Chester hospital in England; 400 of my constituents work at Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port, which is supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; Crewe station and the airports at Manchester and Liverpool serve my constituency; constituents go to Chester university and West Cheshire college. Am I not to have a vote or a voice on those things on behalf of my constituents?
Paul Murphy
My right hon. Friend wants a vote and will get it. He eloquently expressed my next point, which I will not make because he made it better than I could.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I apologise for the fact that I have to leave in a moment to chair the Welsh Affairs Committee. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to say, as a proud Welshman and a Unionist, and in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who made the very point that I wanted to make, that we cannot possibly have a situation where Welsh MPs can tell the English what to do with their health service and education, but English MPs cannot have any say over what goes on in Wales. Surely the answer for all Unionists across the United Kingdom is to give the English their own Parliament, with powers similar to those of the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments, and have some kind of a federal structure to deal with everything else that matters to the UK.
Paul Murphy
The issue of whether England, by which I mean English regions—I shall come to that in a second—should have its own regional governments is a different matter. That is, ultimately, the answer to the question. Incidentally, I say this to the hon. Gentleman, who is leaving: I recently read a quotation from a senior Conservative, who said in the 1960s, in a discussion on the West Lothian question—it was not called that at the time—that
“every Member of the House of Commons is equal with every other Member of the House of Commons.”
That was Peter Thorneycroft, who was then the shadow Attorney-General. He was the Member of Parliament for Monmouth, so that will be of interest to this hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). His party had a different view of such things in those days, but I will come to that later.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned cross-border issues.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
On that point, my constituents are in the opposite position to those of the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson): they live in England, but many use public services in Wales, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). Some of them live in England, and have their general practitioner in England, but are registered in Wales. They are subject to the Welsh national health service, the policies of which are set by the Welsh Assembly Government, but they have no democratic say at all about those policies.
Paul Murphy
Of course they do not, but they sometimes get the benefit. There was a time when people from the Minister’s constituency were able to come to Chepstow to claim free prescriptions, although I believe that that has been stopped. I agree with him that cross-border matters are particularly complicated in our part of England and Wales. It is not quite the same on the Scottish border, because very few people live alongside it. However, on the Welsh border, in both the south and the north, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn referred, it is an issue, and the Minister also makes that point. If we start trying to disentangle all of this, we would get into an awful muddle as to who does what, and who votes on what.
Policies developed in England have implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. Look at student fees, for example. When we are elected, we are elected as MPs for our constituencies, but we are also elected to represent the UK as a whole. We represent the UK in the sense that we take decisions that affect the whole of the UK, not just our own constituencies. Also, who is to define what is an English issue? I rather fancy that that would put the Speaker of the House of Commons in a difficult position.
Mr Mark Field
The right hon. Gentleman has touched on the idea that perhaps we need to move, in time, towards some sort of federal structure, and I do not disagree with that, but the contributions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and the Minister go to the heart of the point, particularly on the health issue. Ultimately, it is a fiction that we have a national health service in the UK. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have four separate national health services, one for each of the four constituent parts of the UK. Therein is one of our key problems. Ultimately, we have to be a little more open with the public at large about how that structure operates. It is to a large extent inconsistent, as the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) points out, but it is not enough simply for us to say that we put the UK’s interests first.
There are issues around transport and policing in London on which I, as a London MP, have very little say, and I feel uneasy about that, to a certain extent. I feel uneasy about speaking on some of those issues, given the devolution to the London government. That is not an entire devolution, in the way that it is for the right hon. Gentleman; he does not represent a single person on health matters, because they have been entirely devolved to the Welsh Assembly.
Paul Murphy
But I do represent people on health matters because of decisions made by the British Government on health spending. As I said earlier, if they put spending up, that has a direct consequence for the people of Wales: their spending will go down. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn referred to cross-border implications; the English health service is important to Welsh Members because of those implications.
Let me say to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) that I voted on the Bill to set up the London authority. I also voted on issues that affected only Scotland before devolution, and all of us could vote on matters affecting Northern Ireland. There were times when those decisions were highly controversial, such as when the poll tax was introduced in Scotland. That was done on the basis of English MPs agreeing to it, but we had to accept that the principle of British MPs voting on British issues was still important, however disagreeable we thought it might be.
Northern Ireland is a good example, because it had its own devolved system from the early ’20s to the ’60s. The Stormont Parliament dealt with all the issues for which it was responsible—education, health and so on—but Northern Ireland MPs still had a say and a vote on matters that affected England, Scotland and Wales. Indeed, it was when Harold Wilson complained in the ’60s that although steel nationalisation was not a matter that affected Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Members were voting on it, that the Conservative party pointed out that all Members in the House of Commons were equal, in terms of their constitutional rights.
Another problem is that of creating two classes of MPs. I quote again from Kilbrandon:
“in our view, therefore, all Members of Parliament, whether or not they come from regions with their own legislative assemblies, must have the same rights of participation in the business of the House of Commons”.
No European country has two-tier MPs. The nearest country to us in terms of asymmetrical devolution is Spain. I asked the Library to have a look at that situation, and it assured me that all Spanish MPs have exactly the same rights in their Parliament as we do in ours, despite the fact that virtually every aspect of domestic policy is heavily devolved to parts of Spain such as the Basque country and Catalonia.
There would be a problem—the hon. Member for Monmouth has left—if we were to accept two classes of MPs, and if Welsh Members could not vote on English issues, whatever they might be. The UK Parliament is in danger of becoming an English Parliament, and that is very dangerous. What about the House of Lords? This has never been an issue, but it may vote on anything, including matters on which Welsh Members of Parliament could not.
The biggest single issue, however, is that when I vote, as a citizen of the United Kingdom who happens to live in Wales, I vote on the policies of the parties as they affect the United Kingdom, but as a Welsh Member of Parliament, I vote on issues that affect, for example, the English health service. That happens in Scotland. All that cannot be disentangled. What would happen if there were restrictions on Members of Parliament and a Government could not carry a majority on English issues, but could on United Kingdom issues? When a potential Prime Minister goes to the palace, having won a United Kingdom general election, does the Queen ask whether they have a majority in England? That is the problem, because there would be a constitutional mess that we have never previously experienced.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s argument with great attention, and agree with much of it, but the key issue is that the real change in governance in Wales was voted on by the whole House of Commons, including all English MPs, and they presumably understood the implications of the decision.
Paul Murphy
Presumably they did, but when English, Scottish and Northern Ireland Members of Parliament voted for the Welsh settlement, they voted for something that was put to the people in 1997: first, that there would be a devolved Assembly; secondly, that there would be the same number of Members of Parliament; and, thirdly, the issue of whether Welsh Members of Parliament were not able to vote on certain issues in the House of Commons was specifically excluded. People in Wales, Scotland and indeed Northern Ireland voted in referendums that in no way denigrated the power or responsibilities of their Member of Parliament.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I am listening with interest to the right hon. Gentleman, but he and other Welsh MPs underestimate the resentment in England that has been referred to, which is growing. I shall give one small example on the point that he was making. I forget the year of the legislation on tuition fees—it was in the late 1990s—but he knows as well as I do that English MPs voted against the introduction of tuition fees in England, and that Bill applied only to England. It came in only because of the votes of Scottish MPs—[Interruption.] It is true. I am sorry, but the majority of English MPs voted against tuition fees.
Paul Murphy
The argument could be made on other issues, such as the poll tax. People in Scotland, who were soon to have their Parliament, deeply resented that; it was something that they did not want. Another issue that caused resentment in Wales—I see no way out of it without English regional government—is the Olympics, which are being held in London. There is great dissatisfaction in Wales about the fact that a huge amount of money is being spent on something in London that has no impact on Wales.
Paul Murphy
Whatever the rights or wrongs, a lot of money that would have come to Wales did not, because it went to the London Olympics. I am not saying that that is good or bad; I am merely pointing out that there was disagreement in Wales. That will always happen. It could be argued, for example, that the southern part of England during the 1960s and 1970s, and recently, voted for more Conservative MPs than Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs. They could feel aggrieved that their part of England has been done down by a Labour Government for whom they did not vote. That is the nature of the United Kingdom legislature, and we cannot change that.
Mr Mark Field
The right hon. Gentleman must accept that it was precisely that resentment in reverse that led to the devolution settlement. In the run-up to the 1997 election, his party recognised that 18 years of Conservative rule had dismayed many people in Scotland and Wales, and that is why we went down the devolution route. He cannot have it both ways. That was an important part of the momentum that led to the devolution settlement that we have today.
Paul Murphy
I think that is probably right, and that was reflected in the referendum result in Wales. People preferred decisions affecting their lives to be taken in Cardiff instead of Westminster, but that was certainly not the only reason for devolution. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted it for various reasons, and people voted accordingly.
At the end of the day, the Government changed their mind, and the Conservative party changed its mind over the years, partly because of such arguments. After all, the Conservatives have only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, eight in Wales and none in Northern Ireland. Is the Conservative party still a Unionist party? I sometimes doubt it. I also sometimes doubt whether, if there were a majority of Conservatives in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it would have the same appetite for change. I am sorry about that, because the Conservative party has a long and proud tradition in its own right of protecting the Union, but that is not so now. I sometimes wonder whether it would prefer Wales and Scotland to go their own ways. That would be a dangerous step, particularly in view of the Prime Minister’s respect agenda for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although I am not convinced that that agenda would be respectful if the powers, responsibilities and duties of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members of Parliament were removed. I sincerely hope that the Government will rethink the issue, because it could imperil our constitution, weaken the Union, and do a great disservice to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I shall speak briefly, because I know that many other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on securing it, because it is important, and such constitutional issues are close to all our hearts. There are no easy solutions.
A major issue would have blown up after the last general election—the right hon. Gentleman alluded to this—if the Conservatives had tried to form a minority Administration. The coalition now has 12 MPs in Scotland, whereas the Conservative party alone has only a single MP, and has won only three contests in total in the last four general elections. The West Lothian issue would have come much more to the fore, and perhaps that would have been good thing.
I hope that the Minister will say a little about what the Government are planning to do in this regard. The past nine months have been a period of substantial constitutional change, and I share many of the reservations on the Opposition Benches, as my voting record shows. I abstained on Second and Third Readings of the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill, but I voted against the Government on some occasions. I was uneasy about the Bill’s being seen as slightly partisan along the lines that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out. I was one of three Conservative MPs who voted to retain the overall number of constituencies at 650, although I would try to equalise them, and we are now moving towards that.
We should consider the whole constitutional issue much more broadly, and it is regrettable that we are making significant changes to the House of Commons when we all know in our hearts that this rapid pace of change will not be represented in any of the changes that will be presented to the House of Lords. There is much speculation that the Deputy Prime Minister, particularly if the AV vote does not go the way he wants, will be given the House of Lords issue and rush ahead with it in the second half of the year. I think we all know that not only is there division in the House of Commons, there is probably rather less division that we would like in the House of Lords, and I suspect that many life peers on both sides will want to retain their position, and will stall on any fundamental reforms.
I shall explain what I would like, which is a pipe dream at the moment, but touches on solving some of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out.
Paul Flynn
The hon. Gentleman seems to measure his party’s support in Wales and Scotland by the number of MPs it has. In two of the last four general elections, the Conservative party had 20% of the vote in Wales without a single MP. Would he not be better engaged in proving that first-past-the-post is a rotten, out-of-date electoral system, and campaigning for AV to obtain justice for his party?
Mr Field
However much the hon. Gentleman would like to tempt me in that direction, I will not go down that path as it does not apply to today’s debate. However, he makes a serious point. In many ways, devolution was the saving of the Conservative party in Wales in the immediate aftermath of 1997, or at least after 1999 with the Welsh Assembly elections. We now have a stalwart group of Welsh MPs, roughly one quarter of whom are present today—that is until the boundaries change. [Laughter.] I will not be unkind to my colleagues. The Minister is blanching at the prospect of a cross-border Welsh-English seat if some people have their way.
Mr Field
Thankfully, I do not think it is possible with the legislation that has been carefully put into place.
I know that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I will say just a few words about what I consider would be the ideal situation. It is very much a pipe dream and an ideal. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) said in his earlier contribution. We need to move towards the idea of an English Parliament. We do not need a whole lot more politicians—I hasten to add—but I would like to see all parts of the United Kingdom come under a federal umbrella, with identical powers for the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English Parliaments. There would also be the United Kingdom Parliament into which Members of the constituent parts would organise themselves on a pro rata basis. The United Kingdom Parliament would look at bigger strategic economic issues such as foreign affairs and defence. Many things that are already taken for granted in Wales and Scotland, such as policies on transport, health and a whole range of issues that are dealt with through the Assembly or the Scottish Parliament, would be tackled at national level. That is important because a huge amount of resentment is building up in England about what is seen as an unfair arrangement. Having a Conservative-led Government has probably helped to assuage that in the short term, but I fear that sense of resentment will become stronger as we go forward.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman presents a measured and characteristically sensible argument. Does he agree that England is a large country containing very disparate regions? I was born in the north-east of England, which in many respects has more in common with Wales than with Essex. Therefore, the type of targeted health policy that makes sense in Wales would not make sense in England because the needs of the various regions are so different that they could not be adequately dealt with by an English Parliament.
Mr Field
There may be something in what the hon. Gentleman says. I was describing my ideal, but I recognise the chief concern that, unlike any other federation, having a single group that contains 85% of the land mass or population, and its Members, would present some difficulties. The Federal Republic of Germany was set up as a post-war construct. Even after the reintegration of East Germany in 1990, there were essentially smaller units. There are particular areas of power—for example, Bavaria is strong due to historical factors and is a powerful Land, and North-Rhine Westphalia is the big industrial heartland, but even the smaller states have an important role to play. Safeguards exist in the United States of America in that each state has two Senate seats, irrespective of size. That means that states work closely together despite great disparities in size and economic power. I accept that point, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, coming from the north-east, there is not much love or great affinity between that region and the area of the United Kingdom immediately to the north. By the same token, when the people of the north-east had the opportunity some seven years ago to sign up for their own government, that move was overwhelmingly defeated. It had been anticipated that that region would have been the most likely to go down the route of a devolved English Government.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I think the hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. Does he agree that the major problems we have had with devolution are because we have never looked at it from a constitutional point of view? Perhaps there is an argument for some sort of written constitution with a Bill of Rights and a clear separation of powers.
Mr Field
There is very much an argument for that. It is not particularly a Conservative party idea, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The nub of his point is correct. We have tended to look at devolution as a political settlement. In 1997, after 18 years of Conservative rule from which the Scots and Welsh felt disfranchised, political momentum allowed devolution to go ahead in a way that would not have happened 20 years earlier.
Chris Ruane
If the logic of the Conservative party—not necessarily the hon. Gentleman’s point of view—is that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should not be allowed to vote on health and education issues that affect London, should that logic be carried forward to London MPs who have the Assembly?
Mr Field
I think it must be to an extent. As I have said, I feel slightly uneasy about issues of policing and transportation. In the dim and distant past when I was on the Front Bench of my party, I was asked to be a transport spokesman. Because of this issue I did not feel able to take up such a role, and I was offered something else instead. It is an issue, although it is a more byzantine and mixed situation. The Home Secretary still has overall control of London policing—
Mr Field
One would not necessarily know it from articles in The Daily Telegraph from the past 24 hours, but it is a slightly more complicated situation and therein lies part of the difficulty.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about these issues. From my point of view—this is my individual point of view, rather than that of my party—it is regrettable that we have not looked at all issues concerning the constitution so as to try and obtain a relatively logical patchwork. I accept that historical analysis of such matters means that logic is often thrown out of the window. The worry is that we have moved ahead with breakneck speed in a way that will have a big impact on the House of Commons and affect our relationship with our constituents and within our countries. The House of Lords has not been part and parcel of that, and 117 peers have been added at the same time as we needed to reduce the size of the House of Commons on cost grounds. That is illogical. We may have considerably more peers given that the coalition agreement mentions equalising the proportion of peers for each party based on the vote at the last general election. That suggests there will be another couple of hundred peers, and some older Members of the House of Lords are very hacked off at the idea of not getting a seat in their own Chamber. It is regrettable that we have not looked at that matter, and I hope that as part of the West Lothian question, we will look at all those constitutional issues together and try to obtain a position for the whole constitution over the years to come, including an analysis of the separation of powers referred to by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) for securing this important debate. Despite the chuckles that I detected from Government Front Benchers, there has been a lack of opportunity to talk about these hugely important issues as they affect not only Wales, but the United Kingdom. The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 that we have just seen rammed through the Commons was entirely partisan in its composition. Crucially—this point was picked up by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—it basically ignored the position of the House of Lords and dealt only with the House of Commons. In terms of a constitutional settlement that is a massive mistake, and these issues must be addressed. House of Lords reform will be on the political agenda, and it was a massive mistake not to consider that when looking at the number of MPs in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.
The Conservative manifesto made no reference to removing the right of MPs from Wales to vote on matters relating to England. Characteristically, it made little reference to Wales and stated:
“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’: the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved. A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”
That is the nub of the issue.
Since the general election, however, Ministers have taken a different tone. We have, of course, heard about the commission that will be set up to address the West Lothian question. The Minister has stated that the commission’s work
“will need to take account of our proposals to reform the House of Lords to create a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber, the changes being made to the way this House does business and amendments to the devolution regimes, for example in the Scotland Bill presently before the House. We will make an announcement in the new year.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 822W.]
It is very unfortunate that a major constitutional Bill has gone through the House of Commons before the commission has been set up. We do not know the detail of the commission and we all hope that we will hear something about that later today. It is very much to be regretted that the House of Lords and the House of Commons are not looked at together when this issue is considered.
There has been no substantive discussion that I am aware of with Members of Parliament from Wales of whatever party about the issue. It was absolutely disgraceful that the Secretary of State for Wales refused to engage in a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee about the number of Members of Parliament in Wales under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. That showed extraordinary constitutional illiteracy, because the settlement that exists in the United Kingdom at this time is very complex. As we all know, it is partly written and partly unwritten and has been established as a result of centuries of history. It has been reached as a result of huge political events that have affected the islands that lie off Europe, including Ireland and, of course, Great Britain.
The changes that were put through, for what I believe were partisan political purposes, in the recent Bill changed that constitution without any real consent, and what was extraordinary in that context was the lack of involvement of Conservative MPs from Wales, who of course voted like turkeys approaching Christmas, but also took no substantive part in the debate. As a consequence, the views that had been recently expressed by members of the public in the general election in Wales were in effect excluded when the number of Members of Parliament in Wales was reduced by one quarter.
We all know that opportunities for Welsh Members of Parliament to discuss these matters were extremely limited if not non-existent in the Chamber. I think that I made a speech on Third Reading, but we did not get to the point of making any submissions on amendments because of the timetabling. As a consequence, there is a real sense of frustration among Members of Parliament from Wales about the matter.
The lesson that I learned is that the Conservative party has changed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen referred to the Kilbrandon review in the 1970s. There was a time when the Conservative party was the Conservative and Unionist party and did not simply represent the views of English MPs. Increasingly as I sit in the House of Commons now and listen to speeches from those on the Government Benches, I am learning—this has been evidenced again in today’s debate—that the Conservative party does not speak for the United Kingdom any more. It speaks for England. It is not driven by any wish to reach out to the peoples of Scotland and Wales.
Chris Ruane
Would my hon. Friend extend that list to include the people of the northern cities of England—the north-west and the north-east?
Ian Lucas
For present purposes, I will resist that temptation because I am talking specifically about Scotland and Wales. We know that the Conservative party has done very badly in elections in Scotland since 1997 and still has only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, despite huge numbers of relaunches in that country. We know also that even last year, the share of the vote that the Conservative party secured in Wales when it ended up forming a Government with its friends the Liberal Democrats was less than it secured in 1992. It has not made the progress in Wales that it would have liked to make.
The lesson that I would have liked the Conservative party to learn from that is that it needs to reach out more to the peoples of Scotland and Wales than it has done. My view is that it has done exactly the opposite. It has withdrawn from the battlefield. We saw, for example, that the Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to make her position clear on the recent referendum in Wales before it took place. The Prime Minister is in effect treating Scotland and Wales at the moment as a franchise—something that is given over to someone else and that does not really affect the person who gives it over. It is the political equivalent of SUBWAY.
Mr Mark Field
The hon. Gentleman, in an otherwise thoughtful speech, is being a little unfair to the Conservatives in Wales. Clearly, since 1859 we have been a minority party in Wales. As the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) pointed out, we got 20% of the vote even in 1997. However, it is fair to say that the Conservative group in the Welsh Assembly has worked very hard to make the Assembly work. Obviously, there has not always been agreement, because it has spent the past 12 years in one form of Opposition or another. None the less, it has made it work. The Welsh Conservative party is not only doing its best to make the Welsh Assembly work, but playing a very important part in the whole polity of Wales within the United Kingdom, so the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is rather unfair.
Ian Lucas
As always, the hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. The Welsh Conservative party may be seeking to take matters forward as far as devolution is concerned. For example, the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales felt able to support the recent referendum. However, the key point is that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did not feel able to support the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales. The Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to support the Conservative group in the—
Ian Lucas
Give me a moment. The Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to support the position of the members of the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales. That is why they are a franchise. They are out in the wilderness as far as the national Conservative party is concerned. They are of no concern to the Conservative party based at Westminster, because that party does not take heed of any of the MPs from Wales who represent it.
Simon Hart
Although it slightly pains me to say this, will the hon. Gentleman not accept that if he applied the 2010 election result to a political map that took account of equalisation, he would not be able to make the comments that he is making about the irrelevance of the Welsh Conservatives? We would have had a far more realistic result as a consequence, which would have forbidden him from making those slightly inaccurate comments.
Ian Lucas
I do not think that my comments are inaccurate at all. My concern is that we now have one political party that is committed to the Union and to devolution within that Union—the Labour party. The Liberal Democrats are in effect—[Interruption.] They are an irrelevance, as has been indicated from across the Chamber.
Of course, we have nationalist parties, but the Conservative party no longer seeks to reach out to the people of Wales and Scotland. I never thought I would say this, but that pains me. The Conservative party should speak up for the United Kingdom, and it is a great shame that that no longer happens.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the United Kingdom’s cohesion and unity might be helped just a little if the Prime Minister made more visits to the countries of the UK—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? He has not been to Northern Ireland since the general election.
Ian Lucas
I must confess that I am extremely surprised by that. I agree entirely.
Whatever constitutional arrangements these isles—Ireland and Great Britain—settle on, the lesson of the past hundreds of years is that we must have constitutional arrangements that work. We have an opportunity to have a measured, non-partisan debate about the UK’s constitutional arrangements. Bearing in mind the constitutional changes that have happened since 1997, there is a strong case for some kind of written settlement. There was a time when I would never have believed that I would say that, but the current flux in devolution settlements needs to be resolved so that the devolved institutions can focus on policy delivery, which is what our constituents are mainly interested in, rather than on constitutional settlements. I would therefore like to see non-partisan engagement by the Government—that has not happened to date, which I am very sorry about—on issues relating to the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The answer to the West Lothian question, if there is one, lies in regional government in England, and I speak with some knowledge of the north-east. One major reason why the devolution proposals were passed in 1997—the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster was correct about this—was that there had been 18 years of Conservative Government. I am not sure that devolution would have happened if there had been a Labour Government in the period before 1997. One major reason why the north-east voted not to have an assembly was that people took the view that they had a Labour Government in London so they did not need an assembly in the north-east. If we asked people today whether they would like protection like that offered by the National Assembly for Wales extended to the north-east of England, we might get a very different answer.
The issue of regional government will come back. If we are to have a devolved settlement in the United Kingdom—we must not forget that there is a devolved institution in London—we will revisit the issue of regional government in England in due course. I know that that is unpopular among Conservative Members, but they should consider the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who noted that the Conservatives are still weak in areas in the north of the country, which is probably why they did not win the general election last year.
These are massive issues, and politicians have struggled with them not only in the past few years, but in the centuries before—as we all know, “one in, one out” defeated Gladstone. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen is a wise man, and when he says that having two classes of MP will lead to the break-up of the UK, the Minister should listen. He should speak to the Secretary of State for Wales, who should start to listen to MPs from Wales; that might help her start doing a better job.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I shall make two brief points, which have crossed my mind recently, largely because of my experience as a Minister in the Wales Office for the best part of two years in the previous Government.
The first point is that the devolution settlement is far from straightforward. It is not neat; as we say in Wales, it is not tidy. Reference has been made to the block grant, which goes exclusively from Westminster to the Assembly. The assumption is that health and education are devolved matters and are nothing to do with England, but things are not quite that straightforward. For example, even after the referendum, which gave the Assembly legislative powers in clearly defined areas, we still have English and Welsh legislation on health and education, and it is still possible to put forward Welsh clauses with the support of the UK Government.
We in Wales are also mindful of the fact that we have a large border with England. One thing that continually struck me in the Wales Office was the time devoted, quite rightly, to cross-border issues. Offa’s Dyke is not that significant or that high, and our border is more apparent than real in many ways. Cross-border issues will therefore always be significant for the UK Government in Westminster and the Welsh Assembly.
It is also important to recognise that devolution is very asymmetrical in the UK as a whole and in Wales and England. Wales is relatively small compared with England, and what happens in England inevitably has a tremendous influence on Wales. We see that even on issues that are primarily devolved, such as health and education. The debate on higher education in Wales cannot be conducted in isolation from what is happening in England, as we have seen recently. That reality cannot be denied and it will not go away.
Much, but not all, of the responsibility for the environment is devolved to the Welsh Assembly; for example, the Environment Agency in Wales is still responsible to the UK Government. That complex interface is a reality, and parliamentary processes must take account of that. Another example is the economy. Certain aspects of micro-economic intervention are devolved, but macro policy is not devolved at all. Again, what happens at a UK level has a huge impact on the Welsh economy. My first point, therefore, relates to the sheer complexity of the devolution settlement, which has not been fundamentally altered by the recent referendum result.
My second point is that devolution has certain unintended consequences. One is the frequent assumption in Whitehall and Westminster that the devolution of powers to Wales goes much further than it actually does. For example, when I was in the Wales Office, I was continually struck in the discussions that were necessary with the Home Office by what people thought the devolution settlement meant for Wales. Despite the excellent efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was a Home Office Minister, the assumption—primarily among civil servants—was often that the Home Office did not need to bother with Wales any more, because Wales had an Assembly. The incorrect assumption was that Home Office responsibilities, including for policing, were devolved, but that is not the case. It is important to recognise that.
Following on from that, the Home Office had a tendency, which had to be corrected time and again—it is still there, but I fear that it is not being corrected—to make policy as though it applied only to England and not to Wales. Little consideration was given to how the relationship with the Welsh Assembly should develop over the foreseeable future, and there was little understanding of the particular needs of Wales. The assumption was that Wales had an Assembly so the Home Office did not have to concern itself with Wales. That is wrong, and something of which we must be mindful. That leads me to the conclusion that it is important for Welsh MPs not to be confined to certain areas, but to continue to have an influence on all legislation relating to England and Wales. Two categories of MPs would be intrinsically wrong. It would be bad for Wales and also for England.
Mr Hanson
Is it not also important, therefore, that MPs representing constituencies in England use the facilities of the Wales Office—where my hon. Friend once worked, as I did 10 years ago with my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy)—to raise Welsh issues through the Secretary of State for Wales’s office?
Mr David
Yes, I think that is very important. It is necessary, in this complex mosaic of devolution in Britain, that we have a series of different relationships. Quite often the representation of English MPs to the Wales Office is indeed important. One concern I have is the lack of proactivity from the Wales Office. Increasingly people are asking—
Mr David
Yes, where is she, and what is the point of the Wales Office? The Wales Office has a point; there is a need for a Secretary of State for Wales, but he or she has a job to do. That job needs to be promoted effectively, which is not being done at the moment.
I want to pick up something said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). As someone who passionately believes in devolution—as power should rest close to the people—and who believes in Wales and the United Kingdom, my concern is that there is almost an unholy alliance, an inadvertent alliance, between Welsh nationalism and the Conservative party. Although they might sometimes be pulling in different directions, the common ground is the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Conservative party is becoming an English party. That worries me intensely. It goes against the whole grain of history. Nevertheless, it is becoming an objective truth.
Mr Mark Field
The fact is we have eight seats; the Conservative party is the second party in Wales. As the hon. Gentleman will know, only two years ago, we got more votes in the European election than the Labour party, for the first time in living memory. I do not think that there is any sense that the Welsh Conservative party wants to break away. In many ways we are very committed to the United Kingdom and to Wales.
Mr David
Yes, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham made the important point that it spoke volumes when the Secretary of State for Wales had no opinion in the recent referendum. That shows the attitude of the Conservative party towards Wales. At the very least, it is not interested. It does not want to know.
That brings me to the last point I wish to make. It is extremely important to have this England and Wales debate and to recognise that the United Kingdom has particularities, but there are also many things that unite us.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I cannot resist starting my contribution by responding to the extraordinary revelation by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) that the Prime Minister has not yet been to Northern Ireland. Perhaps that pays tribute and is testimony to the excellent work done by my former right hon. Friend Tony Blair in securing a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Of course, many hon. Members worked over many years, if not generations, to secure that.
The debate on this question has run long in the House. I arrived only 10 months ago but, as a Welsh Member and historian, the debate was familiar and dear to my heart. However, I did not imagine that the debate would raise its head again so quickly, and would gather this degree of momentum, within a few short months of my arrival. The phrase “the West Lothian question”, coined by Tam Dalyell, has been around since the 1970s, but the question has been around a lot longer. It was inherent in Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill in 1886. The lack of representation for Irish Members addressed by that Bill was effectively the first instance that the West Lothian question was raised in legislative terms. That prompts the question why it has not been satisfactorily addressed. We can all see that there are issues relating to representation across the nations and regions of the UK.
Why has it not been addressed? Why has it been placed so often in the “too difficult” box? Is it that those issues are so fiendishly difficult that we cannot possibly address them, or that they are insoluble? I think it is not a cop-out that it has not been addressed. In some respects it is a reflection of the intelligence of this legislature, this House, in realising that certain things—given our unwritten constitution and the historical evolution of our Parliament and representation—will be imperfect, asymmetrical and untidy. To interfere with those things and seek a perfect solution is, in my view, misguided, unrepresentative of the historical evolution of our country and fundamentally problematic. I believe many hon. Members would share the view that an undesirable consequence would be the break-up, the disaggregation of Britain.
As we have heard, asymmetry is a key feature of our settlement in the UK. That should not unduly concern us, as it has been a feature of our country and others for a long period. All of our nation states in pre-modern Europe were fundamentally asymmetrical, in the nature of the division of power between legislatures, Churches and other aspects of the state. Post-Union in 1707 there has always been asymmetry. The first representation from Scotland after the Act of Union was fundamentally asymmetrical and predicated not on populations but on the relative contribution to the Exchequer of the Scots versus the English. We have subsequently moved to a position based more on relativities in respect of population, and have now taken it to its conclusion in the partisan Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. After the next election it will be based on relative population size, and that solves lots of the issues.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It will be based not on population but on the number of registered electors. We will be the only country in the world doing it on that basis.
Owen Smith
That is of course right. I was using shorthand and have fallen into the trap set by the Minister in so many of those debates, even when we did not get to the Welsh clauses.
Asymmetry also exists in other countries. Canada has an asymmetrical system of devolution, as has Spain. One could argue that de facto we have a federal system of sorts, a unique British federal system, but it is certainly asymmetrical. Why is the issue raising its head? Why are we so worried about it now? It has never been true that any individual Government have held a majority purely predicated on the basis of Scottish and Welsh votes. There can be no concern that political imbalances arrive by virtue of there being more Scottish Members, or having misrepresentation from Wales and Scotland. That issue has ostensibly been dealt with by the Government. I fear the headlong rush is due to opportunity, momentum and a partisan view from the Government. There is a sense that the iron is hot, the moment is right for the Tories to strike and secure electoral advantage. That underpins the decisions taken in respect of the constituencies Bill, and I fear it is driving the considerations we are looking at today.
It would be foolhardy to pursue that. History tells us that inevitably not just in this country but others, when constitutional reforms are pursued for electoral reasons and the partisan politics of one party, they fail.
Chris Ruane
Would my hon. Friend compare and contrast the constitutional changes that came about in Scotland, where they had a convention involving civic society, the Churches and the trade unions for many years before that important decision was made?
Owen Smith
That is an important point. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) was extremely eloquent in making a persuasive case that we should be worried about pursuing constitutional changes of this magnitude—[Interruption.] On the back of an envelope, as we heard. These are deep-rooted issues, and they require deep consideration. They should not be treated in this fashion.
We have heard a lot today about resentment in the English shires, and that is a worrying position for the Tory party. It is a little Englander position. The party has spoken on a broader canvas for the whole of its history. It should reflect on that and offer leadership to the country. It should not be driven by English nationalism.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on securing this debate.
It is particularly interesting that the West Lothian question is being debated without the benefit of advice from Scottish Members of Parliament. The Liberal Democrats were here briefly, and three Conservative Members joined the debate briefly and then left. The level of passion and excitement that some Conservative Members say that there is on the subject is not quite as evident as they suggest. It is interesting that it took a Welsh Member of Parliament to bring the matter before the House. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), for Caerphilly (Mr David), and for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) on their important contributions to the debate.
Although many people think that Welsh MPs have been attending Parliament since 1542, it is worth bearing in mind that Wales had representation before then—but only in the shape of four bishops, who attended from the very first Parliament. In 1327, 24 Members of Parliament from north Wales were invited to attend, but only from the north. They were to attend the Parliament that was meant to depose Edward II, but because Isabella thought that they might vote the wrong way, half of them were arrested and kept in captivity. They were not allowed to attend Parliament, which seems to be rather the sort of attitude that the Government now hope to advance. As we have heard, Scottish MPs arrived in 1707 and Irish MPs in 1801, although with the creation of the Irish Free State the number changed.
Two contradictory political forces are at work, not only in British politics but elsewhere in the world. The first is globalisation, in that every street has the same sort of shops, we all see the same images on television and, broadly speaking, everyone has similar experiences. As a result, people regularly say that they do not want a postcode lottery. They resent the fact that one town may be able to get a drug on the NHS that is not available in other parts of the country. We were reminded earlier that tuition fees are not being imposed in Wales because of the decision by Welsh Assembly Government, but that they are being hiked up to £9,000 in England. The second is this: people resent the postcode lottery, but at the same time a passionate desire is pulling in the other direction; people want much more local decision making, and want to be able to decide what happens to the configuration of local services. In the end, one of the biggest problems is the pushmi-pullyu force that we are seeing in British politics.
I admit that there is concern in England about what seems to be the unfairness of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members being able to vote on matters that substantially affect England, but English Members not being able to vote on matters that affect only Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. I say to those who want to go down the route of change that that is a meretricious argument. In this context, all that glisters is not gold. For a start, it is difficult to decide precisely what is England-only legislation.
The Minister will know that I have used this example before, but it is an important one. The Health Act 2006 was going to introduce a ban on smoking in public places, among other things. When it was being debated, I remember saying to a Welsh group of Labour MPs and then in the Chamber that if we voted in a particular way it would mean that clubs and pubs in Wales would not have the opportunity to make special rooms available for smokers. Everybody disagreed with me; the Clerks disagreed, and the Speaker disagreed, but in the end I was proved right. That is a problem when trying to advance legislation; all too often, the complexity with which it is drafted means that it may seem to be an England-only matter when, in truth, there is a real debate to be had. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said, if the Speaker decided what was England-only legislation, there would be a danger of bringing the Speaker into party political debate—into debating the substance of how to advance the legislation.
We could instead choose another route, and multiply the number of Bills. However, when drafting, we would have to be rigorous in ensuring that we never allowed a single clause that related to Wales or Scotland, or that had financial implications of any kind. To take up the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen, any financial implication is an implication for the whole of the UK, so any legislation with financial implications must by definition be UK legislation. If we wanted to draft legislation solely for England, we would have to have extra Bills that were Wales-only, Scotland-only and Northern Ireland-only. The multiplication in that process would be a real problem.
Chris Bryant
I shall give way, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be quick.
Mr Field
The core concern for many English voters is this: the hon. Gentleman referred to health, but he does not speak for any of his constituents in Rhondda on the subject because health is a devolved matter, yet he is able to influence decisions that are made throughout England. Health, of course, is a particularly incendiary problem because of the whole idea of a national health service. The concern of many English voters is not so much that people in Wales have the opportunity for a broader range of services and free prescriptions, but the perception that English taxpayers are footing the bill.
Chris Bryant
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a fair man, so I hope that he will explain to his constituents that it is not quite as simple as that. I know that the vast majority of our constituents could not describe the present constitutional settlement. As a result of devolution, they could not say who is in charge of policing, or who is in charge of this, that or the other element of environmental policy. A case in point is that the terms and conditions of GPs are not a devolved responsibility. When decisions are made about what GPs do in England, Welsh Members have to be able to vote because implications for Wales will follow from them. If the Speaker had to decide that Welsh Members could not speak in a debate, there would be a terrible row. That would be a problem.
Chris Bryant
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I have a few more points to make. We could see a vast multiplication in the number of Bills, with many more Second Readings of minor Bills that affected only specific parts of the country. I suppose one could then say that if a piece of legislation was not on a devolved matter but affected only Wales, only Welsh MPs should be able to vote on it. That is the logic of the argument of those who say that English legislation should be voted on only by English MPs. The danger is the effect on Government; a complicated Venn diagram would be needed to show who are the Government on any particular subject. We would have England-only legislation; England and Wales-only legislation; England, Wales and Scotland legislation; and England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland legislation, and a different set of people would be voting on each sort. There would be at least five versions of the Government of the United Kingdom. That is potentially problematic and could be dangerous.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen wisely referred to Welsh peers. Would one suddenly decide that Welsh peers should not be able to vote? How does one decide what constitutes a Welsh peer? It is difficult enough deciding what nationality the Secretary of State for Wales is. At a recent reception held at the Foreign Office, I gather that the Secretary of State for Wales made a little speech. As the Bahraini ambassador was saying thank you, he said, “It’s great finally to discover, Cheryl, after all the years that I’ve known you, that you’re Welsh”—and he is a diplomat.
Chris Bryant
She was not clear about it until she became Secretary of State for Wales. The final point is the effect on Parliament. There have been times when there have been different categories of Members of Parliament. In particular, the burgesses and knights of the 13th century occasionally sat separately because they were able to secure different grants from the Crown. However, that has not happened since the 13th century. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said—others have alluded to this—no other country in the world has different categories of Members of Parliament. The confusion and difficulty that such a system would lead to would be very dramatic.
The Government have said that they will set up a commission to consider the issue. I hope that that commission will be as interesting as the one that was set up in relation to the Human Rights Act 1998. Many of us would like to buy tickets to sit in and watch those meetings, as there are people on it with completely and utterly diametrically opposed views. When the Minister clarifies what he is doing about the commission, which the Secretary of State for Wales has said will be in place by the end of this year, I hope that he will assure us that people with diametrically opposed views will be on it, so that we see absolutely no progress on the matter.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on securing the debate, as it allows us to kick around some of the issues. However, the debate was, as I suspected it would be when I saw the cast of characters in front of me, a little repetitious of the debate that we had on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. Perhaps that does not apply to the right hon. Gentleman, but it certainly does to one or two others.
The history of the issue goes back a long way. I will not repeat it, as the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) did at least mention Scotland; he referred to the origins of the West Lothian question, and the fact that the phrase was coined by the then Member of Parliament for that constituency. Given the cast of characters here today, and the fact that Wales is so well represented, I am tempted to use the description that my right hon. Friend, the very excellent Secretary of State for Wales, has sometimes used, and to call it the West Clwydian question.
I should just say to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that my hon. Friends the Members for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), had said that they were not able to stay for the whole debate because they were serving on Select Committees. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes is on the Health Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth does an excellent job chairing the Welsh Affairs Committee.
Mr Harper
I hear reports of his excellent chairmanship. The right hon. Member for Torfaen talked about the commission, and I will come to that at the end of my remarks. A number of Members talked about the settlement that we reached in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. As I have said many times, it was not partisan; it was about treating every single part of the United Kingdom in the same way to ensure that each had the exact number of seats for the number of electors they have. There were many who said that because of devolution, we should ensure that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had fewer seats in this House per head of the electorate, but that was something that the Government did not want to do; we wanted to ensure that we treated each part of the United Kingdom—Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England—in exactly the same way, and that is what we have done in legislation. We have been very fair and even-handed.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about the Welsh Grand Committee. He should be aware that the hon. Member for Rhondda thinks that the Welsh Grand Committee is a Welsh grandstanding Committee. When we were debating the Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill in the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Rhondda said:
“The truth is that, all too often, the Welsh Grand Committee has been a pretty futile body.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 638.]
Given that that is the view of Labour’s official spokesman, I am amazed that hon. Members made so much fuss about whether the Welsh Grand Committee could discuss the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. I drew the remarks of the hon. Member for Rhondda to the attention of the Secretary of State, and very interesting she found them.
Ian Lucas
The point is simply that Welsh MPs did not have the opportunity to discuss the issues, or any of the amendments, in the main Chamber. It would not have been difficult for the Secretary of State for Wales to have allowed a Welsh Grand Committee to take place, so that we could discuss the issues.
Mr Harper
I sat through all the debates on the 2011 Act, and of the 40 MPs who spoke on Second Reading, a large number were Welsh Members of Parliament. Although we did not have as long to spend on the groups of amendments as we would have liked, we spent a long time talking about the Bill and its effects on Wales. Welsh MPs spoke for a great deal of time, and I had tremendous pleasure in listening to the arguments that they put forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) drew our attention to the over-representation of Wales. That is something that many people in England—not Conservative Members of Parliament but members of the public in England—resented, and we sorted that out in the 2011 Act. We have dealt with every member of the United Kingdom in exactly the same way and treated every part fairly.
Mr Harper
I will not give way, because I have only five minutes to deal with all the issues that have been raised. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who is no longer in his place, referred to the fact that a number of his constituents living in Wales use English public services. He said that he should have a say in those services. The point that I made in my intervention was that many of my constituents have to use public services, such as the health service, in Wales. They have no say over how those are set up, because those policy decisions are made by the Welsh Assembly Government.
Mr Harper
In my experience as a constituency MP, the protocol does not work well. The cross-border issues, which, as the right hon. Member for Torfaen said, are much more important between England and Wales than they are between England and Scotland because of the way in which the population is distributed, were not very well thought through when the devolution settlement was arrived at. Many things do not work very well across borders. The experience of my constituents is that the English-Welsh border has become more of a real barrier since devolution than it was before. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) referred to that issue when he asked whether English MPs knew what they were voting for. I am not sure that they did, because the cross-border issues were not very well thought through.
The right hon. Member for Torfaen asked—at least he was fair enough to ask the question; one or two other Members put it as a statement—whether the Conservative party was still a Unionist party. It absolutely is; it is the Conservative and Unionist party. We were the only party that contested seats in all four parts of the United Kingdom. It is fair to say that our experience of contesting seats in Northern Ireland did not go as well as we had hoped, but we did contest seats in all four parts. We are a Unionist party, and we want to keep the Union together. Indeed, that is why we want to tackle the West Lothian question. Some commentators believe that any threat or damage to the United Kingdom would stem from the resentment of English voters—not MPs—so it is important to deal with the issues to keep the United Kingdom together.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster pointed out what would happen if we had a United Kingdom Government who did not have a majority in England but insisted on governing as if they did. Given that we have a devolution settlement in Wales and Scotland, the resentment that would ensue could have the effect that the right hon. Member for Torfaen fears.
This debate shows the complexity of the issue. A number of Members leapt into potential solutions, mainly focusing on what the Conservative party had set out before the election. Of course, the two coalition parties come at the issue from different angles. Unusually, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster may find the Liberal Democrat federal solution more to his liking. The Conservative party had a different approach. Our agreed solution is to get the commission to examine the issue so that we can try to reach a thoughtful and sensible conclusion. We are thinking about the composition, scope and remit of that commission. Once we have finished setting that out, we will announce it to the House.
Mr Harper
Yes, this year. I have experience of setting up such a commission; in a written statement, I announced the very excellent commission on a Bill of Rights, which has a very well-qualified team of people. It will make considerable progress on that issue and on reform of the European Court.
We will announce the composition of the commission. The right hon. Member for Torfaen referred to the importance of the House of Lords; we will shortly publish our proposals and a draft Bill on House of Lords reform. Once they are published, we will set out our plans for the commission on the West Lothian question. This was an important debate that highlighted the complexities and challenges of the problem, and for that the right hon. Gentleman should be thanked.
Financial Services (Rural Communities)
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to bring this matter to Westminster Hall today. I can understand why the Minister might be a little reluctant to interfere in it, because presumably he would not want to micro-manage the affairs of many of our financial institutions. However, I may be able to suggest one or two ways in which the Government could have influence in the matter and ensure, by working with communities, that financial services and advice on financial matters are available to our communities.
Looking around Westminster Hall at the Members present, I wonder if the fact that my name is associated with this debate means that people think that it is a Welsh issue, but of course it is not. It is very much a reserved matter and one for the Westminster Parliament and the UK Government.
I was very lucky to secure this debate almost immediately after applying for it. Sometimes hon. Members apply for debates over a long period without securing them, but as soon as I applied for this debate I was very fortunate to receive the opportunity to have it.
The reason that I put in for the debate is the worrying trend of high street bank branch closures in rural areas. According to the Campaign for Community Banking Services, in the past 20 years 7,388 bank branches have closed and most of those closures have been in rural or suburban areas. The CCBS estimates that, in Wales alone, 56 communities are left with just one bank each.
I will use an example from my own constituency—hon. Members will understand that often these debates are initiated or spurred on by Members’ experience in their own constituencies. For the past six months in my constituency, the local Welsh Assembly Member, Kirsty Williams, and I have been trying to save a branch of Barclays bank in the small market town of Rhayader. Rhayader has a population of approximately 2,000 people, with many more people living in its rural hinterland and catchment area. Members present will understand that Rhayader is a marvellous market town in the Cambrian mountains, very close to the Elan valley. More than 100 years ago, the Birmingham Corporation built dams in that valley to provide water for the wonderful city of Birmingham. The Elan valley has now become a tourist area, along with other attractions in the Cambrian mountains.
Unfortunately, Barclays refused to keep its branch in Rhayader open and the people of the town are now served by a solitary HSBC branch, which is open for a total of 18 hours each week, between 9.30 am and 3.30 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The Barclays branch in Rhayader closed last Friday and already the building is being gutted, the “For Sale” sign is up and the cash point, which was a very valued facility for the town, has a sheet of plyboard across it. There is no more money to be had from the ATM in Barclays in Rhayader.
There is some strength in Barclays’ argument and I understand its argument. Barclays argues that the people who used the branch in Rhayader were not buying enough of its financial services and financial products to make the operation of the branch profitable. However, there is another argument that many of those people who used the branch actually bought services from Barclays in the past. They had their mortgages, pensions, saving products and general insurance from the bank and the fact that many of them have paid off their mortgage or are now receiving their pension means that there was not a good enough case for Barclays to say, “I’m afraid that from now on you won’t be able to have that face-to-face service that you have enjoyed in the past.” I believe that banks have a duty of care to the people for whom they provide products.
Another argument used for the closure of the Rhayader branch is that local people can use other branches nearby. However, let me give an example of the geography of this area. The nearest Barclays bank branch to Rhayader is in Llandrindod Wells, which is a 24-mile round trip from Rhayader. In mid-Wales, there is very little public transport, so that journey is very difficult for some people.
I want to give a few local examples to provide a little local colour. Daisy Powell runs the local newsagent in Rhayader, in the shop right next door to the branch of Barclays. She has banked at Barclays for a modest 52 years, during the time that she has run her business. She used to bank cash three times a week, but now she either has to drive for miles to bank cash or faces the anxiety of keeping cash on her premises. Another example is that of Jo and Chris Walton, who run a very good electrical appliance shop that was set up by their father. They have also had a business account with Barclays for more than 50 years and they too now face having to make long journeys to do their banking.
Now there are no banking facilities in Rhayader on a Tuesday, which is the livestock market day. Rob Lewis farms 150 beef cattle and 2,500 sheep at Pistyll farm, which is just outside Rhayader at Cwmdauddwr. As many local farmers did, he used to pick up his cheque from the auctioneers and bank his money at Barclays on the Tuesday after the livestock market.
There are also disabled and infirm residents, for whom the type of journey that I have mentioned would cause major problems. Ed Narborough is almost totally blind and uses a wheelchair. He has had to choose between changing banks to HSBC, which would mean not having a five-day banking service, or trying to make the journey to Llandrindod Wells.
One effect of the closure of the Barclays branch in Rhayader is that the town is now left with only one cash point. We all know how temperamental cash points can be. Just when someone wants that £10 to buy the last round of drinks that will bring an evening to a wonderful conclusion, they find that the cash point has run out of money or is failing to pay out for some technical reason. Rhayader relies on tourism for much of its income, but it is faced with having only one cash point machine and if that machine goes out of action at the beginning of a weekend or, even more worryingly, at the beginning of a bank holiday weekend, people will be unable to get cash within the town and are likely to move on to another town where there are better cash point facilities.
Barclays has argued that many of its customers are moving to online banking as an alternative to using a branch.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Lest we concentrate too much on Barclays, I am sure that it is right to say that other banks have taken similar steps to those that Barclays has taken. Does he share my concern about the potential closures arising from the announcement by Lloyds TSB bank that it will be divesting itself of perhaps 600 branches in the very near future and does he believe that such closures might have as bad an effect on local services in rural Wales and elsewhere as the closures of Barclays branches?
Roger Williams
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. When a company such as Lloyds TSB indicates that it will make branch closures, we can readily anticipate where those closures will be made. Indeed, I have some statistics about other companies and I do not wish to concentrate on Barclays. It is just that Barclays is in the forefront of my mind at the moment. It is not only Barclays that has been closing branches. In 2010, HSBC closed 52, Barclays 40, NatWest 18 and Lloyds TSB 11. As my hon. Friend pointed out, more closures are in the pipeline.
Online banking is, to an extent, a generational problem. To draw a parallel, in a debate on fuel poverty in this Chamber, it was pointed out that many people now have the opportunity to take advantage of competition in the fuel sector. A number of hon. Members were in the debate, but only two of us had never switched suppliers—me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable). We were, I think, of a different generation. Many people who bank at small rural branches are not willing or readily able to switch to online banking. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) will be making a point about access to broadband and the internet, and such points were made very well in the rural broadband debate that the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) secured in Westminster Hall last week. Many of these people do not have access to fast, safe internet, so even if the will is there it might not be possible for them to bank online. I commend the Government for the excellent steps that they have already taken on rural broadband, but more must be done so that rural businesses, people and communities are not left behind.
I shall finish, as far as Barclays is concerned, by saying that during the process I have been speaking about it was announced that Barclays had made a profit of £6.1 billion, and that its chief executive, Bob Diamond, was receiving a £6.5 million bonus. Bob Diamond’s fan club in Rhayader is not full, and if anyone wants to make an application to join I am sure that there is plenty of capacity. Having said that, Barclays did not take any public money during the banking crisis, for which it should be applauded. It certainly benefited, however, from the liquidity measures and the quantitative easing that the Government implemented to help the banks through the credit crunch, so it should show more thought for its customers, whose taxes assisted in keeping it afloat during that difficult time. I should, of course, point out that it is not only Barclays that has been making closures, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) has pointed out.
I understand the commercial pressures that the banks are under, but they must understand the effects that closures have on tourism, economic development and customers in rural areas. What is the solution? The Campaign for Community Banking Services suggests that we set up a community bank—one centrally run facility in the community with face-to-face services operating on behalf of all banks and building societies. There would be only one set of overheads, and the massively reduced costs would be covered by all the participating banks. I understand that it would use the same technology as that which links ATMs, so the set-up costs would be not too large. A similar system in the United States has proved very successful. It seems an ideal solution, with our constituents continuing to receive the service that they so desperately need. Will the Minister outline any discussions that he has had on a similar community banking facility for the UK?
I want to say a few words about mutuals and credit unions. I am a member of the Brecon credit union, am well aware of the part that such organisations can play, and have recently met with representatives of the building societies that have remained in the mutual sector. They do a very good job of providing services in local areas, and are able to lend not just on an arithmetic income multiple but on their better understanding of the local economy and of the quality of employment in which many people who wish to get a mortgage are involved. The smaller mutual building societies complain that the reporting and regulatory requirements are more fitted to larger financial organisations. They would like the Government’s approach to be more risk related, and some of the very onerous regulations to be moderated in some way.
It is not just the closure of bank branches that is of concern. I am very pleased that the Government have announced that they intend to maintain, as far as possible, the post offices, which are the financial and social hub of rural areas but which have too frequently been closed. The Communication Workers Union says that 1,000 post offices—one in 10—closed in 2010, and about 2,500, many in rural areas, have been closed in recent years.
Although I am aware that mail volumes are falling, and that other services that branches offer, such as benefit payments, are moving online, I ask that the Minister, in conjunction with his colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, seriously take on board the value and worth of rural post offices. According to Age Concern, 44% of pensioners use post offices to collect their pensions, 43% use them for access to cash and 56% use them to pay their bills. At both a local level and a Government level, we must do what we can to prevent widespread closures and long-term temporary closures. There has been an announcement that the long hoped for post bank will not be proceeded with, but does the Minister have any thoughts on whether a similar facility could be set up to address many of the issues that we are debating today?
The next issue that I want to talk about could be a huge problem for all our constituents. The cheque has been an integral part of our lives for more than 350 years, but there are plans to phase it out by November 2018. We currently write more than 4 million cheques per day, and despite the decline in usage we will still be writing 650 million a year in 2018. Cheques are essential and irreplaceable in many situations, and they are particularly important in rural areas. There is currently no easier, safer or more efficient way to pass money from one person or organisation to another.
Cheques are easy to use, virtually fraud proof, can be posted or handed over anywhere, and are cheap, safe, popular and understood by all. The use of credit and payment cards has, of course, hugely altered payment methods by virtually replacing cash in most everyday transactions, but only larger businesses can afford the technology to install card machines and we are light years away from the day when every individual will be able to receive payments by card.
There is only one reason to get rid of cheque books— profit. Cheque books are more expensive for banks than credit or debit cards. Handling paper is not efficient according to the bean counters, and as all British taxpayers know to their cost, banks are driven by many things other than providing a convenient service for their customers. The abolition of the cheque will lead to an increase in the black economy, as people will start paying cash when a cheque would have previously been used. It could also lead to an increase in crime, as older and more vulnerable people who are unable or unwilling to use other methods start storing significant amounts of cash at home. We do not currently have a viable alternative to the cheque, and until we find one not even the thought of it being abolished should be entertained. Will the Minister ensure that no decisions are made on the abolition of cheques before a viable alternative is found?
In conclusion, these are difficult times for rural constituents, with rising oil prices and the necessary cuts to public services. People need good and proper access to financial services so that they can grow their small business, obtain a mortgage for their first home, or cash and pay in their cheques so the local economy can grow and flourish. Thank you, Mr Caton. I open the floor to my colleagues.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) on securing this important debate. I am sad that so few of us are in the Chamber, as the issue is vital to communities in general, and specifically to rural communities such as those in my constituency and, even more so, in my previous constituency of Caernarfon, which has a large rural hinterland, now part of Dwyfor Meirionnydd. I also congratulate him on his early-day motions, which I have signed. I checked; I have signed at least one of them. He has a track record on the issue.
A great deal of attention has been given recently to the bonus culture and high salaries in banks, but the changes in banking that have the most intimate and direct impact on our constituents happen on the high street: particularly, for the purposes of this debate, in the towns and rural villages of Wales. That impact has had less attention, as has the effect on jobs in the banking sector. A job in the banking sector is always seen as a safe and effective career. Several of my contemporaries at school went into banking. I come across them occasionally, and they are now on extended gardening or golfing leave. That is the effect when banks close, as many have done in the past few years.
We have been given briefing material for this debate. I will refer particularly to the Countryside Alliance’s briefing, which I found useful. According to my briefings, 7,000 branches have closed in the past 20 years, leaving about 10,000. That is a 40% change—ish; my arithmetic is not very good this morning—in provision, which is substantial. Rural banks face a threat. It is not only Barclays, which the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire mentioned, but HSBC and the other members of the big four. In my constituency, the Campaign for Community Banking Services has identified Llanberis as an area of potential difficulty, with only one remaining bank serving a large tourist area visited by many thousands of people during the summer. A couple of other communities in my constituency are in the same situation. Elsewhere, in Bangor, Betws-y-Coed, Wrexham and throughout rural north Wales, the provision of banking services is fragile and under threat.
Unfortunately, the banks have been less than candid over the years about what they are doing. The Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, of which I used to be a member, took evidence from banks some years ago about closures in rural communities. Interestingly, one bank provided us with a map showing that there was a bank within five miles of a community where another bank was closing. Unfortunately, a large mountain was in the way. One would have had to travel all the way down the valley and back up it to get to the bank that was allegedly five miles away, and the return journey would have taken most of the day on public transport. Banks have been less than candid.
I referred in an intervention to the potential danger that some Lloyds branches might close. I understand that Lloyds is in a difficult position—it must divest itself of parts of its operation due to European Community state aid rules—but about 600 branches are threatened, and I fear that they might be sold off. I understand from the press that the new chief officer of Lloyds, Mr Antonio Horta-Osorio, has announced that the plans to sell off the banks are to be accelerated, so the change will happen quickly. That is not only a threat to the Lloyds network; Lloyds also controls Cheltenham and Gloucester and TSB. People do not realise that it has several brand names. I am not sure whether the Government can do anything about that, but I will be interested to hear whatever the Minister has to say.
Local bank branches are vital to commercial activity. The hon. Gentleman mentioned shops in his constituency; the same is true in rural parts of my constituency. Equally importantly, local banks are also a good way to address financial exclusion, which I know concerns this Government greatly, as it did the previous Government. A bank in a community allows for a measure of inclusion; the converse is also true.
Assisting older people, people with a disability and vulnerable people with their banking needs is also an issue. Not everybody can do their banking over the phone or broadband. The Government have at last announced an initiative to bring superfast broadband to parts of Wales, including my hometown of Pwllheli, but that will not extend to all communities. I must mention Rhiwlas, as I always do when I refer to this issue. It is within sight of the university city of Bangor but has appalling broadband service, and there seems little prospect of its being improved. That is not a way out for many people and, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, we might see the end of cheques, which would also be a tragedy.
On the current trend towards automated banking, my branch, HSBC in Caernarfon, is an excellent branch in the middle of town, but it has recently been largely automated. There are banks of machines for printing statements, depositing money and withdrawing money and a telephone that one can use to talk to somebody far away. The counter space has been reduced to two positions. I was there the other day. A member of staff was hovering around the machines to seduce customers into using them, but there was an enormous queue for the two positions, one of which was closed. People are voting with their feet. They would rather queue for 10 or 15 minutes than use the machines. That says that people appreciate the face-to-face nature of banking transactions. Banks divest themselves of that way of promoting their business at their cost.
HSBC has also introduced its own radio station. I do not know whether hon. Members have heard it. When one queues for a position, one must listen to pop music, news and advertisements for the bank’s own products. I almost think that HSBC is doing it deliberately to drive customers away; it certainly drove me to use the automated facilities. As I said, banks will have to learn—as have Departments, such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions—that people like to discuss their business face to face. I would also say that face-to-face business is of itself good business.
My party’s policy for many years has been to set up local community-based banks. In fact, it was one of the central planks of our 2007 manifesto. If local community-based banks cannot be set up wholesale, we would like pilot schemes. I know that this Government and the previous Government thought carefully about setting up post banks, but if a scheme cannot be introduced wholesale, can pilot schemes be tried, just to see what would happen? Post offices offer themselves as ideal locations for providing access to personal and small business banking. I will not pursue the question of post office closures, Mr Caton—I am sure that you would stop me in my tracks if I did—but I note that there were 200 closures in Wales during the last wave of closures, 11 in my constituency. However much local people complained—I organised a series of public meetings in my constituency that were very well attended—the net effect was that 11 closures were proposed, and 11 closures went ahead. I was not sure from the hon. Gentleman’s remarks whether it is still Liberal Democrat policy to have post banks or community banks. It would be sad if that has changed.
Finally, in Cardiff we have a One Wales Government made up of Plaid Cymru and the Labour party, and we have invested recently in credit unions, which are an excellent way of providing small amounts of money—small loans—for people, and of saving small sums of money. The One Wales Government have invested a further £3.4 million in credit unions.
Roger Williams
One of the points on which I could have expanded is that there does not seem to be a root from which a credit union can progress to become a larger, more responsive financial service, such as the mutual building societies, which, of course, originated in small communities such as ours.
Hywel Williams
Indeed. There is a gap in the market. Credit unions are very good for people who need small amounts of money and need to save, but it is not so easy for businesses to access small amounts of investment. There have been huge complaints about the way in which the large banks have been acting in that regard recently. I am loth to mention cases, but a holiday business in my constituency closed down because trade was terrible and the bank withdrew its banking facilities. Without going into details, all I need to say is that it was winter—trade is always terrible in winter—and the bank would not wait until summer. I would say, therefore, that there certainly is a gap in the market. Our proposal as a party is for a postal bank—a people’s bank, as it were.
I will end by saying that I would like the Welsh Assembly Government to have the legal power to intervene in the market in that way if this place does not do so itself. I think that everybody understands that there has to be change. Banks are commercial organisations, but there has to be much greater social responsibility in their business.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Caton. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) on securing this important debate. He may not be rewarded by a mass turnout this morning, but he knows that this is an important issue for those of us who serve rural communities, not least in north and mid-Wales.
Much concern has rightly been expressed today about the total number of rural bank branch closures. There has been a 43% net reduction in branches since 1990 and an 18% net reduction since 2000. Figures from the Campaign for Community Banking Services show that the UK has significantly fewer branches than other comparable European states. There are 170 branches per million inhabitants in the UK, compared with 440 in France, 570 in Italy, 480 in Germany and 1,010 in Spain. I do not know what the trend is in those countries, but I suspect that some of their communities have been better served by the banks than ours.
There are obvious reasons why banks choose to close less-well-used branches. They operate in a very competitive environment, but, none the less, access to banking services is essential in any community, and we have to find ways to ensure that that presence remains throughout the country. The CCBS has talked of the need for flexible format-shared branching, whereby third party providers provide services through a variety of channels, such as post offices, village shops or even community shops. I emphasise that the services provided are essential. The anecdotal evidence that we have heard from Arfon and from Brecon and Radnorshire makes that point strongly. I concur with what has been said about duty of care. Anger is felt in communities such as Rhayader over the billions of pounds that the banks currently earn.
In 2009, a report by the Commission for Rural Communities, “Rural Money Matters”, considered the difficulties associated with rural financial inclusion in England, but much of what it says also resonates throughout the rest of the UK, including rural Wales. The report points out the consequences of the lack of access to financial services. For example, the fact that most employers require wages to be paid into a bank—many do not—limits the employment opportunities for those without a bank account. Many will miss out on the discounts available for direct debit and online payment, and even the ability to shop around for credit could force those in rural areas to pay more.
Another impressive organisation, Consumer Focus Wales, published a report, “The Cost of Cash”, in November 2009. It recommended several steps, including face-to-face support for those opening a bank account for the first time; explaining how direct debit works; and exploring alternative arrangements for electronic payments, such as setting up sub-accounts solely for bill payments, to alleviate some of the fears associated with direct debit payments. The infrastructure needs to be in place, however, if many of those suggestions are to become a reality.
The number of free ATMs has increased, but, in smaller communities and the more rural areas, many of our villages are five miles or more from a cash point, which is a concern, particularly when we also see deficiencies in public transport. My bank for the past 27 years has been Lloyds in Aberystwyth, and I live six miles away from that town. My community is still served by some modest public transport and I own a car, but many people in my constituency do not have that luxury and live considerably more than six miles away from their nearest bank.
We also need to look at the impact—this is a fundamental point—on the local economy. It is very difficult for small businesses to operate in rural areas without immediate access. My hon. Friend mentioned the proprietor of the newsagent in Rhayader taking her cash in. I can guarantee that, at 4.30 pm on any day of the week, local businesses are queuing at Lloyds bank in Aberystwyth to pay cash over the counter. In Ceredigion, we have the largest proportion of people employed by small businesses anywhere in the UK, and those businesses are vital to our community. I think we could multiply a thousand times the anecdotal evidence that my hon. Friend has given from Rhayader. It is a big issue for our small businesses.
One of the additional barriers that we face to accessible financial services is the lack of digital inclusion. Those of us with rural constituencies will be familiar with the figure that is bandied around of 99% of exchanges being broadband enabled, but the picture is very different on the ground. Even those who are able nominally to receive broadband often find that their service is slower and less reliable. The Government have indicated welcome investment in superfast broadband, but it is also key that they tackle existing not-spots as a priority, so that those who currently do not have access to broadband, who are often also likely to be those without access to physical services, are able to access things such as online banking. I pay tribute, in a cross-party way, to some of the initiatives undertaken by the National Assembly. Certain communities in Ceredigion have certainly benefited from remedial action by the Assembly Government.
Another broadband-related issue that we face in rural areas is that, as well as generally receiving a slower line speed and a more patchy service, people have had to pay rather more for it. In areas where BT is the sole wholesale provider, internet service providers have been charged line rental, which has then been passed on to the customer, meaning that many of the cheap deals advertised by ISPs are out of reach for many living in rural areas. In January, Ofcom proposed that BT reduce those charges, and it would be helpful if the Minister or one of his colleagues could update us on that.
The lack of bank branches and, indeed, other financial services means that there is a need to use the facilities that we have, most obviously post offices. The Government have announced plans to make post offices what they call a front office for Government. Those of us who have been arguing against the retreat of Government from our post offices would certainly welcome that in order to make services accessible and to safeguard the remaining post office network. There was disappointment that the Government did not advance the suggestion of a post office bank, but they have reached an agreement with banks, whereby 80% of current accounts will be accessible at post offices. I think that that will have a significant impact where those post offices exist for those communities. It would be helpful if the Minister could outline what steps have been taken to ensure that the aspiration to provide Government services through the Post Office is realised, and that the network can benefit from additional revenue streams.
Another crucial issue—I shall broaden the definition of financial services slightly—is the availability of financial advice and help for people with debt problems. I very much support the efforts of hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) in talking about compulsory financial education in schools. That would be of great benefit in establishing financial literacy from a young age. It remains the case that when people have debt problems, financial advice is harder to access. In some rural communities, it is physically harder to access that advice. In Ceredigion, we have two excellent citizens advice bureaux—one in Cardigan and one in Aberystwyth. My wife is the trustee of one. We are lucky because, this Thursday, they will merge to make a county-wide CAB service. However, that still presents a difficult journey for people who live outside towns—although the CAB has undertaken good outreach work in some scattered communities. I welcome the Government’s extension of the financial inclusion fund but, particularly in these difficult economic times, there is still an issue with people accessing such financial advice.
Both my colleagues have expressed concern about the demise of the cheque. I echo the difficulties that that presents for many, especially the elderly. I appreciate that that matter is the responsibility of the Payments Council and not the Government, but it would be helpful if the Minister could assure us that the Government are committed to ensuring that any decision on cheques will not be taken without considering the impact on those who still use them, particularly the elderly. I include myself in that.
In rural areas, we often have debates—both my colleagues have participated in debates for many more years than me—about the importance of retaining services in our communities and the principles of rural entitlement. We have heard both the current and previous Governments talk about how difficult it is to justify the costs of retaining services because of the increased reliance on online methods. However, it is often more difficult to access services online in rural communities. Hon. Members should be in no doubt that rural communities will disappear unless we protect those services. I congratulate the Government on their early pronouncements on the Post Office and the investment—necessarily limited as it is—in superfast broadband. However, much more can and needs to be done.
When we consider community and services, I take a slightly holistic view. Let us reflect on why young families might want to move into the kind of community that I represent. When we consider the specifics of why young families move into a community, there are certain essential ingredients. First, there is an implicit need for a job. Secondly, people might consider the presence of a village school, certain retail outlets, a public transport system, a post office and access to financial services. Those factors are all part of the mix that means we can still have vibrant communities in rural areas. That is why this debate is so important and why we look forward to hearing what the Minister and his shadow, the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), have to say on the matter.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) on succeeding in securing the debate. This is an incredibly important topic for a number of hon. Members. As he has said, I am surprised that more hon. Members were not aware that the debate was being held this morning. The issue that we are discussing comes up in rural communities particularly, precisely for the reasons the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) gave when talking about the crucial ingredients that help to create a vibrant town, village or community. A critical, tipping-point questions is: how many of those vital services can be removed before a village or town becomes less attractive, viable and functional?
I shall start by stepping back and looking at the current range of financial service providers in the UK. What should banks—financial service institutions—have as their core purpose? Ultimately, banks are utilities; they are a necessity in modern life. We are not talking about a discretionary activity; people do not choose to have a bank account, or, necessarily, to borrow or save. Credit and its availability is part of the warp and weft of modern live, so we need to treat banking and financial services in a similar way to water, electricity, gas and so on.
I sincerely hope that the Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by John Vickers, which is due to report in the summer, will take as its starting point the social purpose of financial services, and the issue of what banks are for. I hope that it will move from that basic philosophical concept to the question of what consumers need as a basic level of service across the country. Ideally, consumers should have choice and diversity in the services that they consume. We need to look at the current provision of financial services, particularly in rural communities, and ask whether we are really providing that choice and diversity to local people. I am not convinced that the current arrangements are ideal. The credit crunch and the banking crisis have hindered rather than helped a move in that direction. As hon. Members have said, we need new entrants in the financial services market.
Hywel Williams
There is a specific issue surrounding the rural poor. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), who secured the debate, represents Powys. That is one of the most rural counties and it has, I think, nearly the lowest wages in Wales. Incidentally, it also has the highest level of car ownership, which is a further burden on people. The rural poor are particularly excluded in the situation that we are talking about—I am sorry that my intervention is so long, Mr Caton—and last night I saw an advertisement on television for a company that provides loans based on a week’s wages. The interest rate is around 2,000% per annum. People are going to fall prey to those sorts of temptations.
Chris Leslie
Absolutely; the hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point. The pay-day lending industry has tried to fill the gap where the mainstream financial services sector has pulled back. In rural communities—this certainly happens in urban communities, such as my constituency of Nottingham East—people have had difficulty accessing mainstream financial services, so those less desirable players have moved in to fill the void. The gap available is being filled not only by high-interest legal players, but the illegal loan-sharking sector. That is a real and growing problem. In recent years, surveys have demonstrated that financial service deserts have grown up across different parts of the country. It is therefore incredibly important that when the Independent Commission on Banking reports this summer, we take the opportunity to step back, take stock and say, “What should good, responsible, social banking involve?” That is not a party political point; we are talking about something that communities need and deserve.
I am concerned about the points made about branch closures in some of the mainstream banks, as they start to retreat from rural communities. Hon. Members have already referred to the Campaign for Community Banking Services and its survey about the number of bank branches that are closing, particularly where a bank is the last one in a town. That leaves those towns or villages without any banking cover at all. I shall mention briefly some of the places affected. Barclays is closing the last bank in town in Kelvedon and Southminster in Essex, and Bedfont in Middlesex. Lloyds is closing the last bank in town in Potton in Bedfordshire, Wainfleet in Lincolnshire, Bilton in Rugby, Barton-under-Needwood in Staffordshire, Netley Abbey and Stockbridge in Hampshire, and Yarmouth. HSBC is closing the last bank in town in Whitburn in Tyne and Wear, Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire and Hoylake in Cheshire.
In addition, although it is not exactly a rural area, we had a debate the other night about the Nationwide closing a number of branches in south-east London. A number of big financial players could be criticised for diminishing the services to long-standing and loyal customers who really appreciate access to a branch.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire made a point about access to online banking and the requirement for broadband. High-speed internet is very important, particularly in rural areas, but it is not always available. The hon. Member for Ceredigion talked about the broader concept of financial services, and financial advice. I would add to that the controversy about access to independent financial advice and independent financial advisers, or IFAs. Sometimes, IFAs are one of the only providers of independent financial advice in small communities. Hon. Members may be familiar with the retail distribution review being conducted by the Financial Services Authority, and the impact that that might have on the ability of communities in rural areas to access independent financial advice.
The IFAs are under pressure, not only as a result of the FSA review, in terms of the extra qualifications that they need to gain, but as a result of changes to commission structures, which need to be handled far more carefully. There are also increasing pressures as a result of the levy placed on them by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. There a number of factors, some of which have reasonable arguments behind them, that together could place in jeopardy the ability of individuals to get free or low-cost financial advice. Will the Minister confirm that he is conscious of that strategic risk to the IFA community? What steps will be taken to ensure that that advice will still be available, despite so many proposed changes?
The hon. Member for Ceredigion congratulated the Government on maintaining the financial inclusion fund for another year. That is one of those strange things that happens in politics when something that is valued is initially scrapped. There were howls of protest in the previous Budget when the Conservative-led Administration decided to scrap the £27-million financial inclusion fund. The fund pays for at least 500 debt advisers—largely face-to-face citizens advice bureaux advisers and so on—and I think it helps to support approximately 100,000 appointments each year. Those howls of protest helped to bring about a partial U-turn from the Government, and a few weeks ago they announced that they will keep the fund going for another financial year. Are we supposed to show gratitude for that? Well, perhaps, but it is not enough to say “Thank you for continuing the fund for another year.”
I want to know what the Government’s plans are for the end of the 2011-12 financial year. What will happen, in April 2012, to the financial inclusion fund? We are in the spending review period, so there is no excuse for not knowing the available finances. The Minister needs to say now what his plans are for the financial inclusion fund from that point; at the very least, it is surely necessary to give charities and organisations that provide debt advice certainty about what will happen over the spending review period, so the Minister needs to answer that point.
Mr Mark Williams
I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I share the general direction of his comments. None the less, it would be churlish not to congratulate the Government, because they listened to the strong concerns that were expressed on the issue. I was certainly relieved that two debt advisers in my constituency would carry on their excellent work in helping 500 families.
Chris Leslie
Absolutely. It would be churlish not to be glad that there is a continuation of that, but it is such a pity that it is on a piecemeal, ad hoc, year-by-year basis, when the fund should be a strategic plank of the Government’s approach to providing financial services and advice, especially in rural communities.
Hywel Williams
It is tragic that the areas where banks and post offices are closing are the areas where it is also so difficult to access financial advice, and more general advice from the citizens advice bureaux and from lawyers in public service. Banks and post offices are closing and creating deserts, as far as advice is concerned, throughout large parts of rural Wales.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Gentleman is completely correct. Of course, it is not just the financial inclusion fund that gets thrown into the mix, in terms of supporting CAB and others. Local government grant services are as critical, and the spending reductions are also having an impact on that area.
It is important to remember that some banks and other financial services institutions are subsidised heavily by the taxpayer, so they have a wider community duty that we MPs have a right to call into question. They serve a customer base, too, and the degree to which they serve their customers is intriguing. In recent years, bank mark-ups on the cost of borrowing have become considerable. The availability of decent interest rates for savers has gone down and down—that is the so-called interest rate spread issue—so consumers are paying a heavier price. That affects people in rural communities, as elsewhere.
The bank base rate has fallen from 5% to 0.5%—a change of 4.5%—yet the charges on overdrafts have fallen by only 1.8%. Charges on credit cards have fallen by only 0.8%. The charge on fixed-rate loans has fallen by 0.4%, and on mortgages, according to the New Economics Foundation, there is a spread of approximately 3% in post-credit crunch extra profit that the banks are making from ordinary borrowers and households in rural and urban areas. The foundation estimates that there was something like £1.6 billion in extra profit in 2009, and a further £1.5 billion per year from 2010. Consumers are taking a considerable hit, but do they feel that they are getting services back in return? That question should not be neglected. It is not just taxpayers’ interests but consumer interest that we need to protect when we think about banking and financial services reform.
I am very sorry that the Government have decided to renege on the promise that they made in the coalition agreement, in respect of the Post Office bank plans. That idea was floated by the previous Government, and we thought it had been taken up by the new Administration when they mentioned it in the coalition agreement. In November, however, the idea for a Post Office bank, in which post office facilities were used for some sorts of basic financial services, especially in rural areas, was ditched. At the time, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that the idea was too time-consuming and expensive to pursue, probably because of the privatisation process. That is a pity, and a huge missed opportunity. I note that the National Pensioners Convention said that that was an extremely short-sighted decision on the part of the Government.
I hope that the Minister will say that whatever happens to the Post Office, one requirement for future owners and operators of post office services will be, at some level, to have some sort of basic financial service transaction capability in those areas where post offices still exist. I would also like to explore the issue of local authorities, and encourage them to think about their role in community banking facilities. I know that many local authorities help supporting credit unions. That is a crucial dimension that needs to be encouraged, although local authorities, naturally, are retreating to their core activities.
[Miss Anne McIntosh in the Chair]
I am really glad that hon. Members raised the issue of the risk to the cheque, that paper-based payment system. Over the years, my aunts, uncles and grandparents have sent various little payments and presents in birthday cards. Many of us enjoy writing cheques and using that basic facility that we take for granted. The cheque is valued not just in rural areas or by older people, but in all walks of life. It is a simple and comprehensive system, and very popular as well. It would be an incredible pity to lose the cheque capability simply because the banks do not wish to provide it anymore. We know that free banking services are already at risk, so the Minister needs to take a more proactive stance and step in. Rather than leave the issue completely to the Payments Council, he needs to think about what powers the Treasury may need to consider in order to preserve that basic social function, should no alternative easy and simple method of payment be devised in the meantime. That is a crucial point.
The Treasury needs to stop its usual habit of giving the banks carte blanche on many of these issues, and it needs to start speaking up for communities, especially in rural areas, when it comes to the financial services that customers and taxpayers need. It would be a tragedy to forget the social necessity of banking and financial services. We need to ensure that the consumer perspective is at the heart of public policy.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) on securing this debate. There may have been relatively few participants in it, but the quality of contributions has been high, and Members have recognised the importance of the issue.
Access to financial services is not just a rural issue. On a Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I responded to a debate secured by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) on access to financial services in south-east London. There are some common strands, but the particular nature of rural communities creates an additional challenge that we need to reflect.
I shall respond to several points that were made before I cover most of the rest of the issues in a few brief remarks. On automated teller machines, it seems that hon. Members should be in Rhayader on a Friday night if the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire is in town, since he is keen to ensure that he is able to get that tenner out of the cash point to buy us all a drink. He is right to highlight the fact that there is only one cash point in the town. He may be aware that since the report in December 2006 by a parliamentary working group on cash machines, LINK has received nominations for sites, particularly in low-income areas, for about 600 free cash machines. I encourage him to contact LINK directly to suggest that there is a need for one in his community.
My hon. Friend and several other hon. Members spoke about the future of the cheque, a matter which I take seriously. The previous Government turned a blind eye to the threat to the cheque. I have met the UK Payments Council and discussed with it the need to ensure that there is a viable alternative to the cheque before its operation ceases. I made it clear that that is a priority for this Government. It is not clear to me what the alternative would be, given the many qualities of cheques: they are easy to use, people are familiar with them and it is easy to post them. We wait to see what the council says, but I made it clear that it should proceed only if there is a viable alternative that is accepted by many of the groups that currently use cheques.
However, I add a note of caution. The diminishing use of cheques means that the cost per cheque is rising. Clearly, that cost has to be covered in some way, so no one should see cheques as an entirely free option.
The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) spoke about Lloyds Banking Group’s plans by to divest itself of 600 branches. He may recollect that the European Commission made that a condition of state aid before signing off the significant investment that the previous Government made in bailing out Lloyds after its merger with HBOS. The Commission required Lloyds to make a significant divestment, and it is making progress on that. There is a great opportunity for that divestment to be used to create a new challenger to UK banks. None of the existing banks in the UK that have a share of the personal account market of more than 14% can buy those branches, so there is an opportunity for someone to become a challenger—to enter the market, buy the branches and provide competition. There is not enough competition in banking at present. A new challenger in the market would help ensure a better deal for consumers, and that banks focus much more on their customers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) spoke about broadband services in rural areas, and how important it is to ensure that people in such areas have access to online banking. He will know that broadband is not a reserved policy, but work is being done through the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly on improving access to broadband.
In the spending review, we provided more than £500 million of funding for superfast broadband over the next four years, and some of that money can be used to pay for superfast broadband roll-out in areas that the market alone does not reach, including rural areas. The Welsh Assembly are now in discussions with Broadband Delivery UK on how its work will be supported in future.
I agree with my hon. Friend that there are huge opportunities if we can roll out superfast broadband to rural communities. It will help tackle the digital divide and not just enable banking services to be more easily accessed by people in rural areas but create new wealth opportunities, and encourage economic growth and development in those areas.
My hon. Friend also spoke about the future of the Financial Inclusion Fund. I am pleased that the Government will make funding available to continue the face-to-face advice project until April 2012. However, we have been clear that the debt advice sector needs to be put on a more sustainable footing in the long term. There is considerable investment already through the Consumer Finance Education Body, which is looking at financial advice more broadly. We have asked it to take forward debt advice as part of its work of running the money advice service. That work will be funded not by the taxpayer but the financial services industry, which benefits most directly from good quality debt advice being available. He made an important point about access to advice.
Mr Hoban
I will, if the hon. Gentleman will be patient for a moment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion made points about face-to-face advice and issues in rural areas around accessing advice. Part of the challenge is to ensure that advice is available when people need it. Sometimes that is difficult, given that citizens advice bureaux and other providers operate at fixed opening times, but there are other ways. The Money Advice Trust runs an effective telephone helpline service, as does the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, and we need to look at online tools. It is important that we have a holistic approach to financial advice, and that is why I am keen that the CFEB takes this forward and provides a coherent view about how we provide advice to people, not just in urban areas but across the country.
Chris Leslie
I accept what the Minister says about online and telephone advice, but, on face-to-face advice, can he confirm that, as far as the Government are concerned, the £27 million fund will not be available from April 2012 onwards? It is his decision that it will end next April.
Mr Hoban
The reality is that the previous Government expected the project to end at the end of this month—that was in their spending plan—but we have extended it for a further year. However, it is important that the financial services sector picks up the bill for it. It is important to integrate it as part of the CFEB—it is its responsibility to take it forward. Of course, we will work closely with that organisation and monitor it to ensure that it delivers that advice. It accepts that it is its responsibility to develop a model of debt advice that meets the needs of people across this country. That is an important goal for that body. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) was not around in the last Parliament, but the CFEB had support from his party as well as mine. His colleagues in the then Government saw it as an important way of improving financial capability and advice, so there is shared interest in ensuring that it is successful.
I have two brief points to make about the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. He should be very clear that the Independent Commission on Banking is a focused piece of work—perhaps he ought to read its terms of reference. It is about stability and competition in the banking sector, not the greater issue of banking’s social role. The ICB’s mandate is narrowly focused. The hon. Gentleman is looking perplexed.
Chris Leslie
With respect to the Minister, surely competition is integral to the wider social and consumer interest. If his Administration have so narrowly defined the ICB’s activities, is there not at risk that some more important questions might be neglected by Ministers in their future decisions?
Mr Hoban
We were keen to ensure that the ICB has a focused remit to enable it to deliver its work on time, so that we could take forward some of the lessons that should be learned from the financial crisis, when large banks posed a greater risk to the economy. UK banking was consolidated, partly as a consequence of the Lloyds and HBOS merger, and the building society sector became more concentrated. That is different from imposing additional social obligations on banks, which the hon. Gentleman seems to favour.
The hon. Gentleman also touched on independent financial advisers. He should be aware that their advice is not free; it is paid for through commission, and it is not always entirely transparent how much is being paid. A move to a fee-based system will help improve transparency. It is important that consumers receive good quality advice. We live in a complex world of financial services, and as a Minister I deal with too many cases of consumers being given bad advice and paying a high price for that. There is a strong consumer-friendly element in the reforms.
The hon. Gentleman also talked about the financial services compensation scheme levy. It pays for the cost of failure among IFAs. It is an important part of the mechanism to give consumers confidence that if something goes wrong, the bill is picked up so that they are not left out of pocket. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme should be reformed, and that someone else should pick up the levy, he should be clear which sectors should do so. My experience is that people are keen to offload the responsibility to someone else, but never clear who that should be. The scheme ensures that the sector swallows its own smoke.
Turning to the main issues raised by my hon. Friend the. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, I recognise his concerns about the significant impact of branch closures in his constituency, and the fact that the HSBC branch in Rhayader has only limited opening hours. I also recognise that although people in rural areas experience the same financial challenges as people in towns and cities, living in a rural area may bring additional challenges. Exclusion from financial services may be less visible in many ways in rural areas compared with urban areas.
My hon. Friend referred to micro-managing banks’ activities. I am not interested micro-managing them, and that is as true for the banks in which the state has a significant stake as for those in which we have no shareholding. However, banks and building societies should serve the economy, and we are committed to improving access to banking, and transparency of financial products for consumers. Decisions on opening and closing branches are taken by the management team of each bank and building society on a commercial basis, and the Government do not intervene in such decisions.
My hon. Friend should recognise that the role of banks is not just about branches. They play a much a wider role in helping the UK economy, and we reached agreement with them earlier this year to encourage them to work in partnership to support the recovery, to increase the amount of money they lend to small and medium-sized enterprises, and to pay out lower bonuses than last year. They are more transparent about their pay, and are making an additional contribution to support business growth and the big society bank of £1.2 billion. However, there is more work to do to improve access to financial services, certainly among the most vulnerable groups, by supporting financial mutuals, and improving competition in the banking sector.
We are committed to improving access to basic financial services, especially for those who are vulnerable to exclusion, and we are working actively to ensure that all consumers can access an appropriate mix of financial services. Bank and building society branches are not the only channels for accessing financial services, nor are they necessarily favoured by consumers on low incomes. For many people, the barriers are significantly greater than simply having no local bank or building society branch to visit.
It is important that financial services adapt so that they fit the grain of how people run their lives. For example, many consumers without bank accounts express a preference for managing their finances in cash. They want direct control over their spending, and often believe that a bank account takes that away from them. For many, the financial services with which they engage most often are not in bank branches.
That brings me to the post office network, which has more branches than all the retail banks put together. An important part of the Post Office’s future sustainability will be the continued growth of revenue from financial services. The Government have promised that there will be no programme of post office closures, and in last year’s spending review we promised to provide £1.34 billion for the Post Office to modernise the network and to safeguard its future, making it a stronger partner for the Royal Mail. We have also said that expansion of accessible and affordable personal financial services available through the Post Office should be a priority. Our ambition is that all UK current accounts should be accessible through the post office network, making post offices the convenient place for people to access their cash.
Roger Williams
I thank the Minister for his comments on the debate. On a practical issue, people tell me that the one thing they value about banks is that they can talk in private about their financial concerns. That facility is not available in post offices. If the Post Office is to deliver more financial services, it must address that issue, as well as availability, with the public.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As it expands the financial services that it offers, the Post Office will have to think about how to encourage take-up, and how to provide support and advice, if that is the route that it wants to take. I was about to acknowledge that the range of services that the Post Office will offer will not be the same as a community bank, which is an idea that he outlined.
There is a real challenge in putting in place the right model of financial services in rural communities. It is not right to mandate a particular model as being right. The impetus for new ways of developing services should come from the financial services sector. The hon. Member for Arfon complained about the HSBC branch that has become highly automated. The challenge there is whether that meant that the branch could stay open, and whether new technology is being used to keep more branches open by changing the way in which services are offered. There are some interesting challenges, and banks must work their way through them.
When thinking about how financial services best support families and businesses, particularly in rural areas, we must think more carefully about their changing nature. There is a risk of getting stuck in a particular view of how banking should work. People are turning increasingly to prepayment cards or e-money. For example, Tesco is making payment to short-term employees with an e-money card, instead of paying money into a bank account. We can learn from other countries how they have tried to get around lack of bank branches. We should think about developing new safe and convenient financial services using different channels.
Mutuals were mentioned a couple of times, and I am conscious of the excellent work done by credit unions, particularly in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire. Mutuals can be more accessible for those who cannot or do not want to access banks. The coalition is committed to a strong mutual sector that should have the capability to enrich British society. It is in everybody’s interest to do whatever we can to help the mutual sector prosper and grow, and for that to be achieved sustainably. Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to start a meaningful dialogue with the mutual sector about its ambitions, looking at what services it can offer and how it can overcome the hurdles that have been holding it back.
Although mutuals benefit from not having to pay dividends to their shareholders, they have an obligation to their members. They have to strike a balance between meeting their wider obligations and providing returns to their members through higher returns on savings or lower borrowing costs, ensuring that they remain viable and competitive. Such considerations are at the heart of every decision made by a building society.
As a consequence of the financial crisis, there is clearly an appetite for change in the way financial services operate, and mutuals stand well placed to respond to that challenge. To help achieve it, the Government are implementing several legislative reforms to help create a more equal playing field in financial services, thus promoting diversity and providing a challenge to banks.
The legislative reform order on industrial and provident societies and credit unions has been a long time coming. It will be re-laid before Parliament shortly, and will introduce basic yet far-reaching reforms that will enable credit unions to modernise and grow. We will also take forward the implementation of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010 after the legislative reform order comes into force. That will bring the industrial and provident society name into the 21st century, and modernise the powers available to update legislation in the future.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire asked about reducing the burdens on building societies. We will shortly lay an order that gives mutual societies—including building societies—the option to use electronic communications to engage with members and distribute certain statutory information, as opposed to sending it by hard copy. That will reduce costs to businesses and enable them to invest more in services.
In recent years, credit unions have made great progress in providing affordable financial services to people who could not otherwise access them. They provide an alternative to payday lending, loan sharks and home credit, and I want them to continue to develop and strengthen. We are providing additional support to those institutions outside the regulatory legislative process. Building on the financial inclusion growth fund, the Department for Work and Pensions will continue to support credit unions for four years through a new expansion and modernisation fund worth up to £73 million. The fund will seek to extend access to basic, appropriate financial services to many people on lower incomes, through modernising delivery and customer support systems.
Roger Williams
One concern relayed to me by mutual societies, particularly building societies, is about the burden of reporting that has to be done on a regular basis, presumably to the Financial Services Authority. That seems to be out of proportion to the risk that building societies present, and certainly to that presented by large commercial organisations.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes an important point to which I should have responded earlier. He lays down a challenge about the burden imposed on building societies and other financial services organisations. The FSA has looked carefully at the regulation of building societies. He will be aware that building societies were affected during the financial crisis, and there were several rescues as they had to consolidate. The concern is that a number of them moved into areas in which they were not entirely comfortable or well resourced to deal with, and that put the building society and depositors at risk. We need to ensure a proportionate regime for regulating building societies that recognises the risks posed to members and financial stability.
One area in which the Government are taking forward further work to support building societies, and an issue building societies have raised as a consequence of the financial crisis, is the need to find new sources of capital. We are working closely with building societies to identify an instrument that enables them to raise capital markets, will help absorb losses if they occur in the future, and is consistent with enhancing the stability and security of the building society sector. We are taking active measures to strengthen the mutual sector because we believe that its diversity can act as a spur to further challenges to the banking sector. It is an important part of the architecture of financial services, not just in terms of providing mainstream products, but in trying to provide greater access to groups that are harder to reach.
I have been fortunate to have enough time to expand on the subject at some length. I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise that although the Government cannot intervene in the individual decisions taken by banks and building societies to close branches, we are committed to taking further steps to improve access to financial services throughout the country, in rural and urban areas alike. We recognise that particular challenges face financial services in rural areas, and we will continue to look carefully at those issues and listen to concerns raised by hon. Members.
Solar Power and Feed-in Tariffs
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise this issue today. I was astounded by the number of people who contacted me when they saw this debate was coming up, asking me to speak out against the Government’s proposals following the fast-tracked review of the feed-in tariff which has been in place for just 11 months. I know that the matter is subject to a consultation, but early in my speech I will be bold enough to suggest that the Minister and his team follow the example of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the sell-off of our forests, ditch the consultation and think again about the whole matter.
The feed-in tariff was designed under the assumption that the cost of a given technology comes down with increases in installed capacity. That has been the case in the solar PV market, and there have been impressive reductions in cost over the past 12 months, thanks in part to the feed-in tariff. I am told that in the past 12 months, market volume and competition have brought UK domestic prices down by at least 20%. In the same period, volatile oil prices have risen by 50%.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Is he also aware that 300 new jobs have been created by Sharp Solar in my constituency on the back of the introduction of the feed-in tariff? Is he aware of any other policy that has been so successful so quickly?
Alex Cunningham
I am not aware of any policy that has been so successful so quickly, and I know that across the north-east of England, many jobs have been created as a result of that policy. Many more jobs could be created, but that could change under the Government’s change in policy.
The aspiration of the industry—and, I hope, the Government—is to bring the technology to the point where renewable energy will compete with grid electricity without subsidy. To put the matter firmly on the record, I have been told that even BP concedes that electricity from solar PV will be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020—a startling and very welcome statistic. To be clear, the Government’s decision to significantly reduce the tariff for schemes that are larger than 50 kW will cause havoc in this fledgling industry and make it less likely that community groups and schools, hospitals and churches will contemplate solar energy schemes, as they will simply be unaffordable. Schemes over 50 kW in size will see the feed-in tariff reduced by between 39% and 49%.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
If money is to be limited, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be best to prioritise larger-scale projects that offer a better return for the taxpayer and help to achieve our goal of increasing renewable energy?
Alex Cunningham
I will come on to some of those specific issues about the size of projects and the tremendous fear that the Government seem to have about larger projects, which could be controlled in the way that the hon. Gentleman mentions.
A 50 kW scheme is not a large scheme in any way, shape or form, despite what the Government would like us to think. We are talking about an area that is just the size of two tennis courts—hardly the large solar farms that the Government claim to be worried about. But do not just take my word for it. The Government should be listening to the Renewable Energy Association, which says that the industry has been “strangled at birth”, and to the Solar Trade Association, which calls the decision “a total disaster”.
The fact is that solar energy is hugely popular. A study of public attitudes to energy generation technologies that was undertaken by Cardiff university last year showed 88% support for solar PV. It had the highest level of support of all technologies. More than 70% of people agree that supporting renewable energy sources such as solar or wind is a better way of tackling climate change than nuclear power.
Back in 2008, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who is now a Minister of State in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, stated when speaking about 5 MW projects:
“The idea behind it is to allow the inclusion of non-commercial scale projects, such as those that will be installed by homeowners, small businesses, local authorities, community groups, farmers and others. That would help out hospitals and schools that want to facilitate greater use of renewables and ensure low emissions as part of our 2020 targets.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 144.]
I cannot understand why the Government’s policy now goes against that very sensible statement. The Government are trying to present the decision as a choice between supporting home owners who want to install solar PV panels, and supporting big, commercial-scale schemes. The reality is that many community groups interested in medium-sized schemes—you know, the big society—will also lose out thanks to the proposed changes to the feed-in tariff.
In my constituency, a local project at the Norton sports complex has been hit hard by the Government’s decision. The complex was due to secure much needed funds through the FIT by using some of its previously unused land to install solar PV panels. The project was expected to be 1.5 MW in capacity, meaning that, thanks to the Government’s changes to the FIT, it will no longer be viable. I cannot emphasise enough what a disappointment that is. The Norton sports complex does tremendous work in the community, providing sporting and social facilities to local people, but has faced a difficult financial situation in recent years, as attendance at the social club part of the complex, which raises the money, has fallen by 60% thanks to the difficult financial circumstances in which many local people currently find themselves; many are out of work.
The chairman of the Norton sports complex was optimistic that FITs would provide a long-standing income for the complex and guarantee its future, but it will now have to go back to the drawing board, as the Government have pulled the rug out from under its feet.
Justin Tomlinson
I agree with pretty much everything that the hon. Gentleman is raising. He makes the point that a lot of time and money have already been invested in chasing a scheme for which the rules have suddenly changed. That puts groups such as the one that he has highlighted in a very difficult position.
Alex Cunningham
Exactly, and there are countless schemes throughout the country that will now not happen as a direct result of what the Government have done. The Norton sports complex is only a few hundred yards from where I live, but I have been told of many projects further afield that were in the pipeline but will now fall by the wayside.
Ian Lucas
I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and to develop the point being made by my hon. Friend. The worst aspect is that the stable business framework that was in place previously has been wholly undermined by the Government’s decision. Does my hon. Friend agree that stability for business investment is hugely important and that the decision drives a coach and horses through the Government’s pretensions to be providing a stable framework for business?
Alex Cunningham
Indeed I do. The industry was excited by the scheme that was put in place by the previous Labour Government. It saw real possibilities. I will go on to talk about jobs and the effects that the industry has had in Germany.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
On the point about uncertainty, I accept what has been said, but does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the REA, 165 of whose member companies are from the solar PV technology industry, has come out firmly and said that the review is the first step in a process that should ultimately end all uncertainty around these schemes?
Alex Cunningham
I do not think that the process will end any uncertainty. We will simply be saying to people, “Look, just walk away, because it won’t be financially viable for you to develop the sorts of project that you have in mind.” The Government policy is wrong. We need to ensure that the incentives are in place to develop these projects.
In Herefordshire, work is under way on a 300 kW installation on farm buildings that will not be viable when the new tariffs come into effect. Similarly, the UK’s first ever community-owned solar power station is due to be launched in Lewes in April and is expected to save more than 40 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Without the feed-in tariff, that development, to be built on the roof of a warehouse, will not go ahead either, as it is 100 kW in size.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. Can he expand a little on the thought that there ought to be a difference between companies that are looking to take on this fantastic new way of producing energy for the country and would use it to run their factories, and venture capitalists who might want to jump in on it? Can he not understand that, ultimately, if there is no more money, there is no more money, but perhaps the Government might consider changing the arrangements for companies that are producing energy, so that they will be green companies for the future and will look after their local environment?
Alex Cunningham
With respect to the hon. Lady, that is not what this is about. It is about the feed-in tariff. I am all for companies developing their own solar power stations on the roofs of their factories or wherever to run their own businesses. They may well have a little surplus that they can feed into the grid. However, many organisations can develop solar power projects without relying on the feed-in tariff at all.
I could go on, but sadly I do not have the time to list all the projects and examples that I have been sent information on during the last few days. The Renewable Energy Association estimated, before the fast-track review of the FIT was announced, that, nationally, 17,000 new solar jobs would be created by the end of 2011. Those jobs are now unlikely to materialise as medium and large-scale projects are axed. At a time when the number of people unemployed stands at 2.5 million, we should be doing everything that we can to encourage the creation of green jobs. The Government’s review could end up costing jobs, rather than creating them.
Just as important is the renewables target, which aims to see 15% of UK energy coming from renewable technologies by 2020 under the EU renewable energy directive. We are third from bottom of the list of European countries in meeting our renewable energy targets, and the Government’s decision will not help. Many people in the renewables industry are very angry about that decision, and confidence in the Government has been shattered thanks to the mismanagement of the fast-tracked review.
Jeremy Leggett, executive chairman at Solarcentury, has said:
“Since the CSR, I’ve had numerous conversations with Ministers during which I have been assured that any urgent review of feed-in tariffs would be carried out after publication of a proper trigger and would in any case exclude built-environment PV. The Government has not only betrayed those assurances but today proposed feed-in tariff rates that would ensure the UK PV industry stalls. No renewables company or investor can easily be able to trust this Government again after the u-turn by Ministers who were so quick in opposition to call for a more ambitious feed-in tariff and so ready with empty promises in the early months of Government.”
That is quite a condemnation.
I have also been in touch with Eco Age, a company that has been involved in project managing the installation of a number of large 1 MW to 5 MW solar PV systems, which I am told have now all been frozen and are unlikely ever to happen thanks to the FIT review. I am told that just one of the projects—a 1.5 MW solar PV system on the roof of a 550,000 square feet UK super-warehouse—is likely to go ahead. That will be one of the largest roof-based solar installations in the country. Surely it is the type of project that we should be encouraging, but sadly, thanks to the Government’s decision, similar projects have now been scrapped. Eco Age makes the important point that large companies that were engaging with the idea of solar PV schemes have, as a consequence, also embraced other more sustainable practices across their businesses in relation to waste, water transport and procurement. That is a welcome development.
Various representatives from the industry have told me that DECC’s concerns about large-scale solar farms taking up too much of the FIT are unfounded. Large-scale roof-mounted systems are difficult to develop because most commercial property is leased to the tenant, who is not in a position to grant a lease for the roof to a PV company. Ground-mounted schemes, such as those on farms, are far easier because farmers really understand that we need 25 to 40-year lease arrangements to make developments worth while. Although interest in such schemes has been significant, the industry does not expect many actually to go ahead, because it is anticipated that many will struggle to get planning permission.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is speaking eloquently about large-scale PV schemes, but is not the problem that the previous Government’s estimates of the feed-in tariff quantum allowed for zero commercial take-up of large-scale schemes, which is precisely why we have the problem we do? The hon. Gentleman has not even addressed that.
Alex Cunningham
That may well be the case. The industry has been so excited that it has really cranked up its activity in this area, and more and more people are showing an interest in it. The examples in Germany show that we have a real opportunity to grow this industry, and, believe you me, the revenues that flow into the Government’s coffers as a result could more than compensate for the money that is being spent.
Alex Cunningham
I am going to move on, because I need to get through my speech.
Even if we accept that such large-scale sites are a potential concern, why can the Government not restrict the use of greenfield sites and set a reasonable kilowatt capacity limit to curb industrial-scale developments, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies)?At a time when oil prices are rising and volatile, and when the nuclear crisis in Japan is highlighting to all the dangers of nuclear power, I am not alone in suggesting that the Government should look at ensuring that popular, green methods of meeting our energy needs get the support that they deserve. Medium and large-scale solar PV schemes can be part of the solution to serious energy security and climate change problems, but the Government seem intent on focusing just on domestic-scale installations.
The REA tells me that the Department has underestimated solar’s potential and overestimated its cost. Disappointingly, I do not have time to go into the detail, but this technology has exceptional and proven potential. I am told that in Germany—a country with a climate similar to ours—solar PV could reach grid parity, where no subsidies would be required, between 2013 and 2016, which is just two to five years away. Where will the UK be? Yes, left behind again.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Ministers’ suggestion that slashing support for the solar industry does not matter because it affects only projects larger than two tennis courts really is ridiculous, given that an average secondary school could accommodate about 80 kW, which is considerably more than the 50 kW produced in an area the size of two tennis courts, which Ministers like to cite?
Alex Cunningham
Indeed. The hon. Lady arrived late, and that was the very example I used when I opened my speech.
The fact is that we face a predicted energy gap in 2017, with power cuts anticipated for the first time since the 1970s. I am told that DECC had a taste of things to come last Thursday, when it was subjected to its own power cut, which meant that officials were unable to print important briefing notes for Ministers ahead of DECC questions on the Floor of the House. Perhaps that is why the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), was so badly prepared for questions that day and used the rather shabby comparison with Germany’s tariff scheme when seeking to defend the changes his Department has announced. He said:
“Community-based projects that are larger than 50 kW…and up to 150 kW…will still get a tariff comparable to that paid in Germany.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 1068.]
Alex Cunningham
No, I have to finish.
The fact is that Germany’s solar industry is far more developed than ours. It has taken the Germans 10 years to build their industry, which employs 65,000 people, and they now have massive purchasing power and control supply chains. That enables them to undercut British construction companies by more than 25%. Indeed, solar generation in Germany exceeded nuclear generation for the first time just last week. The UK is a long way behind Germany, which is why we need to maintain effective feed-in tariffs if we are to have any hope of maximising the potential of this popular technology.
I hope that I have been able to outline the concerns in the renewable industry about not only the changes to the feed-in tariff, but the Government’s reluctance to acknowledge the real potential of solar energy. The decision to make medium-sized solar PV developments above 50 kW unviable is frankly bonkers. It is clear that the Chancellor, not the Energy Secretary, is dictating DECC policy, because the arguments put forward by Ministers for this shift in policy make no sense to those I have been in contact with in the renewables industry.
The fact is that this decision is dictated by the Treasury, not DECC. The spending review committed to finding £40 million—10%—of savings from the feed-in tariffs. We all know that the Tory-led Government are cutting too far and too fast—[Laughter.] We all get that in. The fact that the Government are cutting too far and too fast was made clear this weekend, when 250,000 people took to the streets of London to protest against the scale and pace of the cuts. The provisions we are discussing are one more victim of that ideologically driven policy.
We were told this would be the “greenest government ever”, but I think that that will be added to their growing list of broken promises, given that energy policy is now being dictated by the Treasury. It is time for the Government to admit they have got this one very wrong, choked off many schemes at birth, turned enthusiastic potential developers away, broken promises to the industry, lost the opportunity to create thousands of jobs and set back our chances of ever meeting our renewable energy targets. I hope to get an assurance today that the Government will start listening to the industry and the many others who will doubtless respond to the consultation on feed-in tariffs, as well as to organisations such as the Norton sports complex.
In summary, I would like to pose three questions. First, how do the Government propose to restore confidence in their renewable policy, which has been severely shaken thanks to the shambolic way in which the decision on feed-in tariffs has been handled? Secondly, what is the Government’s long-term vision for solar PV? Evidence from other countries demonstrates that it has the potential to play a significant part in renewable energy provision, yet the Government’s policy is geared towards sidelining it as a purely domestic, small-scale technology. We are not being ambitious enough when it comes to solar PV. Finally, will the Government promise today to listen to the industry during the consultation, because it is very angry about this unexpected change in policy? Will they then act to ditch that ridiculous change in policy? If not, they risk alienating not only the solar sector, but the whole renewables sector.
Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
May I start by apologising on behalf of the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who, for reasons I have explained to the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), is unable to be here today?
May I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate? He has a long-standing interest in the subject and has forcefully and passionately put on record his views. I thank other Members who have taken the trouble to come to the debate, including the hon. Members for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), and my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker), for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Ipswich (Ben Gummer). I am grateful to everybody for having come along today and made this an interesting debate.
I have certainly taken on board what the hon. Member for Stockton North has said and I will endeavour to reply as best I can to the points that have been raised by him and others. To the extent that time limitations and other factors do not allow me comprehensively to reply now, I am more than happy to ensure that I or my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden give a proper reply subsequently.
The coalition Government are committed to renewables, particularly to meeting our European Union target of ensuring that 15% of all energy comes from renewable sources by 2020. The spending review shows that we are delivering on being the “greenest Government ever” and that we delivered an excellent settlement for renewables, which underlines the priority that the sector constitutes for the Government. Support for large-scale renewable electricity under the renewables obligation will be maintained over the spending review period, with the budget due to rise to £3.2 billion by 2014-15.
Heat makes up 49% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. It has long been neglected and requires significant investment.
Ian Lucas
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman, who is a reasonable man, is responding to the debate, and I hope that we will see some sense on this issue. I have campaigned on it for many years, but, for a long time, I did not get a lot of sense from the Government of the day. However, has he seen the article in today’s Financial Times about private investment in clean energy plunging in 2010? Is he not concerned by the reaction of investors, including Sharp in my constituency, to the announcement, which will strangle private, rather than public, investment?
Mr Vara
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I remind everyone that we are in difficult economic times. Every area has to be looked at, including this one, where the review has been brought forward. We are keen to emphasise that there is no cut-off up to 50 kW. That will cover the majority of the domestic market, which we are keen to protect. I hear what the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Stockton North have to say, but I am keen to emphasise that there is a cut-off point, which will ensure that, to a large extent, the domestic market is protected.
The renewable heat incentive, which will go ahead in 2011, represents more than £850 million of investment over the spending review period. That will drive a more than tenfold increase of renewable heat over the coming decade, shifting renewable heat from a fringe industry firmly into the mainstream. To prioritise those critical projects, we have needed to take hard decisions, reducing budgets to focus on the most important, and looking to reduce the burden on the bill payer. We will save money on support for small-scale electricity through feed-in tariffs, to prioritise the most cost-effective technologies and maximise value for money.
Justin Tomlinson
I understand the difficulty with pressures on budgets and the need to get the best return for the taxpayer. Surely the larger-scale schemes offer the better return to the taxpayer in terms of renewable energy produced and cost to install. Surely we should be considering those as a priority, perhaps at the cost of the domestic schemes.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend consider asking Ministers whether they would contemplate allowing the same feed-in tariffs to community buildings, including sports clubs and other local organisations, rather than large-scale commercial manufacturing of solar power?
Mr Vara
I am more than happy to pass that on to the relevant Minister. I hope colleagues will forgive me: I have about eight minutes and I wish to make progress.
The coalition is determined to drive a step change in ambition for the deployment of decentralised renewables and clean microgeneration technologies. As part of that, we are fully committed to feed-in tariffs for small-scale, low-carbon electricity generation. To meet our 2020 and longer-term targets we need to make the best use of all technologies that deliver renewables. Solar photovoltaic is part of the total picture. We expect that it will deliver a relatively small proportion of the overall total, but it can make a real contribution, especially at the household and community scale.
Solar PV has the advantage of being the only renewable technology that can be delivered easily at scale in the domestic context. It can be deployed quickly and does not have the disadvantages of noise and other local impacts, and at the small end of the scale does not need complex and expensive grid connections. Through permitted development rights, microgen-scale solar PV does not need planning permission. It can provide a range of benefits to the wider green agenda by engaging households and communities in the energy that they consume, and taking action to reduce their carbon footprint. Solar PV can work hand in hand with other initiatives, including the green deal.
It is important to remember that solar PV can be deployed on a range of scales. That can be small systems of 2.5 kW on domestic roofs that will provide a typical household with about half its electricity needs, through community scale schemes on school and hospital roofs of 10s of kW, to industrial scale schemes of several megawatts in fields or on warehouse or factory roofs. We need to question whether all those types of installation are appropriate for bill payers’ support at the current level of technological development. That is why we have launched the comprehensive and fast-track reviews of the FITs scheme.
Alex Cunningham
The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) mentioned sports complexes, as I did. There is one in my constituency that is considerably bigger than the Government want to support in the future. Does the hon. Gentleman not have sympathy for that sort of local sports organisation, which could make a major contribution to the community and green energy?
Mr Vara
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I would like to think that he did not really mean to say that the Government are not supporting it. The Government are supporting it, but have to take a decision at the moment to have the cut-off point at 50 kW. That will clearly be reviewed on a regular basis, because that is the way forward. We recognise that, but, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, we have constraints given the current economic climate.
The first anniversary of the FITs scheme is fast approaching and we have been pleased with the success to date, which has seen more than 20,000 PV installations registered for FITs. When the FITs scheme was introduced by the previous Administration, it was made clear that all aspects of the scheme, including tariff levels, would be subject to periodic reviews and that, if necessary, early reviews could take place. I would add that the previous Administration were able to pass the measure because it was a cross-party matter, which had the support of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
“Feed-in tariffs: Government’s Response to the Summer 2009 Consultation” made that clear, and also provided examples of what reviews would consider. The context for the first review of FITs was set by last year’s spending review. The review made it clear that there are spending parameters within which the FITs scheme must operate. Put simply, there is no blank cheque for FITs. Particularly in the current climate, it is crucial that we take a more responsible and efficient approach to public subsidy to ensure that consumers receive value for money and new investors are not over-rewarded with public subsidy.
At the time of the spending review, we said that the first review of FITs would take place as planned in 2012, taking effect in 2013, unless higher than expected deployment triggered an early review. However, since then we have become increasingly concerned about the risk that larger-scale solar PV, unforeseen by the modelling undertaken prior to the start of the FITs scheme, could lead to long-term pressure on FITs costs. That risk provides a trigger consistent with the statements made at the time of the spending review.
Therefore, last month the Secretary of State announced the start of the first comprehensive review of FITs. As well as allowing the concerns mentioned to be addressed, bringing forward the review of FITs also allows for industry to be provided with certainty, sooner rather than later, about how the savings committed to as part of the spending review will be delivered. Many in industry have been pressing for that.
In the first scheme review, we want to secure the continued success of FITs, through sustainable growth rather than boom and bust. That means enabling industry to grow smoothly within the spending parameters confirmed by the spending review. Starting the review now provides us with a better chance of delivering the aim than allowing unsustainable growth, which might have to be reined in dramatically in the future. Furthermore, by fast-tracking consideration of solar PV larger than 50 kW, and farm-scale anaerobic digestion, we can address urgent concerns that have arisen.
The fast-track review is looking at FITs for solar PV above the microgeneration threshold of 50 kW. Solar PV mocrogeneration of up to and including 50 kW is not within the scope of the fast-track review and is therefore not being considered by this consultation, but will be considered as part of the comprehensive review.
I am mindful that time is pressing. I say in conclusion regarding the three points raised by the hon. Member for Stockton North that we believe that confidence is important, and we will continue to monitor. We firmly believe that by protecting the domestic market, confidence has not been damaged. On a long-term basis, this is the way forward, and we will continue to monitor. In response to whether the Government will listen, of course we will listen. We have listened today and will continue to do so. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stockton North and all other hon. Members and hon. Friends who have taken the time to make their voices heard.
Carmel Bloom
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
I start by thanking everyone involved in allowing me this debate. Many times in the six years in which I have been honoured to be a Member of Parliament, when people have come to me with a case of a medical nature, I have regrettably had to say that I could not assist them because there was no way to take the case forward. I want to make it clear that this case is not one of them.
I shall start with a brief case history, and the family’s attempt to understand how a normally fit woman went from being perfectly healthy to tragically losing her life during an everyday, routine procedure from which, I am told, no one has ever died. Carmel Bloom, a healthy 54-year-old woman, walked into Bupa Roding hospital on the evening of 27 August 2002. She was found to be suffering from pain in her left side, and was therefore admitted as an in-patient. Earlier that evening, she had gone to the accident and emergency department at the King George national health hospital in Ilford, but because there was a 14-hour wait, she had gone on to the Bupa hospital.
The following day, 27 August, a scan and blood test showed that she had a urinary tract infection and that a stone may have lodged in her lower left urethra. The following evening, exactly 24 hours later, an everyday procedure was commenced in an effort to bypass the blockage and enable the free flow of urine. That was done by inserting a JJ stent—a small J-shaped rubber tube—into her urethra.
Seven hours after the procedure, Carmel was transferred by emergency ambulance to the intensive care unit at the NHS Whipps Cross university hospital. During the transfer, Carmel collapsed into an irreversible coma; she never regained consciousness. Tragically, 10 days later, on 8 September 2002, her life-support machine was switched off, and she was certified dead. Carmel’s family has spent nearly nine years trying to discover what happened on that fateful night, and to understand how a normally fit and healthy woman could die of an everyday complaint with which, I am told, no fatality statistics are associated if it is properly treated in a hospital environment.
The family told me that following Carmel’s admittance to Whipps Cross university hospital’s intensive care unit, it quickly became apparent that the doctors and nursing staff were ill at ease, and I am told that they became quite agitated when asked for further particulars of Carmel’s condition by Carmel’s sister-in-law. I should explain that she is a qualified medical doctor; she resides in Canada, which is why that had to be done by telephone. Which one of us, if we had a qualified doctor in the family, would not ask that person to request information? However, the doctors refused to accept any further calls from her after she requested further details of Carmel’s condition and treatment. I cannot say why that happened.
On 9 September 2002, Carmel’s death was referred to the Walthamstow coroner, as it had become apparent that her death was anything but straightforward. The following time line demonstrates the due process that the family were obliged to follow in their quest to find out how and why Carmel died. As you will hear, my involvement came seven years down the line, as I was not Member of Parliament for Ilford North at the time. Nearly nine years after Carmel’s death, the evidence shows that questions about the causes of her death have still not been properly answered. A number of agencies come into play, but today I shall restrict my comments to the health aspects of the case. At a later date, I shall seek to revisit other justice matters.
In 2002, the first inquest was adjourned; coroner Dr Stearns stood down because of a conflict of interest. In 2003, the inquest was adjourned again; Dr Dolman, the second coroner, stood down but refused to disclose his reasons. In 2003, the third coroner, Andrew Walker, brought in a verdict of death by natural causes. In 2003, the Home Office suggested that application be made for a new inquest.
In 2003, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, intervened. In 2004, he granted consent for the High Court to quash the inquest verdict of natural causes. In 2004, in the High Court, Lord Justice Tuckey quashed coroner Andrew Walker’s verdict, and ordered that a new inquest be held with a jury. In 2005, the inquest jury overturned the natural causes verdict, finding that a series of failures had contributed to Carmel’s death.
In 2006-07, the Healthcare Commission investigated Bupa Roding hospital. I should say that it is no longer a Bupa hospital. The commission found a series of shortcomings and a serious lack of training and equipment in the hospital, together with false reports being given to them following Carmel’s death. The commission brought no charges against the hospital, stating that it had no power to act in retrospect. Following the investigation, Bupa sold its 26 hospitals.
In 2007, the General Medical Council started an investigation into the conduct and fitness to practise of Mr John Hines and Dr Paul Timmis. In 2007, the London ambulance service disclosed previously withheld evidence—the AS/1 emergency call receipt document and Bupa Roding Hospital’s 999 tape recording. I have seen the transcripts and heard the tape, and there is a gap of approximately 15 seconds in the recording; to the best of my knowledge, it remains unexplained to this day.
In 2007, the police began an investigation into Carmel’s death and looked into Bupa’s alleged false report to the Healthcare Commission on the events that led to her death. As I said earlier, I shall not speak about the police at this stage, except to say that, between 2007 and 2009, the Ilford criminal investigation department referred the case to the Metropolitan Police Service’s homicide and serious crime command unit, following the discovery of new evidence. In 2008 and 2009, the homicide unit referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service. In March 2008, Bridget Matthews, the night sister on duty at Bupa Roding hospital on 29 August 2002 and the nurse in charge, was interviewed under caution by the Met’s homicide and serious crime command unit, SCD1.
In 2009, the Ministry of Justice investigated a complaint against the 2005 coroner. It was said that the coroner withheld key evidence from the inquest jury. Unfortunately, however, no inquiry took place; the judicial review office cannot investigate coroners’ non-disclosure of evidence to a jury. The non-disclosure of evidence enabled the court to understate Carmel’s condition, but that issue is not the object of today’s debate. I became involved in 2009, when my constituent’s family came to see me. I intervened, and approached the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), then the Secretary of State for Justice.
In 2010, the General Medical Council’s fitness to practise hearing against Bupa doctors Mr John Hines and Dr Paul Timmis commenced. At that stage, I wrote about the case in my newspaper column and in articles, and I thank the Ilford Recorder and the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian for printing them. In my writings, I asked if anyone had information relating to Carmel’s tragic death. I pay tribute to Julie Moody, who came forward as a whistleblower. She made a statement, which caused her great difficulty; that was done at great cost to her personal and professional life, and I record my gratitude for her bravery. She displayed enormous courage and compassion. She was a senior nurse and an ex-employee at the Bupa Roding hospital. She contacted me with vital new evidence about Carmel’s treatment during the night following her operation. I provided this new evidence to the Ministry of Justice and the Met borough commander, but it was withheld from the GMC’s fitness to practise panel hearing against Mr Hines and Dr Timmis. The GMC decided to proceed with the hearing, even though a whistleblower had come forward, casting new light on Carmel’s treatment at the Bupa Roding hospital, with evidence of serious negligence during Carmel’s operation. Entirely inappropriate post-operative treatment was also alleged.
Let me read out the remit of the General Medical Council:
“Our statutory purpose is to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine.”
It is vital, not only in this case but a number of cases, to decide whether the GMC is a union for doctors—if it is, fine—or whether it is there to represent patients’ interests.
In 2010, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence considered an appeal to the High Court against the GMC hearing’s decision not to prosecute or even issue a warning against the two doctors, even though, between them, they pleaded to, or were found guilty of, 79 charges, including one where the doctors’ conduct was so serious that it increased the risk of Carmel suffering hypoxia—I apologise for any mispronunciations of medical terms; I know that the Minister is medically qualified, but I am afraid that I am not—cardiac arrest, brain damage and/or death.
In 2010, there was an unsuccessful appeal against a decision of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Metropolitan Police Service’s homicide and serious crime unit interviewed the night sister. In an extraordinary development that has still not been explained, the night sister said in her statement that she had been given the whistleblower’s highly confidential statement. That statement had been given only to me—I immediately put it in a solicitor’s safe in north London—the police and the Ministry of Justice. I cannot explain how that could have possibly happened.
In 2010, the Crown Prosecution Service was approached for the third time by homicide detectives who were considering instituting a criminal prosecution, but the CPS failed to reopen the case. In the same year, the GMC referred the Bupa nurses to the Nursing and Midwifery Council for misconduct in relation to the care and treatment of Carmel, leading to her death. Bupa’s resident medical officer, Dr Darko, was also referred to the General Medical Council. Further evidence from the whistleblower—Julie Moody—and a 500-page report were provided to: the Met’s homicide unit; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; the General Medical Council; the Nursing and Midwifery Council; and myself.
All the way along the line, the family, who have suffered great distress over a prolonged period of time, have said that they simply want to know what happened, and want closure. That is why they asked for my assistance, and I have been trying to help to the best of my ability. We are awaiting a number of key developments: the Attorney-General’s consent to apply to the High Court for a fresh inquest; the outcome of a Nursing and Midwifery Council action against the two Bupa nurses; a decision to call for a full police investigation into the death of Carmel Bloom; the GMC’s decision to recharge the two doctors involved; and the decision by the health service ombudsman regarding the London ambulance service’s actions and the part that it played.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. I appreciate that she will not be able to answer them today. I let her see a copy of what I was intending to say last night, but it was too late for her to get any replies to me. The family are concerned that the GMC, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Healthcare Commission did not investigate the causation of death. I am not making any accusations against anyone; I am neither a lawyer nor a doctor. None the less, there are so many questions that need to be answered before the poor family can move on and have closure.
The coroner at the 2005 inquest wrongly withheld key evidence—I cannot give any reasons for that; I am not making accusations—contained in the London ambulance service’s emergency 999 call receipt document, to which I referred. That evidence was introduced into the inquest’s rule 37 bundle as an exhibit, but the detail and significance of this document was never pointed out to the jury. The information in that 999 call, which was made by the Bupa Roding hospital to the ambulance service, is significant.
The fact that there is a two-tier legal system is clearly demonstrated by the shocking and disproportionate lack of prosecutions. I am not saying who should or should not be prosecuted, or even whether anyone should be prosecuted. As I have said, I do not have the ability to go into that. However, there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions.
Before a fresh inquest for Carmel can be held, some medical personnel must be questioned and a number of medical documents must be disclosed. The X-rays taken during Carmel’s procedure, which would have shown the condition of Carmel’s kidney, have been removed from the hospital’s notes. The chest X-rays taken on Carmel’s arrival at the intensive care unit would show the condition of Carmel’s lungs. The hospital notes state that on her arrival, Carmel had a maximum four-star pulmonary oedema—fluid in her lungs—and no heartbeat. She was cold to the touch, had shut down, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. Forgive me—I am a layman—but those symptoms suggest to me someone who is, sadly, deceased. The operating department assistant anaesthetist who was present during Carmel’s botched operation needs to be questioned, and we need to know the identity of the radiologist who took the X-rays during Carmel’s operation. An investigation is also needed properly to establish the true identity of the anaesthetist who accompanied Carmel in the ambulance.
Let me stress again that Carmel was not suffering from a life-threatening condition. It was a regular occurrence that could happen to any one of us in this Chamber today. If a person dies unexpectedly in a hospital and relatives suspect wrongdoing, negligence or criminality, there is no Government body or organisation— apart from the police, who refused to get involved—willing to assist.
One of the difficulties that I have found with this case is that it falls under the remit of a number of Departments, which is why I have not included certain aspects of the case in my speech. The Minister could not be expected to respond to them, so I will have to revisit them at a later date. I will wind up, because time is moving on and I want the Minister to have the opportunity to reply. Let me, in a removed way, make my own comments. During this case, I have been moved by the dignity of the family and the whistleblower. There have been times when the family have been under great pressure and stress, and I have had to explain that there are things that I can do, and things that I cannot.
When I first met the family more than two years ago, I pledged that I would stick with the case to try to get the answers and the closure that they need and deserve. I pledge again today that I will stay with the case. When this first started, I received a phone call warning me off the case. To this day, I do not know who that was or what their reason was. I do not pretend to be a remarkably brave person, but if I give my word, I stick to it. I brought this case before the Chamber today, and I feel honoured to have done so. I thank you, Miss McIntosh, for your time and await the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Miss McIntosh. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on securing this debate. He has set out, with considerable passion, some of the detail that led to the death of Carmel Bloom following her operation to remove a kidney stone. It was a moving speech and I commend him for the support that he has given to Ms Bloom’s brother, Bernard, who has worked tirelessly to try to establish the sequence of events that led to his sister’s death.
My hon. Friend has worked tirelessly to give support not only to Ms Bloom’s brother but to the family. I should like to take this opportunity to extend my sympathies to the family. Being unable to find out the circumstances of Ms Bloom’s death or to get any closure is a terrible burden to live with.
As my hon. Friend has eloquently said, there have been numerous investigations and inquiries into the treatment that Ms Bloom received. I know that in 2002 there was a coroner’s inquest that recorded a verdict of death by natural causes. The second post mortem did not provide conclusive statements and a further inquest in the presence of a jury found the cause of death to be
“progression of pre-operative infection following surgery, to which the absence of post-operative intubation, ventilation and monitoring contributed.”
However, none of those investigations or inquiries has brought the closure that is required by the family, or a feeling that they have found out the true circumstances of what happened.
As my hon. Friend has said, there were fitness to practise hearings into the behaviour of two clinicians, but those hearings found that the failings of neither clinician amounted to misconduct. The hearings came to the judgment that it was not necessary to issue a warning in either case. As I say, none of those investigations or hearings has resulted in an explanation that has satisfied my hon. Friend or indeed Ms Bloom’s relatives.
I have nothing but admiration for people who pursue answers to questions, sometimes, sadly, in the face of considerable adversity. Unfortunately, it is really down to their tireless efforts that we learn more and more about the failings of systems. What is important is that we ensure that we learn lessons and that those failings do not happen again.
As my hon. Friend said, Mr Bloom has taken up his case with the Metropolitan Police Service and so my hon. Friend will appreciate that, in the light of ongoing inquiries, I cannot comment further on any police action. I know that that might be a disappointment to Mr Bloom, but it is essential that due process is allowed to take its course free from interference from the influence of Government Ministers.
I also want to commend my hon. Friend for his tribute to Julie Moody. Whistleblowers, for want of a better word, are an important part of this process and we have strengthened the protection of people who have information that we feel is important. That information, when it reflects on the safety and efficacy of treatment, is absolutely vital and it is important that those people are protected.
Services provided by independent hospitals such as the Spire Roding hospital are subject to regulation and inspection. All health care providers in England, whether they operate in the independent sector or in the NHS, are subject to both professional regulation and system regulation. It is important that those things work and are effective.
Health care professionals are required to be registered with their relevant professional regulator. As my hon. Friend knows, in the case of doctors, that is the General Medical Council. He is absolutely right that the GMC’s purpose is not to act as a trade union—the British Medical Association is the trade union for doctors—but to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine. It does that by controlling entry on to its register, and by setting standards for medical schools and postgraduate education and training. The GMC registers doctors to practise in the UK and, where necessary, it has the power to issue warnings, remove a doctor from the register, suspend a doctor or place conditions on a doctor’s registration.
Interestingly, in preparing for this debate, I got out some figures about the GMC. In the last year that we have figures for, the GMC undertook 270 fitness to practise hearings, which resulted in 68 instances of doctors being struck off the register and 77 instances of doctors being suspended. I think that those figures give my hon. Friend some idea of the sort of activity that the GMC is engaged in.
At the time of Ms Bloom’s death, independent hospitals were registered with the then Commission for Health Improvement, but since that time a new system of registration has been introduced, which focuses on the outcomes of care that matter most to patients. Although I will not be able to respond to all my hon. Friend’s comments and questions today, it is perhaps important for me to set out some of the changes that have been made.
All health care providers are required, as part of their registration with the Care Quality Commission, to have an effective complaints mechanism that will enable them to learn from the experience of patients. That is an important point to make. Often we cannot change what has happened and we cannot always correct mistakes. People want to know what happened, but most importantly they want to know that things have changed as a result of what has happened to them or to their family and that lessons have been learned.
In the first instance, a complaint would be considered by the provider itself. In the case of the Spire Roding hospital, if a complaint is not resolved to the satisfaction of a patient at the hospital level, I understand that an independent review can be requested from Independent Healthcare Advisory Services. On 1 October last year, the registration of independent health care providers was transferred to the new registration system operated under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Under that new system of registration, all providers of a regulated activity—whether they are privately or publicly funded—are legally required to register with the CQC. Providing a regulated activity without being registered is indeed a criminal offence and in order to be registered a provider has to meet and must continue to meet 16 registration requirements. Those requirements set out the essential levels of safety and quality for the provision of health care and adult social care in England. Those are essential levels of safety and quality, and as I have said already they focus on the outcomes that matter to patients and all service users.
Where a provider provides services that do not meet those essential levels of safety and quality, the CQC now has additional enforcement powers that were not available in 2002. For example, it can now issue a warning notice for non-compliance and a new financial penalty notice can be issued in lieu of prosecution through the courts. In extreme cases, the CQC has the power to close down a specific service or ward, or to cancel a provider’s registration and/or to bring a prosecution for non-compliance. If the CQC does bring a prosecution, the courts are now able to impose a larger fine of up to £50,000 where a provider has failed to meet essential levels of safety and quality. Those powers should provide some assurance to patients and service users that wherever they access health and adult social care they will receive a service that at the very least meets essential levels of safety and quality.
The CQC is risk-based and it should be a transparent regulator. That transparency is very important. Its inspections are informed and guided by the intelligence that it gathers about providers, and its inspection reports are publicly available on its website. I understand that there have been three inspections of the Spire Roding hospital in the last few years and that there were two inspections in 2009.
I can assure my hon. Friend that we want robust and effective regulation of health care providers and that we want to improve current arrangements. The health reforms that are currently before Parliament will strengthen the role of the CQC, by giving it a clearer focus on regulating the essential levels of safety and quality. In addition, we have also set up HealthWatch as a new and powerful consumer champion for users of health and social care services. It is very important that that voice for patients and the public is heard. HealthWatch will be established as a committee of the CQC and it will provide a direct route for the views of service users to reach the regulator.
Anne Milton
I know that time is running out on us and I will certainly get back to my hon. Friend. My door and the doors of other Ministers are always open if it would be useful to have a meeting to clarify some of the issues that we have discussed. Of course, as I have said we cannot necessarily interfere in processes that are already under way.
I know that what I have said today will not change things for Ms Bloom’s brother and the rest of her family and friends, and I also know that the ripple effect of a case such as this one goes far and wide. Sadly, what I say today cannot provide the closure that they want, but hopefully I can work with my hon. Friend to give him and Ms Bloom’s family and friends some of the answers that they so desperately seek.
Road Vehicle Wheel Safety
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is good to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Miss McIntosh, and I am very grateful to have this opportunity to highlight the growing concerns about wheel safety, in particular in relation to commercial vehicles. I do so having been alerted to the lack of an adequate system for checking and inspecting heavy goods vehicle wheels by a company based on the Sharston industrial estate in my constituency. Motor Wheel Service is the largest distributor of HGV wheels in the UK and across Europe.
I am also grateful to the Minister for how he has responded thus far to my concerns. We have corresponded, and have met industry representatives to discuss the issue. Although I have yet to convince him of the need to take further action, I know that he is still listening and that he takes road safety extremely seriously.
I had always assumed that wheels and tyres were regulated in the same way, since the safety of one clearly has a direct impact on the other. Tyres are closely regulated; they all have an E-mark, which is a number printed on the tyre wall confirming that it is approved and meets certain standards. When it comes to wheels, however, there is no registration or marking, no regulated standards, and no testing or checking. It is an offence to fit and supply defective or unsuitable parts, but the problem is that people do not know whether a wheel is defective because the monitoring system is so weak.
As it stands, a wheel could be damaged in a serious accident and yet be back out on the road the very next day fitted to a different vehicle, without any inspection or accountability. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency has never been tasked with routinely inspecting wheels when checking HGVs and, although I have no doubt that it would view the loss of a wheel in an accident very seriously, in other incidents it rarely looks to see if wheel failure has caused the problem. I accept that in the past there might have been less to worry about because of the very limited number of manufacturers and suppliers in the field, but the situation is changing, and wheel suppliers suspect that over the past three years there has been an annual increase of approximately 10,000 substandard and potentially hazardous second-hand HGV vehicles entering the UK market. The fear is that in difficult times companies will be tempted to cut costs and use wheels that are not fit for purpose, which would not only undercut legitimate business but put public safety at risk. There has also been a rise in the number of commercial vehicle wheels sourced from the far east entering the UK without any requirement to meet minimum standards of design, safety or maintenance. These wheels have no history or traceability but can be sold by anyone in the UK, with no requirement for technical procedures to assess their history.
An HGV wheel can be damaged in a number of ways. Dents and cracks can be caused by over-tightening the wheel nuts, and wheels can be involved in collisions or constantly pounded on kerbs and in the potholes with which we are all too familiar. They can also rust and suffer wear and tear as a result of age, weather or road surface conditions. The implications of purchasing a faulty wheel are enormous. A 45-tonne lorry travelling at 55 miles an hour can cause serious damage if a tyre fails, and numerous measures are in place to prevent that. It simply cannot be right that similar measures are not in place to prevent wheel failure from causing exactly the same type of damage.
Burton Copeland, a leading criminal practice in the north-west of England, has warned that the absence of regulation and testing would be no defence if HGV wheel failure caused a death and if an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found that the company concerned had not carried out its own risk assessments or, perhaps as a cost-cutting measure, had fitted faulty second-hand wheels to the vehicle. In Burton Copeland’s view, if there was evidence of negligence, the company director responsible could face a police investigation, and even a charge of corporate manslaughter.
People in the industry should take their responsibilities seriously, and I know that wheel suppliers are playing their part in educating their customers about the risks of failing to adopt high standards. Nevertheless, the Government’s own monitoring and testing system should do more to hold companies to account and to prevent accidents from happening in the first place.
In our meeting last November, the Minister promised to review the available evidence. I was very grateful that he commissioned a review, and in a subsequent letter he confirmed that over a 15-year period there had been 23 accidents and a total of 103 cases involving heavy commercial vehicles with recorded wheel defects. It would be helpful if the Minister gave more details of the kind of problems that were identified in the search that his officials carried out. The Minister also told me in that letter that VOSA had identified 60 incidents of defective or fractured wheels. That was in a sample of 197,000 inspections, but the fact that the numbers are small is no reason for complacency. One catastrophic wheel failure could be enough to cause a very serious incident and loss of life.
VOSA’s findings are not really a surprise, as it is hardly likely to identify many wheel failures when it does not set out to look for them in its inspections. A hairline crack in a wheel could have disastrous consequences, but would not be picked up in a routine VOSA roadside check. Therefore, although the Department for Transport does not currently believe that wheel failure is a significant factor in accidents involving HGVs, the truth is that no one really knows, because the checks are inadequate. It is not possible for the Minister or his officials to be absolutely confident when the checks are not carried out as thoroughly as they should be.
I pay tribute to my colleague Brian Simpson MEP, who has been raising this issue in the European Parliament, where a draft report on European road safety up to 2020 is currently being considered. As I understand it, paragraph 33 calls on member states to monitor imported accessories and spare parts more closely, to ensure that they meet European consumer protection standards. In the absence of adequate standards and checks, it would be interesting to know what the UK’s response would be to such a call, and perhaps the Minister can tell us what the current thinking is. It certainly would not present a problem to his counterpart in the German Government, because there they have adopted a system known as TÜV approval, which includes a comprehensive system of wheel certification—the kind of system that we should seek to develop in the UK.
In order to make progress, I want to put to the Minister two practical suggestions, to at least make a start down the road to better safety. First, he should identify a senior official in the Department for Transport to act as a point of contact for the wheel supply industry, so that the industry can forward directly to that named individual any evidence of defective wheels. I have learnt from briefings by industry representatives that there are those on the front line of the HGV wheel supply industry who hear stories and come across evidence of faulty second-hand wheels being used irresponsibly. It would be a positive and inexpensive move in the right direction if those concerns could be reported officially and investigated properly, rather than remaining as mere anecdotes. We all know that when tales get told in that way and there is no point of reference for their investigation, confidence can be undermined unnecessarily. We need to have those reports made and proper investigations carried out.
Secondly, I would like the Minister to consider commissioning a year-long trial in one area of the country, in which VOSA would operate an enhanced testing programme, including greater scrutiny of wheel safety. He will argue—perhaps reasonably, based on his evidence—that moving to a full-blown system of enhanced inspection throughout the country is not warranted, especially at a time of difficult decisions about public expenditure, which neither his nor any Department can escape. However, a limited trial of one year in one part of the country could be justified, and would test his assertion that the problem is not widespread.
I do not argue completely against the Minister, as I do not have the evidence, but neither does he. If he were to commission the trial, we could begin to gather evidence to test his assertion. If he is right, I am happy to accept and abide by that, but if a trial such as the one I have suggested produced evidence to the contrary, it would argue for a more developed and widespread scheme across the country. I hope that the Minister is prepared to put his current view to the test. If a trial confirms that there is no major problem, I will be happy to accept the findings. Better that than waiting for a catastrophe before taking action.
When we are elected to this place, we come with our own experience and background, and we have the opportunity to raise issues that have become important to us in debates and questions. We meet constituents who reveal issues and problems that we can then bring to Parliament on their behalf. We also learn lessons from companies in our constituencies. I had never even considered wheel safety until a year ago. As I said, I assumed that wheel safety and tyre safety were bound up together, but I have discovered differently. When we find out such information, we are duty bound to bring it before Ministers and ask them to respond. Even when a conscientious Minister such as this one does not want to take action immediately, we do not give up easily. We persist and continue to look for evidence. If, in the end, the evidence does not exist, we accept that, but at least we know that a proper search has been carried out.
The company is based in my constituency on the Sharston industrial estate, close to the M56 and M60, and five miles from the M6. Every day, HGV vehicles pass in front of my house. I am only too aware of what could occur in all those scenarios if something went wrong. I now have nagging doubts about wheel safety, and I believe that it is important that the Minister follows up the matter. As I said, he is a conscientious Minister who has responded constructively and positively to the questions that I have raised. I look forward to hearing what he has to say and hope that we can take the issue forward in a more thorough way, so that the public can be satisfied that everything is being done to make the vehicles on our road as safe as possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs McIntosh, for the first time as either a Back Bencher or a Minister of the Crown. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) on securing this debate. I am not surprised that he put his name into the ballot for a debate after our meetings. It is natural for a Back Bencher to follow up meetings and correspondence with Ministers in that way. I gave him some assurances, which I followed up in correspondence, and I have more evidence today regarding what I promised when I met him and industry representatives.
It is a pleasure to set out the Government’s position on wheel safety. Having held an HGV licence for the past 34 years, I have been conscious of the issue for a long time. However, in all the time that I was driving, I never experienced or saw a wheel give way in normal service, except in a road traffic accident. In my 11 years of attending road traffic accidents with the fire service, I never saw a wheel buckle, unless—I will discuss this later—it was due to an ill-fitting tyre or to the vehicle’s being overweight. I have seen overweight vehicles on which a wheel could not take the pressure.
Road safety is crucial, and I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has raised it. It is one of my passions in life, given my background, and it is a priority for the Government. We have the safest roads in the world, but according to the most recent figures, 2,222 people were killed on them last year. Our roads are not safe enough yet. We intend to build on our history and safety programme. We are developing a new safety strategy, which will be published in the next few months. The overall approach of the framework is to focus on localism and targeted education, particularly remedial education, wherever possible. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned how we educate the industry. The industry has a role to play as well as the Government. We will be publishing on many other road safety issues at the same time, not least the problem of drink and drug driving. I know that the industry is looking particularly at drug driving, and I recently met the representative bodies of the haulage industry to discuss it.
On the specific points, I agreed when we met that I would consider carefully what existing data had been published and what had not. We considered the data for the past 15 years, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and they were fascinating. Of 197,000 roadside inspections, 60 found defective wheels. Admittedly, we do not know at present exactly what those defects were. They may well have been due to over-tightening of nuts or to incidents in which the vehicle was not involved; the wheels could have been transferred. It happens all the time. In salvage yards around the country, one can see it on cars as well as HGVs.
When I met the industry and the right hon. Gentleman, I said that I had considered the risk. That is crucial. We cannot wrap everybody in cotton wool; we must consider the risk. Out of 197,000 roadside inspections, 60 found defective wheels, which represents a failure rate of 0.006%. I am not saying that any risk is acceptable, but that is a pretty low rate. At the same time, we considered an analysis of more than 4,000 heavy commercial vehicle MOTs—in my time, it was called plating, but we have moved on, and everybody understands MOT terminology—in which no wheel was found to be defective. In considering the evidence, it is important that we consider the risk. I have kept an open mind throughout. In 2009-10, the last year for which figures are available, there were 198,000 inspections. We expect the figure for the first eight months of this year to be about the same, and we have found only 33 problems involving wheels. There were a similar number the previous year, and it looks as though the figure this year will be lower, unless we have a surge in evidence, but it does not look as if that will happen.
The reason is, I think, the rigour of annual testing on HGVs. Unlike MOTs, an HGV must have a test every year, no matter how old or young the vehicle is. A brand-new vehicle must have an MOT after 12 months. Anybody in the industry who says that the test is easy or that it is not taken with due rigour has not attended one. If the right hon. Gentleman likes, I will arrange for him to do so, either at VOSA or elsewhere—we are now outsourcing tests to the industry—to see for himself how rigorous they are. Defects are found on a regular basis. I remember vividly how, when I used to come home on leave and do part-time work, I would be asked to take one of the lorries down to the testing centre. It was one of the most frightening experiences that I had ever had. The lorry had been jet-sprayed and sandblasted, everything was spotless and still they found something wrong. That is why, as the junior guy, I used to be sent; the others were frightened of going down there. It is right and proper that the test should be rigorous.
Paul Goggins
The Minister makes a generous offer, and I would be happy to take him up on it, because I would like to test precisely what questions are asked and what examinations take place. I contend that the close scrutiny applied to tyres is not applied to wheels. That is the problem. Will he comment further? It is not surprising that the numbers are so small considering that those questions are not asked and those issues not investigated in the same depth as for other aspects of the vehicle.
Mike Penning
I understand where the right hon. Gentleman is coming from, but there is a difference between a tyre and a wheel—in manufacturing and in actual product. The key to knowing what is going on is not what questions are asked, but visual inspection. Anyone can say whatever they like about where the vehicle has come from, what sort of work it has been doing, and whether it has been off-road or on-road. By the time a vehicle arrives for its plating or MOT, it has been jet-blasted, cleaned and painted, and everything looks immaculate, but if the inspectors get deep into the vehicle, they will find any defects.
The failure rates are also an issue. We are not picking up defects at MOT stage. As I have said, 4,000 had no defects. I accept, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, that they might not be looking closely enough, but one would still expect more failures for vehicles that are in use on the roads. A failure rate of 0.0004% does not seem to be huge. I promise the right hon. Gentleman, however, that I will keep an open mind.
On priorities in relation to funding and to where we need to put our assets, the right hon. Gentleman asked me to go to the next stage and announce a year-long inquiry into or validation of the issue, but it is difficult for me to do that, because I do not have the evidence that that amount of failure is occurring. If I did, I assure him that I would do not only a localised inquiry, but a national one. However, it has to be evidence based and, at the moment, the evidence is not there.
I have made sure that a senior official at VOSA, which is part of my Department, will be responsible for dealing with complaints, and he will probably be inundated with them. Anecdotal complaints are always difficult. The gossip machine and tribal drums go on and people talk about things, but we will try to identify genuine complaints and concerns. Local authorities also have powers under the Road Traffic Act 1988, and I am more than happy for the Department and my office to be contacted directly. If anybody feels that they have a problem that is not being dealt with or that they think should be taken straight to the top, they can bring it to my Department or office and I assure them that it will be investigated. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, a lot of complaints are anecdotal, but I have to base everything that I do in the Department, especially on road safety, on my evidence base. We have three separate pieces of research. The first mentions 4,000, the second notes 1,900, and it looks as though this year’s figure might show that failure rates are lower than they were last year. It is, therefore, difficult for me to respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s request.
Trading standards have a role to play, particularly in relation to the concerns about foreign imports. There is a concern about the quality and standards of Chinese imports. We will continue to look at that. I am aware of what the German Federal Government are doing. Their form of Government is different from ours, and I will leave it to others to decide whether theirs or ours is right. We have safer roads than Germany and I am sure that that will continue to be the case. It is entirely up to the German Government if they wish to operate under their own legislation. The general product safety regulations fit in with this. If there is evidence that the products coming in from abroad are defective or sub-standard, we should be made aware of that and we, along with other Departments, will investigate it fully.
It is difficult for me to accept the suggestion that minimum standards like those for tyres be set. If we stand back from the issue, we will realise that tyres are a completely different product. Wheels are solid steel in most cases, particularly on lorries and public service vehicles, while there are myriad different types of manufactured wheel-product for cars. They are a different product. I do not want to ban products that are still serviceable from being transferred from one vehicle to another because of the sheer expense that would cause the industry as a whole. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the product must be safe. Salvage is a form of recycling. We have all done it over the years. I certainly have—I have been in many a scrap yard over the years to get products that I could not afford directly from the manufacturer.
Paul Goggins
I mentioned in my speech the “E” number system that operates for tyres. Does the Minister think that a similar system would help in relation to wheel safety? If that stamp was on a wheel that was transferred from one vehicle to another, it would at least show that it had met the industry standards.
Mike Penning
That is something that I am more than happy to look at. However, if we compare the failure rates of tyres with those of wheels, we will see that they are a very different product.
The right hon. Gentleman has asked me to look at two specific points, but I am sure that he will come up with more at a later stage. I do not say that in a derogatory manner, because that is the nature of a campaign. I cannot agree to do a specific year-long report, because the evidence from the three reports—this year’s report is about eight months in, so we will get its figure pretty soon, in about four months—do not show the failure rate to be as significant as the industry feels so passionately that it is. As I have said, I am more than happy for a senior official in VOSA to be the point of contact. If anybody thinks they have a defective product, not only do I encourage them to go to their local authority, but I am more than happy for them to report it to my own office and Department.
To reiterate, if there is a concern, we have to carefully look at the risk and make sure that it is evidence based. I know that this will be a disappointment to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent and his business, and to the right hon. Gentleman himself, but I do not see the evidence to support Government expenditure on a further plan. I will, however, keep a close eye on the evidence that my Department receives. The way in which the right hon. Gentleman has raised the issue today, in correspondence and in meetings means that it certainly will not leave my eye for a considerable time. VOSA knows full well—my officials are present—that this is something on which I intend to keep a close eye, but the situation will not change unless the evidence changes to show that the failure rate is more significant. I apologise for citing the figure 0.0004% a few moments ago. The actual figure is 0.0006%.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman understands my and the Government’s position. I congratulate him on his campaign and on bringing it to the Chamber’s attention today. I will work closely with him, based on evidence, but at the moment, I think the industry is doing fine.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Sustainable Communities Act
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)
I have today launched a consultation on new, light-touch, regulations to govern the implementation of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007.
On 15 December the Secretary of State invited local authorities to consult their communities about how best to improve their local areas, and to take whatever action was necessary to make these ideas a reality. If councils find that a bureaucratic barrier prevents them from taking action they can submit a formal “proposal” asking the Government to remove the barrier. There is now an easy route to do this—through the new online portal at http://barrierbusting.communities.gov.uk. This portal is also open to anyone who wishes to ask the Government to remove a barrier which is stopping local action.
I want to remove the bureaucracy that surrounded the first invitation under the Act. I do not intend to regulate the actions of local authorities who wish to respond to the invitation, nor to regulate the duties of the selector—the Local Government Association—which in the past has had to shortlist proposals and engage in lengthy consultation with the Government about their implementation. Councils will no longer be required to take specific steps before submitting a proposal, or to submit proposals to a set deadline. We are turning government upside down to provide a much more direct and personal service dedicated to removing as many barriers to localism as possible.
There may be times, however, when a council which has submitted a proposal under the Act is dissatisfied with the reasons given by the Government about why a particular barrier cannot be removed. I intend, therefore, to set out in regulations a clear role for the selector to provide challenge to government in such cases. The selector will be able to resubmit a proposal with a requirement for the Secretary of State to consult and try to reach agreement with them, prior to reaching a final decision.
The consultation on the proposed regulations closes on 20 June 2011. I have placed a copy in the Libraries of both Houses.
“The Early Years: Foundation for Life, Health and Learning”
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)
The importance of the early years—as a foundation for life and for future attainment and success—cannot be overestimated. Children’s personal, social, emotional, language and physical development are of paramount importance, and without strong foundations in these areas children will struggle as they develop in life, with friends and in school. That is why it is vital we have the right framework to support high-quality early-years education.
Progress has been made in improving young children’s outcomes, but there is more to be done. Recognising this, in July last year I asked Dame Clare Tickell to launch an independent review of the early years foundation stage (EYFS). This sets out the standards that all early-years settings have to meet to help provide children with the best start, and so it is essential this is as strong as it can be. I am pleased to announce that tomorrow Dame Clare will be publishing the findings of her review in the report “The Early Years: Foundations for life, health and learning”. Copies will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
I asked Dame Clare to consider four main areas:
Scope of regulation—whether there should be a single framework for all early-years providers;
Learning and development—looking at the latest evidence on how children are best supported in their learning and development and what is needed to give them the best start at school;
Assessment—how young children’s development should be assessed;
Welfare—the minimum standards to keep children safe and support their healthy
development.
Dame Clare will make recommendations in all these areas on how the EYFS could be improved and strengthened. The full details will be set out in her report.
I am thankful to Dame Clare for all the hard work that has gone into her review, and look forward to reading her report in detail. We will be looking to implement any changes from September 2012 onwards.
Health Select Committee Report (Revalidation of Doctors)
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
I have today laid before Parliament the Government’s response (Cm 8028) to the House of Commons Health Select Committee’s report “Revalidation of Doctors: Fourth Report of Session 2010-11” which was published on 8 February 2011.
Patients and the public have the right to expect that the doctors who care for them are up to date and fit to practise. This is why this Government are supporting the work of the General Medical Council and other partners to design and properly test a proportionate and streamlined system for revalidation that is right for the profession, the health sector, patients and the public. Revalidation, if implemented sensitively and effectively, is something that will support all doctors in their innate professional desire to improve their practice still further.
We have made clear our commitment to revalidation and have pressed ahead with the responsible officer regulations which came into force on 1 January 2011. Responsible officers will play a key role in supporting doctors to improve the quality of care they provide and in ensuring that prompt action is taken to protect patients where concerns arise about the practice of individual doctors.
The Government welcome this report by the Health Select Committee. The next year of testing revalidation will help develop a clearer understanding of the costs, benefits and practicalities of implementation so that it can be paced in a way that is affordable, supports high-quality care and makes effective use of doctors’ time while providing assurance to patients and the public.
Copies of the Government’s response are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.
Skills Conditionality (Response to Public Consultation)
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Today my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning and I have published a joint response to the public consultation on the implementation of skills conditionality.
The consultation proposed that claimants could be mandated to undertake activity to address an identified skills need, putting this on the same basis as other conditionality requirements. We consulted on the implementation of skills conditionality in order to make it fair, consistent and as administratively straightforward as possible. We are grateful to those who took the time to respond and will be reviewing delivery plans in the light of the comments we have received.
The Government believe it is right that claimants who are able to look for work should be required to do so as a condition of receiving benefit. Getting the right skills is one way of preparing for work and failure to meet those responsibilities should result in a financial sanction.
Skills conditionality will be introduced in England from August 2011 and will apply to those claiming jobseeker’s allowance and in the work-related activity group on employment and support allowance who are referred to training by a Jobcentre Plus adviser.
Copies of the consultation response are available on the DWP website at; http://dwp.gov.uk/consultations/.
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond)
My Lords, before the Minister moves that the first statutory instrument be considered, I remind noble Lords that in the case of each statutory instrument, the Motion before the Committee will be that the Committee do consider the statutory instrument in question. I should perhaps make it clear that the Motions to approve the statutory instruments will be moved in the Chamber in the usual way. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011
Lord Marland
That the Grand Committee do consider the Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, I beg to move that the Committee has considered the draft Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011.
These regulations build on the voluntary agreement negotiated by the previous Government with energy suppliers. I applaud them for bringing forward the primary legislation in the Energy Act 2010, which has allowed us to make this scheme a reality.
For over five years, the numbers of households in fuel poverty has risen. It is estimated that in 2010, 4 million households were living in fuel poverty in England. The Government are committed to tackling fuel poverty and supporting low-income and vulnerable consumers to heat their homes affordably. The warm home discount scheme enabled by this instrument will help this to happen.
We are aware that fuel poverty is an issue that is best tackled via many angles, not just one. That is why there are four proposed elements to the warm home discount scheme. The first is the core group. A specified financial benefit of at least £120 per annum will be provided to households in receipt of certain elements of pension credit. Receipt of pension credit guarantee credit, which goes to some of the poorest pensioners, is one of the best ways to identify this group. We consider this group to be at high risk of fuel poverty. Over half of all fuel-poor households contain someone over 60, and over 80 per cent are in the lowest three income deciles.
The second group is the broader group. The same financial benefit specified for the core group will be provided to a broader group of households, who are fuel poor or vulnerable to fuel poverty. We have specified a number of state benefits that energy suppliers could choose from to identify those eligible for broader group support. Suppliers would also be able to propose additional criteria for approval by Ofgem, which would target support at those in or at risk of fuel poverty.
The third group involves the legacy spend. This will give a smooth transition from the voluntary agreement, which is an agreement that has been in place for the past three years between the Government and energy companies. It provides financial assistance to vulnerable consumers but the agreement ends this month. The amount of spending by suppliers on these legacy forms of support will decrease over the course of the scheme, as the amount of spending on rebates for the core and broader groups increases. The warm home discount scheme builds on the success of the voluntary agreement, and allows the Government to provide stronger support for the people who need it.
Lastly, there are the industry initiatives. Suppliers will be able to fund some activities in addition to the provision of direct financial support, which will benefit households in or at risk of fuel poverty. The scheme regulations detail which forms of support can be funded and include activities that improve targeting of the available support or those that provide energy advice to consumers. Through the scheme, those participating energy suppliers will provide support worth up to £1.1 billion over the next four years. But we must ensure that the resources we have are used effectively to tackle the problems underlying fuel poverty.
On 14 March, the Secretary of State launched an independent review of the fuel poverty target and its definition, led by Professor John Hills. Our intention is that suppliers’ contributions to the policy will be proportionate to their market share. Further regulations will be laid to allow a reconciliation mechanism to guarantee this, should the House support these scheme regulations. Subject to support from Parliament for the data-matching regulations due to be tabled later this year to help identify the core group, we estimate that around 2 million low-income and vulnerable households will be assisted by the scheme annually. On that basis, I commend this instrument to the Committee.
Baroness Maddock
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said, and these regulations, but I have some questions that I hope he will be able to help me with. I should also declare an interest: I am a vice-president of National Energy Action, a charity which campaigns to help people in fuel poverty. I know that the Minister himself, through the passage of the Energy Bill, is very committed to trying to alleviate fuel poverty in this country, but I wonder if he can help me.
The Minister estimated that 2 million households a year will benefit from this scheme, and he also explained that there will be legacy households from the voluntary scheme. Can he tell us how much of an overlap there is between these two groups? Maybe this is in the documents that go with the order—I did have a look at them, but I was not able to find this myself.
Also, following the Budget there was a lot of peripheral discussion about the fact that the upgrade on the winter fuel allowance that had been in place temporarily for two years was not continuing. I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to do this today, but is it possible to say what percentage of pensioners who get the winter fuel allowance are likely to be helped by this scheme? It is fairly important that we get that message out, given that there has been publicity in local papers about how terrible it is that people are losing their extra £50, or, if they are over 80, £100. It seems that many of the people who will find it hardest should benefit from this scheme, and it would be helpful if we could get those figures out.
I turn to my other question. Other than the pensioner or elderly group, will the Minister tell us more about how he sees other vulnerable groups, and who are they? I understand that the main concern of this is to protect the health and welfare of elderly people, but there are of course other vulnerable households—as indeed the noble Lord mentioned. I am thinking particularly of low-income families with young children, or people who have long-term disabilities or illnesses which mean they need to be kept warm.
I welcome this, I hope that the regulations that go with it later on are fairly speedy in coming, and I look forward to the answers from my noble friend.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, like my noble friend I, too, welcome these regulations. They bring a little more certainty to what has hitherto been a rather uncertain variety of schemes.
My main concern has always been how the suppliers are intended to identify the householders that they are supposed to help. My noble friend will remember that we had some discussion about that on the question of the Green Deal. It is on these energy discounts and what have previously been called rebates on bills that the problem has been at its most acute. I do not need to go over the detail of this, but when we first debated the CERT scheme—it must be nearly four years ago—two things were evident. One was the considerable hostility of the industry—the suppliers—to becoming involved in this sort of activity. I think attitudes have dramatically changed, and I find in talking to industry representatives a clear recognition that helping those who are most likely to suffer fuel poverty is indeed very much part of their social obligation. I welcome this change of heart; a variety of factors have contributed to it and I do not necessarily need to go into them.
The second problem, as I said, has always been that of identifying the households. We pressed former Ministers very hard on this and eventually secured a clause in the Pension Bill which allowed Ministers in the Department of Work and Pensions to supply the names of pension credit pensioners, as households likely to be most in need. Given the problem that had been identified—I will forbear from giving a quotation in Latin, because that now is rather frowned upon in this House.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
Right: Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. The mountains heaved in childbirth and what came out was a ridiculous mouse. We had asked for far more clarity on how these fuel poverty households were to be identified and my discussions with the industry then revealed that they were wasting a very great deal of time and money on going from house to house trying to find out who they were. Of course, they got much better at it; they began to recognise—as, indeed, most people’s common sense would say—that there are areas in which you will find a much higher concentration of fuel poverty houses, but they also found that quite a number were not eligible for help because they had already had Warm Front help and this added to the problem. This is nothing new; it has been going on for some time.
We have here, as my noble friend has described, two main groups; the core group and the broader group. I very much welcome, because it meets the demands that have been made over the years, Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the order, headed:
“Eligibility criteria: descriptions of persons satisfying Condition 1”
—that is, the core group. Instead of having what had hitherto been either a tiny pensioner group or a fairly indeterminate criterion, we have, in these four sub-paragraphs, descriptions of the kinds of households which should form part of the core group. I very much welcome that; some progress has been made. However, as I think my noble friend Lady Maddock said—we are promised further regulation on data sharing—it is all a question of data sharing and what is legitimate under the general law.
Paragraph 4.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:
“It is also intended to make further Regulations under section 142 of the Pensions Act 2008 to authorise, and prescribe safeguards in connection with, the sharing of data between electricity suppliers and the Secretary of State. The purpose of the data sharing will be to facilitate the exercise of the Secretary of State’s powers under Part 3 of this instrument”—
these orders, these regulations—
“by enabling the Secretary of State to identify which of a supplier’s customers are recipients of state pension credit”.
Is there any advance in this? Are we in any way going beyond the state pension credit households who are going to be identified so that suppliers can know precisely who they have to help? I had thought, to begin with, that this was going to be an extension of the defined criteria, but I think, if I can put it this way, that it is still the same ridiculous mouse, in which case, what is the purpose of the further regulations? What are we to expect from those?
I will not quote them but I have figures here of what the industry has been doing under the voluntary scheme introduced by the last Government, which clearly has been very helpful. However, I welcome this tighter scheme which is now coming into operation as a result of these regulations. My noble friend gave the figure of £1.1 million. I have the chart here of how that is going to be made up and how the amounts on the core group and the broader group are going to increase over the next four years. There are much smaller sums of money in the broader group, which is interesting. The legacy spending, as he said, is going down so that the figures broadly balance. Then there is evidence of the figures for the legacy spending cap and the industry initiatives cap, with the total for each year rising from £250 million in 2011-12 to £310 million in 2014-15. Those figures add up to the figure we gave of £1.1 million.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, in his introduction the Minister said how he applauded the last Government. He commented in your Lordships’ House during our debates on the last legislation that he looked forward to being held aloft as he left the Chamber. He may not quite have achieved that on this occasion but he has had a pretty good stab at it and we welcome these regulations. Given that it comes from legislation passed in the Energy Act 2010 by the last Government, it will come as no surprise that we agree with the broad thrust of the order because it builds on that voluntary agreement which has been so successful in supporting those who are fuel poor. The Minister will be aware of the commitments made by Ed Miliband, then Secretary of State of State for Energy and Climate Change and now Leader of the Opposition, when he said he would bring forward legislation to make such support compulsory and to target resources at the most vulnerable consumers. The legislation was brought forward, along with other measures to deal with fuel poverty such as Warm Front and winter fuel payments, for two reasons—to deal with the issues of those that are fuel poor and the issues of those who live in unhealthy and cold conditions. We have heard from our previous debates on the Energy Bill the impact that can have on homes and families. There is an individual cost but also an environmental cost. So for those reasons I welcome the regulations. However, I did not imagine when the legislation was brought forward that the regulations would be with us today against a backdrop of winter fuel payments having been cut in the Budget and of Warm Front being drastically cut by two-thirds and phased out completely after two years. Although we will see the introduction of the Green Deal and the energy efficiency measures, which we welcome, we do not know yet if and when those measures will apply to the public rented sector. That makes the responsibility of getting this right today all the more important.
We agree with much that is in the order, and certainly with the principles behind it. The Minister spoke of four key elements, including support measures and who might be eligible for a rebate as part of the core group. We, too, favour that support being extended to a wider group. I understood that the wider group comprised those who were at risk of fuel poverty, but the Minister in his opening speech said that it was those who were fuel poor and those who were at risk of becoming fuel poor. That seems to be an admission that the core group will not pick up everybody who is fuel poor. I would be grateful if he would say something more about that. The voluntary agreement ends in the next few days. The legacy spend is an appropriate way forward. The proposed model of industry initiatives allows some of those non-financial benefits such as energy advice to continue.
There is considerable agreement in principle, but I will raise some questions that I hope the Minister can satisfy me on. They are not dissimilar to the questions raised by other noble Lords. I understand from the debate yesterday in the other place that there will be a further order concerned with data collection and protection issues that might arise from identification of the core group. This will concern sharing information with the DWP. One concern with the process of sharing information is whether it will fully identify everybody who will be eligible for support. What action will be taken to ensure that as many people as possible in that group are reached? Given that the information will be shared with energy companies, what restrictions will be placed on its use, and how will they be enforced or policed to ensure that they are abided by?
I am also interested—I know that we have a further order on this—in the reconciliation mechanism for energy suppliers in the core group. Further regulations have been published, but perhaps I have missed the Explanatory Notes to those regulations. I do not know whether they have been published yet. How will the reconciliation mechanism be funded, and what consultation has there been with energy companies prior to the order being published? The main concerns with the broader group arise out of the identification and funding of that group. The core group is specifically identified, but the broader group is not. That is appropriate, and I understand why the Government want to allow greater flexibility to suppliers to support a wider range of vulnerable households. I am aware that they understand that energy companies will need guidance on this. However, I am still not clear how the energy suppliers will identify those who need support. Will support be available to assist them? Will the Government enlist help from third-party organisations, and, if so, will they in turn have any support to help them work with energy supply companies to identify who is entitled to a rebate and support?
The Minister will be aware also of some of the concerns of those helped by organisations such as Macmillan Cancer Support. For those who are terminally ill, the additional cost of heating their homes is significant. It is a serious worry for people. Macmillan's research has identified that one in five people with cancer turns off the heating when they most need it because they are worried about, or cannot afford to pay, their bills. That causes concern both to the NHS and to your Lordships' House. Every health and social care professional is convinced that having an adequately heated home is crucial to a patient's recovery. Why was the decision taken to exclude people with terminal illnesses from the core group? I do not think that it is a matter of costs, because they are relatively small; perhaps there is another reason. It would be helpful to have further information on that.
Another area I would like to explore with the Minister is whether the Government have made any assessment of whether those who benefit under the current voluntary agreement could lose support under the new arrangements. It would be helpful if there was some kind of review of the scheme as it progresses to assess whether or not that is the case; and, if it is, what action can be taken to address the unintended consequence of losing support in moving to a statutory requirement.
I want to raise a couple of other issues, of which I have given the Minister notice, so it will be easier for him to address the points in Committee. On page 3, in the Interpretation, the Introduction there is a list of those who are eligible for a rebate. They are:
“a man and a woman who are married to each other … [or] not married to each other but are living together as husband and wife … two people of the same sex who are civil partners”,
and in the same household, or,
“two people of the same sex who are not civil partners of each other but are living together as if they were civil partners”.
These are couples who have a relationship. But what about other couples, siblings who may be living together, for example? Would they not be eligible for the same support as couples who have a civil partnership, or marriage, or are living as if they did? Two friends sharing a home in the same way as a married couple or civil partnership couple seem to be excluded under the interpretation. Any information or advice that the Minister can give me on that would be helpful.
Finally, it was helpful when the Minister spoke of the work of Professor Hill, which will be incredibly valuable to the work of the Government on energy efficiency and fuel poverty. I understand that there are discussions about him being asked to look at redefining fuel poverty. The only way we should take people out of fuel poverty is by addressing the core issues, not be redefining fuel poverty. Can the Minister can ask Professor Hill to look at this issue and come back to us on whether it can be done through this order or in some other way? I raised this during the Energy Bill as well. In terms of pre-payment meters, Save the Children has identified what it calls a poverty premium issue: those who earn the least, and have the greatest need, pay the most. If you are paying through a pre-payment meter you pay around 8 per cent to 10 per cent more in energy bills. Six per cent of households have pre-payment meters and 25 per cent of those households are fuel poor. That may not easily fit into the broader group, but it would be helpful if that could be looked at, as the broader group is being defined. One way out of fuel poverty is to stop charging those that have the greatest problem the most money for their fuel.
I assure the Minister that we welcome the proposals. I am not sure that they fully plug the gap that is needed to address the fuel poor, particularly the rise in energy prices. We are seeing the numbers of those who are fuel poor increasing. It will certainly help, however, and I entreat the Minister to keep the operation of this scheme open and under review, so that if we do find that there are gaps where we are not addressing the crucial issue, we can come back and ensure that this does fully undertake the role that the Government are seeking for it in these regulations.
Lord Marland
My Lords, I am grateful as always to the input from my noble friend and those on the opposition Benches. Again, I would like to thank opposition Members for giving me some indication of the angle that they were coming from in terms of questions. It is extremely helpful. These are detailed questions which I will seek to address now, but clearly, for some points, it may be useful if we put something in writing at a later stage for clarification; as always, I am happy to make officials available for further clarification.
I shall deal first with my noble friend Lady Maddock, who has unrivalled knowledge in this field through her work in the charities sector. She quite rightly asked about the overlap between the groups. I can assure her that we put in place arrangements to allow suppliers to continue to provide benefits to customers, receiving help under the current voluntary agreement through the legacy spending section. The amount of funding available, which I think is the figure that she would like to know in relation to the first scheme, is about £140 million. This would allow that continuation and assistance.
What percentage of those pensioners who receive the existing winter fuel allowance will be helped by the scheme? The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was alluding to this question as well. There are 12 million such pensioners, and in the first year we anticipate that 800,000 people would benefit, which is roughly 6.5 per cent—I say despite my failure at the old-fashioned maths O-level—and 1.3 million towards the end of the scheme, which is just over 10 per cent. I hope that is a satisfactory figure.
My education continues with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, talking to us in Latin. I am very grateful in this particular instance that he did do a translation—I did Latin O-level, but it needs some brushing up. I notice the noble Baroness opposite did not need to have it translated for her.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
If it will help my noble friend at all, I can tell him that it was a line from the poet Lucretius.
Lord Marland
You see, you learn so much in these debates, don’t you? I am so glad that the noble Baroness opposite showed me that she knew exactly what we were talking about, whereas on these Benches we have to be educated.
That takes me away from the thrust of his real question, which was how suppliers identify households in the criteria. As he rightly says, if you read the document, page 18, Part 1, Schedule 2 outlines how we have got to the criteria— I sound like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, now, because he normally quotes references from here. Are we going beyond the state pension households? Obviously, we would like to. It is very important to await the findings of Professor Hills to find out what the fuel poverty criteria is going to be, because that is where our focus and attack has got to be. I am grateful for the support from the Benches opposite, and I am delighted that we will listen to what Lord Hills—not Lord Hills, not yet—Professor Hills has to say before we really attack this subject.
Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for pointing out the table— although I have lost it now among all this paper—which clearly shows the application of funds. I will be very happy to provide that to anybody who has not seen it because it shows quite clearly the distribution of funds to these groups.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked four or five questions, but fundamentally whether this will this pick up the fuel poor. I refer to the remarks I have just made: clearly, the whole point is to take people out of fuel poverty, to stop this figure of 4 million, which is running slightly out of control at the moment, and grind it to a halt.
Her first question was about the identification of the core group in terms of the collection and protection of data. We have a data-matching organisation on hand to carry out a comparison of names and addresses, energy suppliers and customers. Names and addresses would be held by the DWP on pension credit recipients. Where the data matches, each energy supplier would be told which of their customers have matched and are therefore eligible for the rebate. The purposes for which this shared data may be used are set out in the scheme’s regulations. I hope that helps answer that question.
The core group is of course focused on pension recipients. These are some of the poorest pensioners. We know that over half the fuel poor are pensioners and over 89 per cent of the fuel poor are in the lowest three income deciles, which is very useful information to bear in mind.
The noble Baroness then asked for information about the reconciliation mechanism. The mechanism will be necessary only to share the costs of providing help to the core group. This is because each supplier will have to provide help to all its eligible customers identified by the Secretary of State thorough the data-match and suite processes, and the spread of customers is unlikely to be equal.
We then moved on to identification of the border group and why the terminally ill were excluded. The regulations are clear that the suppliers should target those in fuel poverty, as we have just said. That should include low-income families but we should also be very mindful of the terminally ill, the disabled or the long-term sick because they are the ones who find it most difficult to cope with this problem, and I can give the noble Baroness an assurance that that is very much in the forefront of our mind.
There was a very good question on voluntary agreements. We put voluntary agreements in place to allow suppliers to continue providing benefits to customers receiving help under the voluntary agreement through the legacy spending section of the scheme. However, we believe that the core and broader groups will take more people out of fuel poverty as well as providing clearer and more predictable benefits. We therefore propose that the legacy spending should be transitional and that suppliers should have to manage their spend over the scheme period.
The noble Baroness’s final point was about two people living together who were not married or in civil partnership being eligible. The rebate will be paid to either member of the couple where one of them satisfies the eligibility criteria and is also the electricity bill payer. The regulations set out the meaning of the word “couple”, which is well worth knowing. The definition is that generally used for benefit purposes: two people are treated as a couple if they are married, not married but living together as husband and wife, in a civil partnership or not in a civil partnership but living together as if they were. And if you can get to the bottom of that, you will be much the wiser.
The question of pre-payment meters is a valuable one. Over 80 per cent of the fuel-poor use the pre-payment method, so it is very important that we work with that. The pricing mechanism is a matter for Ofgem, which has recently produced a review that is available. I am happy for our department to put one in the post to the noble Baroness for some light bedside reading when she is enjoying a weekend off.
Sorry, did I say that the fuel-poor used pre-pay meters? Over 80 per cent of the fuel-poor do not use pre-payment meters.
I am grateful to noble Lords for their input, as always, and it is fundamental, as we have said on many occasions, as those who have listened to our energy debates in the past will know, that we should focus on getting people out of fuel poverty. This Government are determined to concentrate on that issue, as I know were the previous Government. That is where the warm homes discount can make a difference. I commend the order to the House.
Export Control (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2011
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Export Control (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2011.
Relevant documents: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 24th Report from the Merits Committee.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint)
My Lords, the order was laid before Parliament and came into force on 2 March. It was made using powers under Section 6 of the Export Control Act 2002. It imposed export controls on unissued Libyan bank notes and unissued Libyan coins. As a result, the export to any destination of such notes and coins is prohibited unless a licence has first been obtained from the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. The order revoked and replaced the Export Control (Amendment) Order 2011 which, for reasons of urgency, was made and came into force on Sunday 27 February and was laid before Parliament at the earliest opportunity on Monday 28 February. This order had imposed controls on the export of unissued Libyan bank notes.
I will explain the background to the orders. On Friday 25 February, the Government became aware that a commercial printer in the UK had a contract with the Central Bank of Libya to print Libyan bank notes. The Libyans had asked for urgent delivery of the entire stock of outstanding notes, valued at nearly £900 million. Given the worsening situation in Libya and the imminent imposition of United Nations sanctions against that country and its regime, the Government judged that there was a risk that regime members would attempt to move state assets with the intention of keeping them for their own benefit if the regime failed, against the interests of the Libyan people. There was also a risk that the assets might be misdirected through corruption. In both cases, we assessed that the movement of these funds would constitute money laundering.
There was an urgent need to prevent the supply of the bank notes in order, first, to mitigate the risk that the money would be used by Colonel Gadaffi and his associates to support further violent repression of the civilian population; secondly, to prevent Colonel Gadaffi and his associates misappropriating the money for personal use if and when forced from office; and thirdly, to ensure that the money was kept safe for future legitimate use by Libya when the risks I referred to no longer exist.
We needed to act quickly. The printer had told us that contractually it had no grounds for delaying the shipment. We considered a number of ways in which we could prevent the supply of the notes. We were working hard at the UN for a Security Council resolution that would impose, among other things, an asset freeze. We did not know at the time whether this would include the Central Bank of Libya, or how long it would take. We also considered whether it would be possible to take action under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
However, the Export Control Act 2002 allows the Secretary of State to make provision, by order, for or in connection with the imposition of export controls in relation to goods of any description. The Libyan Bank notes were not in circulation and therefore did not constitute legal tender, but because they were paper notes they were “goods” that could be controlled under the powers of the Export Control Act. We decided that the use of these powers offered the quickest and most robust method of preventing the supply of the notes. Officials in my department worked closely with HM Treasury and others to draft the legislation. Work continued on this on the Friday night and into the weekend. Because the notes could be shipped at any time, it was essential that the order came into force as soon as possible. This meant bringing it into force on Sunday 27 February, before it could be laid before Parliament.
In compliance with the requirements of Section 4 of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, my department wrote to the Speakers of both Houses setting out the reasons. The Export Control (Amendment) Order 2011 was laid before Parliament at the earliest opportunity, on Monday 28 February. Soon after this, the Government became aware that a further contract existed with another supplier, in this case for the supply of unissued Libyan coins. Although the value of the coins was much lower, we judged that the same risks of money laundering and of the misappropriation of state assets existed. We therefore made the Export Control (Amendment) (No. 2) Order which imposed export controls on unissued Libyan coins as well as bank notes. This order was made, laid and came into force on 2 March. At the same time, the original order was replaced and revoked by the new order. The order was laid before Parliament pursuant to the procedure in Section 13 of the 2002 Act and, unless approved by a resolution of each House within 40 days, it will cease to have effect. Orders made under Section 6 last for a maximum of 12 months.
The situation in Libya and the international response to it is and has been changing rapidly. We are keeping the need for this order under review. If it becomes clear that it is no longer required, it will be withdrawn. On the basis of the facts that I have outlined, I commend the order.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I start by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, to these important but less dramatic moments. I understand that his debut was in Questions in the Chamber the other day and I am very sorry to have missed that. I also welcome him in his capacity to that very fine and sensitive line that exists between business, trade and foreign policy with its ethical umbrella that we attempt to live up to in our dealings with all of these matters.
This order has its origins in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 and is subsequently reinforced through Resolution 1973 as well as EU directives to comply with the new sanctions regime in Libya. There was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when economic sanctions were seen as the poor cousins of military sanctions that were deemed to be the only thing that really worked. I am delighted to say that such is the power of capital and capital flows in a globalised world that they are now an essential element of what we see as specific and targeted mechanisms, designed not to impose real hardship on mass populations but rather to prevent specific named individuals, their friends and their businesses from carrying out illegal acts in support of reprehensible objectives.
In pledging our support for these measures, I have a few questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. Some might go slightly wider than his brief but I will put them on the record in any event. The first relates to the activities of the Libyan Investment Authority and its assets held by UK banks. Is the Minister confident that we now have clarity on the value of these and of our banks’ co-operation with the sanctions regime? On a related point, have the assets of those running the Libyan Investment Authority, such as Mr Mustafa Zarti, been frozen in the UK? We know that other countries such as Austria have moved to freeze them and we also know that the Sanctions Committee of the United Nations formed under Resolution 1970 is moving to publish a new and updated list. I hope that these named individuals who are extremely close to the Gaddafi family will find that they cannot usurp the assets of their fellow citizens in that manner. Are we also clear that Libya’s stakes in other UK companies are subject to being frozen, including the subsidiaries of those companies if the companies are designated for such purposes? Finally, Libya appears to hold the Middle East’s fourth largest gold reserves. Can the Minister tell us if HM Treasury is in discussion with its partners in other jurisdictions to ensure that Libyan gold cannot be sold on the international gold markets until such time as UNSCR 1970 and 1973 are complied with? Apart from those points, we are delighted to support these smart sanctions and hope that they will have the effect that they are intended to in the longer term.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Green. I was not there on the previous occasion. I must admit that I did not expect to be involved in the Libyan situation, but one never knows what happens in these circumstances. The noble Lord answered most of the questions I had. The question of why we did not include coins as well as notes in the first one was satisfactorily answered when he pointed out that there was a first contract for £900 million and then another in relation to the coin contract.
Can the noble Lord say whether he thinks there will be an impact on these businesses? I do not question the need to do this—I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, that this is a smart sanction and, indeed, a necessary one, although I concur with the further points that she made. The noble Lord also gave a general indication which answered a question I wanted to pose as to what happens to the seized assets. I saw a figure of up to £2 billion worth of seized assets and he indicated generally that they would be kept until such time as they could be transferred. Will he expand a bit on that? Other than that, I also welcome this legislation.
Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint
My Lords, I would like to close this debate by thanking noble Lords for their attention and for the contributions of my noble friend Lady Falkner and the noble Lord, Lord Young. In response to my noble friend Lady Falkner’s questions, I can confirm that the Libyan Investment Authority is covered by the assets-freeze requirements of Resolution 1973. I cannot confirm whether we have clarity on the value of the assets held with the banks; I will have to look into that. I am pretty sure that I can confirm, or ought to be able to confirm, that the banks are co-operating, but I will look into the value of the assets held. As for specific individuals, we will, of course, apply sanctions to any named individual and, as the UN updates its lists, we will make sure that those are complied with. Again, I will have to look into the question of stakes in companies; it is clear to me that it ought to be covered, but I will confirm that to my noble friend.
We will certainly work with others to ensure that gold reserves do not get illegally sold in a way which creates a back-door access to assets that they should not be able to get hold of. On the question of the impact on businesses, I do not think that we have any clear information; it is one of those things that those businesses will have to reckon with. It is not yet clear what the ultimate outcome will be and therefore it is not possible at this stage to make any meaningful assessment of the implication for those businesses, but the Committee ought to know that it was those businesses that came to us and said, “We have this issue. We have no contractual right to refuse. We would like your help, please”. I am very pleased to report that this was a very responsible and swift action by the company concerned.
As for the eventual outcome, the money is being held securely by the Bank of England; it will be delivered at a time when there is an appropriate resolution of the Libyan situation and it becomes clear that there is a legitimate recipient of these banknotes, but at the moment, the situation is grave and unclear. I think that I have dealt with all the questions that were tabled. I commend this order.
Employment Equality (Repeal of Retirement Age Provisions) Regulations 2011
Baroness Wilcox
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Employment Equality (Repeal of Retirement Age Provisions) Regulations 2011.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, the regulations before the Committee today fulfil the Government’s pledge to quickly phase out the default retirement age. They repeal the legislation which currently allows an employer to dismiss an employee—provided that certain administrative procedures are followed—solely for the reason that they have reached the age of 65.
In order that employers who currently use the default retirement age have time to adjust, the repeals are subject to transitional arrangements. These arrangements allow retirements to proceed where individuals have been notified of retirement before 6 April and are 65 or above before 1 October this year.
The regulations also introduce a new exception to age discrimination legislation for group insurance benefits provided by employers for their employees. This includes, for example, income protection, health cover and life assurance. We have provided an exception because the consultation on removing the default retirement age identified a real risk that group insurance benefits might be reduced or removed. These benefits are greatly valued by many employers and employees and can provide important social benefits, for example enabling cover to be provided to people who would otherwise find it difficult to obtain individual cover. It is in everyone’s interest to ensure that these employer-provided benefits are not withdrawn. The exception therefore makes it lawful to withdraw such benefits only for employees at age 65 or over. This minimum age for withdrawing insured benefits will increase in line with increases to state pension age.
There is growing recognition that older people make an increasingly valuable contribution to the economy. This is without doubt a good thing. The over-50s currently make up just under a quarter of the workforce, but they will comprise nearly a third by 2020. Furthermore, latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the employment rate for over-65s has increased from 7.9 per cent to 9.1 per cent in the last year. Clearly, older workers will play a key part in the economic recovery and in the United Kingdom’s future economic growth. With increasing longevity, demographic change and skills shortages, it is crucial that we make full use of all available skills and experience, regardless of age, and we encourage older people to carry on working. It would be a shameful waste to ignore the contribution and potential of older workers.
I hope that what I have said so far has struck a chord with Members of this House. We all know that age is not an indication of whether someone is able to do their job well. Research shows that productivity does not decrease with age in the vast majority of jobs, and that older and younger workers complement each other. Furthermore, it is wrong to suggest that increased employment of older people means unemployment for younger people. International studies show that, if anything, a higher employment rate for older people tends to increase the rate for younger people.
Extending working life will also play an important part in reducing pensioner poverty and ensuring people are able to fulfil their expectations of retirement. A single man with a good employment history who decides to work one year beyond state pension age can increase his retirement income by up to 10 per cent.
Many employers, meanwhile, are recognising the importance of retaining the valuable skills and experience of older workers to help them through, and out of, the recession. Research shows that older workers can bring such qualities as commitment, punctuality and accuracy to their roles, as well as having a more responsible attitude to health and safety. These attributes are valued by employers across the board.
Lord Cotter
I am glad to support this measure, which is certainly welcome. The Minister has been very clear in his remarks supporting this, as indeed was the case in the other place when it was discussed.
There is no question that many people when they reach the age of 65 will welcome the opportunity of being able to carry on working. As the Minister has said, the experience and talents they have gained over many years can often be a great loss to the business community, if they have to retire when they feel they can still contribute to the workplace.
I would like personally to attest to this particular measure. The Minister referred to this Chamber, this place where we work in Parliament. The Minister may perhaps have been looking at me, I hope, when he said that many people here operate quite effectively after retirement age. In my case, certainly, being just short of 10 years beyond the retirement age, I welcome it very much indeed as an opportunity to contribute with some of the experience that I have gained—for my own personal satisfaction and, I hope, for others.
It is also very much a pleasure for me to support this measure, having been in the small business sector. There is no question that when I ran my small business, I was more than happy for people to work—sometimes it turned out to be part-time—beyond retirement age. The statistics that back this measure indicate that so many people feel that they have something of value to offer and so many people are appreciated for those reasons. I am glad to support the measure wholeheartedly. I thank the Minister for a clear explanation of what we are discussing today.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I, too, support this legislation. It is safe to say that it is an idea whose time has come. Some would say that it is not before time. As a member of the previous Government, I can say that we had planned a review, but this Government have anticipated that process, and probably rightly so. All the evidence of increased longevity, the contribution to the labour market, productivity and performance that the Minister drew to our attention are valid points.
I have one or two questions and comments. I understand the need to introduce the exception to make the group insurance benefits legal, but I wondered whether someone at some point might attempt to say that there is nevertheless discrimination by not allowing those benefits to include them. Have the Government looked at that aspect?
I must admit that I fell into the group of people who felt that doing away with this would have an impact on youth employment, until I looked at the impact assessment. In some ways I would describe it as counterintuitive, but it is hard to argue with what seems to be an overwhelming weight of evidence. I say only that I still feel that it would be valuable to monitor the situation, but one cannot quarrel with the evidence of the impact assessment.
I have a comment about flexibility. In this country we still have what I call “cliff-edge retirement”: for the most part, you are fully employed and then you are retired. This is something that the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, referred to in passing when he talked about people becoming part-time. There is not a lot of evidence of that. The situation tends to be what I have just described. Once upon a time we in the trade union labour movement thought about the idea of a flexible decade of retirement where we did not fix on a particular age. We ought to be thinking about which legislation would enable employers to be more flexible in employment prior to retirement because of the impact of pensions and so on.
I agree with the points that the Minister made about performance management, appraisal procedures and the need for open dialogue. There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about the number of employment tribunals. If you examine how many times the tribunals succeed, you will find that it is mainly because employers do not operate procedures and do not practise open dialogue. If there were more of that going on instead, that would be good. Looking at things like raising the amount of time relating to unfair dismissal from one year to two will not solve the problem. The Minister is much more on the right lines when she talks about the importance of having the right personnel procedures.
I looked at the reasoning behind introducing the regulations with guidance rather than a code of practice. Again, I understand why the Government have decided that, but I ask that we keep that one under review to see whether in fact guidance is sufficient in these circumstances. Those comments and questions aside, though, I enthusiastically welcome the Government’s approach.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cotter for his words of support and his welcome to all parts of this piece of work. I was particularly pleased to see the satisfaction and pleasure that he is getting out of the period—it can be only one or two years—since he passed the age that we have been referring to. Now that we are working as a coalition, I hope that we will see many more years of work out of him.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, said that his party had anticipated this progress. That is true and we expected him to say that. I am delighted that in broad terms he, too, is welcoming of these words today.
In response to the question on exception for employer-provided insured benefits, we are introducing the insured-benefits exemption in recognition that the default retirement age of 65 is currently used by insurers as a trigger point at which they can legitimately cease to provide insured benefits. The exception will allow them to continue to operate in this way once the default retirement age has gone because otherwise there is a risk that premiums will become too high and employers will cease to provide those benefits. I am sure the noble Lord would agree that is in no one’s interest. The exception will apply initially to employees aged 65 and above and will rise in line with the state pension age. I hope the noble Lord finds that answer helpful.
Monitoring the impact is good advice. We will monitor the impact through available resources such as the Labour Force Survey. We are committed to a review after five years. I enjoyed the noble Lord’s description of cliff-edge retirement. I had not thought of that phrase but it aptly describes what happens when we do not think through how things can work as people go forward in their working life. The Japanese or the Chinese have a system whereby they bring in a younger worker alongside an older worker and gradually the job changes in time and expression as between them they use a mentoring system. I am not sure we are that sophisticated yet.
I am grateful to both noble Lords who participated in the debate. Your Lordships’ House has, as always, displayed a keen interest in the default retirement age since its inception under the previous Administration in 2006. The Government are moving swiftly and decisively to fulfil the commitment to abolish it while providing new guidance and transitional arrangements to help businesses adjust. We are giving greater freedom to older people who want to remain economically active to contribute to the UK’s future growth. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Patents County Court (Financial Limits) Order 2011
Baroness Wilcox
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Patents County Court (Financial Limits) Order 2011.
Baroness Wilcox
I beg to move that the Grand Committee has considered the draft Patents County Court (Financial Limits) Order 2011.
This order is part of a package of measures to improve the Patents County Court. The Government’s purpose is to make it easier for small firms and entrepreneurs to navigate legal processes, giving them more time to concentrate on business activities. We often hear that intellectual property litigation is expensive and time-consuming. For many small businesses this can be a barrier to justice. Indeed, a 2006 study for the European Patent Office found that the cost of intellectual property litigation for United Kingdom small and medium-sized enterprises was roughly three times higher than elsewhere on the continent. If it costs too much for small businesses to litigate, they will be unable to defend their rights. We cannot have a legal system with such barriers. A reliable intellectual property enforcement regime must be accessible in the truest sense, not in the terms of access to finance. Lord Justice Jackson recognised as much in his comprehensive and independent review of civil litigation costs last year, which was of course commissioned by the previous Government. His recommendations were that we should improve access to justice, reduce the costs of civil litigation, and ensure costs and remedies are proportionate.
Now, the Patents County Court was established in 1990 to provide a cost-effective forum for intellectual property cases. It has jurisdiction over disputes in relation to intellectual property rights, and it should hear less complex and lower value cases and offer an alternative to the High Court. Until recently though, procedures and costs have been the same as in the High Court. The damages it awards remain the same as in the High Court, and it is this that we wish to change.
The order intends to set a maximum limit of £500,000 that could be awarded in the Patents County Court. Without this limit, a small or medium-sized enterprise with a legal case worth less than £500,000 may face litigation in either the Patents County Court or the High Court, and not know the level of financial risk it faces. With this order, however, the same business will have certainty that the Patents County Court is the appropriate forum and that there is a limit to its financial risk.
The principle of a damages limit has been examined through numerous consultations, including Lord Justice Jackson’s review. The Patents County Court judges and senior judiciary are eager to see this limit introduced. Legal practitioners and court users recognise its usefulness, too. A host of businesses and associations support the move, and a recent Intellectual Property Office consultation found 77 per cent of respondents supported the £500,000 limit. We will monitor the effectiveness of the damages cap, with a formal review in 2014.
The order addresses the need for a damages limit for patents and design cases, within the jurisdiction of the Patents County Court. Similar work is in hand to take forward comparable changes to other intellectual property rights, such as trade marks and copyright. This measure is consistent with our broader reform effort. For example, we have already simplified procedures for cases heard in the Patents County Court, and introduced a recoverable costs cap of £50,000. In a court where litigants can represent themselves, these changes have been warmly welcomed.
A further possible consequence of these reforms, as Lord Justice Jackson recognised, is that they may increase the availability of intellectual property insurances to small and medium-sized enterprises. At present, they are not widely available at affordable prices.
We all recognise that litigation around intellectual property is complex. These changes, on their own, are no panacea, but they will help small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to innovate, providing clarity about legal processes, certainty over risks and giving them confidence they stand on an equal footing with financially stronger companies. The bigger picture, of course, is that innovation is essential to economic growth, and that is the abiding goal of this Government. I beg to move.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, I am glad that the issue of patents is being addressed today. There is no question that SMEs in particular have disadvantages when it comes to patenting products, particularly worldwide, so anything that can happen to encourage SMEs to embark on the patenting route is to be welcomed. At another occasion, another time, I may emphasise that point.
As the Minister said, the Patents County Court was created to help SMEs by providing an affordable forum for litigation, but it has been found that improvements are necessary, and today we start on that process. In saying that, though, I welcome the fact that within the regulation there is a requirement to review within three years how this process has progressed. Obviously, at the end of it, if any further measures are required, I would certainly support the Minister from these Benches.
SMEs will need to be told about this measure and many similar ones. I see that the benefits will be publicised through the e-mail notification system, which communicates with more than 400 stakeholders. Can we be sure that this means of communicating information will effectively reach SMEs throughout the country? If the Minister cannot provide a detailed answer today, perhaps the matter might be taken away to ensure that SMEs hear effectively and clearly about the measure. On that basis, I am happy to support it and will be glad to hear the Minister's response in due course.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, we, too, welcome the proposed legislation. I reflected as the noble Baroness moved the legislation that—if I may paraphrase—justice overpriced is justice denied. The report of Lord Justice Jackson provides welcome assistance to SMEs by reducing the cost of protecting patents and designs in disputes and by allowing claims of up to £500,000, excluding interest, to be heard in patent courts.
It is a pity that we will need further secondary legislation to include IP rights such as copyrights and trademarks. It is a shame that this could not be done in parallel legislation. Perhaps that would not have been possible, but I would welcome an explanation of why there has been a delay and why we could not do both at the same time, given the importance of these areas. I, too, welcome the Minister’s comments on intellectual property insurances. Again, if that helps SMEs and entrepreneurs, it will be valuable.
I have a concern about the post-implementation review. Three years is a long time. Perhaps some consideration could be given to shortening that period. After two years a fair body of evidence should be available. Again, I do not know how practical that is. I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on the importance of communicating these important changes to SMEs. With those comments and questions, I, too, welcome the proposed legislation.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in our discussions today. My noble friend Lord Cotter welcomed a review after three years and felt that further measures might be required, which he would support at the time if he thought that they were right. My noble friend Lord Cotter and the noble Lord, Lord Young, asked how we would communicate with people and whether we would use means other than the internet. E-mail will reach all SMEs. The e-mail notification system includes a large number of representative bodies—we knew that. We will also hold seminars in which Judge Arnold will cover the changes to practices. This is news to me; I thank noble Lords for asking the question because I now know the answer.
As a past chairman of the National Consumer Council, I am very keen to make sure that people get the information that they want in the way they want it. If there is any question that we need to communicate in another way, we will certainly look at it.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked why we do not have parallel legislation on copyright and trademarks. Lord Justice Jackson included recommendations to reduce the cost of intellectual property litigation in his review of civil litigation costs. His recommendations included implementing the package of proposals made by the Intellectual Property Court users’ committee. These were intended to reform the Patents County Court. We were able to expedite the completion of stage one of this process through amendments to the civil procedure rules. These introduced simpler procedures and fixed the scale of recoverable costs. Stage two of the package could only be achieved through the lengthier process of this Privy Council order and this will introduce a damage limit of £500,000, which will ensure that lower-value complex cases are automatically heard in the cheaper patents county courts and not the High Court. I hope that that is some form of clarification. If it is not, we will certainly write to make sure that I have expressed it clearly.
The noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Cotter, asked about waiting for the three-year review. The Intellectual Property Office is working regularly with the judiciary to see how these changes will progress. I do not know whether that answers the question on the second and third years.
I am very glad that we are all agreed that this is a good package of measures. Not only is the introduction of the damages limit a positive move to reduce the uncertainty of civil litigation for smaller businesses, but the collective packages of changes being undertaken satisfies several of the recommendations made by Lord Justice Jackson and his independent review of civil litigation costs. We need to help small businesses protect and profit from their innovation and creativity. By allowing this measure to complement the wider package being developed, we will be providing small businesses with clarity, with certainty and with confidence. I commend the order to the Committee.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Earl Attlee
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I beg to move that the Committee has considered the draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011.
As your Lordships will recall, I came to the Committee on 7 February and subsequently obtained approval to charge for visa, immigration and nationality services under the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2011. At that time I said that specific fee levels would be set in separate legislation using the affirmative procedure. That is the purpose of today’s debate.
The fees paid by those making visa, nationality and immigration applications are set out in regulations made under Section 51 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and in accordance with the powers granted in Section 42 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 as amended by Section 20 of the UK Borders Act 2007. Under Section 42, the Secretary of State can set a fee for an application that exceeds the administrative cost of determining the application. The way our legal powers are defined means that we must also specify fees in separate regulations under the powers in Section 51 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.
These regulations are to set the fee for applications, processes and services that are provided at or below the administrative cost of determining the application. These regulations were laid before Parliament on 16 March 2011, are subject to the negative procedure and are not debated at all in this House. I recognise that having fees in two sets of regulations makes things a little complicated, but I am happy to take points on any of the fees proposals here today.
In general, we are proposing to limit the majority of increases to less than 10 per cent. For example, we propose to increase the sponsorship application fees by 3 per cent and will maintain our concessions for small businesses and charities who want to sponsor migrants. The increases in these fees will be the first since the points-based system was introduced in 2008.
Increases to fees that do not follow this approach are fees for dependants applying to extend their leave in the UK at the same time as the main applicant. Currently these fees are set between one-quarter and one-third of the corresponding main applicant’s fees. We propose increasing this ratio to half of the main applicant fee. This continues our agreed policy to better align our fees in and out of the UK, where all dependants already pay the full fee. This will better reflect the processing cost to us for each individual within any given application, as well as sometimes an independent set of entitlements.
Also, the fees paid overseas for those seeking entry through tier one post-study work will increase by more than 30 per cent. This will bring the fee paid by migrants overseas closer to that paid by those who applied for this route in the UK. The vast majority of applications made under the post-study work route are made in the UK.
Also, there will be further increases to fees for visa applications under tiers four and five of the points-based system; these routes continue to be charged below the administrative costs of processing the applications.
New fees being introduced include fees for amending a previously issued nationality certificate, other than when this amendment is being made to correct an error made by the UKBA, for providing certain stateless persons with the ability to acquire the status of a British protected person, and for the registration as a British citizen for the children of foreign national soldiers serving in the UK armed forces. This would align our fees legislation to reflect the rule changes that have simplified such registrations.
New fees are also being introduced for tier two intra-company transfers coming to the UK for less than 12 months, where the applicants pay a lower fee than those coming for more than 12 months.
We welcome the economic, cultural and social contribution made by legal migrants to the UK. We continue to ensure that the fees for immigration and nationality demonstrate that the UK is open for business and retains its position as an attractive destination. We also continue to monitor the economic, equality and diversity impacts of our changes and to ensure that our fees continue to be priced at levels which make them competitive when compared with those in other key countries.
I believe these regulations provide a basis for a sustainable immigration system, which all noble Lords will want. I commend them to the House.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for his careful explanation of the order that is in front of us.
This order is drawn to the special attention of the House by the Merits Committee, but it does not say what is unusual about the order or what distinguishes it from other orders covered by the same report; particularly the three orders dealing with amendments of fees for other services. According to its terms of reference, there are four grounds on which the Merits Committee may draw the attention of the House to an instrument, draft or proposal, and in this case your Lordships may think that the only ones that might apply—or should apply—are,
“that it is politically or legally important or gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House”.
Assuming that is the case, the only matters of substance raised in the delegated legislation Committee of another place were the effect of the order on Bangladeshi and Chinese restaurants, and the question of whether UKBA would be able to cope with the workload of dealing with applications.
Since the Government have taken steps to reduce the number of immigrants the burden will be eased, but the 5,200 cut in UKBA staff is more than proportional to the reduction in the number of cases that they are expected to process.
The predicted effect of the fee increases on applications varies between zero and 2.5 per cent in the case of an application by a tier four student to change his course, which has been free in the past but is now to cost £386. On top of that, the requirements for tier four applicants have been tightened up further. Applicants from outside a university, for example, will have to present a test certificate from an independent test provider of their competence in English to level B2. It would be surprising if these new requirements did not have a larger deterrent effect, and I would be grateful if my noble friend could give us his estimate of the drop in the number of tier four applicants expected from the Home Secretary’s announcement last month. We need this to be able to assess the expected increase in the average productivity of immigration officers dealing with tier 4 cases, and hence to get a feeling of whether the reduction in UKBA staff numbers can be managed without damaging the quality of their decisions.
The rationale of the order is that fees should be set at the correct level to ensure that the income generated contributes adequately towards the costs of running the immigration system. The impact assessment estimates that UKBA income will rise by £65 million as a result of the fee changes proposed, but what will the total income be, and how close will the UKBA be to balancing income with expenditure after the cuts have taken place? I apologise to my noble friend for not having given notice of the questions that I am asking as I would normally do; I just did not have the time.
I understand that the Government have decided to defer implementing the proposed cuts in the UKBA until they have disposed of the remaining legacy cases. Will my noble friend confirm that? How many of those cases were still on the books at the latest convenient date, and what has been the average rate of completion of those cases since the start of 2011? They have always been pretty vague about when the legacy cases are going to be completed. I should have thought, as we were approaching the end of the process, that it ought to be possible to be a bit more precise now.
Under what conditions may the fees themselves be waived? For example, the fees for the registration of a minor as a British citizen are rising significantly. This is money that is intended not just to cover the administrative cost of the application but to make a profit for the UK Border Agency. If a child is prevented from registering as a British citizen for no other reason than a fee, designed to make profits for the UKBA, how does that meet the “child’s best interests” principle under the convention on the rights of the child, to which the Government are a signatory?
I have had a letter just now from Cambridge Assessment, which I think is a firm that is well known to the UKBA for supplying services in English-language skills. It expresses concern that those who cannot pay fees may not be able to learn crucial skills that they need to find work and play a positive role in their communities, as we would all wish. I have not had a chance to discuss this in detail with Cambridge Assessment, but the firm has asked me for a discussion and I am intending to meet it and go into these points in more detail. Has the Minister considered the effects on people who do not contribute to society because they are unable to find the fee for the English-language test?
Another important question relates to the ministerial authorisation on race discrimination, which was covered by a letter on 21 March from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association to the Minister, Damian Green, of which I have seen a copy. This permits the refusal of applications on grounds of specified nationality and the making of additional requirements or examinations that would not be required of another nationality and that may lead to refusal. The applicant will not know, because the specified nationalities will not be made public. He or she will have paid the fee —which is much higher than in previous years and is increasing again—but may be refused by reason of his or her nationality and not on the strength of his or her application. Perhaps the noble Earl would comment on that.
The ILPA letter also makes the general point that if the UKBA is to make a profit from charging fees, it should deliver a commensurate service. For instance, its service standards include timeframes within which applications should be dealt with, but it constantly fails to meet them. There is also the grossly unfair practice of refusing an application that would have been approved under the rules in operation at the time it was made because the rules changed some time later. The least that should happen in those circumstances is that the fee should be refunded.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Earl for his introduction and detailed and helpful explanation, and for agreeing to answer questions not necessarily confined to this order. As he said, the fees contained in the order are set in the context of the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2011, which we debated some weeks ago.
I was interested by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I have not taken it that this has been drawn to the special attention of the House. There are three categories in the report: instruments drawn to the special attention of the House, other instruments of interest and instruments that are not drawn to the special attention of the House and which presumably are not thought to be of interest either. That probably explains why the Merits Committee has not given any further explanation of its consideration of this. I suspect that it has an intrinsic interest in the fees structure arising from the decision of the Government to move to a flexible charging model aimed at allowing the UKBA to generate sufficient revenue.
The noble Lord raised very apposite questions. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will not be surprised if I mention the context in which we debate this, and the responsibilities of the UKBA. The agency is expecting a reduction of 5,000 staff. Almost every day, Ministers talk about the new responsibilities of the UKBA. I have raised this matter on a number of occasions but have yet to receive a response to my concern about whether the UKBA is in a position to take a massive reduction in the number of its staff when it is having new responsibilities constantly placed on it. Perhaps the noble Earl will comment on that.
We have already discussed the principle of the fees increase. This is our opportunity to look at some of the detail, and I will ask the noble Earl a few questions. Annexe 5 contains an interesting estimate of the decrease in annual applications. The estimate appears to be related in part to elasticity assumptions contained in Annexe 4. I note that on page 12 of the impact assessment there is some discussion of the methodology of estimating the decrease in applications. I will not tempt fate or put the noble Earl through agony by asking for an explanation of the methodology, but perhaps he would comment on how robust the methodology is, and how accurate are the estimates in Annexe 5. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested, they will have a knock-on impact on the resources that will be made available to the UKBA.
I also refer the noble Earl to page 13 of the impact assessment, where the consequence of the fees increase is expected to cost the UK economy £24.4 million in 2011-12, and £89.4 million over the next four years. My reckoning from the tables contained there is that the net result, taking account of the extra income through the fee charges, is a very small benefit of around £4 million per year. Can the noble Earl confirm that? To me, this means that the benefits are therefore extremely marginal. They might be advantageous in relation to Home Office funding and the funding of the UKBA, but because of the consequences to the UK economy, the overall profit and loss account seems to come out even. On that basis, can the noble Earl comment on whether this is really an appropriate way forward?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for the considered debate given to these regulations. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his comments about the Merits Committee reports. I am sure he is right. I will write on any vital points I do not cover in my response.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked a number of very good questions. He asked about students switching courses. Tier four migrants who applied for leave from 5 October 2009 have to apply and pay a fee to the UK Border Agency to change sponsor as part of a new leave application. Students who applied for leave under tier four of the points-based system between 31 March 2009 and 4 October 2009 would now have to pay the UK Border Agency when they want to change their educational establishment. Currently the UK Border Agency considers the requests from these students when they wish to change their educational establishment and approves or refuses them accordingly. There is a cost to the UK Border Agency for undertaking this work but no fee is charged. In the current economic climate we think it is right that these costs are met by the applicant. It is right that applicants pay this fee as there is a cost to the UK Border Agency of assuring that this switch of establishment does not infringe on the students’ immigration status. Last year we received about 18,000 such applications, although we anticipate a much lower level this year. The proposed fee of £160 will be lower than the £386 that those who were granted leave based on applications dated from 5 October 2009 are required to pay. Changes to the immigration rules will be announced before this fee is introduced. This is part of our process of making sure that those who come here to study are not coming here to work.
The noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, talked about some of the reductions in the UK Border Agency. We are aiming to maintain service standards in terms of time and quality as we reduce costs but improve productivity. We are achieving this through investment in technology, moving to electronic rather than paper applications and case files, improved workflow management, and more efficient security-checking arrangements. These fee proposals will ensure that, while we are reducing costs, we are increasing income levels as we shift the contribution for the migration system from the UK taxpayer to the migrants who benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, also made the point about balancing income and expenditure. In 2011-12 the UK immigration system is expected to cost over £2 billion. Our proposals will ensure that we recover approximately 36 per cent through fees from applicants and the services. These additional fee increases are expected to raise approximately an extra £90 million. Of this figure we expect to generate around £65 million from income fees set at levels where they exceed the administrative cost of processing an application. The rest of this figure will come from fees set at or below costs. The remaining costs are met by the UK taxpayer. The Committee should not forget that.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talked about children born to foreign members of the UK Armed Forces. We believe that all those individuals who are required to register for British nationality should pay a fee to reflect the value of the entitlement that citizenship bestows. We only need to think of current events where Her Majesty’s Armed Forces are repatriating people stuck in difficult situations all around the globe. We already offer significant concessions to those family members by enabling their children to bypass the requirements placed on children of other migrants to obtain settlement in the UK before an application for citizenship can be made. This offers a more accelerated and hence cheaper route to citizenship than that available to family members of other migrants. An application to register for British citizenship is the free choice of the individual, or their parent in the case of children, and is not a requirement placed by the UK Government on a migrant asking to stay. It is charged at £540. By contrast, the fees required to reach a point where a child born overseas to a migrant worker could claim citizenship would be at least £2,322.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about legacy cases. We estimate that we will have completed these by July 2011. He also asked about refunds for refused applications. The fees are set for the work involved in considering the application, not according to its outcome. He also asked about refusal of nationality. He will understand that this is a debate about fees, so I will write to him on that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made an extremely important point about international comparisons. He suggested that perhaps the Chinese would start charging us higher fees. We regularly review the fees charged by the UK against those charged by comparator economies across the globe, and I imagine that the Chinese do the same. However, migration systems and fees are complex. Direct comparisons of price can be difficult because we cannot always compare like with like. Visa fees vary considerably between comparable economies and depend usually on the particular circumstances of the applicant, such as their current location, their category of stay and their relationship to the settled person. Visas can be issued for different lengths of time, can allow more than one visit and can confer particular entitlements to work or bring in dependants. Some countries charge an additional fee for dependant applications.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that point was very helpful. Does the noble Earl accept that if costs go up—and the general trend is that UK fees are going up—although it is difficult to equate like for like exactly, there might be a knock-on impact on British businesses trading abroad because if fees go up here, they will go up there?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, there might be a small effect, but when one considers how much people will pay—thousands—to gain illegal entry to this country, the cost of a legal visa is relatively small.
We believe that our fees compare favourably with those of key competitor countries and offer good value, particularly when one considers the benefits and entitlements of a successful application. Where visa fees charged by the UK are more expensive than those of other countries—for example, fees for visit visas—we tend to offer better entitlements to applicants. For example, the Schengen visa is a three-month, single-visit visa, whereas the UK short-term visit visa is multiple-entry and valid for six months.
I will make some international price comparisons. For a short-term visit visa for up to six months, the UK charges £76, Australia £65, Canada £66, New Zealand £67 and the USA £96. The Schengen visa is cheaper, but it is single-entry and valid only for three months. For tier 1 exceptional talent, the UK charges £800, Australia £1,080 and Canada £662. For a tier 1 investor, the UK charges £800 and Australia £2,132. I could go on, but I would weary the Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about the robust methodology of the impact assessment. The methodology that we applied for estimating the impact of elasticity of demand was agreed by cross-government economists and by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee. We do not believe that fee increases at the level we propose will have a significant impact on the volume of demand.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about the fee for the English language test, which is not included in the powers being debated here. He asked for an explanation of the income figures in the impact assessment. The additional fees increases are expected to raise approximately £90 million. Of this, we expect to generate around £65 million in income from setting fees at a level that exceeds the administrative cost of processing applications. I apologise for repeating the figures.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I apologise for asking the noble Lord, but my confusion is that in the table at the bottom of page 13 under the cost benefit analysis it says that:
“Benefits … Revenue raised from fee changes for those who continue to apply (PV)”
is £24.1 million. However, over the page on page 14 it says:
“UKBA’s annual income is estimated to rise by £65.4 million as a result of fee changes”.
Are those two different definitions?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am confident that the analysis is robust. I think it best that I write to the noble Lord with the exact situation, but it is quite a complicated analysis. The Committee should be assured that the brightest and the best will continue to be welcomed to the UK as will those who seek to come here to visit or to invest. We will also continue to monitor the impacts of our proposed changes. I believe that these regulations provide a basis for the sustainable immigration system that noble Lords want and I commend them to the Committee.
Licensing Act 2003 (Royal Wedding Licensing Hours) Order 2011
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Licensing Act 2003 (Royal Wedding Licensing Hours) Order 2011
Relevant document: 16th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the licensing hours order before you today was laid in Parliament on 9 February. The order proposes the relaxation of licensing hours to celebrate the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton. If made, it will allow licensed premises to stay open from 11 pm on Friday 29 April, the day of the wedding, to 1 am on Saturday 30 April, and from 11 pm on Saturday 30 April to 1 am on Sunday 1 May to sell alcohol for consumption on the premises; to put on regulated entertainment; and to sell hot food and drink in venues where alcohol is also sold for consumption on the premises.
Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 gives the Secretary of State the power to make an order relaxing opening hours for licensed premises to mark occasions of,
“exceptional international, national or local significance”.
A licensing hours order overrides existing opening hours in licensed premises and can be used for a period of up to four days. An order may be applied to all licensed premises in England and Wales, or restricted to one or more specific areas. Scotland and Northern Ireland are subject to different legislation. The wedding of His Royal Highness Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton is a day of national celebration and, as such, the Government believe that a small relaxation of licensing hours in England and Wales is appropriate.
It is likely that many premises will wish to open later over the royal wedding weekend to take advantage of the celebrations and the long weekend. The Government do not have detailed statistics on closing times in pubs and other licensed premises—apart from 24-hour licences—but understand that around 67 per cent are currently shut by midnight on a Saturday. Licensed premises may currently use a temporary event notice to extend their opening hours for a limited period at a cost of £21. However, TENs are subject to certain annual limits—for example, only 12 may be given for a single premises each calendar year—and they may be refused by the licensing authority if the police object on crime and disorder grounds. A small relaxation of licensing hours will benefit premises that would otherwise have used a TEN to open late and will allow people to celebrate the royal wedding in pubs, clubs and other licensed venues, such as community halls.
In January this year the Government consulted on a proposal to relax licensing hours until 1am on Saturday 30 April and Sunday 1 May for the sale of alcohol for consumption on the premises and for regulated entertainment, which includes live and recorded music and dancing. The off trade was excluded from the proposal on the basis that anyone wishing to celebrate at home could buy alcohol in advance or at any time during normal opening hours. It was estimated that this small extension of licensing hours would save businesses in England and Wales between £240,000 and £280,000.
The consultation period was limited to two weeks but this was necessary to ensure that the order was made in good time for the wedding and businesses had sufficient time to plan. There were 712 responses to the consultation from a variety of interest groups and trade associations. A summary of the consultation can be found on the Home Office website. Although there was some support for an order, many of those who responded were concerned about a possible increase in crime and disorder and therefore in policing costs.
The Government take very seriously the concerns expressed by respondents to the consultation, but it was clear from the press response to the consultation that many people in this country want to celebrate the royal wedding and will welcome these proposals. The order will have no permanent effect on licensing hours and will mean that venues will open for just one or two hours later on the specified days. We anticipate that any additional policing costs will be very limited because the majority of licensed premises that will take advantage of the order would have opened late anyway using a TEN. We would expect any small extra costs to be met from existing police budgets.
Some respondents to the consultation suggested that the order should also include late-night refreshment —the sale of hot food and drink after 11pm—so that restaurants, pubs and other venues could continue to serve food until 1am. The Government accepted that suggestion but did not believe that the order should apply to takeaway establishments, which in most cases already have authorisation to stay open late.
I hope that noble Lords will agree with the Government that that this minor extension of licensing hours to celebrate the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton is an appropriate use of the powers conferred on the Home Secretary by Section 172 of the Licensing Act.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I thank the Minister for this draft order. It has my full support. It has been an interesting exercise to go through the consultation; the majority of people who responded to it are against the measure, which shows us that it is not always the case that those who respond to consultations reflect the majority view. I am sure that when she made her decision the Secretary of State took account of the majority view in the population as a whole that it is right to extend the licensing hours as is proposed.
However, I ask for one piece of clarification. In the consultation, a specific request was made that we should be absolutely clear what “regulated entertainment” meant and that a lot of publicity should be given to the fact that live music and dancing would be part and parcel of this order, to avoid any confusion. In the draft order as published, it is not clear to someone who is not familiar with the law whether live music and dancing are part of that or not. I think that it is clear that they are, but I hope that the Minister will explain that that is the case and the general public will have the right, in the extended licensing hours, to have live music and dancing.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness for her helpful explanation. We welcome and support this order. I accept that the royal wedding is an exceptional occasion and merits a small relaxation of licensing hours. Like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, I note that the majority of respondents to the consultation seem to be opposed to it. I agree with him that people who consult do not always reflect the views of the general public or of Parliament. I am glad the Government have decided to press ahead with these proposals.
A couple of points were raised when this was debated in the other place. Perhaps the Minister could reflect on those. First, I understand that the order only applies to 29 and 30 April. Was consideration given to extending the order over the bank holiday weekend for a three-day period? Secondly, has any thought been given to the provision in the Licensing Act 2003 that allows certain areas to apply different hours on different days during the period covered? In other words, could local authorities be given further discretion at a local level? Finally, in the Explanatory Memorandum it is estimated that the additional policing of the order will cost between £45,000 and £170,000. Presumably there will be additional costs to local authorities. Has her department considered those costs? These are points of detail on which I would welcome a response, but overall we welcome this order.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I thank my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for this short debate. I am pleased that it has been received with such enthusiasm as we will all merrily enjoy this wonderful event. In response to my noble friend, if premises normally have dancing or serve food, this order will apply to those activities and those premises will have no difficulty in extending them.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about a three-day period. We were mindful that we could have extended it but there were concerns during the consultation that there may be raised levels of crime and disorder. The key days are 29 April and 30 April. Two days was considered an appropriate period of time for a celebration. In response to his question about additional costs, had we not extended the licensing period, those premises would have extended it so the costs would have been there anyway. I am sure that licensed premises wishing to use this order will have taken that into account and will be responsible. This is one of those events where the country will rise to the occasion and join in the celebration and I am sure that most will be mindful that we do not end up with disorder and increased levels of crime. We have saved licensees the cost of this extension so there is an overall saving for those wishing to use it. All noble Lords have joined in with great enthusiasm and I am hoping that the country will do the same. On that note, I commend this order to the House.
Equality Act 2010 (Public Authorities and Consequential and Supplementary Amendments) Order 2011
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Equality Act 2010 (Public Authorities and Consequential and Supplementary Amendments) Order 2011.
Relevant document: Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am delighted to be leading this debate, and to have this opportunity to explain the Government’s approach to this legislation.
The main purpose of this order is to add a number of additional public bodies to the lists in Schedule 19 to the Equality Act 2010, so as to make those bodies subject to the public sector equality duty. Schedule 1 to the order sets out those public bodies we propose to add to Part 1 of Schedule 19, covering general public authorities; Schedule 2 adds a new Part 4 to Schedule 19, relating to cross-border Welsh authorities.
Any organisation performing a public function is subject to the equality duty in respect of that function, but listing bodies in Schedule 19 serves two useful purposes. First, it makes absolutely clear that the body named is subject to the general equality duty, and in regard to which of its functions—in some cases this will not be all of them. Secondly, it enables the Secretary of State to impose specific duties on those bodies, to enable the better performance of the general duty. Only bodies listed in Schedule 19 can be made subject to the specific duties.
Schedule 19 to the Act, as it currently stands, lists broad categories of public bodies which are subject to the equality duty, including central government departments, local authorities, the Armed Forces, and the key health, education, policing and transport bodies. In total, around 27,000 public bodies are covered by these categories. This order adds a number of additional bodies to that schedule. I would like to explain briefly how we arrived at this final list.
The Government’s broad criteria for listing bodies for the equality duty were set out in our consultation document in August 2010. Our intention is to list public bodies which deliver public services, are responsible for regulating or inspecting the delivery of those services, or otherwise influence the way in which those services are delivered. The consultation included a draft list for comments. The Government’s broad criteria met with general approval. However, a number of respondees, and particularly the Equality and Human Rights Commission, suggested additions to that draft list.
My officials and lawyers have considered every one of those suggestions, and met with the EHRC to discuss them in detail. As a result of those discussions, a number of bodies have been added to the final list. I will quickly run through those bodies: the General Medical Council; the General Dental Council; the General Chiropractic Council; the Nursing and Midwifery Council; the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service; the Homes and Communities Agency; the Higher Education Funding Council for England; the Student Loans Company; the Legal Services Board; the Judicial Appointments Commission; and the NHS Business Services Authority.
Where we did not accept the recommendations of the EHRC or other respondees to our consultation, one of a number of reasons applied. First, in some cases they suggested bodies which are in fact already covered by the broad criteria in Schedule 19. For example, Ofsted and the Charity Commission for England and Wales were suggested, but these are technically non-ministerial government departments, and so fall under the listing for all government departments. Secondly, some bodies were suggested whose influence on equality outcomes we doubted—for example, the Inland Waterways Association. Thirdly, and most importantly, some bodies were suggested which we could not say with confidence perform public functions as defined in the Human Rights Act 1998. This is a necessary criterion for bodies to be listed. While there is no absolute definition as to what constitutes a public function for the purposes of the Human Rights Act, in the case of YL v Birmingham City Council in 2007 the House of Lords adopted a narrow approach when addressing this question.
On this basis, my legal advice was that I could not confidently say that certain bodies met the necessary criteria. These include some museums and heritage organisations; some research and advisory organisations, particularly ones where Ministers make the final decisions; and some trade promotion organisations, such as the British Wool Marketing Board. These types of organisation have therefore not been listed. My officials explained to the EHRC which of these reasons applied to which organisations, and I would be happy to discuss individual cases, although I am obviously keen that we do not get bogged down in lengthy debate about each and every organisation this evening.
I must stress that we will keep the list under review. We plan to add certain additional bodies to it through primary legislation, such as we are doing with GP consortia in the Health and Social Care Bill, and it would be possible to make another order such as this at some point in the future. If there are convincing legal arguments that a particular body not listed exercises public functions and has a significant impact on equality issues, I would be happy to consider them.
Moving on, the order also makes a small number of consequential and supplementary amendments to the Equality Act 2010 and other legislation. The purpose and effect of these amendments are explained in detail in the Explanatory Memorandum for the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. In summary, though, the overall purpose of the consequential amendments is to ensure that the amended legislation is up to date and works correctly in relation to the Act. There are four such amendments in Articles 3 to 5 of the order. The first is to Schedule 26 to the Act itself, which deals with amendments to other legislation. This amendment simply ensures that the definition of “disabled person” in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 refers to the Act instead of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which has been repealed.
The second amendment is to Schedule 27 to the Act, which sets out repeals and revocations of other legislation. This amendment adds two new Parts to the legislation, reflecting repeals and revocations of other legislation that are consequential on the repeal of the race duty under the Race Relations Act 1976, which will happen when the new equality duty comes into force.
The third amendment is to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. This amendment removes redundant cross-references. The fourth is to the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. This amendment requires school adjudicators, when taking decisions, to have regard to the obligations owed by local authorities and school governing bodies under Section 149 of the Act in relation to all the protected characteristics under the Act—not just race, as is the present position.
The overall purpose of the three supplementary amendments in Articles 6 and 7 of the order is to correct inadvertent omissions or drafting errors and ensure that the Act’s provisions work as intended. The first amendment is to paragraph 20(1)(b) of Schedule 8 to the Act. This amendment puts right an incorrect technical reference relating to cases where a reasonable lack of knowledge of a person’s disability would mean that the duty to make reasonable adjustments did not apply.
The second amendment is to paragraph 14(4) of Schedule 17 to the Act. The Act misdescribes the arrangements for appeals to be made in respect of exclusions of disabled schoolchildren. This amendment corrects the wording in relation to appeal arrangements for exclusions to reflect the actual arrangements in England and Wales respectively where the pupil, the parent or both may bring an appeal, depending on the pupil’s age.
The third amendment is to Section 27(1) of the Equality Act 2006. This provides that the Equality and Human Rights Commission can make arrangements for the provision of conciliation services in respect of proceedings under Section 116 of the Act about disabled pupils in schools. This was the previous position, which was intended to be carried over into the Act. I commend the draft order to the Committee.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I welcome the order introduced by my noble friend. It clarifies the responsibilities of public bodies in successfully delivering the equality duty. It may well be that more will need to be added to the 27,000 now listed, but that can be done with new orders.
I have a general query about the distinction now being drawn between the general duty and the specific duties. The general duty will come into effect very shortly, on 5 April. In terms of the specific duties, though, a second consultation has been undertaken with a closing date of 21 April.
The specific duty relates to what information public bodies are required to gather and to publish. We do not want to over-bureaucratise public bodies, but some of the changes that are being proposed need to be looked at very closely because, as I understand it, the key differences in the new draft regulations from those published following the previous consultation are the removal of the requirements on public bodies to publish the details of the engagement that they have undertaken when determining their policies and equality objectives; the equality analysis that they have undertaken in reaching their policy decisions, and the information they have considered when undertaking such analysis.
As I understand it, it is expected that there will be challenge from the public to public bodies and that that challenge will be the key means of holding public bodies to account for their performance on equality, and that mechanisms are being developed to support organisations and individuals to effectively challenge public bodies to ensure that they publish the right information and deliver the right results.
I do not understand how the public will be enabled to challenge unless the public are clear what engagement a public body has undertaken when determining policies and equality objectives; what equality analysis it has undertaken in reaching its policy decisions; and what information it has considered when undertaking such analysis. In other words, will the public have the information they need to be able to challenge public bodies effectively?
I hope in the course of the consultation that is now being undertaken and in the next stages of the specific duties being finalised, that there will be greater clarity produced as to what it is the public will have a right to expect to enable them to challenge the equality duty being delivered by those public bodies.
Lord Waddington
My Lords, I rise not to oppose these regulations, but to put down a few markers and raise one or two questions. I am glad that my noble friend is at the Dispatch Box, not only because I have a great admiration for her, but because I can be sure that she will pass on my concerns. There may not be many to hear them today, but I can rely on her to see that others hear about them.
The point about these regulations, so far as I am concerned, is that they herald very much more significant regulations and developments which are in the offing, namely, the commencement of Section 149 of the Equality Act and the implementation of the Equality Act draft specific duties regulations. In my view the coalition should be congratulated on scrapping the provisions in the Equality Act, which placed a duty on all public bodies at all times to take account of the inequalities of outcome that result from socioeconomic disadvantage. In promoting equality of opportunity, one is trying to extend the freedom of people to make the most of their talents: promoting equality of outcome means allowing the state to try by rules, regulations and bureaucratic means to iron out differences in performance so that endeavour and achievement are not rewarded. I would have thought that that is the last thing that one could possibly want in a free society. The Home Secretary was entirely right to point out in a speech that while people expect fairness, there should be no seeking a world where everyone gets the same out of life regardless of what they put in. Most people were really pleased to hear her say that the Government are moving away from equality of outcome to equality of opportunity.
The question is: how does what the Home Secretary has said fit in with what is in store for us? And, how much mischief by local authorities and public authorities will be encouraged by the implementation of Section 149 and the Equality Act’s specific duties regulations?
I accept that much has been done in the most recent version of the specific duties regulations to reduce bureaucracy, but the regulations will still require public authorities to publish equality objectives which are specific and measurable—and that means, in plain English, targets. They will require them to gather information to show that they are complying with those targets. That sounds to me very much more like equality of outcome as an approach than the one that the Secretary of State says that she now espouses.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed explanation of the draft order, which applies to a number of public bodies in the list in Schedule 19 to the Equality Act 2010. We will be happy to support the order.
I was interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. He has certainly livened up what is sometimes a rather dull affair in Grand Committee. He will not be surprised to hear that I do not really agree with the general thrust of his arguments; in general, I am proud of what we achieved in equality legislation. I agree that one would like to enhance people’s minds; that is a preferable approach. However, legislation sometimes needs to underpin desirable changes, and this legislation is very important.
Sometimes, of course, there is excessive zeal, sometimes there are instances where people have made mistaken judgments and it is fair to raise those issues, but overall this legislation has proved to be effective, though I look forward to a comprehensive response by the noble Baroness to her noble friend’s questions on this point. I, too, have one or two questions about the order. First, where is the Office for Budget Responsibility? Why is that not listed? I understand that it is considered to be a legal entity and since it seems to have unparalleled influence, it would be useful to know whether her department intends to put it on the list. Will she also say something about the Criminal Cases Review Commission?
I want to come on to discuss the Public Bodies Bill because I am very puzzled about some of the organisations listed in the schedule. We have spent hours and days debating the Public Bodies Bill, sponsored by the Cabinet Office, which gives Ministers the power to abolish or change the function, governance and finance of organisations. It is a remarkable Bill, which is now smaller than when it started, which is very unusual for your Lordships’ House. I see the Youth Justice Board listed in Schedule 1. It is true that last night we voted to retain the Youth Justice Board, but my understanding is that it was the Government’s intention to abolish it, so why is it in Schedule 1? Where I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, is that, if it is listed, presumably its duty is to go through the responsibilities contained in the Act.
I am hopeful that the Government will accept your Lordships’ view on the Youth Justice Board, but let us say that they do not, that they reverse it on ping-pong and that eventually that is accepted. The Youth Justice Board is going out of business, but in this order, we are placing responsibilities on it. That seems to me to be a bit of a puzzle. I then come to “A Primary Care Trust ...” In the other place there is NHS legislation abolishing primary care trusts. These bodies which face going out of business are none the less having duties placed upon them as a result of the order.
The Audit Commission is going to be abolished, not in the Public Bodies Bill, but by separate legislation: again, it is listed in this order. On page 7, police authorities are listed. Shortly, after the Easter break, we will be having Second Reading of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, abolishing police authorities. I thought that the Government were trying to reduce regulation. Why are these bodies listed? As I see it, if we are going ahead with this appalling decision to have elected police commissioners, politicising the police force and abolishing police authorities, why are they listed in the order?
I come to the bodies that are listed in the Public Bodies Bill whose functions are to be transferred to charities or trusts. The noble Baroness mentioned the Inland Waterways Association. I can see why she says that that should not be covered, but what about the British Waterways Board? That will, as I understand it, cease to be a public body and become a trust. The question is whether the equality duty ought to transfer to the trust. I think it ought to do so and I would be grateful for her views on that.
The noble Baroness mentioned GP consortia. As this is part of the NHS Bill, I ought to declare an interest as chair of Heart of England foundation trust and as a policy consultant and trainer to Cumberlege Connections in relation to the health service. I know the Government have now said—the noble Baroness has now repeated the comments of her honourable friend in another place—that in the event of the Health and Social Care Bill becoming law GP consortia will be added. That of course is very welcome, but shadow consortia are in fact being set up at the moment, and, as I understand it, starting to make decisions in relation to commissioning. Could she consider adding consortia as soon as possible, assuming the legislation goes through?
Finally, I come back to the issue of police reform. My understanding is that if the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is passed in its current shape, the responsibilities which apply to the police authorities listed here will transfer to chief constables and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, including the employment of police staff. Can the noble Baroness give me some assurance, assuming that this Bill becomes an Act, that this responsibility would be transferred to police commissioners and the Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis?
Baroness Verma
I thank noble Lords for their warm welcome to the order and for a very good and reasoned debate. As noble Lords will know, when the Equality Bill was going through your Lordships’ House, it really did generate common consensus across the House. It was something that we all signed up to.
The first point that my noble friend Lord Shipley raised was about the opportunity for the public to challenge if they feel they are not able to get a positive response. We have to make sure that there are enough processes and systems in place, and we are working on that at the moment through making sure that local authorities will be able to give advice to individuals on how to get information if they feel they are not being heard. There will be much broader consultation on that, and I hope that in that process the noble Lord will allow me to write to him and other noble Lords about the way we are taking this forward so that we know that individual citizens are empowered. That, basically, is what the Government are trying to do: to draw back from a process-driven way of working to a point where the ordinary citizen feels that he or she is able to go and question what is being applied in their name.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to the new police and crime commissioners. They will be listed through the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. The reference is currently in paragraph 135 of Schedule 16 to that Bill, so it will follow through. The Office for Budget Responsibility has been listed through the Act that created it, so that is already there as well. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is not listed for the existing race or gender duties; we considered it but we were not convinced that it had sufficient impact on the equality list that we have at the moment. Police authorities are listed, and will remain so until the new police and crime commissioners are established.
To answer my noble friend Lord Shipley, public bodies will need to give reasons under their decisions, and guidance will come from the EHRC on how individuals will be able to utilise their powers to challenge local authorities. A body of case law has developed under the existing duties, and the EHRC’s guidance and copy of this practice will be able to reflect that.
I say to my noble friend Lord Waddington that the equality duty applies to protecting the characteristics of religion and/or belief. I agree with the noble Lord that we must not get to a place where some citizens feel that they are not part and parcel of the society that we live in and that they cannot freely practise their form of belief or religion, as long as it does not have a negative impact on those around them. I will take back the points that he raised; he is not the only one who has raised them, and they are real concerns. It is important that we take away differing views—some of us may not agree with all of them—so that we can ensure that everyone is signed in to the equal opportunities agenda, which is very much what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is trying to do. We must move away from the process-driven place that we have developed.
I for one have seen legislation that has responded to the needs of people like me who had to fight very hard to ensure that discrimination was a thing of the past. However, I do not want to be part of a process that adds bureaucracy and adds to the burdens of local authorities and organisations so that, instead of them developing and being responsible for what they are delivering, we add to a process that often segregates and creates divisions. That is something that all of us here would sign up to.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—my answers are random because I am receiving briefing notes from the Box—the Government’s Equalities Office is currently developing a toolkit to help citizens, volunteers and third sector bodies and to hold public bodies to account. I am sure that we will still have a part to play in the process of developing those tools. Debate is incredibly important for this issue, because it is something that everyone has to be fully committed and signed up to.
The noble Lord raised the issue of the relationship of the general equalities duty to the specific equalities duty. We must make sure that the support of the specific duties over the general duties is there through the specific duties. That is the only way that we are going to be able to measure whether public bodies are responding. We want them to be able to respond to their own local community needs rather than for us to superimpose from the centre what we think local communities actually need. I am sure that the socioeconomic duty would have placed a great burden on local authorities. This way, we are tying to make them responsive to the local communities that they are servicing. Hopefully, when they take that responsibility, they will see the challenge and be able to respond accordingly without having to think that there are boxes to be ticked, which often reflect only parts of an individual’s needs, in contrast to the holistic approach that local authorities and local public organisations should be taking on board.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about some of the bodies on the list. While they are in the transitional period, they need to be able to respond and to be certain that they are adhering to the equality duties that are set out in the Act.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Let us take primary care trusts as an example, which face abolition. Already clusters are being created. Staff are haemorrhaging; one can understand that. Unless I have misread the order and the listing in Schedule 1—some of those bodies are not new and have already been listed, but some are being listed for the first time—it seems to be extraordinary that poor PCTs are presumably going to get a guidance from the Department of Health saying, “You are now listed. Your job is to implement the equality requirements”, at the same time as they are going out of business. I do not know why they are being asked to do this.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, while inspiration flies in from behind me, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that there will still be a transitional period during which PCTs cannot abdicate their duty to meet those requirements. The noble Lord will take on board that there are always transitional bodies.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am sorry to belabour this point. PCTs are being merged into clusters. They have virtually gone as entities so the morale among people working in them is very low. To have a note from the Department of Health saying, “Despite all that, you now have to implement this”, does not seem to be sensible or consistent with what the Government are saying about regulation. I simply do not understand it.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, since inspiration has just arrived, my note tells me clearly that PCTs are already listed for the existing duties, so this is no great extra burden while they are still in existence. In fact the burden will be reduced because we are taking it away from being a process-driven requirement to being one where PCTs, like all other listed bodies, will be responding to the specific and general duties within the Equality Act 2010. I feel that the noble Lord is not overly satisfied but I commend this order to the Committee.
House of Lords
Health: Preventable Sight Loss
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the level of preventable sight loss in the United Kingdom; and whether they will include that issue in the proposed Healthy Lives, Healthy People strategy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Government recognise that sight loss is a serious issue and that risks rise in an ageing population. The Health and Social Care Bill proposes that NHS sight testing will be the responsibility of the NHS Commissioning Board. The new public health system will help to prevent sight loss. We have proposed that Public Health England will design and fund some specific public health services, including diabetic retinopathy screening. We have also proposed that local authorities should have new responsibilities in relation to public health and health improvement.
Lord Low of Dalston
I thank the Minister for that response. However, given that half of the sight problems experienced by around 2 million people in the UK could be prevented by regular sight tests and early diagnosis and treatment, what plans do the Government have to communicate this important public health message to local commissioners, health and social care professionals and the public? Does the Minister agree with me that reducing such a high prevalence of avoidable sight loss through regular sight tests and better access to eye care services should be included in the public health outcomes framework, and that specific attention should be focused on minority ethnic groups who exhibit a particularly high incidence of some sight-threatening conditions?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I quite agree with the noble Lord that sight tests allow an invaluable opportunity to review all aspects of eye health, including investigations for signs of disease. The uptake of NHS sight tests is, I am glad to say, increasing. As regards messaging, the department has worked, and continues to work, with NHS Choices on the development of articles and videos to raise the profile of visual health and promote the importance of regular sight tests. Looking ahead, and as part of their new public health responsibilities, we propose that local authorities will have primary responsibility for the health improvement of their local populations. They could well choose, if they wished, to promote eye health and work to improve the wider aspects of health and lifestyle that contribute to improved eye health. We are currently consulting on the public health outcomes framework, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware. We are also consulting on the scope of the evidence base for public health and the interventions that will work best.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Does the noble Earl agree that one of the groups of people at risk of developing eyesight loss is people with diabetes? As part of the increased work to deal with diabetic retinopathy, should not everyone at risk have, in addition to their normal eyesight tests, annual eye screening? This service must not be cut but be expanded, as early detection and prevention is right for the patient, their family and ultimately the taxpayer, as thousands of pounds that would otherwise have to be spent on dealing with preventable complications will be saved.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord makes some extremely important points. This is a good news story and very good progress has been made; more people with diabetes are being offered screening for retinopathy than ever before, and to higher standards. More people are being offered screening now than when the screening programme was announced in January 2003. At that time, 1.3 million people with diagnosed diabetes in England were being screened. The latest figures, for December 2010, show that 2.21 million people were offered screening.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, given that sight loss will cost the economy £8 billion a year by 2013, will the Minister outline for the House the determining factors in extending free sight tests to all?
Earl Howe
My Lords, various categories of patients are eligible for free sight tests. Free tests are available under the NHS to a large number of people, including people aged 60 and over, children under 16 and people on low incomes. As I mentioned, the uptake of sight tests is increasing, which shows that people are continuing to get good access to NHS eye care services; but as regards an extension of the numbers, that will of course depend on available funding.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, does the Minister accept that one of the commonest causes of progressive visual failure in the elderly is macular degeneration? There are two forms: the dry form is currently not amenable to treatment, although research suggests that one day it may be; but the wet form can in many cases be arrested by expensive injections. Is he aware that some PCTs are allowing that particular form of treatment to be given only to one eye, allowing the other eye to deteriorate? Does he not agree that that—if he will forgive the pun—is an unfortunate and short-sighted policy?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence—NICE—has recommended treatment with Lucentis as a clinically effective and cost-effective use of NHS resources for patients with wet, age-related macular degeneration meeting specific clinical criteria. I am aware that, initially, the practice mentioned by the noble Lord was being reported, but I think that it is less true now. I will of course check whether what the noble Lord says continues to apply. I would just say that primary care trusts are legally required to make funding available to enable clinicians to prescribe Lucentis, which is the drug of choice for this, in line with guidance. The PCT allocations take account of expected growth in the drugs spending, including the impact of this type of technology.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, last week the BBC programme “In Touch” asked the question, “Can the NHS cope with the demand for treatment for the UK’s most common cause of blindness?”—a question which follows on from the one asked by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. The programme was made with the recently formed Macular Disease Society, which aims to raise awareness and money for both dry and wet macular disease. Will the noble Earl join me in welcoming the creation of this society, and will the Government ensure that the society is involved in the consultation process leading to the strategy for the early diagnosis and treatment of macular disease?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I join the noble Baroness in welcoming the formation of the Macular Disease Society, and I can assure her that my department will wish to engage closely with it; I think that it is a very positive development. Reducing avoidable sight loss is clearly an issue that we have to take seriously. The prevention of sight loss will be an aim of work undertaken across the new public health system, as I have indicated. At national level we are proposing that Public Health England will design some specific public health services including screening, as has been mentioned, and locally we propose new responsibilities for local authorities.
Lord Naseby
As financial resources are limited, is not avoidable sight loss an absolute public health priority? Is it not better to spend money on that than restricting small and large retailers further in terms of their display of tobacco in a market that is declining in any case?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I will simply say to my noble friend that public health clearly has an important contribution to make to reducing avoidable sight loss by addressing the obvious risk factors for sight loss, but also by delivering on our general public health outcomes, such as reducing smoking and obesity and diabetes, all of which are associated with the development of eye disease. The tobacco strategy has a direct bearing on this question.
Flooding: Defence
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Quin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with communities affected by flooding about their proposed flood defence allocations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, the Environment Agency involves local communities and partner organisations from the earliest stages of a flood defence scheme’s life. The agency works with regional flood defence committees to agree the overall investment programme. Committees include local authority members and other local experts. Particular attention has been paid to working closely with communities to let them know spending decisions affecting 2011-12 and options for the future.
Baroness Quin
I thank the Minister for that reply but, as he knows, flood defence schemes in Leeds, York and Morpeth have been put on hold by the Government, as have other schemes. We have seen huge public concern in all these areas as a result. Are the Government prepared to look to reinstate these schemes and, if not, how do they propose to reassure the residents of those areas, who are worried both about being flooded and about not getting insurance cover for their homes in future?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I remind the noble Baroness that no schemes whatever have been cancelled. Some have been deferred, because obviously we have to make very difficult decisions about the money available. As I made clear in my original Answer, we will involve local communities in discussions, which is why we have consulted—and we are reviewing the consultation—about how we can see the money going further by allowing communities themselves to have an involvement in these schemes, and for communities themselves or for private money to come in to assist the public money that comes from Defra.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I wonder whether the Government relate the flood defences to many other applications, such as agriculture and wind energy. As you cross the channel, you can see that all the major dykes in Holland have windmills on them. Do the Government agree that we need to move in that direction?
Lord Henley
My Lords, it is an interesting thought whether we should put windmills on all the dykes that we have to build for flood defences. I shall certainly take that on board and consider that matter, although there would obviously be planning considerations as well as to whether you would want windmills along all the dykes to which the noble Lord refers.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, the joint working of churches together in Cumbria along with local Rotary and other volunteer organisations in the devastating floods of 2009 will be remembered for many generations. The Regional Resilience Forum is to be disbanded. I understand that it will be relocated with Leeds and other northern areas and focused on Leeds. I wonder whether the Minister shares the concerns of very many people that vital local knowledge and co-operation will be lost.
Lord Henley
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for his comments, particularly for his comments about the devastating floods in Cockermouth. As I told the House the last time we discussed these matters, I visited Cockermouth a year after those floods. I am very satisfied that the local knowledge is still there and that the resilience that that community had in Cockermouth is still there, and that local people are preparing to deal with floods in the appropriate manner, should they get them again. We want to ensure, as I made clear in my original Answer, that we have the appropriate local knowledge. That is why we want to involve local communities, and that is why we have consulted on ways of giving communities a bigger say in the decisions that affect them.
Lord Filkin
Does the Minister recognise that a deferment that does not lead to speedy action will be seen by local communities as a cancellation?
Lord Henley
No, my Lords, I do not accept that. There is a very big distinction between a cancelation and a deferment, and there have been no cancelations whatever. Each scheme that we look at, we will look at on its merits. That will involve the cost of the scheme and how many properties—just to give one example—that scheme will protect. There is no point in spending excessive amounts of money if one could deal with the problem in another way. There are also ways of looking at spending the money and consulting the local communities to get money in other than the money that comes centrally from Defra. That is what we are intending to do.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that the funding promised to help these local communities with their community flood plans and provide community flood wardens will be forthcoming so that they will be protected?
Lord Henley
My Lords we are making some very small reductions to the annual expenditure on flood protection but I am satisfied that those reductions are very small and necessary in dealing with the deficit. We will continue to spend whatever money is appropriate. However much money was available, we would never be able to satisfy all the demands for all the schemes that are on offer.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
What advice will the Government give to those who are having difficulties getting home insurance in the light of the deferment?
Lord Henley
My Lords, obviously insurance is a very difficult matter and we are discussing it with the Association of British Insurers. However, the Government should be wary of trying to interfere in the market because there are those who take a sensible attitude and insure themselves. There is no point in the Government offering guarantees to those who do not insure themselves. We will discuss these matters with the ABI and others as appropriate, but I do not think we should start interfering in the market itself.
Lord Harrison
Will the Government review the Pitt report on flooding and update it? Can the Minister report on the town of Tewkesbury, where I know many people were not rehoused for some 12 months after the terrible flooding that afflicted them?
Lord Henley
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to refer to Tewkesbury. I cannot comment on what happened under the previous Government following those floods. However, following the Pitt review, I can say that we are committed to a working-up of the findings of that review and we will do so in due course.
Petrol: Ethanol Content
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Steel of Aikwood
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the timetable for implementing the increased maximum ethanol content in petrol; and what effect the change will have on the engines of classic and vintage vehicles.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare a non-financial interest as president of the Jaguar Drivers’ Club.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, petrol containing 10 per cent ethanol has been permitted from January 2011. Petrol containing up to 5 per cent ethanol is currently available and expected to be marketed until at least 2015. Petrol pumps dispensing petrol containing over 5 per cent ethanol must display a cautionary label. Research commissioned by the Department for Transport into the potential impact of ethanol on vehicle fuel systems showed that there could be compatibility issues for classic and vintage vehicles.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his answer. He has a delicate way of putting it. In fact, ethanol attacks fibreglass fuel tanks, bits of aluminium, fuel filters and so on. Therefore it is important that he gives an undertaking that the 5 per cent limit will be consistently available and not be superseded by the 10 per cent limit.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am well aware of these issues. I declare an interest in that, because of fuel compatibility issues, I have had to fit an electronic fuel-injection system to a 27-litre V12 tank engine.
I am also well aware of the problem with glass-fibre fuel tanks. One of the issues for classic vehicles is the availability of replacement petrol tanks and the difficulty of making an irregular-shaped fuel tank.
Lord Rotherwick
My Lords, the noble Earl is probably aware that I am an aviator. Is he also aware that there are new and old small aircraft that rely on car petrol without ethanol in it? What provisions are the Government making to ensure that there is a supply of this in the future?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, in the long term, I cannot give reassurances. I will write to my noble friend about the availability of zero ethanol for aviation.
Lord Berkeley
Will the noble Earl tell the House how many petrol-driven tank engines there are in the country? I thought they mostly ran on steam like Thomas does.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord is talking about the wrong type of tank. I am talking about a tank at the REME museum in Bordon.
Lord Broers
My Lords, is the Minister aware that these additives in marine fuels can cause even more problems than those in automobile fuels because their consequences can be far more serious?
Earl Attlee
I am sure the noble Lord is right. There is a difficulty with some types of equipment that are not used regularly, such as standby generating sets. There can also be problems with the formation of algae but there are well-understood procedures for avoiding this problem.
Yemen
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Chidgey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the current security situation in Yemen; and what steps they are taking to protect British residents and officials.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, the security situation in Yemen is tense. There is political deadlock, there are violent protests and there is an already high risk of terrorist attack. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said on 24 March, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised all British nationals to leave Yemen immediately on 12 March. Since then, the situation has continued to deteriorate. We have detailed contingency plans but British nationals should leave Yemen now by the commercial airlines still flying.
Lord Chidgey
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Is there not also a real danger of Yemen descending into chaos, with the vacuum being filled by the al-Qaeda terrorism in that country combining with counterparts in Somalia across the Gulf of Aden, so putting the 40 per cent of the West’s oil that passes through there at great risk? Do the Government have any plans to help to address the underlying problems in Yemen, which come from poverty and hunger? Forty per cent of people there live on less than $2 a day. Have we any plans to assist with the provision of food aid, as something like $225 million of food aid is needed this year alone to stave off starvation?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is quite right to point to a number of very worrying dangers, including piracy and terrorism. We are in fact one of the largest donors to that very impoverished country and we are obviously concerned about how the political process should proceed. We hope that transition will be in a peaceful way and without too much bloodshed, but it is really for the people of Yemen and their present president to decide how that transition should go. As for outside support, rather than outside intervention, we think that the neighbouring countries are probably the best people to rally round and provide it. That may be working through the organisation Friends of Yemen, of which we are one.
Lord Clinton-Davis
How many people does the Foreign Office have in mind and how many, in particular, are employed at the embassy in Yemen?
Lord Howell of Guildford
On the noble Lord’s second point, at the moment we have 10 still there. The noble Lord is quite right to raise the subject because it is an extremely dangerous designation. There have been two life-threatening attacks on the British ambassador in the past year. I assure the noble Lord and the House that we have the most careful and detailed contingency plans for getting those people out safely, but it is a very dangerous situation. I do not have to hand the precise overall number of British nationals. It is not very many but I will provide him with the precise details if we can ascertain them, which is not easy.
Lord Avebury
Does my noble friend agree that with the defection of Major-General Ali Mohsen and other senior military commanders, the sooner that President Saleh steps aside and allows a transition to democratic government, the less blood will be shed? Does he also think that the United Nations might perform a useful role as the broker of such a transitional arrangement, bringing the military and the opposition movements into a common Government to aim at that transition to democracy?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is right that that defection is significant. Those are influential people and that might help the move towards a peaceful resolution and a final decision by President Saleh on how and in what manner he goes in an orderly way. Concerning the UN, it has not recently played a significant role in Yemen. In most people’s view, the responsibility really lies with President Saleh openly to engage with all parties in a sustained and credible fashion. As I said earlier, we think the best kind of outside support should come from the countries immediately around, which are obviously as concerned as us about developments there.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
Does the Minister agree that it is difficult to avoid seeing any change in the administration as a potential threat to western interests? What is his assessment of the role of al-Qaeda among the many other causes—secessionist, tribal and so on—of the unrest? If there were to be an implosion, what is his assessment of the danger of the unrest moving across the frontiers to other countries?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Of course, as the noble Lord knows, these dangers are there all the time; there is no doubt about that. The al-Qaeda threat is there but is not the only threat. Al-Qaeda is most active in the north. Many of its members are being pushed over the frontier from Saudi Arabia. They are a problem and no doubt they are thinking of ways of exploiting any trouble or disturbance they can find. That is why it is essential that the president and the people of Yemen move away from the threats of violence and towards an orderly pattern of transition which they can decide for themselves.
Lord Dykes
I thank my noble friend for the care with which the British Government, other European Governments and America have handled these difficult situations with Arab countries. Bearing in mind that the evidence is now massively overwhelming that Arab populations want freedom, democracy and human rights, as in other countries—we have been told for decades that they did not want this and did not mind oppressive regimes—will my noble friend consider the British Government having some serious conversations with the Saudi Arabian Government to get rid of that oppressive regime and introduce some democracy there, including allowing women to drive cars?
Lord Howell of Guildford
These are all very serious social problems but I think my noble friend would agree that if there is to be change, the aim must be to achieve the most peaceful and bloodshed-free transition. That is what we want. Obviously, we are in talks with all our opposite numbers in the Arab world and in the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, as my noble friend suggests. These matters have to be dealt with and we raise them, but if we can make progress in a peaceful, orderly way, that must be the best way forward.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I am sure we all agree with the Minister that the most successful outcome is one that involves a peaceful and orderly transition. However, in the Government’s view, is that most likely to be attained through President Saleh stepping aside very soon or through his engaging in the sort of dialogue with dissidents elsewhere in Yemen that the Minister described a moment ago? The noble Lord talked about the support of neighbours. What support does he have in mind that Yemen’s neighbours might give? Might it be troops on the one hand or direct aid on the other?
Lord Howell of Guildford
President Saleh has already said that he will step down—we all know that—but it is a question of the timing and, no doubt, the question of to whom power should then transfer. These are obviously very sensitive and delicate questions inside Yemen. Sensible people, supporters and friends of the country and its people want to see the president step down as quickly as possible but in an orderly way. As to outside support, aside from the substantial aid which countries such as our own give to Yemen, the Friends of Yemen group has said that it is very ready to support training and to offer social support, all kinds of social programmes and a variety of other support. It has made clear that that is what it wants to see. However, I am afraid that it is from within Yemen—this is often the case in other Arab countries—that the movement has to come for an orderly transition of power, which is about to take place.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, in that context, what is the Minister’s assessment of the danger of the protest movement in Yemen being taken over by people who are now opposed to President Saleh but whose record in conflict, particularly with the northern Houthis, is no more democratic than his is?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The danger is quite high. There is a danger of all kinds of elements, including the al-Qaeda franchise, other jihadists and the rebel groups that have been present for many years—there is nothing new in some of the matters that we are discussing—taking over and replacing the present unsatisfactory pattern with something equally unsatisfactory. We have to be realistic about this. All the progress throughout the Arab world will not automatically lead to a new dawn of liberal democracy, much as we hope it will.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, have the Government assessed whether al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula within Yemen and al-Qaeda more widely have been caught out by this huge change across what I think Glubb Pasha called the “hinge of the world” from Tunisia through to Oman? It seems to me that they might have been and that, if we are quick on our feet, there is a real opportunity to use this to our advantage. I should be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that.
Lord Howell of Guildford
When the situation is so fluid, it is very difficult to make these assessments, and I suspect that they vary vastly from country to country. We are talking here about the Yemen. Al-Qaeda is not the only threat to Yemen’s present stability; all kinds of different tribal gatherings and pressures are undermining the situation. It could be that al-Qaeda has not been at the forefront of many of these uprisings, protests and rebellions. On the other hand, we must have no illusions but that, where it sees trouble, it will seize every opportunity to intensify it and make it worse. As to our opportunity in this area, we have to move in a very agile and clever way, making sure that we combine the support of the western world and the whole comity of responsible nations in trying to encourage a sensible transition to democracy and a move away from all forms of extremism.
Building Regulations (Review) Bill [HL]
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, Amendment 34 would delete Clause 2(2)(b)—the provision that, if after 14 days following a motion of no confidence the House of Commons has not passed a motion expressing confidence in any Government of Her Majesty, there shall then be a general election. This provision is ambiguously phrased, as your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution noted, and as was pointed out in written evidence from Dr Anne Twomey of the University of Sydney. In questioning the formulation in the Bill, she asked:
“Does this include a vote of confidence in a previous Government that has since resigned and been replaced? Does it refer only to the Government in existence at the time the motion is passed, whether the Government in which no confidence was previously expressed or a new Government? Does it refer to a prospective Government that does not yet exist?”.
She went on to comment:
“This is a critical issue. It is not clear from the provision whether it is intended that a Government that is subject to a successful vote of no confidence follows the customary practice and resigns, leaving Her Majesty to commission a new Prime Minister whose Government then needs a vote of confidence to survive. Alternatively, it could be intended that matters remain frozen once the vote of no confidence is passed and the existing Government remains in office until the end of the 14 days to see if the absence of confidence is reversed. If it is not reversed, then an election would be held. A third alternative is that it is intended that the House may pass a motion indicating its confidence in someone else to form a Government, even though it is not yet formally a ‘Government of Her Majesty’. Query whether this would oblige Her Majesty to commission that person as Prime Minister? The Bill ought really be clearer as to what is intended”.
Dr Twomey was quite right. What do the Government mean by that provision? Will the Minister tell us, and will he undertake that the Government will take this away and improve the drafting so as to impart clarity to the wording in the Bill?
Beyond the issue of the ambiguity of the provision as drafted, we should ask whether we want a 14-day provision at all. This is the smoke-filled rooms issue. Imagine the situation if a Government narrowly loses a vote of no confidence and the Prime Minister does not behave like Mr Callaghan in 1979; he does not make an immediate, dignified and clear-cut statement that his Government will take their case to the country. Indeed, under the provisions of the Bill he cannot do that. Up to 14 days have to be spent cobbling together a deal with the minor parties. Bribes will be offered, and inducements—perhaps a second Humber bridge or contracts to build parts of new frigates in particular constituencies. The US space programme was entirely constructed out of components made in marginal districts of Congress. Maybe there would be new constituencies outside the numerical norm, like Orkney and Shetland and the Highlands and Islands.
Deals are put together and the new cobbled-together Government, perhaps under the same Prime Minister, totters along just as unable to govern effectively. It appears that Ministers have not thought of that possible contingency, although it is surprising that they should not have done so. My noble friend Lady Jay, in the chair of your Lordships’ Select Committee, asked the Minister,
“would it be possible for that government to try to reconstitute themselves, perhaps in a slightly different way?”.
Mr Mark Harper, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, replied:
“Rather than giving you a rushed answer, let me think about it”.
He later wrote to the Select Committee, saying:
“It is not our intention that the Bill should rule out the possibility”—
however unlikely—
“of the House changing its mind … and deciding nevertheless to support the current government”.
At present, if the Government lose a vote of confidence the convention is that they must either resign or seek Dissolution. This provision is just like the Government’s previous decisions in the Bill, such as whether the fixed-term Parliament should be four years or five years—they opted for five; or whether if there is an early election the clock should be reset so that there would be a whole new Parliament ahead—they opted for that. This provision similarly happens to advantage the incumbent Government. It allows them the opportunity to wriggle out of the implications of losing a vote of confidence.
Alternatively, there is not the sordid scene that I describe, but a new coalition is formed with a new Prime Minister and a new configuration of parties in government. The people have not voted for that, yet Mr Clegg and the coalition make much of their ambition to improve accountability and transparency in our politics and the ways in which Governments are formed. I do not think that accountability is improved by this set of provisions.
The Deputy Prime Minister, when he met your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution on 13 October, laid out his general arguments on the need for major constitutional reforms—a series of reforming constitutional measures. He said:
“there are features of our present political arrangements that are secretive or centralised, in which people do not … feel that their voices or views are properly represented … That is why there is an emphasis in everything that we are proposing on greater accountability in the manner in which we conduct ourselves and the way in which politics is conducted, greater legitimacy in the political institutions that seek to represent people, and breaking up excessive concentrations of power and secrecy”.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
For examples of greater accountability, we do not need to look at the textbooks. We have a living example in the recent election in Australia, where the two major groups had 72 seats. There were four other seats and there was very much an auction as to how the votes of those four people would be bought, which was pretty unseemly and certainly not accountable.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am afraid it was all too transparent and not satisfactory by any manner of means. My noble friend always brings his international perspective to bear most valuably on our debates. Clause 2(2)(b), as it is drafted, provides no remedy for the deficiencies that the Deputy Prime Minister so eloquently described.
Why 14 days in particular? What is the rationale for that figure? It would be helpful if the Government explained why they think that 14 days is the right amount of time to allow these processes to continue. It is inconsistent with what Parliament has provided for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, where the equivalent provisions allow for 28 days. Of course, they have different electoral systems that make it unlikely that any single party will have an overall majority. It might be argued that more time is needed, but in all events I would like to know why 14 days are thought sufficient for the Parliament of the United Kingdom, whereas 28 days are provided for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
Beyond that, we also ought to ask: why legislate at all? Convention and practice are to allow an attempt to negotiate a coalition or a pact—a confidence and supply agreement or whatever—over an unspecified period of time. Precedent has shown that it need not take very long. There were three days of such discussions between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party in March 1974, and five days in May 2010. Why is it necessary to legislate to allow up to 14 days for this kind of haggling and negotiation?
I do not think that what is provided in the Bill would produce any improvement. It could make things worse in our politics and our constitution. What I do know is that, during that period of 14 days, there would be no effective government and the country would be uncertain as to whether there was to be a general election. The reputation of Parliament or of politics would not be enhanced by this kind of process. Accountability would be weakened. Is it not better to stick to the understanding that we have: that if a Government are defeated on a vote of no confidence they call it a day and resign or go to the country? That would better fulfil the Deputy Prime Minister’s pledge to improve accountability. It is better that the electors, and not the political parties, decide who will form a Government. Governments are of course accountable both to Parliament and to the people, but accountability to the people should prevail. I beg to move.
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
I have to inform the Committee that, if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 36 or 37 by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I want to group Amendment 37, which stands in my name, with Amendment 34. The officials have been advised. The Minister has also had a little notification of that.
Amendment 37 would replace 14 days with five days. The Constitution Committee accepted 14 days as reasonable. However, would the country accept it? A 14-day limbo seems excessive, not least to the bankers and to what we used to call the gnomes of Zurich—now the genomes of the internet or something. As everyone else discusses whether an election will take place, it could be a long wet fortnight. As David Laws acknowledges in his most helpful book on the five days, there has to be early reassurance of the market. In his wise words:
“neither the British media nor the financial markets nor the public would tolerate a prolonged period of uncertainty”,
as a,
“failure to form a stable government could have a real impact on the UK bond market and on the UK interest rates, as well as on confidence in the pound”.
He well describes how:
“The British press and the British people are used to seamless and swift transfers of power”.
He admits that, anyway, more time would not guarantee a better coalition agreement.
All this, of course, is without thinking about the implications of Ministers from a defeated Government going off to negotiate for Britain in key EU, G20 or IMF meetings over that period of 14 days. In her evidence to the Constitution Committee, Professor Oliver said that she thought that it was against the public interest for there to be no effective government of the country, and even the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Mr Mark Harper, admitted that,
“it would become clear pretty quickly that the government could not put together an alternative government”.
Similarly, David Laws—I am sorry to quote him again, but he is very helpful—testified that David Cameron himself wanted negotiations to be over in days, not weeks, and preferably before the markets got jumpy. Nick Clegg believed at the time that the deal could be done in two to three days.
Therefore, I have to ask why the coalition, which was put together in just five days, thinks it needed longer for that task. Was it too pressed in May 2010 to take sensible decisions? Some of us would say, of course, that the evidence of the coalition agreement supports the idea that it is right in that assumption. Perhaps the chaos caused by the raft of unco-ordinated constitutional changes, of which I believe the present Bill is just one, is evidence of a rather over-hurried deal. Perhaps coalitions anyway should be about domestic and economic policy, not about the country’s constitution, which is far too precious for late-night bargaining.
Certainly, while the price for the Lib-Lab pact was electoral reform—the Lib-Conservative pact; I am sorry, I am too old, although they did not get quite so much out of us, I have to say—it is clear from David Laws that the issue of fixed-term Parliaments was not an end in itself as a real democratic need but was, to use his words,
“to avoid a second election”.
So is it uncertainty about their relationship that leads to this Bill and its 14 days? The coalition expressly does not want to rule out the possibility of a House changing its mind within 14 days. “Changing its mind”, of course, is a euphemism. I shall quote the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, at Second Reading, as it is so good:
“As for introducing a 14-day cooling off period, the mind boggles ... imagine the cornucopia”—
a wonderful word—
“of inducements, together with the bullying, which a future Government might carry out during those 14 days. We might even get a few more Dukes in this House”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1030.]
My noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, a former Chief Whip, said:
“Are we to have 14 days so that Government Ministers can offer jobs to rebels or inducements or threats”,
or is 14 days,
“simply designed as a mechanism for one partner in a coalition to try to persuade a different partner to enter a new coalition and form an entirely different kind of majority in the Commons without an election”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1035.]
An academic rather than a practitioner of the dark arts, my noble friend Lord Plant contemplated,
“a series of coalitions arising during a fixed-term Parliament, without a straightforward appeal to the electorate, that would be club politics of the worst possible kind”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1033.]
Is that what the coalition favours: a sequence of groupings, anything to keep in power? Is it knowing that five days will not suffice next time round? Only a coalition with parties bent on staying in office could have dreamt up the notion of two weeks of haggling to cling to power. The Conservative and Liberal Democrats commenced and consummated their relationship in just five days. They seem very happy, so are they repenting at leisure or do they feel that they needed more time for that coalition agreement? Perhaps they are beginning to worry about the commitment to early legislation to recall an MP, as Mr Clegg is somewhat unpopular in Sheffield. Is it because the commitment to the binding resolution in the other place that an election would be held in May 2015 has already fallen apart, and that has made them realise that they need more time? Is it perhaps the commitment to PR for the House of Lords, given that they have yet to even get a yes for AV in the Commons, and that they are now wondering whether they did that right? Or is it that they wanted time to include in the coalition agreement, “We will cause chaos in the health service and totally upset the BMA, patients and the public by unnecessary reorganisation”? Instead, of course, the agreement says that the Liberal Democrat and Conservative ideas are stronger when combined, such as on the NHS. The agreement states:
“Conservative thinking on markets, choice and competition and add to it the Liberal Democrat belief in advancing democracy at a much more local level, and you have a united vision for the NHS”.
I am not sure that the good noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, has read that.
Those are just some comments on the present coalition agreement. My worry is the essence of the 14 days, because democracy is about more than just numbers; it is about being able to vote out a Government. This measure seeks to entrench one. For that reason, it should be avoided.
I have two questions for the Minister. Why, when this coalition was put together in five days, does he now think that it would take 14 days to repeat the exercise? How does he think that markets and our allies, or indeed our foes, would respond to 14 days of dithering, bargaining and negotiation?
Lord Cormack
The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has made an interesting speech and has raised a number of fascinating questions. But there is a danger that we will have a bit of confusion because Clause 2 is concerned wholly and specifically with holding an “early parliamentary general election” during a fixed-term Parliament in the event of the Government of the day coming unstuck for some reason or other. Although the remarks about the time taken to form the present coalition are intensely interesting, this clause does not affect what happens after a general election when there could be—perish the thought—unlimited time.
I believe that this clause is wholly misplaced. It needs to be deleted and replaced with something far simpler, more specific and more precise. At a later stage in the Committee’s deliberations, I shall seek to move an amendment to that effect.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
Perhaps I may help the Committee by saying that when the Constitution Committee, to which my noble friend Lady Hayter rightly referred, appeared to support the notion of 14 days, this was an entirely constitutional judgment in the context of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. It was not a political judgment.
Perhaps I may draw the attention of the Committee to the exchange between my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith and Mr Mark Harper when he appeared before the Committee. My noble and learned friend suggested to Mr Harper that this was a complete change from the previous practice:
“For example, we could end up with Labour and Liberal Democrats. That could not happen under the present system, could it?”.
However, Mr Harper replied:
“That depends on the way people conduct themselves, but I think that it could”.
He said that if it was “early in a Parliament” that the Government were defeated, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just suggested,
“and there was a viable alternative government and—prior to having published this Bill—a Prime Minister had sought a dissolution, it is perfectly possible that a dissolution would not have been granted”.
My noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith asked him if there was a recent example of that, to which the answer was no.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, first, I hasten to assure my Front Bench that this is my day of virtue and goodness—
Lord Newton of Braintree
—and for recovering ground that I may have lost yesterday.
Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself a little more distant than I usually am from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and it is on her speech that I should like to concentrate. I have not yet fully digested the speech of my noble friend Lord Cormack but I am certainly not distancing myself from it until I have had a chance to think about what he said.
My comments, which I hope the Front Bench will not find unhelpful, are based on three points. First, the noble Baroness asked why you should need 14 days rather than five. I accept that either figure is a bit arbitrary but, given some of the things that have happened since—actually, my Front Bench may not welcome this—it might have been worth taking more than five days to complete the coalition agreement. Am I allowed to say that?
Secondly, the British electorate may like quick, seamless, one-day change, with the pantechnicons arriving at the back, or successively at the front, but I think they are going to have to get used to something else. When I started in the Conservative research department in 1960, we carried out what was called “cohort polling” —it was very expensive and we probably could not do it now—whereby we went back to the same people at intervals. It has been clear for 50 years that the old-style “I am red”, “I am blue” and “I am yellow” syndrome is breaking down. We saw the final conclusion of that at the last election. I do not boast about this, but people did not want anyone to win; they wanted to make us work together. I do not say that will always happen, but it will happen more frequently and the British public will have to get used to it.
My last point on the noble Baroness’s speech—I hope she does not think that I am being too unfriendly—is that the markets will have to get used to it as well, just as they get used to it in Germany. In most European countries, an election is followed by a prolonged period of negotiation—at the worst, horse-trading—before a Government emerge. In many cases it takes far longer than 14 days. I do not see them collapsing in a heap as a result.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I hate to interrupt because I agree with so much of what my noble friend has said. He speaks of other countries where 14 days has been exceeded; I believe Belgium is into its 11th month, is it not?
Lord Newton of Braintree
That may be a bit excessive, but then Belgium has some rather unique problems—which, so far, have not happened here—in terms of racial, linguistic and ethnic division. I take my noble friend’s point and I hope that he will take mine that most European countries do not expect to have the pantechnicons arriving on election day or the day afterwards. They have got used to it; why cannot we?
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree. He is right about the international position; we are extremely unusual in the period of transition from Government to Government. I shall come back to that on a later amendment.
The problem with Amendment 37—I shall speak also to Amendment 34—is the premise that there should be a delay for a set period following the election. It may be for only five days rather than 14, but there is a delay, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, seeks to make provision for an election to follow in the immediate wake of the loss of a vote of no confidence. Given a choice between the two, I incline to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
However, the problem that I have with his amendment is that the loss of a vote of no confidence triggers an election as the only option. I believe that that should be, as now, one option rather than the only option. I shall come back to that issue in later amendments. Given the choice between the two I incline towards the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. However, we still need a provision for Prime Ministers to be able to tender their resignation rather than automatically request that Parliament be dissolved.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Newton, repeated an argument that has been used on many occasions, particularly by his noble friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches, that we are somehow in a new kind of politics now, having moved from the traditional two-party system to the less traditional three-party system, and that we therefore need to change huge swathes of our constitution, including changing the voting system and perhaps changing the mechanism for moving from one Government to another, in order to accommodate a fundamental change in our political system. I put it to him, and to them, that I do not take that view; I think that the fundaments of our politics are quite similar to what they were when I came into politics 50 years ago. I put it to them at least that, should any of the opinion polls be right—and we know that we should treat them cautiously—there is a fair bit of evidence that we are moving back towards more of a two-party system, which I for one would welcome. I would be interested to know whether all those who have been saying “New politics means new constitution” will now say that they want the constitution to revert to the way that it operated previously, should there be old politics after all—that is, fundamentally a choice between people who are broadly happy with the way things are and people who want to change them, which is basically what happens in democracies in the United States, here and in many countries of Europe—rather than a yes, a no and a don’t-know as we have at the moment. I make that point simply as an aside but it is worth considering.
This part of the Bill makes an extraordinary proposition. I think that we all more or less subscribe to the cliché “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but the Government seem not only to be rejecting that idea but also to be saying that, if it is working perfectly, we had still better fix it. My argument is very simply that the no-confidence system as has operated in this country works not just very well but perfectly. We have a test case: 1979. I am very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on the Front Benches; he remembers 1979 as well as I do. That was a perfect example of the no-confidence system, which is not written into our constitution, with there being no clear procedural rules that Jim Callaghan had to follow, working perfectly. He lost the confidence of the House on a motion of no confidence so he went to the country. Will someone please tell me what was wrong with that? One problem that the Government got themselves into in their five days in May, among many others, was trying to write in law aspects of our constitution which are perfectly well understood and which do not need writing in law. It is a bit like trying to write down prescriptively in legislation the procedures that the monarchy needs to go through in the event of a hung Parliament. That would be extraordinarily difficult, and what the Government thought was an incredibly simple Bill is not a simple Bill at all. It has serious complications, and this is the most serious of them.
I simply put this to the Minister. In respect of the 14 days, what is the problem that he is trying to resolve? I shall put it even more simply than that and ask him what Jim Callaghan did wrong. He lost a motion of no confidence; we all know what that is. He immediately went to the country. Under this Bill, he should have entered a period of 14 days’ negotiation, without any consultation with the British public. Worse still—at least from my perspective; nobody could accuse me of self-interest because I have mentioned to the Committee before that his decision resulted in me becoming unemployed—
Lord Clinton-Davis
Jim Callaghan did not immediately go to the country. There was a gap of some six weeks.
Lord Grocott
He immediately called the general election. My noble friend is quite right to correct me, but it amounts to the same thing. My point is that there was no negotiation. He announced the general election immediately, and the public and the parties knew where they were.
Unless the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, can explain it to me, there is a double fault in the Government's position. Am I right in assuming, first, that the Government think that it was wrong for Jim Callaghan to go to the country when he did; and, secondly, according to other parts of the Bill, that the Government should have gone on for another six months until October 1974 without a majority to complete the five-year fixed-term period? That builds absurd rigidity into the system. I cannot see what they are trying to deal with. If the noble and learned Lord cannot answer those two specific questions about what Jim Callaghan did wrong, he ought to remove the provision.
I agree with my noble friend's amendment. To distil it, it simply says, “If a Government lose a motion of no confidence, there shall be a general election”. I would love it if someone would follow me to say, “It is a risky, false proposition that if a Government lose a motion of no confidence, they should go to the country”. Why fiddle about with it? What on earth are the Government doing? Why do they not save us all a lot of time and energy and just withdraw the provision?
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, very briefly, I have for a long time shared the concerns expressed by the noble Lord. Those concerns appear to me to be met by Amendment 50. Has he considered that?
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, it is worth pointing out that the noble Lord’s Government introduced a fixed-term Parliament in Scotland with procedures if the incumbent Government lose a motion of no confidence. The Bill is dealing with a fixed-term Parliament on somewhat the same lines as the Labour Government did in the devolution legislation.
Lord Grocott
I am sorry, my Lords. I was sitting down thinking about having a cup of tea and suddenly realised that those were interventions on my speech.
The fundamental difference between this and the situation in the Scottish Parliament is that that document began from a blank sheet of paper—albeit a very well rehearsed blank sheet of paper. There is all the difference in the world between drawing up a new constitution and amending a constitution which has worked perfectly well. That is my answer to that question.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
This is a fascinating debate. To pick up on what my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis said, it has been mentioned before in this debate, but it is worth citing what Mr James Callaghan said in the evening after he lost the vote of no confidence. He said:
“Mr Speaker, now that the House of Commons has declared itself, we shall take our case to the country. Tomorrow I shall propose to Her Majesty that Parliament be dissolved as soon as essential business can be cleared up, and I shall then announce as soon as may be—and that will be as soon as possible—the date of Dissolution, the date of the election and the date of meeting of the new Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/3/79; col. 589.]
Under the Bill, were it to be passed in this form, Mr James Callaghan would have said, “I shall now wait for 14 days while I offer the Ulster Unionists tunnels and money, and junior ministerial posts to Mr Bruce Grocott, in the hope that they might then support me”. Should Mr James Callaghan have been of that nature, he could under the Bill have used the 14 days to bribe and cajole to produce another Labour Government with confidence and supply support from the Ulster Unionists and come back 14 days later to say, “Ha, ha! I can return with a Labour Government and I will hold on until October 1979”. We should ask ourselves: would the public have had greater confidence in Mr Callaghan if he had behaved like that or did they have much greater confidence in him immediately accepting the consequence of what was happening and going to the country?
I ask that question because the right honourable Mr Nicholas Clegg says that we are going through all these contortions apparently to increase trust in our parliamentary system, despite the fact that Mr David Laws makes it clear that that is untrue. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard.
Lord Rennard
Does not the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, recall that it was actually in the autumn of 1978 that the then Prime Minister, Mr James Callaghan, offered significant inducements to the Ulster Unionists to stave off his defeat by creating extra seats within Northern Ireland at the Westminster Parliament in order, under the existing system, to stay in office for longer? Furthermore, does not the noble and learned Lord recall that, wisely, the previous Labour Government introduced the Acts setting up the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly? In the Welsh Assembly, provisions were shown to have worked well when Mr Alun Michael lost a motion of no confidence, but there was no general election for the Welsh Assembly; nor do I recall any suggestion of that from noble Lords opposite or members of the Labour Party. All that happened was merely that Alun Michael lost the motion of no confidence; he had to stand down as First Minister; Mr Rhodri Morgan became First Minister; and a new coalition Government were formed who governed Wales very satisfactorily until the next election. Is that not a good model?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
It was a very good model for Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, appears to be supporting a model under which you can lose a vote of no confidence, then have 14 days, and come back as Prime Minister. That is what this proposal does. However, that is not my point, which is, essentially, that the right answer will very much depend upon the circumstances.
It was obviously right that James Callaghan went to the country in March 1979, and it would obviously have been wrong if there had been a 14-day pause before he did so, and if the system had allowed it. Equally, when Mr Baldwin was defeated in January 1924 on an explicit motion of no confidence, and he came straight back from a general election, it was wrong for there to have been a general election. Instead, the right answer was reached and a new Government were produced. The right answer in any particular case depends upon the circumstances that apply at the time. I am sure that Mr Alun Michael giving way to Mr Rhodri Morgan was the right course there.
Why are we introducing a Bill that rigidly requires the 14-day period? Why do we not have a system whereby, if it is right to go to the country, we do so, and if it is not right to go to the country, we do not do so? The other example of a vote of no confidence that I have in mind, which is not a true example, is the vote on the conduct of the Narvik campaign in 1940, when Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister. There was criticism of the way that the Government had conducted the raid on Narvik. He won the vote—although I cannot remember whether or not it was a vote of no confidence—but a significant rebellion on the Conservative side led to Chamberlain concluding, almost certainly rightly, that he should resign as Prime Minister. Within two days, he was replaced by Mr Winston Churchill, who formed a national Government. The matter is slightly complicated by the fact that the right to hold general elections had been suspended; but even if that were not the case, the right answer at that point would almost certainly have been for Parliament to choose a national Government and to provide a new leader for the nation. The country would have completely accepted that.
The problem with the Bill is that it rigidly introduces the 14-day period. It is worth repeatedly going back to the 1979 example. The 14-day period would have allowed the Prime Minister to try to cobble together a Government that would not have had popular support and, equally, would have allowed the Opposition to enter into a bidding war with the minor parties to try to get them to support a Government, when it was obvious that the right answer was a Dissolution and a general election. This Bill has unquestionably got it wrong by saying that there has to be that 14-day period. It would have been too long in the Winston Churchill case and too long in the James Callaghan case. It is obvious that we should have gone straight to the country at those times. Who knows whether it would have been long enough in January 1924, when Labour had to make an arrangement with the Liberals—not the Liberal Democrats—to form the first Labour Government? Would that have taken 14 days or longer to concoct? It would have depended on the circumstances. Insisting rigidly on this 14-day period feels obviously like the wrong solution.
With respect to the Government, we are in this mess—it is obvious that it is a mess—because the coalition is looking for a mechanism to hold itself together, as David Laws’s book makes absolutely clear. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, has the courage to shake his head. I therefore invite him to draw attention to those parts of Mr David Laws’s book with which he disagrees. I invite him to say so if this change has been introduced because the Government believe that it is the right thing to do for the country, rather than a means of holding the two parts of the coalition together.
We are where we are: we are looking at this ill thought-out Bill, which is a means of holding the two bits of the coalition together. What is the right solution? I respectfully suggest that the right solution is to give maximum flexibility so that normally, when there is a vote of no confidence, the Government should go straight to the country, as usually happens. There should not always be the need for the 14-day pause. However, there should be some mechanism so that, if it is appropriate, a new Government can be formed, as in the Baldwin example or the Winston Churchill example. That is what the Government should try to produce as part of this Bill, rather than have this 14-day period, which will lead to a 14-day pause when there is no Government, often when the country is simply waiting for nothing. Alternatively, there is the unseemly scene of a Government trying to avoid going to the country, bidding with the minor parties or their own Back-Benchers to get them back into the position where they vote in favour of a new Government, even though they are, in substance, the same as the old Government and have cobbled something together to get around the no-confidence vote.
Either—14 days of nothing or the old Government coming back as a retread new Government within the 14 days—is a very undesirable result. I very much hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will tell me why I am wrong about both conclusions, and how the Bill deals with them. If he cannot deal with them, perhaps the answer is to go back to the drawing board and think of something that, as my noble friend Lord Grocott said, is effective in dealing with the problem at the moment—namely, the present system. A vote of no confidence normally allows for an election but is flexible enough to ensure that a Government emerge when appropriate.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, indicated in moving Amendment 34, and as was confirmed by several speakers, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, its effect would be to trigger an early general election simply by a vote of no confidence in the Government. In other words, a simple majority in the House of Commons could lead to an immediate general election. This amendment places the power to decide whether and when there should be an early general election very much in the gift of the Executive.
I shook my head when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, seemed to suggest that this was some contrivance to keep together the coalition. First, I do not believe that to be the case, and, secondly, the Bill seeks a system of fixed-term Parliaments not just for this Parliament but into the future, when it may not be the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrat party in office. It might be the Labour Party that is in office, or a combination of parties. Therefore, I wholly reject this idea that it is intended to be some quick fix. The point has been debated on a number of occasions; and the party opposite fought the last election on the policy of fixed-term Parliaments, although one sometimes would be surprised by that.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, said at Second Reading, there is a spectrum in terms of Parliaments: at one end you have complete flexibility, much as we have at the moment, as to when the Prime Minister can call an election; and at the other end you have complete rigidity. Many of the problems that have been raised would be resolved if you had complete rigidity and there were no safety valve, as I think the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House described it. I have not heard in any of our debates—either at Second Reading, in the other place or indeed in any of our Committee debates—anyone actually arguing for total rigidity. Therefore, there has to be a safety valve. In trying to devise these safety valves, we have produced one that reflects the two situations that could currently arise if there were a vote of no confidence. In addition to that, there is the safety valve of a Dissolution with a two-thirds majority. There was a view, certainly expressed around the time of the coalition agreement, that a vote of no confidence in the other place ought to have some consequence.
Perhaps I can just finish this point, which my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth raised: the problem with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is that a Dissolution would allow only for an immediate general election. However, the dual convention that exists is that after a vote of no confidence in the Government, the Prime Minister may resign and a new Administration may be formed, which happened in 1924 when the Baldwin Government were defeated and a Labour Government were then established, as was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Or, indeed, there could be a Dissolution, and we are saying that there would be a Dissolution if it were not possible to form another Government. We will come to the timing, but there ought at least to be some time to allow another Government to be formed.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am intrigued by the analogy that the Minister uses in respect of requiring a larger majority than a simple one as a safety valve. Is that not a bit like taking a boiler, setting the pressure 30 per cent higher and saying that is making the thing safer? Surely, a safety valve implies a lower trigger, not a higher trigger.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I was using the terminology used by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. It is not one I would necessarily disagree with, but what was meant by the safety valve—and the chair of that committee is here—was that, rather than be completely locked into a rigid fixed-term Parliament, with no way out if Parliament was unable to continue, there be mechanisms to trigger an election. One of them is where most sides agree that there should be an election and they constitute the two-thirds majority that would lead to an immediate Dissolution. The other mechanism by which an election would be called is where there has been a vote of no confidence in the Government and, within a period of 14 days, no other Government have been able to command the confidence of the House of Commons. It is fair to say—
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Surely, given how the noble and learned Lord has explained it, the safety is being provided for the Executive in order to stay in office, which contradicts the whole thrust of this Government’s position that this Bill is about handing more power back to Parliament. The safety valve is being provided for the Executive.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, maybe “safety valve” leads to a misleading impression of what is meant. It is not a safety valve for the Executive; it is a safety valve for Parliament. If Parliament recognises that it is no longer able to function, there is one mechanism for finding a way out of that breakdown, and that is by calling an election. That is certainly not to the Executive’s advantage. Alternatively, where a Government have lost the confidence of the House of Commons and no other Government can be established, again, there is a mechanism for an election to be called. I do not believe that in any way helps the Executive.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
I go back to my point about the use of the phrase “safety valve”, which I think appears throughout the Constitution Committee’s report in quotation marks. The question about whether it is for the Executive or the legislature is not one we pursued. In response to the exchanges we have just heard between the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, one is brought back to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Grocott: “Why make this so complex? Why not just stick with the present position?”. Everything that the Constitution Committee said about this was in relation to the complexity of the provisions in this Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I think it is also fair to say that the general trigger mechanisms, if I can call them that, were generally supported by the Constitution Committee which had a lot of negative things to say about this Bill.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble and learned Lord again but that is precisely the point I was making earlier. Those were the understandings within the context of this Bill and not the political judgments which have been expressed, rightly, in this debate.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for confirming that in the context of this Bill these were identified as the correct mechanisms. As I indicated, if passed into law, this Bill will certainly bind this Government and this Parliament, and it will also look to the future.
The problem of the position being abused also engaged the concern of the Constitution Committee, and much of the noble and learned Lord’s Second Reading speech was devoted to that. Again, if you just had a straightforward, simple Dissolution which could be conjured up by the Government of the day, that would drive a coach and horses through a Bill which was intended to lead to a fixed-term Parliament. If the Prime Minister could conjure up a vote of no confidence knowing that would trigger a general election, it would restore the power of Dissolution with the Prime Minister.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
I have a very short question. Will my noble and learned friend deal with the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which appeared to me to be totally acceptable? Can he say what is wrong with the constitution? If there is nothing wrong with it, what are we doing messing about with it?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am trying to address the arguments advanced by a number of noble Lords and will certainly come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. He asked what was wrong with the position in 1979. Under our constitution as it then was and as it stands today, the Prime Minister followed a course of action which was constitutionally acceptable. We are looking at a situation where that would not be the framework within which the Prime Minister was acting—he would be acting within the framework of a Parliament elected for a fixed term. The then Prime Minister had the choice of whether to resign or immediately call a general election. He chose to seek a Dissolution. Resigning would not be possible under the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. What we are seeking to do is take away the power of the Prime Minister to call an election. I think my noble friend was trying to get in earlier—
Lord Cormack
Yes I was. I am most grateful to my noble friend, who is the most conciliatory of men—but. The two devices of the 14 days and the two-thirds majority are in this Bill to protect whoever is the Prime Minister and whoever are the Executive, and there can be no getting away from that. Surely, allowing a Prime Minister, having lost the confidence of the House of Commons, 14 days, or allowing two-thirds of its elected Members—not two-thirds who are necessarily there at the time—to vote for a Dissolution, is a protective device and one that gives time for the powers that be, the Whips Office and elsewhere, to work on Members. It will make for a thoroughly undignified situation, and it will only add power to the Executive and take it away from Parliament, where it rightly belongs.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend Lord Lamont has also been trying to get in. If he wishes to ask a question, I shall deal with it and then press on.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
At Second Reading, my noble and learned friend said that the advantage and the public interest in having a fixed-term Parliament was predictability and continuity, as a Government could then complete their programme over a five-year period. I understand that argument. However, what public good is produced when a Government with a wafer-thin majority lose the confidence of the legislature and then artificially try to create a situation in which a new type of Government with new allies might be formed? Why is that in the public interest? Why have these two devices to try to create a new Government in place of the previous one? I do not see the public interest in completing five years with two different Governments.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
As has been pointed out, what happened in Wales was that, after Mr Alun Michael resigned—he did not actually face a vote of no confidence but there was one on the horizon—a new Government were formed who quite successfully saw out their term of office. The point that I am trying to make is that with fixed-term Parliaments there is that certainty.
Equally, it has been widely recognised that there must be some mechanism that allows an election to take place if it is no longer possible for a Parliament to continue. That is why I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that these are devices that somehow are to help the Executive; they are devices for where Parliament can no longer function. If these rules had been in place in 1979 and the then Prime Minister, Mr Callaghan, had decided that calling an election was the right thing to do, I rather think that the then leader of the Opposition, Mrs Thatcher, might well have agreed with him and there would have been a two-thirds majority for a dissolution. Alternatively, as happened in 1924, it was possible for one Government to resign and for another to come in and form an Administration.
Lord Norton of Louth
What I have to say is fundamental to what my noble and learned friend is saying. In the present situation, if a Government lose a vote of confidence, the Prime Minister has the option either of calling an election or of resigning. The Government go. Under the phrasing of this Bill, the Government do not have to go; they can be reformulated. In that sense, the provision protects the Government as the present situation does not.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
They could if they commanded a majority in the House of Commons. It would require them to face the House of Commons and command a majority there. It is no good for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, to say, “Well, we have these two situations, as happened with Mr Baldwin in 1924, and somehow we have to find a means for that to happen”. This provision tries to find a means by which that could happen. He may say that this is not the best means of trying to do that; I have not yet heard from him how he would seek to do that, given that his party also believes in fixed-term Parliaments and does not believe that they should be rigid. If he thinks that there should be a mechanism for a Government to resign and a new Government to be formed without an election, we would certainly be open to hearing how he would devise the means by which that could be done. It is certainly not done by the amendment to which he put his name, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
On the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, with regard to the period of 14 days, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern said, with the devolution settlements a period of 28 days is allowed for a new Government to be constituted after a Government in Scotland or Wales lose a vote of confidence. We took the judgment—and I accept that it is a judgment—
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am sorry, but I have been very generous. It is important that we make progress.
We took the judgment that 14 days was the appropriate time to allow for another Government to be formed. I pick up on the point made by my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree, who said that more than five days might have been better in May last year. I leave that thought hanging. We have a culture here of doing it in one day, with the pantechnicons rolling up into Downing Street and furniture being taken out. That may not be healthy, particularly if we are in a situation where there may well be more elections that do not produce an outcome with an overall majority for one particular party.
The position with the devolved Administrations is not always comparable, but I simply reflect that in 1999, after the election to the Scottish Parliament, there was a situation where no party had a majority. The pressure on those of us who were negotiating to try to establish a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition was quite intense for that to be done in a relatively short period time. By the time of the 2003 Scottish election, where again there was no overall majority, there was not the same pressure. We were able to deliberate longer before finalising a coalition agreement; because of our experience in 1999, we had changed the expectation, as it were. I believe that is what would happen, as there would be a change of expectation and there would not be the same level of pressure to rush into an agreement. As my noble friend Lord Newton indicated, places like Germany seem to take a bit longer than we do without necessarily causing great upheavals there.
That is why we took the view that 14 days was right. It is not just 14 days to establish a Government but 14 days during which a new Government would have to be established and a vote of confidence in that Government to have been passed by the other place. Therefore, it is not simply the formation of a Government. It could well be that during that period of time it became blindingly obvious to everyone that no Government would be formed. In those circumstances the sensible thing might be to have a dissolution motion, agreed by all parties, so that an election could be triggered rather than waiting the 14 days. Equally, if a new Government were formed very promptly, we would not have to wait 14 days either for that period of relative uncertainty, as it was described, to be over.
As the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, who is no longer in his place, pointed out, in 1979 there was a period of five weeks before the Government were defeated. The point I would make is that, in trying to arrive at the 14 days, we wanted to look at the fact that there was a period then, and there would also have to be an election period after it. We did not want to make it too long, but equally we felt that too short a period might not allow the appropriate level of time. A balance has to be struck. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, whose Constitution Committee did not make a political judgment; nevertheless its constitutional judgment was that the Government got it right constitutionally in allowing a period of 14 days.
A similar amendment was considered in the other place, where I think it was defeated overwhelmingly. Indeed, Mr Chris Bryant indicated that he was very much with the government Front Bench on the matter. I think that the amendment would lead to restoring the power of the Prime Minister to trigger a general election when he or she wished it to happen through a vote of no confidence. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, expressed concern that even with the 14 days that could happen. I believe it could happen even more easily with the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. That would drive a coach and horses through the principle of having a fixed-term Parliament and taking away the power from the Executive. Therefore I urge him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the noble and learned Lord tell the Committee whether he intends to take away the subsection in order to redraft it to eliminate the ambiguities which expert academic commentators have drawn attention to and which I think are significant?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise to the noble Lord, as I think that was his very first point, which was also picked up in the report of the Constitution Committee. In the light of that, we have considered the wording and we do not believe that it leads to ambiguity. We are not looking to a situation where there is, as it were, an investiture or a notional vote on whether someone should be recommended to Her Majesty the Queen to be Prime Minister; a Government would have to be formed. However, in the light of his comments and those of the Constitution Committee, I am willing to look again to see whether the matter can be even further clarified. However, having considered it at some length, we think that the wording actually says what it means on the face of the Bill. Nevertheless, I undertake to consider the point that the noble Lord made.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I thank the noble and learned Lord for his willingness to look again to see whether the drafting could be clarified. I think that is important.
The debate that we have just had shows that this question of whether there should be a 14-day provision following a vote of no confidence is a subject that has been very well worth our while to consider. The Minister denied that the provision is a contrivance, but if it is not that in itself, it is the product of a contrivance—a contrivance to keep the coalition in place for the longest possible time. On this policy of fixed-term Parliaments, the more we examine it in this Committee, the more we realise that there are much greater difficulties attaching to what appeared to be a simple and beguiling proposition than were recognised at the outset by the framers of manifestos in various political parties and by Ministers as they prepared this Bill.
The noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Norton of Louth, underscored how, among the risks contained in the provisions in Clause 2, there is the risk that the provisions will, perversely, serve to protect the position of the Government. I acquit the coalition of having that motive, perhaps, but that may be the consequence of the provision. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, was of course right to remind us that politics does not stand still and that we may well continue to see rather different electoral outcomes from those that we were accustomed to seeing in past decades. The constitution, of course, always needs to respond flexibly, pragmatically and appropriately. That is one great virtue of not having a written constitution and one reason why I worry that this Government are so keen to write into statute great chunks of a new constitution. That is a difficult thing to get right; it may well be impossible.
My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and my noble friend Lord Grocott described graphically the absurdities that would have occurred had this Bill been on the statute book in 1979, or indeed in 1940, with the undignified and chaotic situation that that would have produced in Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
On 1940, let me just be clear that these provisions would never have been engaged then, as Mr Chamberlain did not lose a vote. He decided to resign and the King, no doubt on the recommendation of the outgoing Prime Minister, asked Mr Churchill to form a Government. The provisions in the Bill would not have come into play.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The Minister is absolutely right in relation to that. I took the 1940 example because I felt that one has to deal with the position. Suppose that Chamberlain had lost the vote of confidence; what then would have been the position? We have to test it against that but I accept what he says: it would not have been engaged.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, if I may say so, that was another worthwhile exchange. It would not be my intention to prevent the possibility of resignation. This clause could be amended fairly easily to incorporate that possibility. One would simply have to say that a parliamentary general election may also take place if the Speaker of the House issues a certificate. Against that background and against the noble and learned Lord’s undertaking to reconsider the specific drafting of the subsection, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Justice: Civil Litigation Reform
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a Statement. I have today laid before Parliament two documents: the Government’s response to our recent consultation on Lord Justice Jackson’s recommendations for reforming no-win no-fee arrangements, and a fresh consultation document on proposals to overhaul the civil justice system. Copies of both documents will be available in the Vote Office and on the Ministry of Justice website. I hope to bring forward legislation on the Jackson reforms as soon as parliamentary time allows.
To many people in this country, the prospect of legal action is an expensive, daunting nightmare. One of the worst features of our compensation culture is that our justice system has increasingly become closed to vast rafts of the ordinary public by legal costs out of all proportion to the dispute or the claim. The proposals I am announcing today will, I hope, begin to restore proportion and confidence in our system of justice for both claimants and defendants.
First, following careful consideration of the consultation responses, I have decided to reform no-win no-fee arrangements to stop the perverse situation where fear of excess costs forces defendants to settle, even when they know they are in the right. I can therefore announce that the Government will seek to legislate to return the no-win no-fee system to first principles. We plan to end the recoverability of success fees and insurance premiums which drive up legal costs, award claimants a 10 per cent uplift in general damages where they have suffered loss, and then ensure that they take an interest in controlling the bills being run up on their behalf by expecting them to pay their own lawyers’ success fee. We will also bring forward our plans to encourage parties to make and accept reasonable offers, to protect the majority of personal injury claimants from paying a winning defendant’s costs and to allow claimants to recover the cost of expert reports in clinical negligence cases.
Secondly, I am publishing a consultation paper which I believe paves the way for the most effective and efficient delivery of civil justice after 15 years of stagnation. The current system is slow, stressful and expensive and change is long overdue. My aim is to help people avoid court wherever possible while reducing costs where that is unavoidable. We are proposing that small-value cases should automatically be referred to mediation so that many people are able to avoid the experience of court entirely; the maximum value for small claims will be raised from £5,000 to £15,000 to enable more cases to be heard through the simple small claims process rather than a more costly, complicated trial; to increase the value below which claims cannot be brought in the High Court to £100,000 so that the county court jurisdiction is extended and the High Court is reserved for only genuinely complex or high-value cases; new measures which will improve the ability of courts to tackle those who evade payment of their debts even though they have the means to do so, while ensuring that those who cannot pay continue to be protected—for example, by setting a minimum level of consumer debt at which property could be put at risk for non-payment—and, my final example, the extension of a successful online system to cut waiting times and legal expenses in personal injury cases, as recommended by my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham.
We have a duty to deliver a civil justice system which is more equitable, accessible and just. Resorting to the law need not be the long, drawn-out, expensive nightmare which so many people experience today. It could become a sensible, affordable way of resolving disputes in a proportionate manner. I believe these reforms will help to restore those fundamental values of proportion and fairness in our civil justice system. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Bach
I begin by thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement made by his right honourable friend and for giving us advance sight of it. We have a number of questions, mainly around the first part of the Statement. We look forward to the second part on the commencement of the consultation period, and broadly welcome the fact that there is to be a consultation period on those issues.
As regards the first part, we of course accept that costs in civil proceedings are very much worth investigating; indeed, we did so when in government. I am sure we all agree that those suffering injury through the negligence of public and private bodies and who cannot afford to fund actions privately must have recourse to the civil justice system. Our fear is that these plans go so far in trying to keep down costs that some claimants with good cases will find it difficult, if not impossible, to find a lawyer who will take on their case. Of course, the devil will be in the detail of today’s announcement, and I ask when it is intended that legislation will be introduced. Will it be part of a Bill that is rumoured to be coming from the Ministry of Justice within the next few months?
To justify his announcement, the Justice Secretary refers in his Statement to Lord Justice Jackson’s monumental report. However, have Her Majesty’s Government taken into account Lord Justice Jackson’s view that his proposals should be seen as a package and should not be subject to cherry-picking, although is that not exactly what the Government have done in this announcement? Will he also take into account Lord Justice Jackson’s strong desire to keep civil legal aid for clinical negligence and housing cases, which are currently very much under threat from the Government’s proposals? I quote from page 70 of his final report:
“I do, however, stress the vital necessity of making no further cutbacks in legal aid availability or eligibility”.
Is it fair to allow claimant solicitors to recover up to 25 per cent of their costs from the damages that a claimant recovers when the increase from defendants to claimants in compensation will be only 10 per cent and will apply only to general damages, which as the House will know, are sometimes only a fraction of the total damages? Why should someone who has suffered the trauma of an injury at work be told that some of the money they have justly received to compensate them is to go to their lawyer? Do we really want to go down the route of contingency fees? I know that they existed under our law for a short time but they no longer do. I think that at some stage the House will want to debate the whole issue of contingency fees and whether they are an appropriate course for the English and Welsh legal system.
Has the Justice Secretary had a chance to assess the road traffic accident portal scheme introduced by the previous Government to reduce costs? This uses fixed fees and efficient processing to limit costs, and it came into force in March 2010. Does the Minister accept that it has reduced by half the cost of 75 per cent of personal injury cases? Expanding the scheme to cover personal injury claims would, we believe, save costs. Do the Government agree?
The Government have said that an aim of the reforms is to reduce the costs that defendants have to pay. Of course, many defendants are insurance companies. In the light of the reforms, can the Minister say what reductions the Government expect in insurance premiums? Can he confirm whether there is an impact assessment of how the changes will affect access to justice, costs to defendants and reductions in insurance premiums?
Next, is the Minister concerned that, although there will be limitations on claimants’ ability to bring a case and on the costs incurred by their solicitors, there will be no such controls on a defendant in defending a case? Does that not raise the question of possible inequality between the two sides in a case?
In this House we all agree that a fundamental principle of our justice system should be proper access to justice. As a Government, we agreed with senior judges such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—the Lord Chief Justice—as well as Lord Justice Jackson and others, that the costs of civil litigation were sometimes excessive. We would all like reduced litigation costs and, very importantly, alternatives to litigation and particularly to the courts to be found wherever possible.
Our fear is that the proposals could restrict access to civil justice, particularly for those who do not have their own means of funding—rather like the Government’s proposals on cutting legal aid in social welfare law. It could reduce access to justice rather than the opposite, which is our desire—to improve it. It will be on that key issue of access to justice that we will hold the Government’s actions to account.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, both for his welcome for the discussion on the county court proposals and for the general level of his questioning. I think that if we are to touch a system like this, there is bound to be some concern about whether there will be a reduction in access to justice. We are looking at that carefully in our impact assessment and in other approaches. On the question of legislation, we intend to legislate as soon as possible and as soon as there is a suitable vehicle.
I do not think that we have cherry-picked Lord Justice Jackson’s report. We have retained a certain hold-back on protecting clinical negligence claimants in the help that they will get. Lord Justice Jackson made 109 recommendations, and the Government are taking the reform of conditional fee agreements as a matter of priority because of the potential cost saving for the Government and others. He conducted a year-long review of current arrangements and considered the likely impact of these proposals. Much of the necessary data are held in private hands by lawyers and defendants in civil litigation. Data were provided during Sir Rupert’s review and further data were received by the Government during the consultation. The Government’s initial impact assessments were published alongside the consultation and comments were specifically sought on the assumption. A final impact assessment was published alongside the Government’s response. Our impact assessment shows that successful claimants in personal injury cases will generally end up in a similar position to now, although overall most will gain.
As the noble Lord said, the road traffic scheme, to which the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, also referred in his report, seems to have been a considerable success, and we are examining ways of how it could be extended. On the impact on insurance it is difficult to be precise, but it is interesting that today the Association of British Insurers has issued a statement saying that it expects insurance costs to fall as a result of these reforms.
Why should claimants pay? Claimants with meritorious claims will still be able to bring them. The Government believe that it is important that people with serious injuries should be able to receive compensation for negligence. That will continue. Indeed, the general damages for non-pecuniary loss, such as pain, suffering and loss of amenity, will be increased by 10 per cent under these proposals and there will be an incentive to reduce costs compared with now, such as improving incentives to settle. This will improve justice overall.
As the noble Lord will know, one of the main criticisms of the post-2000 operation of this scheme was that claimants had no real incentive to put a check on their legal costs on the assumption that they would never be responsible for it. The Government also believe that damage-based agreements will provide an additional method of funding for claimants. Like conditional fees, they are a type of no-win no-fee agreement under which lawyers are not paid if they lose a case but may take a percentage of the damages awarded to their client if their case is successful.
I hope that I have covered most of the points that the noble Lord covered. If I have not, I will give him opportunity to intervene again. In aid of these proposals, I call upon two statements. One was made by Mr Jack Straw, who originally commissioned the Jackson report.
Lord McNally
Did he not? Sorry. You were there; I was not. Thank you very much. Mr Straw said that the Jackson proposals,
“are designed to reduce the costs of civil litigation overall. Those costs have risen too high, and that is a bar to proper access to justice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/10; col. 740.]
Perhaps he was pointing to what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, just said. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger—the Master of the Rolls—commented:
“Critics do not appear to have been able to provide an alternative model for a comprehensive package to tackle what seems universally acknowledged to be a non-sustainable problem of rising civil litigation costs. The time for analysing the problem has come to an end. The time for action has come”.
The Lord Chancellor has brought these proposals forward in that spirit.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I welcome the review of civil justice. One problem with the civil justice system is that we have, over the past 10 years or so, succeeded in creating what amounts to a parallel system of criminal justice enforced by the civil courts, thus adding to the burden that already exists for the civil courts to discharge. I have in mind in particular the serious crime prevention order and the violent offender orders. Those are just examples of what we are doing; there are many others. Would it not be better for what are essentially matters of criminal justice to be dealt with in the criminal courts and not in the civil courts, thus relieving the pressure on the civil courts? Could the Minister see his way to somehow looking again at the serious crime prevention orders and the violent offender orders and repatriate them, if that could be done, to the criminal courts rather than the civil courts?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I will certainly not bluff the House that I am able, with no legal training, to assess the noble and learned Lord’s suggestion. These are still proposals, and his intervention will be reported back to the Lord Chancellor. If his suggestions have merit—and coming from that source, I have no doubt that they do—I am sure they will be given full consideration before we bring forward our final proposals.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, centuries of English law produced a position whereby, in civil and criminal cases, it was a principle that the lawyer should not have a personal interest in the outcome of the case. In other words, he would be paid whether he won or lost. That was mitigated to ensure that there was proper access to justice by the introduction of the legal aid scheme. It was on that principle that during the previous Government’s period we on these Benches opposed the introduction of no-win no-fee schemes.
It is interesting to look at this Statement to see what are now said to be the problems resulting from the change from the basic principle that we had had for so long. The Statement refers to,
“the perverse situation where fear of excess costs forces defendants to settle, even when they know they are in the right”.
The proposals are also said to,
“begin to restore proportion and confidence in our system of justice”.
What has happened in the mean time, over the past 10 or 12 years, is that advertising has been allowed to proliferate and non-lawyers have collected and farmed claims. By advertising, they have drawn to themselves hundreds and thousands of claims and have then farmed them out to various firms of lawyers. All these ills have done nothing to improve the lot of the claimant who has been injured or who has a grievance that he wishes to be resolved.
It is because I have such a basic objection to no-win no-fee that I cannot completely endorse these proposals, but they are undoubtedly an improvement on what has gone before and they redress some of the problems that have arisen. Success fees and insurance premiums are recoverable; that is to say that I as a claimant can insure myself against losing the case and then charge the insurance premium, which I know can be tens of thousands of pounds, to the defendant, provided that I am successful. I can do that not if the case goes to court but if the case is settled at some stage, so the cost of litigation has been a huge problem that has faced defendants and insurance companies.
Another problem that arises because of that is that a plaintiff has very little interest in the amount of costs in the case. He is insured against paying the defendant’s costs, he will recover if he wins and if he loses, and he has none of his own costs to pay. It has been very damaging to permit no-win no-fee cases to go in the way that they have. The proposal to ensure that claimants have an interest in the result and are restrained from allowing their lawyers to run up massive bills of cost, as proposed, is something that I, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Bach, think is a way forward.
The second part of the Statement dealing with the consultation paper on the improvement and efficient delivery of civil justice is also to be welcomed. The proposals to give greater jurisdiction to small value cases, for small claims cases to be heard through the simple small claims process and to increase the threshold for going to the High Court are all to be welcomed.
Lord De Mauley
I draw my noble friend’s attention to the fact that Statements are supposed to be the occasion for brief comments and questions.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I apologise. I was thinking it was a debate.
Lord McNally
In fact, we are trying to cut out the middle man, as my noble friend Lord Newton is now.
I could listen to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford all day on these matters. On his comments about no-win no-fee, I recall very well the debates about that and about the removal of the principle of no self-interest on the part of the lawyer in the outcome and of it simply being a matter of delivering a professional fee. Against that was the very real motivation that the system could and would provide access to justice that might not otherwise have been there.
On balance, as I said in my response to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, we are trying to get the system back more to how it was when my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern introduced the system in the early 1990s and to avoid some of the inflation that has occurred in the past 10 years. For reference, a general liability insurer has indicated that in 1999 claimants’ solicitors’ costs were equivalent to just over half the damages agreed or awarded at 56 per cent. By 2004, average claimant costs were 103 per cent of damages. By 2010, average claimant costs represented 142 per cent of the sums received by the injured victims. The insurer also indicated that, while average damages paid had increased since 1999 by 33 per cent, average claimant costs paid, including disbursements and insurance premiums, have increased 234 per cent. It is that kind of inflation that we are trying to tackle in these proposals.
On the other point made by my noble friend, we are aware of concerns about referral fees. This matter was raised in a recent report by the House of Commons Transport Committee on the costs of motor insurance. The committee called for greater transparency in referral fees. The Government are now awaiting the legal services report on referral fees, which is due shortly.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I declare an interest as an unpaid consultant in the firm of solicitors at which I was for many years a senior partner. Like the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, I am no great fan of the no-win no-fee scheme. I recall a discussion with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, on a social occasion many years ago at which I outlined some objections. He was much more confident about it. The problem is the disappearance of legal aid for so many of these claims, particularly in the realm of personal injury claims.
In a letter today in the Guardian, the president of the Law Society makes two points on which the Minister might like to comment. The first is in relation to the high costs incurred in clinical negligence claims. The president says that much of that is incurred because of the way in which the National Health Service contests these claims. It is very slow and, in far too many cases, the claims go right to the door of the court instead of seeking to settle them earlier. Savings could be made if those cases were better dealt with.
The second point relates to the thrust of the Government’s proposals today around mediation. Does the Minister agree with the president of the Law Society, or does he have a view about her comments, that mediation is suitable in cases where the parties are roughly comparable in their status, economic position and so on but much less so where there is a disequilibrium between the two parties? Is there not some danger in pressing the mediation route, as the Government seem intent to do with these reforms, at the expense of having matters properly adjudicated on with a determination that is perhaps more suitable in more cases than the proposals imply?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I take on board what the noble Lord has said about the way in which the NHS fights its cases. I am not sure whether I have the exact costs to hand but they are enormous. Certainly any way of making settlements easier and less costly will save literally hundreds of millions of pounds for the NHS. Certainly the lowest figure for the impact on these settlements would be £50 million a year, but many people believe it would be far more.
I agree that mediation will work in disputes only up to a point. However, many people find themselves drawn ever deeper into the litigation process, with its associated costs, when a matter might be dealt with much earlier. Mediation offers the opportunity to nip problems in the bud and to avoid the stress that can often accompany a drawn-out legal process. The noble Lord made a point about inequality of arms, and a great deal will depend on the quality of the mediator and their ability to judge these matters.
I now have the figures for the NHS. In 2008-09 the National Health Service paid out £312 million in damages, but it paid out far more in lawyers’ fees—£456 million. That is the wrong way round and it is not where the NHS should be spending its money.
I have the highest respect for the Law Society, which has an absolute duty to represent its members and to put forward its views. However, I am not sure that the invitation on its website at the moment is within the dignity of the profession. It states:
“Defending legal aid: send us your case studies … What we urgently need from you are cases studies of individuals with interesting stories that will chime with the general public. It is clear from our research that cases of medical negligence (especially obstetrics), education matters and private law family matters will resonate very well with the public. Those cases based on clients who are happy to discuss their case with the media and be photographed would be particularly helpful. High profile cases will also be gratefully received”.
That is one way of representing its members, but I would not describe it as research.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, first, in the light of what has been said, I declare an interest as the chair of a health trust. I have a good deal of sympathy with what has been said both on that front and about mediation. Secondly, I declare my solidarity with those on both Front Benches as they seem to agree that the underlying issue is access to justice. That means looking at the small print alongside the proposals for legal aid.
I have two, perhaps three, questions. First, do these proposals relate only to the civil courts or to other bodies that are, in effect, part of civil justice—namely, employment tribunals, land tribunals and others? Secondly, do they apply in any way to the great raft of tribunals that involve citizen v state and have not normally been seen as civil justice? Thirdly, how many people have recourse to the civil courts and how many people have recourse to tribunals?
Lord McNally
My noble friend is right that the proposals will be linked in with those for legal aid. The Government have still not made their final decisions on the legal aid package on which they have been consulting, although they have indicated that they want to make cuts on the civil side of legal aid and how they want to make them.
We are trying to reduce the cost of our legal services by reforming court procedures, by introducing mediation, which may avoid the greater costs of court, and by following Jackson and putting some responsibility on claimants for managing legal costs. I had better come clean with my noble friend about how far the proposals extend into the world of tribunals. I shall write to him on that, because I am not quite sure of the answer. I would imagine that they do, but I had better make sure and write to my noble friend.
Lord Laming
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and the Minister referred to the rather seductive advertisements that appear very frequently in many places—the Minister gave a vivid illustration of one such advertisement. Is there anything in these proposals that will have an impact on that kind of advertising?
Lord McNally
No, not in these proposals, but, as I said earlier, we are waiting for a report on that matter. It must be at least 10 years ago, and perhaps more, that I raised from the Benches opposite the fact that you have only to watch the television any afternoon at home—I know that noble Lords do not often do that—to see those adverts, which make the winning of a case seem akin to winning the lottery. You see a smiling client with a large cheque, having successfully referred their case to some organisation or another, without the general public being aware that the organisation with which they were in contact would not have dealt with their case but farmed it out to a solicitor, thereby only adding to the costs. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor is very well aware of this and we await the report. I suspect, knowing him as I do, that he will want to take action on something which irritates and angers a lot of people.
The third question of my noble friend Lord Newton was how many people have recourse to the civil courts. In 2009, some 1,460,000 money claims were issued. I hope that helps my noble friend.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Norton of Louth
“( ) the Prime Minister has decided to request a dissolution in place of offering his or her resignation.”
Lord Norton of Louth
I shall speak also to Amendment 38. I very much agreed with the arguments advanced earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, but that is largely because they all supported my amendments rather than the one that he was addressing. Perhaps, given that he has now left the Chamber, he was trying to get his arguments in first in support of my amendments.
My amendments are designed to maintain features of our existing constitutional arrangements while addressing the problem for which the Bill makes no provision: that is, the Government opting to resign without having been defeated on a vote of confidence.
Amendment 35 would maintain the present constitutional convention that if the Government lose a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister resigns or requests that Parliament be dissolved. The precedent was established in 1841 and has been maintained since. As we have heard, in January 1924, the Baldwin Government met the new Parliament, were defeated in two Divisions of confidence and resigned. In October of the same year, the MacDonald Government were defeated in two Divisions deemed matters of confidence and requested that Parliament be dissolved. As we have heard about in some detail, in 1979, the Callaghan Government were defeated on an explicit vote of confidence and requested the Dissolution of Parliament.
The advantage of the current situation is that it allows some flexibility in order to respond to the conditions of the time—the point made earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. If it is clear that there is no prospect of an alternative Government being formed, there seems little point in waiting. If one takes the situation in March 1979, can one really claim that the Prime Minister should not have requested the Queen to dissolve Parliament and hold an election? There was demonstrably no case for waiting. Under the Bill, there would have been a delay of two weeks before an election was triggered.
I see no grounds for not allowing the Prime Minister to recommend an election if the Government have been defeated on a vote of confidence. Stipulating the 14-day gap serves no obvious purpose. It does not provide a disincentive for the Government of the day to manipulate a vote of no confidence. If the Government are able for their own purposes to persuade their supporters to vote for a Motion of no confidence, they can presumably also use them to ensure that no alternative Government can muster a majority for a vote of confidence. That just delays matters by 14 days.
My other amendment provides that if the Government opt to resign and no alternative Government are formed and achieve a vote of confidence, an election will be triggered after the passage of a set period. In my amendment, it is 28 days. That is in line with what is in the devolution legislation. That may appear too generous. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, stipulates 14 days. It may be that 14 days is preferable to 28; it may be that the period should be shorter. As I mentioned earlier, we are unusual in the United Kingdom in having a rapid transition from one Government to another. However, whatever the period, we need at least to stipulate a clear time limit, however unlikely it is to be utilised.
A Prime Minister is not expected to resign unless it appears that an alternative Government can be formed. Only in the event of the implosion of the Government is such a provision likely to be necessary, although in those circumstances it may be that the Opposition could muster sufficient support to pass a Motion of no confidence. However, my amendment covers the highly unlikely, but not impossible, situation of a Prime Minister resigning; the House failing to pass a Motion of no confidence or to mobilise the 400 votes out of 600 necessary for a Dissolution Motion; and the Leader of the Opposition, or some other figure, being unable to form a Government. Under the Bill, there could be stalemate until the election at the end of the five-year period. As we have heard, Belgium is presently setting the record for the length of time for which no Government has been formed. I am not suggesting that we will ever be in that situation. My amendment ensures that such a situation will not arise.
In essence, my amendments seek to maintain the benefits of the present arrangements within the context of fixed-term Parliaments. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)
I have to inform your Lordships that if this amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 36 or 37, because of pre-emption.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 39, which fits into this group covering various contingencies in relation to the resignation of the Prime Minister. My amendment would provide for an early general election if the Prime Minister resigned and, after 14 days, there had been no vote of confidence in any Government of Her Majesty.
This issue was raised by my noble friend Lady Jay during the proceedings of the Select Committee on the Constitution. She asked the Minister, Mr Harper, whether, if a Government resigned without losing a vote of confidence, that would trigger the 14-day provision. Mr Harper replied:
“If the government resigned and we were without a government, you would then have to have a process of government formation. I believe that we think that would be the case”.
That is not quite pellucid and it hardly inspires confidence that Ministers had thought rigorously about this legislation.
Mr Harper then wrote again to the Select Committee, stating that:
“There is nothing in the Bill that prevents a government resigning; the Bill is about the length of a Parliament. If a government decided to resign when the Speaker had indicated that he was not minded to issue such a certificate, then the 14 day period would not be triggered although, as I said to the Committee, a period of government formation would obviously follow. It would just not be time-limited”.
Your Lordships may consider that it should be time-limited and that we should not allow ourselves to get into the Belgian or Iraqi situation whereby a Government cannot be formed for very long periods.
Amendment 38 of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, specifies 28 days. As he anticipated, I think that 28 days is too long. His Amendment 35 does not specify any time limit, but just removes the 14-day provision altogether. It will be no surprise to your Lordships, following a previous debate, if I confide in you that that is a much more attractive provision. However, supposing we accept that time should not be unlimited in such circumstances. If we provided for 14 days before an early general election takes place, following the resignation of the Prime Minister, it would integrate provision for the contingency of the Prime Minister’s resignation with the provisions in the Bill for other early departures of a Government.
It may be wise to provide a clear remedy, given that we have the Bill. The Bill would abolish the royal prerogative of Dissolution. Currently, with the prerogative—as the noble Lord reminded us—if the Prime Minister resigns, the Queen takes soundings to see whether another party leader can form a Government. If he cannot do so, she dissolves Parliament. That remedy is removed by the Bill. The Bill allows resolution of the impasse only if two-thirds of MPs vote to dissolve Parliament. However, that is not a sure remedy, because the Opposition might prefer not to take their chances at an immediate general election—they might not co-operate to secure that two-thirds vote.
It is worth considering what might have happened in historical situations that some of us can at least dimly remember. In the Government of Mr Attlee in 1951, he chose to go to the country. Aneurin Bevan and Harold Wilson had resigned from the Cabinet, having disagreed with the Government’s budget. The Labour Party had a majority of five, and Mr Attlee judged that he could not carry on. Under this Bill, Mr Attlee could not have gone to the country. Under this Bill, Mr Heath could not have gone to the country in February 1974. Of course, Mr Attlee or Mr Heath might have appealed to the other leaders and secured a two-thirds vote of the House of Commons for Parliament to be dissolved and for there to be a general election. However, what might have happened in October 1974, when Harold Wilson chose to go to the country? Would the Conservatives, at that stage, have been ready to agree to a general election? We shall never know, but the answer is uncertain.
It may be as well to provide a clear remedy, although I anticipate that the Minister will point out that it would drive a coach and horses through the central purpose of the Bill, which is to prevent a Prime Minister from seeking an early general election. However, in such situations as I have sketched, it may be desirable and in the public interest for there to be an early general election. The fact that we have to debate these amendments once again shows the unwisdom of seeking to legislate for fixed-term Parliaments.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who has unrivalled academic expertise and authority in matters of this sort. I am a mere practitioner, so my contribution to this debate is very much probing, rather than definitive. I am generally concerned about the drift that would appear to be the theme of this group. The Committee is provided with three options. One would remove the 14-day period for the formation of a new Government if the existing one falls; one would extend that period to 28 days; and the other would keep it at 14 days but change the process by which it would happen. We therefore have a spectrum of three amendments, representing a scale: one with no period at all in which another Government could be formed; one with a 14-day period; and one with a 28-day period. Those of us of a centrist disposition might be naturally inclined towards the middle option—Amendment 39 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. However, strictly speaking, Amendment 39 is not necessary, since it barely departs from the principle that the Government have already adumbrated in the Bill itself.
Therefore, I will concentrate principally on Amendment 35, which is the “back me or sack me” amendment. It would offer a Prime Minister who had lost the support of his or her party in the Commons the opportunity to go to the country instead of to the Palace. There is nothing wrong with that in principle. It might have provided some clear guidance to Thatcher, Major and Blair at moments when factionalism was on the cusp of becoming fratricide. However, again, the amendment is surely unnecessary. The Bill already allows for the Prime Minister to resign or for a new Prime Minister and a new Government to be appointed. What the amendment does is to take away from Back-Benchers in the House of Commons the power actively to insist on the replacement of the Prime Minister with another. That is the principle behind this change. Instead, it places the decision on going to the country, as now, back with the incumbent of No. 10. I thought Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House thought that was not necessarily the best result.
Under the Bill as it stands, a Prime Minister could effectively be disposed of, as Labour wanted to do with Blair for so long. A clear period would then exist for a new Government to be formed. Members of the Committee can imagine that, when Tony Blair eventually stepped down, the Bill’s provisions would have allowed Gordon Brown to form what he called a new Government, in much the same way that John Major did when Margaret Thatcher resigned. It is not, therefore, clear to me whether my noble friend seeks a move away from the principle that votes of confidence in the Government need not precipitate an election—the status quo—if another Government can be formed. Here is the nub of a very important principle. I wonder whether my noble friend is trying to move away from the principle that the Prime Minister must have the authority and confidence of the House of Commons to continue; and whether he is, therefore, moving towards a principle that there ought, automatically, to be an election if there is a change of Prime Minister.
In February 1974, Mr Heath said, “Who governs Britain?”. He did not say, “Back me or sack me”. We have referred to that election on several occasions in your Lordships’ House in recent months; it is one that many of us recall very well. I have no doubt that my noble friend could find much public support for that principle. However, on balance, I have always thought that British Governments should depend simply and solely on the confidence of the House of Commons to remain in office. That is a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential one.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
Will the noble Lord explain to me why I am mistaken in recollecting that Mr Heath did say, “Back me or sack me”? That is my recollection of the interpretation that everybody I knew had of what he said.
Lord Tyler
He may well have said that, but actually what he put on the table before the electorate in 1974, which I remember very well, was that his Government were challenging the country to say whether his Government—and the elected representative Members of the House of Commons who gave confidence to his Government—or the miners should continue to govern the country. That was the issue that he put before the country.
This is, surely, what the Bill seeks to enshrine: that we are a parliamentary democracy, not a quasi-presidential democracy. It is not clear that the noble Lord’s amendments, or any of the options before us in this group, would actually improve it. Unless we intend to complete the process from a parliamentary to a presidential form of government—which I assume my noble friend does not support—surely the change he appears to recommend would be premature. I believe in a parliamentary democracy, and I believe it is the House of Commons that gives confidence to a Government. If that were to change, we would be making a very considerable and dramatic alteration to the basis of our whole constitutional settlement.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
It is possible to see very clearly what the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is trying to achieve. The current position is that, on the defeat of the Government in a vote of no confidence, the Prime Minister has the choice either of resigning, in which case the House of Commons has the opportunity to form a new Government, or, alternatively, of advising the Queen to dissolve Parliament and have a general election. The choice is either have an election or try to produce a new Government. As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is trying, in effect, to replicate that with his proposals.
The amendment is saying that once the Government have lost the vote of confidence, instead of the 14-day period, the second provision required for an immediate general election is that the Prime Minster asks for a Dissolution. The amendment then adds in a bit that says that, where the Prime Minister resigns, there is 28 days to form a new Government. The difficulty is that that is too rigid. Let us assume that in March 1979 the Prime Minister in theory wanted to stay on, although that was not his position at the time. His right course at that point would have been to resign. He would then have had 28 days, in effect, not 14 days, because, remember, the vote was 311 to 310. If you were a Prime Minister who wanted to stay on, you would resign then offer various junior ministries at the widget shop to a variety of people and then get your 311.
The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, would provide for an early general election if,
“on a specified day, the Speaker has been notified that the Prime Minister has tendered to Her Majesty his or her resignation, and … a period of 28 days has passed after the specified day has ended without the House passing any motion expressing confidence in any Government of Her Majesty.”
This may not be what the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, intends, but the wording leads to the possibility that you could end up with a Prime Minister who has been defeated but does not want to go, so he indicates that he is resigning. If the other side fail to form a Government, he could then come back, so the bidding war that has been going on for 28 days is the one that would otherwise have gone on in the 14 days.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I merely seek some advice from the noble and learned Lord. He said that the Prime Minister would have the choice of either resigning or going to the country. Is the constitutional position not actually that it resides with the monarch whether to grant a Dissolution? There might be circumstances where a Prime Minister wished to go the country but there was someone else who was capable of forming a new Administration, and a Dissolution might not be granted.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The modern trend in constitutionality is that you do not wish the monarch to make any decision that could be controversial. In those circumstances, you would normally expect the monarch to act upon the advice of his or her Prime Minister. For example, in the last election, at no stage did the monarch indicate who should seek to form a Government; she left it to the political parties to come forward. In one sense the noble Lord is right but in all practical terms the element of discretion for the monarch has effectively gone. That is the way that political parties now operate when it comes to the question of who should try to form a Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is shaking his head, which worries me deeply. The wording of his amendment seems to me to allow for a resignation because the choice it gives the Prime Minister is Dissolution or resignation. It does not necessarily mean that at the end of the 28-day period he or she does not re-emerge as the Prime Minister, which could be his or her intention right from the outset.
Although I am much more beside the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, than I am beside the Government, neither solution is wholly satisfactory. That is indicative of the inability of a Bill to reflect the ability of the current arrangements where there is a vote of no confidence and to reflect the differing political situations that may have emerged. It is very difficult, for example, to have envisaged the situations in 1940, 1924, 1974, 1979 or 2010, but our current constitution is well able to deal with them. It is possible to accept the principle that there should normally be a fixed-term but where there is a vote of no confidence then there may need to be a Dissolution and a general election. Why do we not have a Bill that simply says that? Even the finest constitutional brain in Britain, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, seems to me when trying to codify it to have produced a situation that even he would not necessarily regard as particularly satisfactory.
In a genuine spirit of consensus I ask the noble and learned Lord, who is much admired for his openness and conciliatoriness, to think about why one does not just have a very simple clause that says that, where there is a vote of no confidence in the Government, the Prime Minister may ask for a Dissolution—full stop and leave it at that. It could then be read in the context of the constitutional conventions governing our country. You would have the safety valve. We would not need to contort ourselves into situations where we are trying to see what history will bring in the future—if that is not a contradiction in terms—which we are not going to be able to manage.
Let us be wide open—like the constitution—and recognise that a vote of no confidence should probably, but not invariably, lead to a general election. Let us have a Bill that reflects that.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for his amendments and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, who again has made some interesting and constructive contributions. Amendments have been tabled, not least the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Cormack, regarding procedures in the Bill concerning motions of no confidence, what the consequences of those might be and whether they need to be more tightly or more widely specified to cover different situations. I repeat what I said at the start of some of our amendments on the second day in Committee relating to the Dissolution provisions in Clause 2. We are willing to listen to what noble Lords have to say on these matters. I particularly note the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. I understand that the thrust of his comments at Second Reading was that the Bill would be open to abuse by a Prime Minister who might wish to contrive a situation to get a Dissolution at the time of his or her choosing and therefore defeat the purpose of a fixed-term Parliament. I would want to consider what he proposed in the light of that and whether it might make dealing with the potential for that abuse simpler; and, on the specific amendments, whether the choice of having a Dissolution or a resignation that could lead to another Government being formed, as happened in 1924, should remain solely in the hands of the Prime Minister or whether Parliament should have a role, as we would seek to provide.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right that I regard the position of there being a contrived vote of no confidence as quite easy under this Bill, but I do not think that there is any dispute about that. The noble and learned Lord accepted it, the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, accepted it, and I have asserted it. So it appears to be agreed on all sides. I do not think that there is anything that can be done about that. Indeed, as I made clear, it would have been right for Mr Heath to have insisted on there being an election through a vote of no confidence if the Opposition had not agreed to an election in 1974 and if there had been a fixed-term Parliament. I see that as indicative of the fact that you are not taking away much power from the Prime Minister. My problem is the idea that the more rigid you make the measure, the more you allow a Prime Minister and a Government to stay in power when it is perfectly plain that the Commons wants to see the back of them and there should be a general election. I see that as the much more dangerous aspect of the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am interested in the noble and learned Lord’s comments, and I shall reflect on this matter. The second point that I made was whether the choice between seeking a Dissolution or there being a resignation with the possibility of an alternative Government being formed should be entirely the choice of the Prime Minister alone or whether, as we seek to do, there should be a role for Parliament when no other Government can be formed and 10 days have elapsed without a confidence motion being passed by Parliament. As I understand it, however, the objective is much the same. In a situation when you have a fixed-term Parliament and it becomes obvious that there is a logjam or deadlock, there must be some means of breaking it and triggering an early election.
The same argument applies to a point made my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I assume that he sees Amendments 35 and 38 as being taken together as part of a package. Under one of his earlier amendments, Amendment 27, he said that if the Prime Minister’s discretion over the date of the election were removed, as would happen with a fixed-term Parliament, it should be provided,
“that an early election is possible only if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the Government or if the Government resign and there is no prospect of another Government being formed”.—[Official Report, 21/3/11; col. 564.]
Although this is a technical problem that could be looked at, as presently constructed the proposal could mean that the Prime Minister of the day might choose neither to seek Dissolution nor to resign. I am sure that that is not the intention behind the amendment as it would create a very difficult situation. However, it could be a consequence of the amendment. I do not want to make too much of a technical point as I am sure that that is not a scenario that my noble friend seeks to advance.
At the conclusion of our debates on the second day in Committee, my noble friend presented a scenario whereby the Government had lost the confidence of the House in a way that did not necessarily trigger the provisions of the Bill. He used as an illustration what might have happened in 1972 if the other place had refused to give the European Communities Bill a Second Reading and it had not been designated by the Speaker as a vote of no confidence. In such a scenario, the Prime Minister might wish to resign or hold an election, and the provisions of the Bill would not necessarily apply. I think it is clear that if the Prime Minister had genuinely lost the confidence of the House of Commons, under the provisions of the Bill there would be a way to make that clear through a motion of no confidence and no other Government being formed by that Prime Minister, so leading to an election. Furthermore, if there was consensus that there should be an election, that could happen with a Dissolution.
Equally, it would still be open to the Prime Minister of the day to resign, as indeed Neville Chamberlain did in 1940. As the noble and learned Lord agreed in the previous debate, it would not have brought into play any of the mechanisms in the Bill. Nevertheless, it was clearly possible for a new Government to be formed under Winston Churchill in two days—I believe that was the figure that he indicated. Nothing in this Bill would inhibit that happening. If the Prime Minister of the day chose to resign, he would tender his resignation to Her Majesty the Queen and the convention would be that, so Her Majesty was not left without a Prime Minister, he would recommend to Her Majesty another MP who would be invited to form a Government. Either that new Government would fail at the first test, there would be a no confidence Motion and the new Government would not be able to get confidence, which would lead to an election; or, alternatively, a new Government might be formed and would command the confidence of the House of Commons. If it commanded the confidence of the House of Commons and could vote a supply, it would be left—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, if we assume the Prime Minister resigns, that does not trigger the Bill. A new person is invited to form a Government. He or she then puts his or her Government to the confidence of the Commons. If we assume there is a vote of no confidence in that Government, then the provisions of the Bill will apply and there will be another 14-day period.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, there would not necessarily be another 14-day period triggered by the first one. Subject to that, the noble and learned Lord’s analysis is absolutely correct. If someone else sought to form a Government and did not win a vote of no confidence, that would lead to an election if no other Government were then formed within 14 days.
I think there is agreement, surprising though it may seem. However, there are two other possible outcomes: that there is a Dissolution leading to an election, or another Government could be formed, the 1924 example being a case in point. As I said, the 14 days is a matter of judgment, but it does provide for a period for that second outcome of another Government being formed to actually happen. We have debated this issue already and we are due for another debate on an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on whether 14 days is right. However, the provision does allow for a period for that to happen and, if it does not happen, for us to proceed to an election.
Lord Grocott
Can the noble and learned Lord answer this question? It has been raised on a number of occasions but I have never heard a specific answer to it. Under the Bill, if the Liberal Democrats decide at some time in the next four years that they cannot support the present Government, the Government lose a motion of no confidence and, during the subsequent 14 days, the Liberal Democrats decide to support the Labour Party—which would not give many of us a great deal of joy—an entirely new Government could be formed without any reference to the British people whatsoever. Is that the position?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It is a very hypothetical situation. Any new Government, as the noble Lord suggests, would have to be subject to a positive vote of confidence. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, says that they would get it. That does not necessarily follow because clearly the two parties do not command a majority in the House of Commons. It is hypothetical but, if the other Government were formed, possibly involving the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, and it commanded the confidence of the House of Commons, which is crucial, the fixed term would continue to its natural conclusion.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, I hesitate to repeat the quotation that I gave from the Constitution Committee’s proceedings in the last debate, but surely the answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is the one that Mr Mark Harper gave to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, in response to exactly the same question—hypothetical though the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, suggests it is—which was that it depended on the circumstances,
“but I think that it could”.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, asked him whether it could produce a Liberal Democrat and Labour Government, and that was the answer that Mr Mark Harper gave.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
There is the important qualification that, if we were in a scenario where this Bill was law, it would also require that there had been a vote of confidence in that Government by the House of Commons. Subject to that qualification, I think the answer is exactly as the noble Baroness indicated.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, this is not new. Surely in a parliamentary democracy the Government require the confidence of the House of Commons. If they have that confidence, they can then continue.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That is self-evident. One might well go back to 1977 when, quite clearly to forestall losing a confidence vote, the Government of Mr James Callaghan entered into a pact rather than a formal coalition with the then Liberal Party and they were able then to win a vote of confidence. You may say it was a Government of a different nature who proceeded to govern after that day because they were engaged in a formal pact and were not a new Administration, but they were different from the Government who had existed up to that date, who had not had a formal pact with one of the opposition parties.
Lord Howarth of Newport
In the scenario that my noble friend Lord Grocott was suggesting, would it actually be necessary under the Bill for there to be a vote of confidence? If the Liberal Democrats had simply decided that they did not wish to carry on in coalition with the Conservatives and made overtures to the Labour Party, there would not have been a vote of no confidence. There would simply have been a realignment within the House of Commons. As far as I can see, the provisions of the Bill are not activated in that situation.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise. I had presumed that there had been a vote of no confidence in what would then have been a Conservative minority Government if the Liberal Democrats had left it. In that case a new Government would have had to be formed and there would have to have been a vote of confidence. I am sure that a new Government formed in that way would have to have a Queen’s Speech, which would trigger a potential confidence motion, and if they won that they would continue to govern. As my noble friend said, if an Administration have the support and the confidence of a majority in the other place, they can govern. I apologise if I misinterpreted the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I presumed that there had been a motion of no confidence, and that may not have been part of the hypothesis that he put. However, the new Government would be susceptible to a vote of no confidence if they did not have a majority and could not command the confidence of the House. Therefore the procedures in this Bill would then be triggered; otherwise it is as the noble Baroness says.
Lord Grocott
If this game of musical parties were to occur—more specifically, if the Liberal Democrats were to decide which party they wanted to operate with—it would be very difficult for Mr Clegg to continue his argument that this was reconnecting Parliament with the public.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
If that was the scenario—a purely hypothetical one—I think my party would have a challenging time making the argument as to why things had changed. However, I do not suppose for a moment that the noble Lord—who probably was in the Commons in 1977—complained too much about an arrangement falling short of a coalition with the then Liberal Party, which actually sustained a Labour Government in power. Obviously the Liberal Party had to answer to the electorate for what it did then, and that is the political reality. These things are all considered in a political context. There is the political reality again, taking the point made by the noble and learned Lord, that if a Prime Minister of the day sought to try and abuse or contrive a vote of no confidence, that would be judged in a political context. It may be thought in some circumstances that it was right to do so, in others that it was duplicitous; the ultimate determination of whether it was right or wrong is one for the electorate, and so it should be.
The period in my noble friend’s amendment is 28 days. He indicated that he took it from the arrangements that had been made for Scotland and Wales in the event of a resignation of a First Minister. There are sufficient differences in the position between the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the United Kingdom Parliament that would make 28 days an inappropriate period. That is why we have exercised our judgment and said in the Bill that 14 days is more appropriate.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, would provide that an early general election could be triggered where the Prime Minister has resigned and 14 days have elapsed without the House of Commons passing a motion expressing confidence in a Government. Again, my point would be that in establishing fixed terms, we are seeking to deny the Executive their ability to decide if and when there should be an election. This amendment places one of the triggers for an early Dissolution within the hands of a Prime Minister. That is the problem which we would have with it. The noble Lord mentioned 1951 but it is generally accepted—indeed, I think Mr Jack Straw accepted this on Second Reading—that the circumstances there would almost certainly have triggered the two-thirds majority for Dissolution, because there was common ground that an election should take place. The problem with the noble Lord’s amendment, as I indicated, is that in an effort to try and take away the power from the Executive and put it into the hands of Parliament, it would return it to the Prime Minister.
However, subject to what I said in my opening remarks in response to the constructive point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and in wishing to look at the important contributions that have been made, I certainly intend to reflect on what has been said in this debate and in earlier debates on the same subject. I have no doubt whatsoever that these matters will be returned to on Report but I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this short debate. It has been extremely helpful in elucidating problems with the Bill. On a rather small point, I have to correct the noble Lord, Lord Howarth: it was actually me putting the questions to Mark Harper as I was in the chair of the Constitution Committee on that day, which is one reason I am pursuing the issue today.
I have two points to make to my noble friend Lord Tyler. One is on drafting. It has to be about the Prime Minister resigning, not the Government, because when the Prime Minister resigns the Government go. The other point is much more substantive and relates to what we were saying earlier. Parliament is stronger under the present arrangements than under this Bill, because the key point is that under its provisions the Prime Minister gets a second bite of the cherry if he loses a vote of confidence.
On the observations made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, my point is that if the Prime Minister resigns having lost a vote of confidence, formally the Government are out. In those circumstances, the Queen sends to whoever she believes could form a Government. Formally, that could include the outgoing Prime Minister but that is the present constitutional position anyway—one thinks to some extent of the circumstances of 1931. I would argue that what I have put forward is better than what is in the Bill because, as I indicated, my amendments are designed to maintain the benefits of the existing arrangements. However, I very much agree with the noble and learned Lord that they reflect the problems of trying to codify existing conventions. That underpins the problems with the Bill.
I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace for his response. He is quite right that the intention was to take these two amendments together. On his point about the example that I gave of 1972, if Edward Heath had said, “This is a matter where the Government cannot sensibly continue”, but the Speaker had not certified it as a confidence motion and if he had lost and a good number of Conservative MPs were not prepared to vote for Dissolution—not necessarily to vote against it but not to vote for it, so that it would have been difficult to mobilise 400 votes out of 600, although there was a slightly different percentage at that time—then you get into a stalemate.
I am grateful for what he said, particularly because I did not hear any strong arguments against my amendments. The Minister queried the 28-day provision; as he says, there are sufficient differences with the devolved Assemblies. I accept that and would like to apply it to the rest of the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am interested because I made this point in response to the comments by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. Will my noble friend accept that there is perhaps this issue? If there is a choice between immediate Dissolution and a resignation with the possibility of another Government being formed, who exercises that choice? In a Bill where we seek to take power away from the Prime Minister, should that choice lie with the Prime Minister or does my noble friend accept that we should look at ways in which what happened would not be the Prime Minister’s choice alone?
Lord Norton of Louth
I do not really accept the premise of my noble and learned friend’s question in that the Bill does not take away the Prime Minister’s power where the Government are defeated on a vote of confidence. The Government are trying to limit the Prime Minister’s prerogative to request Dissolution at the time of the Prime Minister’s choosing, rather than in the context of the Government losing a vote of confidence. The Bill does not actually limit the Prime Minister on losing a vote of confidence; as I say, it gives him a second bite of the cherry. That is what my amendments are really trying to get at. I accept the point made about 28 days or 14 days, which is a matter for discussion, but my point is that to avoid an ongoing stalemate you need some cut-off point. That was the argument of principle there.
My overall proposition is that the benefits of existing arrangements outweigh those in the Bill which, in the context of a vote of confidence, do not limit the Prime Minister. As I say, the Government are trying to limit the Prime Minister’s prerogative to foreshorten an election when it is in the gift of the Prime Minister, rather than when Parliament is in effect seeking to take it out of the hands of the Prime Minister through a vote of confidence. I am advancing the argument that the Bill gives Prime Ministers a second chance—more so than under existing arrangements. I am grateful for my noble and learned friend’s willingness to reflect upon what has been said from all parts of the Committee. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
“( ) An early general election will only be called at the end of a 14 day period following a vote of no confidence if no Government has been formed since the last general election.”
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is another part of the conundrum that we have debated pretty fully already. Perhaps I may indicate the particular problem that this amendment deals with. My inclination on how one deals with a vote of no confidence is that it should generally lead to a general election. My complaint about the Bill is that it is drafted too rigidly, reducing flexibility, and that it encourages a situation where once a vote of no confidence is lost, the norm is not a general election but a process of haggling. I believe that is quite contrary to the purpose described by honourable gentleman the Deputy Prime Minister to the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. He said that it,
“collectively introduces the mechanisms by which people can exercise greater control over politicians”,
as set out in paragraph 15 of the committee’s report. It obviously does precisely the opposite if what happens when you lose a vote of confidence is that there is then a haggle and a new Government are produced.
I recognise that there are some circumstances where you do not want to have a new Government or an election straightaway. I have already mentioned in particular the general election of January 1924 and Mr Baldwin going to the House with a Queen’s Speech that was then effectively voted down by Parliament. I do not think the public would have wanted a general election at that point. They would have wanted a majority Government to be re-formed.
Amendment 41 says that the 14-day period applies only where a Government have not yet obtained the confidence of the House of Commons. However, I say that in the context of strongly objecting as a matter of principle to the idea that the norm after a vote of no confidence is to try to re-form a Government. That should generally take place only where the Government have not yet obtained the confidence of the House of Commons, or in the Narvik-type situation. My amendment does not provide for the Narvik-type situation, although it should. I should be interested to hear what thought the Government have given to the extent to which, if you have a defeat in the House of Commons on a confidence issue, this promotes people’s belief that they can “exercise greater control” over their politicians if a new Government are formed from within the House of Commons rather than by being selected by the people. Does that not have precisely the opposite effect to that which the Deputy Prime Minister wanted? Have the Government given thought to the circumstances in which they would prefer there to be an election rather than a new Government being formed? Are they not worried that by building in 14 days in every case they are encouraging the confidence-sapping haggle? I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I wish to speak briefly on this interesting amendment. I go back to the point raised earlier when comparisons were raised with the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament has been mentioned in defence of the Bill, but it seems to me that the Scottish Parliament is a completely different institution. First, it is elected by PR and therefore its procedures are designed to deal with that situation, but it is not a body which votes means of supply. The House of Commons raises means of supply. An Executive who are no longer able to command the support of the House of Commons are no longer able to operate the Government of the country because they are no longer able to raise the taxes which are required. That is the fundamental constitutional issue here. When a Government no longer have the support of the House of Commons, they are no longer able to carry on and it is necessary to go back to the country to get the authority to vote means of supply. These comparisons with the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament are totally erroneous for that reason. Therefore, the idea that when the Executive no longer command the support of the House of Commons to levy taxes on the people you should have 14 days to do a deal so that you can restore that authority is deeply erroneous. The noble and learned Lord is right in what he says in proposing this amendment.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for his explanation of the amendment as I found its purpose somewhat difficult to discern. He has indicated that it seeks to address the situation, perhaps immediately after an election, where no Government have been formed. My difficulty is that, if the amendment were included in the Bill, a situation such as we are discussing might arise later in a Parliament when a Government had been formed. The amendment states:
“An early general election will only be called at the end of a 14 day period following a vote of no confidence if no Government has been formed since the last general election”.
That could almost exclude an early general election being called if, the Government having been formed since the last general election, there was a vote of no confidence and no other Government were then formed. I suspect that is a technical consequence of the amendment that the noble and learned Lord did not intend. As I understand it—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I could leave out entirely the legitimate drafting point that the noble and learned Lord makes. If the amendment said,
“if no Government had obtained a vote of confidence since the last general election”,
would that help the noble and learned Lord to determine what I am trying to say? It is my fault for not putting it well.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I was genuinely somewhat puzzled about what the point was. However, I understand that the noble and learned Lord is trying to address a certain situation. I can see the distinction between an incoming Government following an election who have never faced the House of Commons on a Queen’s Speech and one which may have done so and lost as they are a continuing Government. He may wish to consider whether a general election should immediately ensue if an incoming Government who are not a continuing Government lose a vote on their first Queen’s Speech. I give a hypothetical example. If a minority Conservative Government had been formed after May last year, they would have been the new Government. A Government would have been formed but they may not have carried the day on a Queen’s Speech. I rather suspect that the circumstances which the noble and learned Lord sought to address in his amendment might be similar to that example. I suggest that another election would not necessarily be triggered immediately by that scenario.
As I understand it, the noble and learned Lord is saying that there are circumstances where there is the possibility of another Government being established, as, indeed, happened in 1924. He thinks that the presumption would be in favour of an early election, triggered by a vote of no confidence. However, it is a rebuttable presumption. The noble and learned Lord is trying to identify the circumstances in which that presumption might be rebutted. One such circumstance could well be where we have an election, there is no overall majority and therefore there ought to be an opportunity, if the Government lose a vote on the Queen’s Speech, for another one to be formed. I understand what he is saying but the difficulty we have in these situations is with the general assumption that an election would take place. We need to make the position certain and not leave it completely vague and imprecise. It is one of the challenges which we have sought to address in the Bill. It may seem somewhat cumbersome at times with the Speaker’s certificate mechanism but the purpose behind that is to try to ensure that there is certainty and that if situations arise which will lead to an election it is not a question of wondering whether it will or will not take place. We need to establish that certain circumstances would trigger elections while others would not.
I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Forsyth that there are important distinctions to be made between the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Westminster Parliament. I think that in an earlier intervention I indicated that you can only take the comparisons so far. If a Government have not commanded the support of the other place, have lost a vote of no confidence and no other Government have been formed who hold the confidence of the other place, an election would follow. If, however, a Government command the confidence of the other place, they would have the wherewithal to raise supply. It is very easy to look at these issues through the prism of a two-party political history, but as my noble friend Lord Newton said in one of our earlier debates, we cannot take it for granted that the simple two-party situation that has prevailed for so long will always do so. We have seen that the first past the post system could not be relied upon to produce a clear-cut majority Government in May last year. We may well find ourselves in those circumstances again. The circumstances which apply in the Scottish Parliament may well be more appropriate for a Parliament that does not regularly have Governments with an outright majority. However, I accept that there is an important distinction between a Parliament elected by proportional representation and one which is not. I do not even claim that AV is a proportional system but it is one which nevertheless could give rise to a Parliament in which no one party regularly has a majority.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend but my point, which I am delighted that he acknowledges, was that the Scottish Parliament is different because it does not vote means of supply. The argument has been advanced that these provisions are appropriate for the House of Commons. Indeed, it has been thrown back in the face of the Labour Party that it introduced these provisions for the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament was deliberately designed in the electoral system as an institution in which no party would be able to get an overall majority, and my noble and learned friend played a part in that. Therefore, to import provisions relating to a Chamber which is completely different from the House of Commons and argue that they are appropriate is an error. That is the point I was making.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why there was an electoral system that almost invariably would not produce a Government with an outright majority. My noble friend Lord Newton said earlier that we may be entering an era where even the first past the post system will not necessarily produce an overall majority, and we can speculate about what might happen if we have an alternative vote system. Nevertheless, the point remains that, if we have a fixed-term Parliament, there has to be a means of breaking out of it if there is a stalemate, and that is what we are seeking to achieve. We have heard a suggestion as to how that might be addressed in circumstances where there was an incoming Government after an election and you would not necessarily want to trigger another election immediately. Again, I think that that is consistent with what I said regarding earlier amendments—it is part of the mix. I do not think that there is too much between us in recognising that a way out has to be found if a Parliament is no longer sustainable, but the challenge is how to do that with the maximum certainty. I welcome the thoughts of the noble and learned Lord but I invite him to withdraw his amendment in the light of my comments.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Of course I shall withdraw it because we are in Committee and will not really be having any votes. I completely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said about the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly being completely different, and I particularly agree with what he said regarding the supply issue. They are both important but they are different sorts of institutions. I do not agree that the old rules do not work because there is now more of a three, four or five-party system in the Commons. That is completely wrong. I keep going back to 1924, but it was because there were three parties and no one had an overall majority that the Queen’s Speech was defeated in January 1924. In October 1924, when again there were three parties, a vote of no confidence was passed in the then Labour Government and Ramsay MacDonald went straight to the country without any difficulty at all, understanding immediately that that was the appropriate thing to do.
With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, this is not a comment on him but on the process. He struggles when he tries to explain the rationale for these provisions. He says, “We want not to be too vague and we want to bring some certainty but we do not want to be too precise”. Those are not his exact words but that is what he said in his reply. I ask: why is it not okay to say “once there is a vote of no confidence”? The noble and learned Lord should remember that the Bill deprives the Prime Minister of calling a general election unless there is a vote of no confidence or a two-thirds vote, which is a considerable restriction. The Government are trying to deliver the element of fixedness but their mistake is in saying that there has to be some complicated process thereafter. This debate simply reinforces the sense that it would be sufficient to have a general provision saying that, where there is a vote of no confidence in the Government, there may be a Dissolution. It would be viewed as a constitutional provision and would not be picked over in this legalistic way, which is the inevitable consequence of the coalition’s drafting of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, after the words in Clause 2(3)—
“A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes”—
my Amendment 42 would add the words,
“and ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court”.
Noble Lords will instantly recognise that that language is taken from Article 9 of the Bill of Rights Act of 1689, and, as such, it may have some reverberance. If these words were incorporated, I suppose that the House of Commons would, in the politest possible way, be saying to the judges, “Do not consider advancing your tanks on to our lawn”. Therefore, my amendment seeks—amateurishly, I am sure—to reinforce the protection that Clause 2(3) already seeks to provide for parliamentary privilege.
I have tabled the amendment because the Clerk of the House of Commons, having examined the Bill as drafted—and we should surely take his view very seriously—considers that parliamentary privilege would be jeopardised by it. He wrote a memorandum to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons last August and, if I may, I shall quote some sentences from it. He said:
“My concern is with the way in which provisions of the Bill impinge upon Parliamentary privilege and which may bring the Courts and Parliament into conflict … The Bill brings the internal proceedings of the House into the ambit of the Courts, albeit indirectly by the route of Speaker’s certificates”.
Then he said that the provisions of Clause 2(2),
“make the Speaker’s consideration of confidence motions and the House’s practices justiciable questions for determination by the ordinary courts”.
The Clerk of the House of Commons said that he was not satisfied with the protection that the Bill as drafted provides:
“Although the provision in 2 (3), that the Speaker’s certificate is conclusive for all purposes, is meant to mitigate challenge or questioning in the courts, it cannot be a protection against the courts interpreting statute either in the UK or in Strasbourg ... embodying these internal proceedings in statute radically changes their status since, by reason of being embodied in statute law, they become questions which are ultimately to be determined by the judiciary rather than by members of the legislature”.
He continued by saying that history provides,
“no basis for concluding that the courts will keep out of this new statutory territory”.
He explained that the,
“possible areas of challenge are wide-ranging. For example, any interested party … could challenge whether a motion for dissolution had been correctly worded or processed, whether the decision had been correctly reached and recorded”.
He thought that there could be legal challenges as to what a motion of no confidence was, as to the Speaker’s selection of amendments for debate and as to whether votes had been properly cast. In his oral evidence to the Select Committee, he observed that Erskine May contains five pages on irregularities in Divisions: mistakes in counting; the Division Bell not working; Members being locked out; Members being nodded through; and so forth.
I tabled this amendment and speak to it with some diffidence, not least in the presence of two very distinguished former Speakers of the House of Commons and a former Deputy Speaker. I am also aware that noble Lords learned in constitutional law, distinguished academic witnesses in their evidence to the Constitution Select Committee of your Lordships’ House and the Constitution Committee itself all expressed themselves as being reasonably sure that there will be no significant practical risk that the courts will abandon their centuries-old recognition and acceptance of Parliament’s exclusive cognisance of its internal proceedings. The Constitution Committee concluded:
“The risk that the courts may intervene in any early dissolution of Parliament by questioning the Speaker’s certificate is very small. Although the political and constitutional consequences of any such intervention would be very significant, we do not consider the risk to be sufficient to warrant a rejection of clause 2 of the Bill”.
Tempting though it is to rest on that comforting conclusion, I suggest that this Committee should at least pause and think about what the Clerk has said. No one except Mr Clegg and Mr Harper has said that this risk can be ruled out. Professor Dawn Oliver, giving evidence to the Constitution Committee, said that in her opinion it was,
“extremely unlikely that the court would entertain a challenge”,
but that,
“you can never be entirely sure what the courts will say when faced with very eloquent advocates with good arguments both ways”.
Professor Anthony Bradley, in the same session, cited Mr Justice Stephen in Bradlaugh v Gossett and Lord Roskill in the GCHQ case as underpinning his belief that the courts would not advance into this territory. However, he anticipated,
“a huge discussion about justiciability”,
and acknowledged that there could be arguments of a broader or different kind, which could not be raised in Bradlaugh v Gossett, that would have to be addressed. He did not contend that a Speaker’s certificate could not be subject in a primary way to the jurisdiction of the courts but considered that in a secondary sense the court would be very loath to apply intensive judicial review to the Speaker’s certificate. He thought that the case could come into court, although he thought it also likely that the judges would decline to rule on it. He noted that aspects of self-regulation have been taken away from the House of Commons, such as, for example, election petitions, expenses and allowances. All in all, his testimony was less than entirely reassuring.
Mr Richard Gordon QC, in written evidence to the Constitution Committee also argued:
“It would … be unwise to assume that there are no circumstances in which the validity of a conclusive evidence clause could be questioned in the courts … At the level of international judicial adjudication … it is highly questionable whether an assertion of parliamentary privilege (by reference to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights Act 1689) would necessarily operate to prevent parliamentary materials from being scrutinised”.
He concluded by saying that,
“it may well be that the practical scope for the scope of Article 9 being affected by judicial enquiry into the validity of a certificate is small”,
but he thought that it ought to be taken into account.
David Howarth, reader in law at Cambridge, former Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament and proposer of the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill 2007—a believer in fixed-term Parliaments—said in evidence:
“The statutory escape mechanisms create a risk that the courts will intervene”.
He elaborated by saying:
“The Bill tries to prevent legal challenge by making the Speaker’s certificate ‘conclusive for all purposes’. But a court that wanted to side-step that provision could easily do so by use of the Anisminic manoeuvre, that is by saying that legal error by the Speaker has resulted in a situation in which the Speaker had not issued a ‘certificate’ under the Act”.
Again, he also said,
“The risk is admittedly small”.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the constitution is not static. It evolves to meet new circumstances. Among the relevant new circumstances are the growing boldness of citizens to sue for their rights and the growing boldness of judges, in judicial review and in interpreting human rights, to venture into political roles where they would have stood back in the past.
Here it is interesting to note some remarks of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Steyn and Lord Hope, in Jackson v HM Attorney-General 2005. I understand that that case concerned the legality of the Hunting Act and whether the Parliament Acts impose judicially enforceable constraints on how Parliament may legislate. The basic argument was whether the notion that Parliament can make or unmake any law requires the presence of enforceable rules for defining what a law is, in which case the court could presumably disallow something that purported to be a money Act but which had not passed through a proper certification procedure—a thought relevant to a Bill that introduces a certification procedure avowedly based on that—or whether, on the other hand, an assertion by Parliament that something is a piece of legislation is decisive in the matter.
I shall briefly quote remarks from the two learned judges. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn, said:
“The classic account given by Dicey of the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, pure and absolute as it was, can now be seen to be out of place in the modern United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the supremacy of Parliament is still the general principle of our constitution. It is a construct of the common law. The judges created this principle. If that is so, it is not unthinkable that circumstances could arise where the courts may have to qualify a principle established on a different hypothesis of constitutionalism. In exceptional circumstances involving an attempt to abolish judicial review or the ordinary role of the courts, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords or a new Supreme Court may have to consider whether this is a constitutional fundamental which even a sovereign Parliament acting at the behest of a complaisant House of Commons cannot abolish”.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said:
“But Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute ... Step by step, gradually but surely, the English principle of the absolute legislative sovereignty of Parliament which Dicey derived from Coke and Blackstone is being qualified … The rule of law enforced by the courts is the ultimate controlling factor on which our constitution is based.”
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, did not see eye to eye with his learned friends on these issues.
Baroness Boothroyd
My Lords, I regret that I was unable to be here for the Second Reading of the Bill but I say at the outset that I endorse the criticisms of it in many of the speeches made in that remarkable debate, which showed this House at its very best.
I wish to focus my remarks on the change to the role of the Speaker of the Commons under the Government’s provisions, which has not been touched on in any great detail until the amendment that has just been moved this evening. As the provisions stand, they extend the Speaker’s authority in a way that affects much more than his position as a presiding officer. They give him the statutory power to trigger a general election in critical situations, the intensity of which the Government too lightly glosses over. It is left to the Speaker to decide what constitutes a motion of no confidence in the Government.
The legislation brushes aside the reasoned warnings by the Clerk of the Commons of the possible legal dangers of the sweeping changes that are being proposed. As it stands at the moment, it will not do. We all know that it is our duty to make this legislation fit for purpose if it is to command confidence and withstand the test of time. We all know that Parliament has suffered too many self-inflicted wounds to its reputation in recent years to accept a half-baked Bill to enable the coalition to remain in power until May 2015. Parliament is still in the convalescent stage after the trauma of the expenses scandal. We cannot afford a botched attempt to change the way that Governments can be forced from office when they lose the confidence of the House of Commons.
The evidence of the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform to your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution is an example of the Government’s wishful thinking on how the Speaker is supposed to fulfil his responsibilities in this brave new world of fixed-term Parliaments. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, to whose expertise I pay tribute, put it to the Minister, Mr Mark Harper, that the Speaker would be in some difficulty if he had to decide what was, and what was not, a vote of no confidence on the basis of his own interpretation. The Minister replied that the Speaker should make his position clear before the debate and before the vote. He said that,
“everyone would be clear about what was going to happen as a result of it”.
He went on:
“In practice, I do not think that that would be a serious problem”.
I must disabuse the Minister, Mr Harper. The Speaker’s role as the sole adjudicator of whether the Government are in danger of losing their life would quickly become a very serious political problem for him and Parliament. Whatever he decided on his own responsibility would lead to ceaseless points of order and unruly outrage in the Chamber. When contentious issues were debated, he would come under intense pressure from all sides—as I know from personal experience. The Speaker’s authority would be as much at stake as the Government’s. In such a situation, a Speaker who lost control would have to decide instantly whether to name Members who defied his ruling, risk losing the vote to enforce their suspension and, thereby, lose his own authority or suspend the House in the hope of resuming the contentious business after taking soundings from all sides.
I dealt with sporadic outbreaks of unruly behaviour and know the heat that they can generate when Government, Opposition and individuals blame each other. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, commented that this could happen in the Commons. Misconduct in the Division Lobbies reached such a pitch in the 1992-93 Session that Ministers complained of a constitutional outrage. Without amendments, disturbances likely to arise from thrusting the Speaker into the political cockpit in the way that is proposed in the legislation would undoubtedly be at the top of the Richter scale and would not move far from the courts.
The Commons Speaker has very few formal powers other than those embedded in convention, enshrined in standing orders or specified by legislation relating to the certification of money Bills and the operation of the Parliament Act. No Speaker with the best interests of Parliament at heart would accept any extension of his authority likely to jeopardise his independence and impair his responsibilities to defend the rights and reputation of Parliament against all comers. The great Speaker Lenthall—whose portrait is out there—immortalised the golden rule against which Clause 2 should be judged:
“I have neither eye to see, nor tongue to speak here, but as the House is pleased to direct me”.
Speaking on Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said,
“there is a lot of meat for the House to get its teeth into”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1048.]
We all say hear, hear to that. His acceptance of the importance of the scrutiny that we are applying to this Bill in its remaining stages is welcome. However, the noble and learned Lord doubted the need for a specific definition of a no-confidence motion on the grounds that,
“one recognises an elephant when one sees it”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1046.]
Fortunately, we do not inhabit a zoo—although many of our critics may think otherwise. Accepting the elephantine analogy, the Speaker, if these amendments were not accepted, would have to decide whether a motion of confidence or no confidence is akin to a charging elephant that can scatter a Government or a placid animal—the sort that carries children on its back. In either case, I do not believe that it is a fit and proper question for the Speaker. Other amendments will come later this evening that underline and give this area much more strength.
To be frank, I am very sceptical about the need for legislation at all, but we must make sense of what we can and send this package back to the Commons in better shape. The Government’s response so far has been to insist on the authority of the Speaker’s certificate to validate a vote of no confidence and empower a new Government or trigger an immediate general election. Clearly, the Speaker’s certificate is seen as the trump card against any challenge or interference by the courts. The Minister, Mr Mark Harper, wrote a dismissive note about the warnings of Dr Malcolm Jack, the Clerk of the Commons, about the possibility of such a challenge in the courts. The Minister wrote:
“The Government sees no reason why the courts would not continue to defer to”,
the normal rules and principles that protect internal parliamentary proceedings from the scrutiny of the courts. I beg to differ. The Minister referred to the Speaker’s certificate as a further defensive weapon against interference by the courts. His note quotes from Article 9 of the Bill of Rights and added:
“This position is reinforced by the role which the Bill gives to the Speaker in certifying whether certain events have occurred. In other words, these are matters to be decided by the presiding officer of the House of Commons and not the courts”.
I know feelings run extremely high in Parliament when contentious issues are debated. Normally rational people do uncharacteristic things. Imagine what would happen if some judges seized on accusations of obstruction in the Division Lobbies and other improper behaviour that could be said to have prevented a fair and orderly vote on an issue of no confidence in a Government. This was mentioned earlier by the mover of this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. It seems that the judiciary is stronger and Parliament somewhat weaker than it was when I entered the Commons 37 years ago.
Contrary to the Government’s claim, the European court is not indifferent to the way Britain runs its constitutional affairs. As Speaker in 1999, I ruled that Sinn Fein could not take their seats without taking the oath of allegiance. Sinn Fein claimed that I had infringed their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and took my ruling to the European Court. Sinn Fein lost the case, but its appeal was not dismissed out of hand as being none of the court’s business, which the Government would have us believe is the automatic response. The court’s seven judges published a lengthy judgment that stated that the protection of effective democracy,
“must equally extend to the protection of the constitutional principles which underpin a democracy”.
The court’s judgment in my favour aroused little interest. I have been in public life long enough to know that a British win is a non-story; the British media will not report it. However, this demonstrated beyond any doubt the court’s willingness to examine the case. This is the most important point I need to make. The Minister, Mr Harper, would have us believe that this could not happen, but he is wrong.
Lord Martin of Springburn
I have heard the Minister say on earlier amendments that if they were withdrawn, he would take them back and give serious consideration to the views that had been expressed. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, are similar. Perhaps they can be taken back and considered seriously, considering what my noble friend Lady Boothroyd said and what I am about to say. I hope I can give some advice to this House.
This is not about Dr Jack the individual; it is about the Clerk of the House of Commons. I have experience of previous Clerks: Sir William McKay and Sir Roger Sands. They are all people of the highest calibre. I can give the House an insight into what would happen before the Clerk of the House delivered this advice. He would not just pluck these words out and put them on paper for anyone to consider; he would take soundings from constitutional experts, get someone to be devil’s advocate and put the contrary point of view, and Speaker’s Counsel would listen to the arguments. These people would give their point of view. Therefore, the words of Dr Jack would be the collective point of view of the constitutional experts we have in the House of Commons. The amendment is the property of this House, but I think it would be good idea for the Minister to take back what has been said tonight.
There is a tendency for courts to—I do not think the right word is interfere—look at matters which they would not have looked at 30 or 40 years ago. I am glad that the Court of Human Rights is there, but many Members who were disciplined in the other place said that they would like to take their case to the Court of Human Rights. Some officers of the House, while they did not encourage them or give any view, privately said that if their case went to the Court of Human Rights, with people’s civil liberties as they are at the moment, they might have won it because of the way in which our standards commissioner conducts his affairs without representation, with hearsay evidence and with people making accusations without substantiation. Although this has not been tested, some of the disciplinary measures that were taken in the other place could well have been taken to the Court of Human Rights, and who knows what would have happened?
Pressure is put on Speakers behind the scenes. I worry about the certificate. I recall a situation—forgive me, there might be some military Members in the Chamber—in which a battalion of Royal Marines was to be moved to Afghanistan in the early days of the Afghanistan problem. The Opposition tabled a Motion to put aside the business of the day to allow that matter to be debated. I felt that the Opposition had a case, and I allowed the Motion to be debated, as was the Speaker’s right. Behind the scenes, a government Whip came in—it was always a Whip who came in with the nasty news—and said, “You had no right to do that. You shouldn’t have done that”. This is the pressure that is put on Speakers. I said, “Excuse me a minute. Why shouldn’t I have done that?”. “Because those Marines weren’t going into combat”. The point I made was that if you are moving 500 highly trained members of an elite organisation into an area where they would come to no harm, they should not have been put there. They should have been back on leave in Catterick, Plymouth or wherever they were based. This was the type of abuse—complaining, if I can put it that way—that you got behind the scenes after the event. Before the event was even worse. So what is it going to be like when there is a vote of no confidence and it is down to the Speaker to decide whether a Government have to go to the country? There will be pressure from every side.
We talked about things changing with regard to the courts. Things have changed with regard to the pressure on Speakers. We have spoken about Ted Heath, his Government and how he had to go to the country. I had the honour of having Ted Heath come up as a friend to Speaker’s House to have a private chat with my wife Mary and me. I remember him telling me stories of when he was a Chief Whip. In passing, I asked him how often he came to see the Speaker, because at that time I had to see the government Chief Whip, the opposition Chief Whip and the Liberal Chief Whip on a weekly basis. He said, “I never bothered the Speaker. The Speaker was too busy to bother with the Chief Whip”. Since that time, things have changed, and terrible pressure is put on the Speaker, so I say with the best possible intentions that this is one of those amendments that get an airing in Committee and then the Minister takes the matter back and looks at it.
The Earl of Onslow
I was never Speaker but I am descended from three Speakers. I have never heard of a more awful choice having to be made. If the courts are allowed to interfere, that will have a catastrophic effect on the role of the Speaker. If they are not allowed to interfere, it will have a catastrophic role on the role of the Speaker. I cannot think of anything worse than that. I do not know whether to vote enthusiastically for the amendment or to vote enthusiastically against it. Whatever we do on this amendment will be nothing short of catastrophic.
Lord Williamson of Horton
My Lords, we have heard outstanding speeches from two former Speakers of the House of Commons. I must say that I am a little timid about getting up to say a word when I am the only non-former-Speaker on these two Benches. The speeches from my noble friends Lady Boothroyd and Lord Martin have fully covered the key elements about the defence of Parliament, which is a vital element underlying this amendment, in my view.
Let us imagine ourselves in the circumstances that would be covered by this part of the Bill: that is, that the Government have lost a vote of confidence, the 14 days have gone by and this certificate is called for. Let us also imagine the position of the British public in a situation in which they read in the papers, “Government defeated”, then, “14-day period expires: it’s an election”, and the next day, “Judicial challenge: no election”. This is a critical point from the point of view of operating confidence in the system. Therefore, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is good, and if it cannot be done in that way we need to strengthen the way of avoiding in this Bill any form of judicial intervention in the system.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, the speeches that we have heard from the former Speakers speak very eloquently for themselves. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on his amendment. I do not know whether it deals with the issue but two points strike me. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, I could not be here at Second Reading. One thing that concerns me enormously is that the advice of the Clerk of the House can be brushed aside in what, quite frankly, is an almost arrogant way.
Our institutions are very important, although things might have changed. I never really had a reputation in the other place as someone who was easily cowed or very respectful but I respected the Clerk of the House, the institution of the House and the Speaker’s office. For a variety of reasons, the House and the Speaker’s office have come under considerable attack, which is a great source of anxiety. In responding to this amendment, I hope that my noble friend will give us some assurance that he will look at this again because these are very serious considerations. Ministers might believe that the risk is limited but I am with the Clerk of the House and I would not take any risks with this institution. It is a very precious baby and it seems to me quite extraordinary that we have reached this pass.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I very much agree with what has been said so far. We will have an opportunity later to debate this clause in its entirety, and I believe that it should be replaced by something that is much more carefully and thoughtfully drawn up. To bring the Speaker into this position would be a cardinal political sin, in my view. We have heard from two former Speakers, who were clear in their advice to this House. In doing so, they were able to speak from the experience of working with the Clerk of the House that none of us can rival, and nor can any Minister in the Government.
While the Minister in charge of this Bill in another place is an extremely able and industrious young Minister, who I am sure has a glittering future ahead of him, he is not the world’s greatest constitutional expert. This Bill is deficient in many respects. It has many aspects, some of which I will touch on later, that should give any constitutional expert real cause for alarm. However, if there is one thing above anything else that is devastating in its implications, it is the politicisation of the role of Speaker. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has done the House a signal service in drawing specific attention to this. The House has been singularly fortunate too to be able to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, who were able to speak from very real experience. I beg the House—although of course we will not vote on this tonight—to stand firm. I very much hope that the Minister’s response will indicate that we will not need to proceed into the Content and Not Content Lobbies on this one, but if we do we should send a real signal to the other place that this is something up with which we will not put.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I rise with some diffidence in view of the speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and others that we have heard. First, I think we all believe that the notion that the courts should be able to interfere with the Speaker’s certificate when this Bill is enacted, if it is enacted in its present form or in something similar to it, is one that we would abhor. No one is suggesting that that is a desirable or acceptable outcome in any way.
In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, discussed the evidence before the Constitution Committee in some detail. I do not propose to rehearse that evidence. However, I would point out that Professor Bradley, an old friend with whom I would be hesitant to disagree, expressed the conclusion that the judiciary would surely accept that this was an area for political judgment which the courts were not qualified to make. That was the conclusion of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee.
This is not simply a matter of the evidence of Mr Harper, which has been dismissed in quite strong terms by others who have spoken. In the light of the careful note of the Clerk of the House of Commons, the Constitution Committee spent a great deal of time analysing all the evidence on this point. The conclusion to which it came was that the risk of judicial interference was very small. It went further in concluding that it was so small that it was not sufficient to warrant the rejection of Clause 2. The assessment of what risk might or might not be acceptable is a difficult area. I align myself with the view expressed by the majority of the legal evidence to the effect that the chances of interference by the courts would be so small as to be insignificant.
That is not to say that we can ever stop anyone bringing a misguided application. However, as Professor Bradley also pointed out, misguided applications can be dealt with quickly and given short shrift. That is what I believe and would expect to happen. The result is that in theory an initial challenge could be brought to the Speaker’s certificate. However, it is the judgment of the Constitution Committee, which I invite your Lordships’ House to accept as well founded, that that challenge would not lead anywhere—a judgment that was made in the face of, and on consideration of, the evidence of the Clerk of the House of Commons, to which a great deal of respect was given.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My noble friend is obviously an expert in these matters. As the argument is about the degree of risk, can he explain why it is necessary to take the risk at all?
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, this is a matter we have canvassed before. My noble friends and I put forward a suggestion in an amendment as to the definition of votes of confidence which might mitigate the risk still further. One problem with the later amendment of my noble friend Lord Cormack is the complicated definition of votes of no confidence. Of course, when it is clear that there is a vote of no confidence, it is very difficult to imagine the issues for the Speaker to determine—that there has been such a vote and that there has been a lapse of 14 days—being justiciable. While I can see that part of the wider argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin—that it is important to avoid the Speaker being drawn into political controversy —is absolutely right, nevertheless the amendment is concerned with the question of justiciability.
The next question for your Lordships to consider is whether the words of the amendment add anything to the words of the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, pointed out, the words of the amendment are drawn from the wonderful and eloquent words of the Bill of Rights, which states that,
“the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”.
That is a general statement of the principle of parliamentary privilege.
The words of more recent statutes which outlaw judicial interference have been more similar to the words adopted in this Bill. The Parliament Act 1911, in dealing with certificates, uses the words “conclusive for all purposes” and,
“shall not be questioned in any court of law”.
The phrase is “shall not”, not “ought not”. I suggest that, for a modern approach to the construction of statutes, the phrase “shall not” is much more useful than “ought not”. The House of Lords Act 1999 simply uses the provision that the certificate shall be “conclusive”. In this Bill we have the words, “conclusive for all purposes”.
Taking that body of statute law as a whole, I suggest that the right conclusion is that, with the possible exception now of “ought not”, those phrases “shall be” and “shall not be”—the imperative form—are effective to provide as much protection from judicial interference as we are likely ever to be able to achieve. It is a matter for the courts, and the balance between Parliament and the courts, as to whether in any conceivable circumstances the court could, at some stage, accept an invitation to interfere with parliamentary privilege. Given the state of the statutes at the moment, this is the best guarantee that we are ever going to get. On the history of the courts’ approach to these matters, I cannot in a million years agree that the courts would interfere with such a certificate, although they cannot prevent a challenge being launched at the outset.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this has been a powerful short debate. My noble friend Lord Howarth introduced the debate moderately and marshalled the material effectively. The speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, would make any Government stop in their tracks in relation to certification and the Speaker.
It is important to identify that two separate points are being made. First, no one engaged in the discussion of the Bill wants the courts to have anything whatever to do with challenging what goes on in Parliament. I speak only from the point of view of the courts, not from the point of the view of the Commons. For all the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, the courts would run a mile from giving any determination in relation to this. They would do so for legal reasons: first, this is a proceeding in Parliament and therefore protected by the Bill of Rights; secondly, it specifically involves a certificate given by the Speaker of the House of Commons as to a proceeding in the House of Commons; and, thirdly, the Bill states:
“A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes”.
As a matter of legal drafting, it is clear that the draftsman is trying to keep out the courts as much as possible.
Equally, for all the reasons given by the two impressive ex-Speakers, the courts do not want to be in a position where they have to say, “We know you all think there is about to be an election, but Mr Justice X has just said that there is not going to be an election”. Can you imagine the situation if a Speaker of the House of Commons had said, “I know you all think that a vote on whether or not we should go to war in Iraq is a vote of no confidence, but I have decided that it is not. Therefore, even if the vote is defeated in the House of Commons, there will be no resignation of the Prime Minister and there will be no general election”. I leave it to the House to seek the views of the two ex-Speakers as to what effect on Parliament that would have.
I was struck by the evidence of Mr Harper in comparison with what the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, have said. They have given graphically their opinion of what it would be like to make these decisions. However, the chairman of the Select Committee asked Mr Harper:
“But it would presumably put pressure on the Speaker if, let us say, he did not make an announcement in advance”.
Mr Harper replied:
“I think the Speaker would want to make sure that the House was clear about the nature of the debate and the vote attached to it. I am not sure that it would put pressure on him; I think there would be an expectation that he would set out clearly the nature of the debate and vote that was to take place, the consequences of the vote and what he would do as a result, so that people were clear about it. I think there would be an expectation that that is what would happen … I don’t think it’s asking the Speaker to make decisions beyond those he should make if there is an expectation. If there is a convention that certain kinds of votes, like votes on the Address, are treated as confidence votes and are treated as those by the government, for the Speaker to make that explicit, effectively, it is a convention that exists and he is simply going to be setting out the consequences of that convention. He is not really creating any new rules. He is just making it more explicit about the effect of existing conventions that are already in place” .
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I make it clear that my error is in no way intended to undermine him. He is the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for political and constitutional reform. It is his view that the Government appear to take in relation to these issues. It is a matter for this House as to whether it is guided more by the views of the two ex-Speakers or by the evidence of Mr Mark Harper. Speaking entirely for myself and having heard the two ex-Speakers, I found the evidence of Mr Harper wholly unconvincing. It suggests to me that not enough thought has been given to this provision.
Lord Martin of Springburn
Mr Harper perhaps overlooks the fact that any Speaker always has at his or her side the Clerk of the House and takes their advice. I grant that it is advice and that, at the end of the day, it is the Speaker who has to make the decision. However, the Clerk of the House is always there. Here we have a situation where the Clerk of the House has taken the very serious step of giving written evidence that he is deeply concerned about this matter.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I completely understand what the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, is saying. My own view is that the courts would try to avoid getting involved, but the consequence of their not doing so is that the Speaker of the House of Commons—who, though I have never been a Member of the House of Commons, I understand should be above the party fray—would ultimately decide whether there would be a general election. Let us imagine the level of emotion that there might be in the House of Commons at that point. Is this not another illustration of the grave error in trying to prescribe in a Bill the working of a process that has previously worked by convention? I am very glad to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, in his place. He has always said that constitutional conventions may be better in certain circumstances. My view in relation to this part of the Bill is that the more we talk about it and the more we try to provide artificial certainty or precision—treating it as if it were a statute where you could see whether you have registered your home properly or whether certain ticks are in the boxes—the more it becomes a wholly inappropriate way to deal with the issue of whether Parliament should be dissolved and there should be a general election.
The more we debate it, the more the best solution feels like a provision that simply says that where there is a vote of no confidence there may be a general election. I do not think that my noble friend Lord Howarth would say that his amendment gives 100 per cent protection from the court; it certainly does not give the Speaker any protection from getting involved in the fray, which is so significant to their independence. I anticipate that my noble friend will say that he has put down the amendment simply in order to test the proposition. I would urge the noble and learned Lord to go back to the drawing board and see how he can construct a provision that is intended not to be a tick-box provision but instead to be a much broader constitutional provision. That will make it clear that the courts are not to be involved. Equally, it will not draw the Speaker into a political fray that could be fatal to their standing either in the House of Commons or, more damagingly, with the public at large. This is another indication that the Bill requires a lot more thought.
The Earl of Onslow
Has not the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, actually made a speech suggesting that we should use some of the remaining powers left to us under the Parliament Act to sling this rotten Bill right out hook, line and sinker?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble Earl is right to identify that the Bill is not covered by the Parliament Act. The more we debate it, the more it seems an appalling mess. If major surgery is not applied to it, a point may be reached where the House might think, very unusually, that it messed up the constitution to such an extent that it should contemplate not giving it a Third Reading. I am sure that a Minister such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will persuade the Government to apply major surgery to the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for the amendment, which I think, by any account, has produced a very informed, worthwhile and important debate. At Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Cormack expressed the hope that we would be able to look at privilege in Committee. Our minds have been very much focused by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and he has done a service to the Committee by tabling it. I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, not least the two former distinguished Speakers of the other place, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, who bring to this debate many years of experience not only as Speakers but also as Deputy Speakers. They have between them many years of occupancy of the Chair, and any Government would be wise to have regard to what they have said. As I said in our earlier debate, this is a part of the Bill where I think that there is some common ground on what we are trying to achieve; that is, to ensure that we do not have fixed-term Parliaments that are absolutely fixed and, if there is to be some means of breaking out of a deadlock, to try to identify how best that is to be done. The comments that the former Speakers made, specifically with regard to the Speaker’s certificate, form part of the consideration that we want to give in trying to get it right.
A number of distinctive points arose out of the amendment and the debate. Perhaps I may be able to separate them out. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, spoke about the Speaker being brought into political controversy and how that related to how motions of confidence were defined. There will be further opportunity to discuss that later in Committee when we come to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Cormack. The comments that have been made will relate to that as well.
The substance of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, related to parliamentary privilege and the fact that, as my noble friend Lord Marks indicated and was confirmed by other speakers, all of us would be in agreement in abhorring a position where the courts should be able to interfere with the certificate if that is what emerges from the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, sought to add the words which, as he rightly said, ring down through many centuries and which come from Article 9 of the Bill of Rights. That states that,
“proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”.
I think that it is widely agreed that that article is of great constitutional importance and a significant plank of what we describe as a doctrine of parliamentary privilege. One of the most important aspects of privilege is that it is for Parliament to judge the lawfulness of its own proceedings, not a court or other outside body. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that he wanted to reinforce that principle by inserting those words. I again confirm that the Government do not consider it appropriate for the courts or other outside bodies to scrutinise how the Speaker would exercise his or her functions under the Bill.
With specific regard to the words of the amendment, I echo some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Marks. We do not believe it necessary to include those words to achieve the aim, as the words have their own significant pedigree. They were based on the Parliament Act 1911, where Speaker’s certificates are equally conclusive for all purposes. It follows the language used in the House of Lords Act 1999, under which the certificate of the Clerk of the Parliaments is conclusive. The effect of those words in the Bill and those Acts is to make clear that parliamentary privilege applies to the matters being certified. Accordingly, we do not believe it necessary to make further provision along the lines suggested. As ever, making further provision may cast doubt on earlier enactments which do not include those words. I do not think that any of us want to go there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, asked what purpose was then served by having a conclusive certificate, when we claim that the matter is already one of privilege. Again, I confirm that it is true that the subject matter of a certificate relating so closely to proceedings in Parliament would mean that privilege alone would be sufficient to prevent the courts considering it. However, making a certificate conclusive reinforces that point and is intended to enhance that certainty.
I cannot accept the assertion made by my noble friend Lord Forsyth that the Government just brushed aside the position set out by the Clerk of the Parliaments. Clearly, when the Clerk of the Parliaments makes a submission such as that, it is given considerable care and attention. My noble friend Lord Marks pointed out that the Constitution Committee of your Lordships' House received considerable evidence on that from a number of people who have great standing as academics in constitutional law. Indeed, it referred in its report to,
“the weight of the evidence we received being against the view that a Speaker’s certificate would be justiciable … The risk that the courts may intervene in any early dissolution of Parliament by questioning the Speaker’s certificate is very small. Although the political and constitutional consequences of any such intervention would be very significant, we do not consider the risk to be sufficient to warrant a rejection of clause 2 of the Bill”.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I accept my noble and learned friend's rebuke. I come from a tradition which thinks that the Clerk of the House is normally the person best qualified to advise on these matters. The way that the Minister dealt with that did not show the kind of respect that ought to be given. I hear what he says. Perhaps I am a bit daft and am missing something here, but could he explain why it is necessary to have the certification process at all?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It is necessary because, as the Bill is constructed, there are trigger mechanisms to cause an election. There has to be certainty as to what causes that election so that it has legitimacy. One of them is to certify that two-thirds voted to trigger a Dissolution. In the context of votes of no confidence, if we seek to take power away from the Executive and the Prime Minister to determine what would be a vote of no confidence, it would be self-defeating then to say that the Prime Minister himself or herself could determine what is a vote of no confidence. Therefore, we give it to the person who is recognised as being independent to certify that there has been a vote of no confidence in the Government and that 14 days have elapsed. That is factual: that there has been a vote of no confidence and that 14 days have elapsed without any vote of confidence in a new Government having been passed.
There is a distinction between a certificate that certifies a fact—hopefully, that could not bring the Speaker into any kind of controversy—and the Speaker being asked to certify or indicate what he or she would consider to be a vote of no confidence. That brings us into the territory of earlier amendments, and those to be spoken to later by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Perhaps I am being stupid, but if a motion in the House of Commons states, “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government”, and it is passed, why do we need a certificate to say that it has been passed? The 14-day provision is open for debate, but if the Bill says that Dissolution should happen 14 days after a motion has been passed, surely it is just a matter of counting the votes. Am I missing something?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I say again, it is not just that it is passed, it is that it is passed and that there has been no further vote of confidence in any Government. That is done for the purpose of ensuring legal certainty: that the election has legitimacy. It is quite straightforward why that is being done: that there is certainty. Otherwise, there will be a fixed-term Parliament where the law will say that the next election should be on whatever date and that to have an election not on that date, you have to be certain that the criteria laid down by law have been met. We take the view that a certificate from the Speaker makes certain beyond challenge that the criteria for having an election not on the date which would otherwise be the case have been met.
The Earl of Onslow
Can the noble and learned Lord give me any precedent where a specific motion of no confidence in the Government has been passed, followed two, three or four days by another motion saying, “Actually, we made a boo-boo and we do have confidence in the Government”? I cannot think of one in the 19th century, or, probably, in the 18th century; and certainly not in this century. Or am I being stupid, like my noble friend Lord Forsyth?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I would never say that my noble friend is being stupid; I take the blame myself for perhaps not explaining this clearly. It may not necessarily be the same Government. More often than not, it will be as happened in 1924, when there was a motion of no confidence, or the Government of the day lost on the Queen's speech, and a new Government came in that carried the confidence of the House. That was a circumstance where a new Government was in place with the confidence of the House. Therefore, there are circumstances in which it could happen.
Lord Tyler
We should look at the precedent for such certification, which is surely the Parliament Acts. Equally, that is a factual situation, but certification is to put it beyond the shadow of doubt that a certain process has taken place within a particular timeframe. That will then be, one would hope, conclusive. Presumably that is the purpose of the provision.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It is for the purpose of making it legally certain that the circumstances have been met, that the conditions have been fulfilled, under which an early election could be called and that the next election should not be on the date on which it would otherwise be under the Bill. That is the purpose. If it is of a factual nature, that should not cause any problem or place pressure on the Speaker. I acknowledge that where the Speaker has to decide whether a matter is a vote of no confidence or not, other factors come into play, and we have certainly listened to what has been said.
Lord Martin of Springburn
I thank the Minister for being patient with me. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, was kind enough to say that proceedings shall not be challenged. It is important that the Minister goes away to consider this and perhaps consults the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and myself on our experience. I am talking from memory, but the signing of a certificate is not necessarily regarded by the courts as a proceeding of Parliament. Decisions are proceedings of Parliament, but the signing of a certificate by the Speaker is different and is not necessarily regarded as a proceeding of Parliament. I throw that one in, and it is important that the Minister goes away to think about this.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I accept the offer of the noble Lord—and perhaps of the noble Baroness—to discuss this. I am more than willing to do so. However, as my noble friend Lord Tyler mentioned, certificates in relation to finance matters under the Parliament Act have never in 100 years been subject to challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Martin, says that they are different; they are certifications; they are certificates that are issued.
Regarding the other points made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that were alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, in the Anisminic case in the 1960s the courts were able to review determinations of the Foreign Compensation Commission, even though those determinations were, by statute, not to be called into question in any court of law. However, in those cases, the starting point was that, but for the ouster clause in the statute, the courts would have had jurisdiction. The courts were thus looking for clear words to exclude an otherwise existing jurisdiction.
The facts of this circumstance are different, because the courts do not have jurisdiction over internal parliamentary proceedings. The fact that the subject matter of the certificate relates to internal parliamentary proceedings that are off limits to the courts means that there will be no motivation for courts to interpret the provisions that provide that Speaker’s certificates are conclusive narrowly.
In the other case which the noble Lord mentioned, regarding Jackson v Attorney-General, two issues have perhaps been conflated. Perhaps that is where confusion has arisen. The issues were, first, whether courts can inquire into the validity of Acts of Parliament; and, secondly, whether courts can inquire into internal parliamentary proceedings. On that second issue, the House of Lords, in its judicial capacity, asserted a view that is complete orthodoxy: that the Commons Speaker had certified that the internal proceedings of Parliament leading to the Hunting Act being passed had been complied with. The House of Lords in its judicial capacity did not look behind the Speaker’s certificate and did not question the internal proceedings of Parliament. It indicated that it would not and could not look at the internal proceedings adopted in Parliament in enacting the Hunting Act 2004.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, referred to the European position and mentioned the case involving Sinn Fein and Martin McGuinness. Interestingly, in the Northern Ireland High Court, it was held that the matter was not justiciable on the grounds that it fell within the exclusive cognisance of the House. It is accepted that Article 9 of the Bill of Rights does not apply to the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights. However, a case will be brought before such courts only where EU law or convention rights are engaged, respectively. The subject matter of the Bill is not in any way related to EU law. Likewise, the functions of the Commons Speaker under the Bill do not engage any convention rights. In support of this point, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has reported that the Bill did not need to be brought to the attention of either House on human rights grounds.
I should add that in the case of A v United Kingdom in 2003, the European Court of Human Rights held that Article 9 of the Bill of Rights did not violate the convention by preventing an applicant from taking defamation proceedings against an MP for words said in parliamentary proceedings. While noble Lords have raised a legitimate point, it leads to the view that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has expressed today and at Second Reading, that a Speaker’s certificate would not be challengeable in the courts. I agree with that analysis and it is no disrespect to the Clerk of the House to state that, although he advanced a different argument. The weight of evidence given to your Lordships’ Constitution Committee was such that it, too, thought that the weight of evidence was that it was highly unlikely that the certificates would be justiciable.
Important distinctions are to be made between that issue and the other concerns that have been expressed about bringing the Speaker into some political role. We have an opportunity to debate these matters further, but, in the light of my comments, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, who I once again thank for introducing this important debate, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, this has been an outstandingly important debate about an outstandingly important subject. I hope that Ministers will study it and think very carefully about the advice that noble Lords have offered. In particular, Ministers should study the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn—two former Speakers of the House who have a wisdom to offer that the Government should certainly heed with the greatest care.
Mr Harper, the Minister, may care to reflect upon exactly why the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said in round terms that he is wrong. She made a very important speech and, as my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said, it ought to make any Government stop in their tracks. She spoke about the unsuitable extension of the Speaker’s role and, in particular, the requirement of certification. We will have an opportunity to discuss that matter later this evening when we debate Amendment 50, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and my amendment to that, Amendment 51, which would delete the subsections that require Speaker’s certification—precisely because I share the noble Baroness’s view that this is a dangerous innovation.
The noble Lord, Lord Martin, floated the possibility that the act of certification by the Speaker may not in itself be a proceeding in Parliament. That perhaps could lead to it being all the more questionable in the courts, but, at all events, certification would relate to other events that have been proceedings in Parliament. We are still fairly deeply entangled.
The noble Baroness spoke about the problems of definition of a no-confidence motion and the scope for legal contention that could arise out of that. Both she and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, advised the House about how contentious the atmosphere would be in the House of Commons—the anger, the passion and the fury that would be raging around the rather solitary person, the Speaker, as he or she issued a certificate. The Speaker would of course be supported by the Clerk of the House, but, in the end, the Speaker would have to take this responsibility of adjudicating on the most intensely political issues that it is possible to imagine. Is it really wise to place the Speaker of the House of Commons in such a situation?
We need to pause and reflect, not least in the context of what both former Speakers described to us as the growing power and challenge of the judiciary to Parliament, and its growing willingness to engage in political issues in certain ways. That echoes the phrase used by the Clerk of the House, when he referred to a Supreme Court that has “not yet got its teeth into these matters”. If our Supreme Court has been relatively restrained, the European Court of Human Rights has not. As long ago as the case that occurred during the Speakership of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, when the European Court of Human Rights entertained the Sinn Fein case, it was already willing to venture into this territory. The Clerk of the House of Commons certainly offers no encouragement to believe that those courts, as time goes by, will become any less willing; indeed, he anticipates that they will be more so.
Both former Speakers and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, drew attention to the sheer status and standing of the advice of the Clerk of the House of Commons, supported by his fellow Clerks and by other legal counsellors. This is very serious and authoritative constitutional advice. Whether or not it was brushed aside, it must be given the most serious regard. I do not for a moment suggest that the Constitution Committee did not give it that most serious consideration, but I suggest that it is also for this Committee—for the whole House—equally to ponder carefully the advice he gave.
Agriculture: Regulation
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Byford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce regulatory burdens on British agriculture.
Baroness Byford
My Lords, the creation of Richard Macdonald’s task force on the reduction of regulation is most welcome. Its report is due shortly, so I know the Minister will be limited in his ability to respond to our individual comments. However, I still consider that a debate of this nature will be valuable. I look forward to hearing from noble Lords and thank them for their participation in this short debate. I should remind the House of my family’s farming interests and my membership and support of farming organisations and charities. I also record my thanks to the NFU, the CLA, the National Pig Association and the CPRE, all of which sent me briefing papers in advance of this debate.
My main concern is with regulations that affect agriculture, but I should point out that we all suffer from the increase in regulation and the resulting bureaucracy that was the hallmark of the previous Government. Only last Thursday, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, stated that,
“the previous Government produced more than 1 million … mainly unproductive jobs in the public sector”.—[Official Report, 24/3/11; col. 881.]
These post holders implement regulations, process an ever increasing tide of forms, and analyse the questionnaires. We have to fill in those forms and questionnaires, and often waste our time at the end of the telephone because government departments do not appear to read or answer our letters. Speak to any small or medium-sized business and they will tell you of the excessive time given to keeping up with the ever increasing bureaucracy. In a recent NFU farmer confidence survey, farmers cited regulation as the issue of most concern to their businesses.
Farmers suffer just as we do, but are also subject to regulation specific to them and to time constraints that do not affect many of us when we have to respond. Weather is all important. Getting the hay in at certain times is critical, just when regulations say that the registration of the birth of livestock is required. Delay in providing such required information usually results in penalties that are excessive by any standards. The NFU Pro magazine last April noted that failure to supply a specific food chain information form prior to the slaughter of any animal may result in the carcass being condemned as unfit for human consumption. There are aspects of livestock control that are important. They should be regulated and the regulations strictly enforced. Other factors should be subject to guidelines, backed up by punishment of those who deliberately flout them. However, why should a farmer who has a number of fields dotted around a village have to fill in forms—movement records—for transferring his sheep from one of those fields to another? Can the Minister tell us whether these existing rules are likely to be reviewed?
Another aspect of regulation that fills me with despair is the lack of computerised information-sharing between Defra and other agencies, resulting in yet more unnecessary form-filling. For instance, in June farmers will be required to complete the census, even though three-quarters of the information is already held on their SFP application forms. This brings to mind the constant barrage of complaints from the farming community about faulty computer systems. The best known culprit is surely the Rural Payments Agency’s single farm payment system. My right honourable friend the Minister, Jim Paice, has recently acknowledged that the thing is so faulty that even he cannot make it work within the timetable he had set himself. His statement on 4 March acknowledged that there had been 140 fixes to that computer system. Many farmers are still awaiting their single farm payments, not just for this year but for previous years, and the Farm Crisis Network is overburdened with requests for help. The net effect on our farmers has been little short of disastrous. Talk to the Farm Crisis Network about the despair that it has to deal with. Look at the statistics on these disadvantaged people and on suicides within agriculture.
The original choice of how to interpret the European edict was always going to make implementation difficult, but Germany—the only other country to make the same choice—has managed it successfully. I wonder what lessons can be learnt there. Our systems, on the other hand, have cost the taxpayer billions of pounds in administration alone. On top of that, financial penalties have been levied by Europe for our failure to pay within the required timeframes. British farmers are let down by regulation in other ways, as well as through the RPA. The EU promulgates its directives and member Governments translate them into national legislation. The UK has been in the habit of ensuring that every agricultural and environmental directive is fully incorporated, by letter and in spirit, and gold-plated. Other Governments have not been so fastidious.
Our farmers, for instance, have to comply with a number of welfare standards introduced following European legislation that has not been enforced by other European countries. Many shoppers in the UK know full well that our pigs and poultry are produced in more humane circumstances than in our continental neighbours. Many retailers in the UK are, however, happy to purchase cheaper European products, slaughter and process them, pack them and label them—fully in compliance with existing regulations—as produced in the UK. This is not fair. It matters very much, as farmers who produce food compete in a global market. When someone undercuts their required price, they either accept less and take a loss or fail to make the sale—and take a loss. Good regulation would not allow this to happen, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell us when the grocery ombudsman will be introduced. This appointment is urgently needed.
Labelling is key to giving the consumer the right information on which they make their purchases. At a minimum, country of origin should be clearly stated on each product, along with assurance scheme logos. It is surely not right that Thai chicken comes from farms that have not been inspected by the EU for years. Beef comes from countries where FMD is endemic, but we may not inspect it before we accept it. The WTO will not allow us to exclude from our trading agreements livestock, or livestock products, produced under poor or non-existent welfare standards. There has to be a wholesale change in our culture. Instead of multiple regulations contained in multiple instruments of turgid prose, laying out the musts and the must-nots for our farmers, there should be guidelines in simple English. Instead of multiple on-farm and in-abattoir inspections for all, there should be a regime of spot checks and proportionate punishment for wrong-doing.
Richard Macdonald’s task force will identify ways to reduce the regulatory burden through the review of the relevant regulations and their implementation, as well as advise how best to achieve a risk-based system of regulation in the future. I hope that it will also consider achieving improvements to farm systems through the use of voluntary agreements. The Campaign for the Farmed Environment is just such a step. I hope that farmers will respond positively, or we may be faced with introducing yet another regulation.
We need a sea change in attitude between farmers and Government. We need to develop a culture of trust: trust of our farmers by officialdom and trust of Government by the agriculture sector. Regulation must be reduced. Regulation should be proportionate and reviewed regularly. Inspection must be reduced for those farmers involved in assurance schemes—they have surely earned their recognition. A clear labelling scheme should be introduced and trust restored.
If we are to meet the challenges of feeding the growing population, we must free up businesses from overregulation and allow them to innovate. I hope that the task force review will herald a new era of working together for the benefit of all.
Lord Grantchester
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and to welcome her return to your Lordships’ House following her recent illness. We have missed her contributions, and once again she has demonstrated her acumen by securing this important debate tonight, as also illustrated by the number of speakers it has attracted.
Reducing the regulatory burden on agriculture has been a challenge to all Administrations and each has initiated programmes to tackle the problem. It was unfortunately inaccurate of her, in her opening remarks, to try to single out the previous Administration in this respect. The impact on agriculture cannot be overstated. The noble Baroness referred to the recent NFU farmer confidence survey, where regulation was cited, at 64 per cent, as the highest negative impact on business. Anecdotally, one of my neighbours cited it as the reason behind his decision to quit farming.
I declare my interest as a dairy farmer in Cheshire. One part of my business was the import and export of cattle, which was brought to an end over the winter of 1995-96, and finally on 20 March 1996, by the announcement from Stephen Dorrell, Secretary of State for Health in the other place at the time. The effect and cost of that announcement was immeasurable. This present Government’s recognition of the problem was immediate, and demonstrated by the establishment of the Task Force on Farming Regulation, led by Richard Macdonald. It is due to report this summer. For the farming community, nothing short of a fundamental reanalysis is demanded. This must start with the analysis of the scope of each EU directive, policy initiative and UK programme objective. In this review, the influence that can be brought to bear by the supply chain, and especially the retailers, must be harnessed. I refer here to the various sector assurance schemes, freedom food initiatives and other marketing ploys that are demanded of agriculture. Mention should also be made of the proposed supermarket ombudsman.
Both government and industry should turn the telescope round and look at the regulation from agriculture’s point of view—the compliance costs, the information that has to be researched and retained, the added load on the business agenda and the incentives and benefits to be derived. Agriculture needs to be able to identity the relevance of the activity to operational improvements, business development and value added. Tackling regulation is often to tackle the symptom, when we really need to tackle the cause. Cutting red tape by introducing a one-in one-out rule is a case in point. Rather, I ask the Minister whether there should be a sunset clause imposed on each regulation, so that the need and relevance of each is systematically reviewed—I suggest five years as a suitable length.
The Conservative-led Government define their objectives in terms of cutting the deficit. I suggest to the noble Lord that nothing less than the effort that is put into that is demanded from agriculture to cut red tape. Has the noble Lord’s department interpreted activities in relation to deficit reduction by focusing on the costs of implementing regulations to government, of complying with regulation to industry and interpreting regulation to consumers? I very much look forward to the task force review and whether it can rise to the challenge of remapping the landscape.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I apologise to the noble Lord but we are under a lot of pressure for time. Three minutes is the limit, and we are now well in to the third minute.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I also declare an interest as a farmer. In my allotted three minutes, I have two points to make. First, there is no doubt that regulation has helped UK consumers to develop greater confidence in the quality of their agricultural products and the way that we, as farmers, produce them. Taken individually, most regulations and audits have the sensible purpose of protecting the environment and reassuring the public, who are our customers. It is right that nothing should be taken for granted.
However, my second point is: why does there need to be so much duplication? Just to give some examples: a neighbour of mine starts a chicken business and he has to pay someone to help him get through the Environment Agency’s integrated pollution prevention and control clearance. Nowadays, you have to employ a professional who knows how to prove you are doing the right thing—doing it yourself simply will not work. Anyway, no sooner has my neighbour got the all clear from the Environment Agency than he has to pay for an environmental impact assessment for the planning authority, which asks all the same questions. One has to wonder why the planning authority will not accept the IPPC—which it would not—and why the form is not the same. There must be ways of consolidating them into one.
On our farm—and I used it as an example, because I do not think we are atypical—we also have numerous inspections and audits. We have comprehensive audits from our buyers such as Waitrose and Tesco. We have local council hygiene standards checks, national dairy scheme checks, combinable crops assurance scheme checks, Freedom Food checks, health and safety checks, HOPS and Cedex checks for our student employment, assured produce checks, Environment Agency checks on both our abstractions and discharges, and of course the Soil Association checks on almost everything. They are all probably justifiable in their own way but put together they are a complete waste of everyone’s time.
In an ideal world there would be one inspector who came on to my farm and really got to know how we work and went through everything everybody wanted to know or to test on the farm. He or she would be under contract to all the government bodies, all the associations and all the supermarkets to impose whatever standards they required on whatever farm. Even if the process took two days on each farm, and involved subsequent random checks, it would be a considerable saving in man-hours all round.
I feel sure my approach is simplistic, but I do hope that Richard Macdonald’s working party will come up with something along these lines.
Lord Plumb
My Lords, we all await the result of the Task Force on Farming Regulation led by Richard Macdonald, but I congratulate my noble friend Lady Byford on securing this time for a preliminary debate. As she said, every sector of society suffers from excessive burdens of red tape, rules and regulations, not all from Brussels, but in agriculture the time spent complying with a data request is increasing.
Regulations cost money—money that is being spent unnecessarily in times of recession. Under the previous Government, the Better Regulation Programme measured the administrative cost alone of meeting regulations in the private sector to be £458 million. This does not include the compliance cost of the general regulatory burden on business. The Institute of Directors estimates the cost of business regulations to be almost £112 billion, of which farmers are very much a part.
In this short debate there is no time to speak of the specific areas. I appeal to my noble friend the Minister and I hope he will agree that we end the so-called gold-plating of EU rules; that we reduce the number of forms needed to register a business and move towards a one-click registration model; that we cut red tape by introducing a one-in, one-out rule; that we end the tick-box regulation culture and target inspections on high-risk organisations and improving professional standards; and that we do as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said and impose a sunset clause so that regulations can be regularly reviewed.
The burden of regulation, as we know, is at its heaviest with inspections, and different agencies have been found to inspect to different standards, bringing the looming risk of penalty and appeals on the understanding that regulatory requirements become crystallised.
Finally in the context of overregulation, planning authorities often cause problems, sometimes determined not by Government but by national parks and very much by local authorities through the localised Bill, and we need quicker and more positive decisions. Successful businesses need helpful understanding from planning authorities, particularly as agriculture moves into production energy and makes good use of waste.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, I too am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for pressing this question and enabling us to have time to discuss it. I want to make two points.
First, I know from my contacts just how pressurised an industry farming is. Clergy in the dales area of Ripon and Leeds—Swaledale, Wensleydale, Nidderdale and so on—report consistently on the pressure, sometimes desperation, felt by farmers, and mental illness has become a significant factor in the life of many agricultural communities. I pay tribute to the work done by clergy and ministers in helping to speak to farmers and to share the real pastoral concerns of farmers in those areas. Farm Crisis Network in particular helps those in difficulties and tries to give advice to those who have become entangled in the regulatory process.
No one doubts that regulation and inspection are needed in the farming industry as elsewhere, but the experience of inspection can often appear punitive rather than encouraging. How will the Government ensure that the inspectorate is helpful rather than punitive in its approach? There is a widespread feeling that the inspection regime is not proportionate or consistent, and this damages the health and well-being of the whole rural community. There is a need for better training of the inspectorate.
Secondly, can the Minister tell us how the independent role of the rural advocate is going to be expressed, given the abolition of that post? For more than a century a rural advocate in one form or another has been part of the countryside scene. I have heard nothing but praise for the way in which Dr Stuart Burgess has been able to express the voice of our rural communities. It remains crucial that there should be an independent way of informing policy-making, because the agricultural industry is particularly complex. The pressures are distinctive; the rural communities are very far from the concerns of London, or Leeds for that matter.
I have two questions. What do the Government have in mind to reduce stress on farmers by better training for inspectors, and how is the independent voice of the rural advocate going to be expressed in the future?
Viscount Brookeborough
My Lords, first I declare an interest in that I farm in a small way and have about 120 acres of trees. To add to the basic agriculture, I wish to refer to the regulatory burden on private commercial forestry, which is an important part of many farming enterprises.
The state, through the Forestry Commission, produces nearly 70 per cent of UK timber production, which is almost a monopoly, but it is also the regulator, which is an unhealthy situation for us all. For example, as a landowner you currently need to apply for permission to put new land into forestry and also to take land out of forestry, as that is a change of use. However, the Forestry Commission presumably does not have to ask itself this and it can do what it wishes. A landowner, having gained permission to plant and probably doing so with a grant of public funds, produces a crop ready for harvesting after at least 40 years. This time, he now has to apply to the state for a felling licence to harvest a crop that the state grant-aided specifically for that purpose when it was planted. This appears to be madness and jobs for the boys.
This brings in another issue—the distortion of the timber market—as the time taken in obtaining felling licences restricts the ability of producers to react to the changing demand and prices of timber in the short term. This does not apply to a grain producer who can sell where he likes. However, the private timber producer has to gain permission from a monopoly state producer and is therefore likely to miss the boat. In addition, the state producer is hide-bound by five-year plans. For example, during last year timber prices rose by more than 50 per cent for some packages. The sawmills that we use were screaming for more timber. A few weeks ago I was talking to a state forest harvesting manager and I asked him why they did not fell some very suitable timber that I knew of at this high price. His answer was that he could not do it as it was not programmed within that year of his five-year plan.
There are two points. First, it is no wonder that our state forests are so uneconomic if they cannot be more flexible. Secondly, the price logically became as high as it did as a result of demand and inflexible supply. Therefore in a period of low prices and oversupply the opposite might occur. State forests will continue felling and oversupplying and the price will go even lower. The forestry section of agriculture in the UK is not being allowed to operate in a free market. The burden of state regulation, control and interference in this sector is far too great, and I ask the Minister what the Government are going to do about it. Privatisation of some state forests at the right price might well be a good option, but the whole business operation needs looking at.
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, globally, agriculture faces some long-term trends. As my noble friend Lady Byford said, there is a growing population, climate change, changing diet and competition for agricultural land. One would have thought that there were good opportunities for agriculture in the EU, but the EU is going backwards compared with the rest of the world. Our yields are flat. They are growing in America, Brazil and almost everywhere but in the EU due to overregulation. It was madness of the EU to bring in the regulation on chemicals and pesticides when there was no alternative. As a result, billions of pounds of investment and innovation money has gone out of the EU, and particularly out of the UK, which was so advanced in this field, and has gone to America and Canada. Jobs and some of our best brains have gone there—and one cannot blame them when one lives in this highly regulated environment, as we do as a result of the EU.
In the report on innovation in agriculture that we are undertaking in Sub-Committee D, we have evidence from Rothamsted Research, that:
“The disjunction between restrictive regulation in the EU and the lack of resources for agricultural research and innovation is probably the biggest threat to the long-term viability and competitiveness of EU agriculture”.
My noble friend Lord Henley has a huge job to turn that round.
More locally, could my noble friend tell me whether there are any plans to change the highly overrestrictive sheep regulations as a result of foot and mouth disease? Having tags in both ears has caused huge problems, including animal welfare problems, as some of the lambs are running around without ears, having been tagged too early. I have just heard that on Exmoor the tags that have been used, which had been authorised, are now no longer acceptable and farmers have to buy new tags.
I agree with my noble friend Lady Byford and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about farm inspections. They are highly costly and need to be restructured. But perhaps the greatest threat to farmers is the draconian subsidy penalties, whether for cross-compliance or anything else. Small farmers cannot tolerate that; they make mistakes quite innocently sometimes, and they are not the people to be persecuted, but sadly that is what happens. I hope that the Macdonald report will bring that to the fore and that the Government will change many of the regulations and the severe penalty regime that are currently in force.
Lord Rogan
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for initiating this timely debate. Agriculture is a devolved matter, but we are speaking about British agriculture, and I trust that a few words and examples from Ulster are germane to the wider debate. Although it has been many years since agriculture was a mainstay of the British economy, even in a rural region such as Northern Ireland it is still an important source of employment and wealth creation. Indeed, during the recent recession and ongoing economic turmoil, Northern Ireland's agri-food sector has been one of the few industries to continue to grow and prosper. It has grown and prospered despite the best efforts of regulators in Belfast, London and Brussels to smother it in red tape.
Ridding the sector of unnecessary and burdensome bureaucracy is, as we have discovered in Northern Ireland, no easy task. We do not need a bonfire of red tape; rather, we need to adopt that robust, age-old farming practice of slash and burn. Two years ago, after not inconsiderable effort, the Ulster Farmers Union welcomed a report from the Better Regulation Task Force, a creation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was apparently going to stop the pernicious spread of farm bureaucracy. In particular, there were concerns about burdens caused by farm inspections, the single farm payment scheme, the administrative stress induced by TB policies, and the stupefying complexity of guidance notes and terms and conditions issued to farmers for every scheme and regulation imaginable under the sun. What, you may wonder, happened to such laudable ambitions? What, indeed. One year later, the Ulster Farmers Union was bemoaning the abject absence of action by Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture. Despite having accepted nearly all the recommendations identified the year before, the department was making slow headway in actually removing any red tape. Indeed, the most tangible outcome appears to have been the creation of that great oxymoron of government, the working group, to consider further action.
Talk, as they say, is cheap, and farmers in Northern Ireland want action, not words. They had been promised that the administrative burden on farmers and agri-food businesses would reduce by 25 per cent by 2013, saving them upwards of £15 million in the process. I rather fear that they will have to wait somewhat longer. There is nothing sedate or comfortable about the fiercely competitive market in which farmers operate; we are all part of the global village, with every possible foodstuff available in and out of season. There is no fat in the industry and no capacity to carry unnecessary administrative burdens. I commend the noble Baroness for securing the debate and encourage those responsible for regulating to pause before putting pen to paper and to consider the anxiety and annoyance that they spread in farmhouses throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for securing this debate and express my own delight to see her back in harness. I declare my interest as a partner in the family farm, a member of the NFU and a board member of the Countryside Alliance. It seems almost a national condition to embrace bureaucratic regulation, gold-plate it and then complain about the red tape that we have to endure. We need to focus on trusting people more and, whenever possible, to have a much lighter touch. Of course we all recognise the need to have high standards, especially with public and animal health in the spotlight. Yet regulation must be fair and proportionate and take into account that British farmers already have some of the highest standards of animal welfare in the world.
We must create an environment in which small businesses across the country in every farm can recognise a helping hand and not a heavy one. Tomorrow the Countryside Alliance rural awards will be held in your Lordships' House. The winners will be beacons of rural excellence, yet across the board regulation is identified as stifling initiative and enterprise.
One of the biggest regulatory issues facing British livestock farmers is the complex and ever-changing rules surrounding animal movements. Rather than evaluating and improving existing regulations, layers of regulation have been overlain by further layers, in many cases involving complex duplication. Until recent changes implemented by the Government, the bizarre situation existed whereby farmers had to notify cattle movements either on line or by post within three days. Many were based in uplands where there is still limited internet access and the returning envelope was supplied by second-class postage. For some of the most remote areas of the country, this is an awful lot to expect from our postal service. What is more absurd is the fact that EU rules state that national Governments may set their own limits on notification between three and eight days, yet Britain opted for the shortest possible time. My intention is not to make a partisan point in highlighting that example, but how on earth did we get ourselves in that position when we had the ability to be more flexible and yet chose the most draconian option? Flexible regulation can result in a significant reduction in the amount of paperwork for farmers. This flexibility will assist a sustainable and profitable farming sector and help British farmers to continue to produce the top-quality meat and produce for which they are justly renowned.
The Earl of Sandwich
I declare an interest as an owner and joint manager of farmland in West Dorset.
Two out of three farmers complained to the NFU last year that red tape was their greatest concern—greater than prices or the economy or the CAP. Defra admitted that the cost of its regulations had reached £458 million, with the greatest impact on farmers. The good news is that common sense seems to have arrived, and the new Minister, Jim Paice, believes that more trust should be vested in farmers, because they know which practices work best and which do not—and he is one.
I am amazed at the stamina that farmers and owners have displayed in coping with so many rules. The culture of political correctness has to change, and I am sure that the Minister will set that out in his reply. We need a new official attitude that states that if we do not need it, we do not want it. Rules intended as improvements have become burdens. With our economy under pressure we cannot afford the luxury of unthinking legislation. There must be no gold-plating of EU rules, especially when it is known that other member states do not comply, as the noble Baroness said.
Does the Minister agree with the NFU that the impact assessments, while they may include a section on rural proofing, are,
“too often ignored or not considered fully”?
I support the Commission’s new proposals on the progressive greening of the CAP and more sustainable agriculture, but I am also concerned about the duplication among the various environmental agencies. We have small tracts of woodland and pasture, including SSSIs, that involve at least four agencies: Natural England, the Countryside Agency, the Forestry Commission and Defra. Can the Minister assure us that designations need not involve so much bureaucracy in future?
Finally, I turn to badgers. Here I can draw directly on our experience in West Dorset. When are we going to follow the Welsh—subject to the court case—and issue farmers with licences for four-year culls in definable areas of the south-west? I know that this is not without problems. They have been outlined in an excellent Commons briefing paper.
Furthermore, can Defra further simplify the bovine TB testing procedure? One farmer whom I know complains that Defra is not collecting animals fast enough, perhaps because of the shortage of vets. The noble Baroness has already mentioned a review of the movements of the animals. Once they are tested positive, too much time elapses, they are kept in isolation longer than necessary and the risk on the farm remains. On top of that, under the 60-day test, four more months of quarantine mean that animals still have to be fed and there can be no sales.
Is the Minister aware that the testing rules are applied differently from county to county? For instance, in Devon, tested animals with the correct ear tags and showing fitness to travel are collected faster because they do not require an inspection, so much more must be done online, and this of course is the most welcome form of deregulation.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, normally when winding up for the Opposition, I would hope to be able to acknowledge most, if not all, of the speeches. However, given that I have only three minutes, as others do, I think that even if I attempted to list all the names of speakers I would run out of time. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will excuse me for not picking up on many of the excellent points that have been made in this debate. I would like to compliment all noble Lords who have spoken on having been able to make quality speeches within such a restricted timeframe. I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, both on securing this debate and, given that she first tabled it some time ago, on showing patience and tenacity in managing to bring the debate forward today.
The issue of the burden of regulation in agriculture has been around for a long time, as my noble friend said. Indeed, I remember complaints about the gold-plating of EU directives from the days when I sat on the European Parliament’s agriculture committee, so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, so I know that these issues have been around a long time. I believe that the previous Labour Government were involved in a number of efforts to seek to reduce the regulatory burden in agriculture from 1998 onwards. Indeed, there was the Hampton review, the Better Regulation Task Force report, Regulation—Less is More, the attempts by Defra to try to simplify regulations and legislation, and some results that the department achieved in consequence.
From these Benches I certainly do not oppose the current Government’s efforts to tackle this problem and indeed wish the Macdonald review every success. I would like to ask the Minister a little bit more about the timing of the review. In the initial announcements of the task force, it was intended to report early in 2011. I also know that issues of significant concern were supposed to be raised with Ministers as soon as they arose through that process. It would be good to know from the Minister whether any such issues have been raised up to now and whether he can give us an update on when the report will be published. Finally, in order to respond fully to the comments that have been made in this valuable debate today, I ask the Minister to ensure that we will have a debate at much greater length once the review is published and its recommendations have been established.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. First I will deal with the last point made the noble Baroness, Lady Quin. Obviously that will be a matter for the usual channels, but I am sure that she and others will find a way of debating Mr Macdonald’s report when it comes through in due course. As regards the timing of the report, I appreciate that there has been slippage, as there often is on these matters. However, it is very important that these things are got right, as it were, before they come out. The current plans are that the report will appear in May—this year, I stress—and I look forward to discussing it at that time.
I also thank my noble friend for bringing forward this debate in the dinner break, and I thank all other noble Lords who have spoken. I think all noble Lords will appreciate that I will not have time to deal with all the questions that have been put to me; nor would it be appropriate for me to respond to all of them as quite a lot are matters that Richard Macdonald will be considering in his report. I will briefly run through some of the suggestions that have been made, then say a word or two about the Government’s general attitude to regulation, about the Macdonald review and how it was set up, about what it is proposed should be done, and a little more about the timescale. I hope that will satisfy noble Lords who have spoken.
As I said, there have been a large number of questions put to me. For example, my noble friend Lady Byford, talked about the lack of proper IT communication between Defra and its various agencies. I accept that we do not always get these things right and we could do more. She also talked about the groceries code adjudicator and when we were likely to see legislation on that. I dealt with that matter a day or two ago in relation to the Public Bodies Bill. It is in hand and we hope to be able to produce something in due course. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, talked about the need for more sunset clauses in all regulations, again something that we would like more of. However, I cannot make any categorical assurance about that, particularly in advance of the report. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, spoke of there being far too much duplication. Again, we should look at that and I very much hope that Richard Macdonald has it in hand.
My noble friend Lord Plumb spoke of having no gold-plating, which the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, echoed. We all think that is right and we do not want gold-plating of matters that come from Europe. My noble friend also talked about the need for more one-click registration modelling. Again, I accept that point, as it ought to be looked at. He also talked about targeting inspection on high-risk people rather than on others, which he made a good case for. I am sure that Richard Macdonald will look at it. He also made the good point that we should make more good use of waste. I assure him that I have very much been involved with our waste review, which is due out in May or June this year. I hope that my noble friend looks forward to the publication of the waste review, which obviously goes much wider than farming, in due course.
The right reverend Prelate spoke of the need for better training of the inspectorate. Obviously, we can always improve the training and I, again, take that on board. I also note his comments on the role of the rural advocate, although I think that I dealt with that when I spoke only last Wednesday on this matter on the Public Bodies Bill. On forestry the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, talked about the conflicts between the dual roles of the Forestry Commission. Again, we have highlighted that in the past and the new panel on forestry announced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will look at that in due course.
My noble friend Lord Caithness looked at some of the problems facing sheep farmers with EIDs. I can assure him that my right honourable friend the Minister for Agriculture, Jim Paice, certainly highlighted this matter to Commissioner Dalli when he came over to England. I suggested that it might be quite a good idea—I think this suggestion originally came from my noble friend the Duke of Montrose—if we took Commissioner Dalli off to one of the big sheep markets such as Longtown, which is very near me, to show him what confusion EIDs were causing and what chaos there was with just how many were falling off the sheep.
I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, for reminding us that although I am a mere English Minister in these matters, the debate was related to British and UK agriculture. I note what he said about the position of Northern Ireland and the other devolved parts of the United Kingdom. We certainly discuss all these matters with our devolved counterparts. At the moment, we are in rather a strange phase in that although they are still in office, we do not know who they will be in a short while, but we will resolve that in due course.
My noble friend Lord Gardiner spoke about animal movement regulations. Yes, I agree that they are very important for disease control, as my noble friend made clear, but that is something which we have to get right. Again, I hope that Richard Macdonald will look at that in due course.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, raised that perennial and very tricky question about badgers and bovine TB. All I can say is that any decision we make will be based on the scientific evidence put in front of us. We will obviously watch carefully what happens in Wales and examine it. The important thing is that we make the right decision at the right time, based on the evidence put before us. I and my colleague Jim Paice have already taken advice from our scientific adviser and the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government. That advice will be listened to and studied when we make the appropriate decision.
I want to say a word or two about the Government’s general attitude to regulation before I get on to Richard Macdonald and his review. Only a week ago, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made the importance of better regulation quite clear in his Budget Statement. I stress “better regulation” rather than deregulation; the important matter to get across is of getting regulation right. He made clear the importance of that in supporting growth and a green economy. That goes much wider than agriculture and across the whole of industry.
In doing so, the Chancellor spoke of our commitment to reducing red tape on businesses to allow them to grow and to support our economy. That was supported by proposals for regulatory reform. To support that objective, as we know, my right honourable friend the Minister for Agriculture announced the establishment of the industry-led task force on agriculture last year. I stress that an independent, industry-led task force to deal with these matters. I regret to say to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, that its remit covered purely England but I am sure that the devolved Administrations will want to look at the matter. The task force was set up to look at ways of advising the Government on improving approaches to regulation affecting farmers, growers and food processors. The key to this is that the task force is both independent of government—we await its report with interest—and led by industry. As I said, it was set up in June last year. The Government want to understand what farming and food processing business are concerned about and what the solutions to their problems might be. That is why we have asked the task force for advice. I understand that the chair and members are now in what one might refer to as the home straight and are preparing for their final meeting on 4 April, which is next week. We hope that they will publish their report later in the spring. We are looking to see that happen in May, just after the local elections.
I can inform the House what we have asked of the task force. We invited the chair and members to be bold in ambition and wide-ranging in vision. We have made clear to the task force that the context for its work was—I quote from its terms of reference—
“In support of a more competitive farming sector that contributes to the economic recovery”.
We asked the task force to,
“identify ways to reduce the regulatory burden on farmers and food processors through a review of relevant regulations and their implementation, and advise on how best to achieve a risk-based system of regulation in future”.
We asked the task force to do so—I stress this element of its remit—
“whilst maintaining high environmental, welfare and safety standards”.
I give an assurance to the House that this review is not about compromising on outcomes or standards. It is not a “bonfire of regulation” that some have demanded and others have decried. It is a way of maintaining standards while moving towards a more risk-based approach of doing business. It is about better regulation—I again stress those words.
To address three aspects of the task force’s terms of reference, it has focused on three main types of problem. First, it has set out to identify disproportionate and overcomplex process, implementation or enforcement, with a view to changing to a simpler, risk-based and outcome-driven approach. Secondly, the task force has looked at unnecessary or outdated measures with a view to revocation or, where they are EU-based, renegotiation. It is important to remember that it is always possible to renegotiate matters in Europe, difficult though it might seem at times. Thirdly, it has aimed to identify the gold-plating of regulations in the past with a view to making recommendations for alternative approaches and the removal of unnecessary burdens.
The farming industry has risen to the challenge of collecting evidence and has provided ample food for thought. More than 350 responses have been received from individual farmers, trade associations and non-governmental organisations. Because this is an independent report it is not for me to pre-empt what the task force will say but it has made it clear that the main thematic areas of its review are farm animals, growing and crops, food processing, business and management, paperwork, environment and land management, and the single payment scheme and cross-compliance. Looking at overlaps and duplication between inspection processes is also an important part of the review.
I do not think that I ought to try to pre-empt what might come out of that review or—this is equally important—how we will respond to it. However, I welcome this opportunity to have said a little about how we set up the review and what we hope will come of it. I again thank my noble friend for introducing the debate.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Norton of Louth
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, this amendment is designed to probe the reasons for the Speaker having to consult the Deputy Speakers before issuing his certificate. So far as I can see, there are two possible, if incompatible, reasons for the inclusion of this provision. The first is because of the provision of Section 1(3) of the Parliament Act 1911, which requires the Speaker, before certifying that a Bill is a money Bill, to consult, if practicable, two members of the Chairmen’s Panel. The Government may thus see the provision of the Speaker’s certificate as analogous to a certificate under the Parliament Act.
The second reason is that the Government recognise that the situation is not strictly analogous. As I pointed out at Second Reading, there is a statutory definition of a money Bill. There is no definition in this Bill of a motion of no confidence. There is therefore the prospect, as we have already heard, of the Speaker being dragged into political controversy. It is possible at the moment for the Speaker to be drawn into controversy over the certification of a money Bill. We saw a recent example in your Lordships’ House. That arose because some Members were ill informed about the provisions of the Parliament Act. However, that perhaps emphasises the point that the potential for controversy is even greater in a politically charged atmosphere where the fate of a Government may be involved, and there is no statutory guidance that would offer the Speaker a protective shield. It may thus be that, recognising that potential, the Government wish to provide some protective cover for the Speaker by involving the Deputy Speakers in the decision. Because the Deputy Speakers will be drawn from different parties, it provides a modicum of cover.
Whichever it is, neither justifies the provision. Ultimately, whatever consultations are held, the decision will be that of the Speaker and be seen as such, as is the position with money Bills. If one seeks to provide some degree of protection for the Speaker, the answer is not to require him to consult the Deputy Speakers but, rather, to provide a clear statutory definition of what constitutes a motion of no confidence. We shall come in due course to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Cormack. That is the way we should be going. I appreciate that his amendment is not incompatible with subsection (4) but, whereas there is a clear, and I believe compelling, case for defining what we mean by a vote of no confidence, I am not clear that there is a compelling case for subsection (4). What value is added by consulting the Deputy Speakers? They are not necessarily experts on the subject. What if they disagree with one another? If the Speaker is to consult, why not give him scope to consult those who appear to him to be appropriate to consult? In practice, he could presumably consult whom he wishes, so there is no obvious need for the provision. Ultimately, if there is to be a Speaker’s certificate, it is the Speaker’s responsibility. He cannot pass it on to others. I am therefore unclear why this provision is necessary. I look forward to hearing from the Minister why it is in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I tabled an amendment in exactly the same terms as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. As he is your Lordships’ leading constitutional expert, I felt very good that I had arrived at the same idea, and I am extremely happy to appear on the Marshalled List as having signed up to his amendment.
The provision is so vaguely drafted as to be almost entirely without meaning. I know that it is borrowed from the Parliament Act 1911 but that does not mean that it is an appropriate precedent, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has just pointed out. In that Act, there is a clear definition of a money Bill, but there is no clear definition of a no confidence motion in this measure. The Clerk of the House of Commons, in giving evidence to the Select Committee in the other place, was of the opinion that the question of whether consultation was practicable would become a legal question. It would be open to legal challenge in so far as anything in the Bill is liable to be open to legal challenge. We had a full discussion of that in an earlier debate.
One observes that judicial reviews have been upheld again and again against the Government on the grounds that Governments had failed to consult properly. If it is a question of whether the Speaker may or may not have consulted properly according to the requirements in the Bill, I suppose that that, if anything, might give an opening to judicial intervention, although I am not seriously afraid that that is the case. The real concern about this provision is that it is almost meaningless. What does “so far as practicable” mean? What would be proper consultation in these circumstances? The requirement to consult does not oblige the Speaker to agree with the Deputies. The Deputies themselves might disagree. In fact, one might surmise that they are rather likely to disagree in the circumstance of a no confidence vote that will occur in the most fraught and complex political circumstances. There will be enormous pressure not only on the Speaker of the House but also on the Deputy Speakers if they are to be involved formally in this process. The Deputy Speakers have disclaimed their party allegiance in their new capacities but, none the less, it is only realistic to anticipate that they would come under immense political pressure from members of their own political parties. They would need to be very sturdy to ignore all that. In the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, described how they would imagine the atmosphere to be in the House on the occasion of a no confidence vote. They gave us to understand something of the sort of pressures that would be brought to bear not only on the Speaker but, if this provision remains in the Bill, on the Deputy Speakers, too.
In the end, the Speaker will be on his own. It seems that this provision gives him no useful cover or protection against the political storm. A very sensible conclusion of the Constitution Committee, contained in its report at paragraph 159, was that, whether or not this turns out to be a legal question, an obligation on the Speaker to consult with the Deputy Speakers should be a matter of internal House of Commons procedure, should not be contained within the statutory provisions of the Bill and therefore should be omitted. Rather regrettably, the Government rejected this advice in their response to the report of the Constitution Committee at paragraph 60. The Government are quite keen to pray the Constitution Committee’s recommendations in aid when they agree with them. They have not done so on this occasion, however. They cite the precedent of the Parliament Act 1911, which, they say, has worked well. As we suggest, it is not a terribly useful precedent; certifying a money Bill is a matter of ascertaining fact and hardly contentious. Certifying a vote of no confidence would be a very different thing.
I hope that the Minister will agree to look again at this sensible recommendation of the Constitution Committee and that he will agree to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and myself.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
On the face of it, this seems an unwise provision. First, the similar provision in the Parliament Act is about the Speaker having to certify whether something is a money Bill. That has become a legal, constitutional issue where there is not much discretion; it is simply a question of law. I can see that assistance is important for this. Secondly, I imagine that the application of the Freedom of Information Act would mean that any document containing the advice given by the Deputy Speakers to the Speaker of the House of Commons in relation to this issue would become available very quickly. Thirdly, it does not help the constitution if there is disagreement between the Deputy Speakers and the Speakers and a doubtful Motion of no confidence. Fourthly, what is the purpose of the provision when the critical issue raised by the Bill is: what is a motion of no confidence? Though the procedure is very tight and closed, the Bill leaves that completely open.
It is not something that the courts will want to get involved in. However, it is not good for Parliament that divisions will become apparent and technical processes that need to be gone through might not be. Quite separately from the issue of whether this is a motion of no confidence—on which view there is wide discretion—the phrase, “so far as practicable”, is one to which any reasonable person can give a very substantial meaning. Two reasonable people can take two entirely differing views as to what is practicable and what is not.
I ask, in parenthesis, what do the Government envisage as making it impracticable to consult a Deputy Speaker? Is it only the illness or incapacity of one of the Deputy Speakers or do the Government have something else in mind? It seems to be extraordinarily unlikely that, apart from illness or incapacity, the tabling of a motion that might be one of no confidence, the indication by the Speaker or the debate on the motion, will happen so quickly that there will be no possibility of getting to speak to a Deputy Speaker. Perhaps the Minister can help us on that.
Like my noble friend Lord Howarth and the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I ask what the purpose of this is once it is accepted, as it is by everybody, that an exercise of judgment may well be required by the Speaker. The judgment is his and his alone, and who he or she consults is inevitably a matter for him or her. For example, one would reasonably expect that if there is any room for doubt, he or she should consult senior representatives of all the political parties about what they think in relation to it, yet the Bill specifies only one group of statutory consultees. I can see the precedent in the Parliament Act, but the way that this is drafted is much more suitable, almost, to the exercise of a discretion by a Minister, which is then challengeable, rather than to the exercise of difficult judgment by a Speaker in the context of the House of Commons where to specify statutory consultees, apart from in the Parliament Act, is extraordinarily unusual. I do not know of any other example, and I would be interested in the other examples that the Government relied on apart from the Parliament Act, which is very different.
It feels as if this has not been thought through, and I invite the Minister, having heard the debate, to ask what we are getting out of this provision. Does it make it worse rather than better? The superficial attractions of asking the Speaker to get advice are, when you think about it, probably not real, particularly when there is nothing to stop the Speaker getting that advice if he wants to, yet here it is made compulsory. Why? What is the benefit? There does not seem to be any, and there seems to be quite a lot of disbenefits.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth was quite correct, as other speakers in this debate have indicated, to draw attention to the provision in the Parliament Act 1911, which indicates:
“Before giving his certificate the Speaker shall consult, if practicable, two members to be appointed from the Chairmen’s Panel at the beginning of each Session by the Committee of Selection”.
My noble friend inquired whether that was simply because of precedent and suggested that there are differences between the definition of a money Bill and what is required of the Speaker in the context of this clause. I accept that this arises from there being a precedent for such a requirement and acknowledge that there is a difference between determining what is a money Bill and the nature of the certification that would be required of the Speaker in the context of this Bill. What they have in common is that they are matters which have important constitutional consequences. That is why we thought it appropriate, given that there is a precedent for the Speaker to consult two very senior members—in the case of the Parliament Act, two members of the Chairman’s Panel and in this case Deputy Speakers—that we should follow that precedent.
When I was listening to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, I was thinking that if we had not included this we would probably have been accused of not having thought this through. In the Parliament Act, there is provision for consultation with the Deputy Speaker and we would have been asked why we had not included a provision to consult the Deputy Speakers.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I feel that the noble and learned Lord is getting a bit paranoid. No, I would not have said that.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it is not necessarily paranoia if you think that someone is putting forward such an argument, but I will leave it to noble Lords to judge whether they could hear the noble and learned Lord making a similar argument.
I accept that the issue links into the debates we have had, and will have later, on whether we could find more objective criteria for determining what constitutes a vote of no confidence. I was not quite sure whether the argument made by my noble friend Lord Norton was that, as things stand at the moment, the Speaker has a greater need to consult in the absence of such a definition than in the context of a money Bill. Even looking at the provisions in the 1911 Act as to what constitutes a money Bill, it may be a statutory definition but it is not transparent, which I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Martin, who had to deal with these things, will recognise.
I would not wish to try to persuade the House—nor is it the case—that this is the most important provision in the Bill. Nevertheless, it is very similar to a provision that has existed on the statute book and has been in force for 100 years. It is a tried and tested procedure. That also applies to the requirement to consult “so far as practicable”. Clearly, if someone was ill or abroad, that might not necessarily be practicable. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, was right to say that the requirement is for consultation, not to seek agreement. As I have said, they are tried and tested measures, which we thought were appropriate in a context where important constitutional consequences would flow from a decision.
On freedom of information, obviously one issue would be what form the consultation took. If the consultation was verbal, there would be nothing for a freedom of information request to latch on to. I would have to remind myself what the possible grounds of exemption are but, given that advice to Ministers can be a matter for exemption, perhaps that would also apply to advice given to a Speaker. However, without looking in detail at the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, I cannot answer that question directly, although I can say that, if the consultation was not written down, I am not quite sure what would be caught. The noble and learned Lord asked me to write to him on this and I will seek to do so.
Given that we are trying to embrace a tried-and- tested procedure, I would invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Does my noble and learned friend not see the irony in arguing the case for this on the basis that it is a tried-and-tested procedure while turning upside down the whole tried-and-tested procedure of how we decide when we are going to have a general election?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I see the irony. I still think that it is right.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken in this short debate, which is an important debate to be had. I am still left wondering what value is added by this provision. My noble and learned friend has confirmed that, of the two definitions I offered, the first was correct. The Government have looked at the Parliament Act in which there is a provision that has been carried over. That seems to be the sole reason.
In terms of the argument, I am not quite sure why the provision should be there. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, was right. The Speaker is quite capable of consulting those whom he wishes to consult. If the provision was not in the Bill, it would avoid the legal problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, referred. The more we can do to reduce the prospect of legal challenge, the better. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, pointed out, there is a problem with the position of the Deputy Speakers, who are neutral figures as Deputy Speakers but seek re-election as party candidates.
The Minister’s argument is that this is based on precedent, as it is in the Parliament Act, which also has a definition of a money Bill. I am not quite sure why we are following the precedent of consultation but not following the precedent of having a definition as the basis on which that consultation takes place. Either one follows precedent and does both or one does neither. I cannot see the argument for saying, “Well, this is in the Parliament Act, so we’re lifting that” and “This is in the Parliament Act, but we’re not lifting that”, even though the definition, to which we will come, is far more important. That is essential in this Bill and I do not see why we need Clause 2(4).
I hope that my noble friend will reflect on that. He has heard the arguments and I think that he has recognised the value of them. I hope that it is something he might consider between now and Report. But in the interim, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, the amendment addresses two issues. I do not propose to deal with the question of possible weekend voting because we have discussed that already.
The first issue is that the Bill as drawn omits to provide for a timetable for an election to take place after a vote for a Dissolution or a vote of no confidence. The existing provision in the Bill is for an election to be held on the day appointed by Her Majesty, by proclamation, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. The Bill therefore leaves it to the defeated Prime Minister to decide on the advice he gives to the Queen as to how long should elapse before a general election is held in the event of a vote of no confidence. To leave the date of the election as open as that would be unsatisfactory and open to abuse.
Secondly, the timescale suggested in the amendment—that an election should be held no earlier than four weeks after the Speaker’s certificate and no later than eight weeks after the certificate—is intended to strike a sensible balance. On the one hand, it is important to avoid an unholy rush to judgment, with a squeezed timetable for candidate selection, for nominations and for postal votes; on the other hand, it should not be possible to delay an election under either of the provisions for an early Dissolution for too long. It is also important not to permit an unduly long campaign to enable a Prime Minister to bolster an unpopular Government’s position. Keeping the period reasonably short is particularly important when there is a vote of no confidence because the Government who have just been rejected by the elected House would remain in power following that vote until replaced after the election.
However, the period allowed also has to be long enough to make it possible for a reasonably full campaign to take place, even where the Speaker’s certificate comes just before a holiday period. The timing of any early Dissolution may be unpredictable and inconvenient and that may happen. For this reason, while it might at first blush seem desirable to opt for a shorter period of six or seven weeks as the longest period permissible, we feel that eight weeks is about right.
It will be interesting to hear what other noble Lords think about the appropriate period, but it would not be sensible for the Bill to be enacted with no timetable at all. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, this is a characteristic of trying to solve a problem that has never existed. The only occasion on which this system has been tested—we keep going over the same ground and I do not need to repeat it—was when Jim Callaghan lost a vote of no confidence. I can remember absolutely no dispute, argument, difficulty or sense of abuse about the period between the defeat of the Government and the general election being held. However, now, as with fixed-term Parliaments and a number of other provisions in the Bill, we seem to need to write into statute law what has historically always operated perfectly satisfactorily.
In particular I am concerned that, unless we can improve the Bill, in addition to the two-week period when the Government are being formed, there is now to be up to eight weeks—10 weeks in all—between the defeat of the Government in a motion of no confidence and the general election. The longest election period in the time that I was fighting elections was six weeks, in 1997. I think that there was universal agreement that that was at least two weeks too long. The public get bored—I do not blame them—pretty rapidly. I shall not go over those arguments again because they are conclusive. I simply say that this is yet another example of an attempt to impose a straitjacketed legal constraint on something which has worked perfectly well and requires no change whatever. At its worst, it could lead to a general election campaign effectively lasting for 10 weeks, which is at least six weeks too long.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I was rather puzzled by the amendment, for the same reason the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated: that this has never been an issue in the past. I have been thinking about what is driving this stuff. It appears to be the notion that the Prime Minister has some enormous advantage in being able to choose the date of the election and, if this amendment were agreed, its timing. For those Prime Ministers whom I have known and who have had to decide these things, it is an agonising decision. Have too long a campaign and you might lose because the public get bored; have too short a campaign and you might not get across your arguments or there may be an event which you are unable to control and which will affect voters’ views—for example, some trade figures. That there is some great advantage in the Prime Minister deciding the date seems to be what is driving this stuff. It is fundamentally misguided and takes away the flexibility which you need in the system to apply common sense.
Perhaps I may make one slightly partisan point. The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill recently passed through this House. The Government moved heaven and earth to make sure that that Bill went through the House so that the referendum could take place on the same day as the Scottish and local government elections, thereby ensuring the turnout. Perhaps I may say to my noble friends in the Liberal Democrat party that it is inconsistent for them to argue, on the one issue, that the Executive’s power and patronage can be used to try to achieve a particular result, and then, on another issue such as this, to say, “Well, we can’t possibly have the Prime Minister deciding the timing of a general election campaign”. It is a power which Prime Ministers have sometimes tried to use to advantage in the past and it has turned out to be something of a curse.
The fundamental thinking behind the amendment, that there is some great defect in our system because of prime ministerial ability to choose the date and timing of a general election, is misguided. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that we end up trying to create a box-ticking culture for the conduct of our public affairs. It will come to grief, as we have seen in many other areas of our public life where this philosophy has been applied.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am slightly confused by the amendment. Its effect would be that, depending on the date of the certificate, you could be compelled to have a general election between, for example, 18 December and 16 January, which would seem unwise, or from 1 August to 29 August. I have no experience of fighting elections but, speaking as a member of the electorate, I imagine that I would not particularly want a general election campaign going on between those dates. The Government cannot avoid that conclusion on the basis of the rigidity in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames. The Government or the noble Lord may indicate that something is wrong with the current system. Have there been Prime Ministers who, having lost a vote of confidence, then held on for a year or two avoiding having a general election? This seems to be trying to solve a problem that probably does not exist.
I wait to hear the noble and learned Lord's view on this, because there may be some problem that we have not spotted. For the life of me, I cannot see it. This is a criticism not of the Government but of the amendment, but again we are struggling with a series of problems which do not exist. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, says: for what? To take away from the Prime Minister the power that the noble and learned Lord acknowledged that he could probably have by the back door: the ability to procure a vote of no confidence in himself whenever he wanted to go to the country anyway.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I readily understand the thinking behind the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Marks. If the Bill is intended to remove the opportunity for the Prime Minister of the day to take a partisan view on the timing of the election, I can see why, the Prime Minister having lost a vote of confidence, you might then wish to restrict the Prime Minister's room for manoeuvre on setting the date—either to go too soon, which may give a campaigning advantage; or to delay unreasonably. Nevertheless, the amendment is unnecessary. More importantly, practical issues could flow from it.
If we take the case of delaying too long, in the context of Clause 2(6) and the Bill as a whole, it is clear that the Prime Minister would be required to recommend to Her Majesty a prompt election. If two-thirds of the House—the other place—had voted for an early election, one would imagine that the Prime Minister would be as anxious as anyone to get on with it. Likewise, although the Prime Minister may be less keen for an early election where there has been a motion of no confidence, and no other Government have been formed, that would also be a clear statement from Parliament that it expected to see change and an election. The electorate would share that view. This is pure speculation, but if the Prime Minister tried to pull a fast one and delay unduly, that decision could be subject to challenge.
On the other hand, there are limits as to how quickly the Prime Minister can move if he seeks an early polling day. Clause 3(1) dissolves Parliament 17 working days before polling day, so the timetable at Dissolution is fixed and is known to all sides. Therefore, there is no way that that could be cut short for advantage. There is already that backstop as to how an election could be called.
My biggest concern is practical. The Government decided not to set specific limits that inadvertently tied hands in circumstances which could lead to a situation such as that described by the noble and learned Lord, where the election campaign might be some time between 18 December and 16 January. It is almost inevitable that if we were to try to fix those times, the first example would be when it fell in a period where campaigning would be very difficult. We should allow flexibility to allow a general election to be called on a date—which, one would assume, would be consulted on among the parties—to minimise disruption in a Christmas period or summer vacations.
Therefore, the amendment is neither necessary—provision is already there which would stop a Prime Minister calling an election too soon; he would clearly be challenged if he tried to delay unduly—nor practical in trying to tie hands. That might run into more problems than the amendment is intended to solve.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble and learned Lord said something important there. He said that the Prime Minister would be subject to challenge if he sought to delay. Interestingly enough, it is a statutory power whereby the Prime Minister is obliged to recommend a date. Is it challengeable by way of judicial review?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It could be challengeable by judicial review if he was abusing his decision on a recommendation. That is why there is a safeguard there, which would mean that it would not be possible to delay in an unacceptable way.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Just to pursue that: the Government envisage a situation that could not arise now—because there is absolute discretion on the part of the Prime Minister—whereby the Prime Minister recommends to the Queen that the date of the general election be, say, 1 May 2013, and other parties can take the Prime Minister to court, arguing that that is an unreasonable exercise of his discretion and ask the court to fix the date of the general election, which it could set to take place two weeks earlier or two weeks later. Is that what the Government envisage as a possibility?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It is not what the Government envisage. However, if a vote of confidence had been on 10 December 2012, holding an election on 1 May 2013, which the noble and learned Lord mentioned, might well be considered to be an abuse of the statutory power. Under judicial reviews, the court would not necessarily substitute its own date, but the Prime Minister would be required to nominate or recommend a date to Her Majesty that would be consistent with a proper exercise of the statutory power. It is highly hypothetical and unlikely, but it would not be unreasonable; if there had been a vote of no confidence and 10 days had elapsed in December 2012, setting an election date for 1 May 2013 would be an abuse of power. That would be widely recognised.
However, the point that I am making is that we do not believe that there should be the kind of restrictions set out in my noble friend’s amendment. They could run into practical problems for the very reasons that he illustrated, but, in practical political terms, it is not likely that a date would be set that would be seen to be an abuse by taking it too far.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I am grateful for the consideration that has been given by noble Lords and my noble and learned friend to the amendment. The problem that it sought to address was simply the question of the lack of a timetable. I am bound to say that the exchange we have just heard between the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and my noble and learned friend illustrates that there is—in theory, at least—scope for an abuse of power by a Prime Minister that could, perhaps in extreme and unlikely circumstances, lead to a challenge, because executive action of this sort might be justiciable and there is room for an abuse of power. The amendment simply seeks to address that.
Of course we are open to consideration of that time, but the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, talked of James Callaghan; it does not follow that because James Callaghan behaved well on that occasion everyone else necessarily would do so. As regards the number of weeks, it is right that there is a window of only a month, and that could involve a holiday period. However, the corresponding argument is that it may be undesirable for a vote of confidence in June to lead to an election being deferred until September or October, on the basis that holidays would intervene. We took the view that is worthy of consideration that it is more important to have an election than it is to avoid the holiday periods and allow them to be an excuse for not holding an election. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
“( ) If an early parliamentary general election occurs under any of the provisions of this Act an order approving the next review of parliamentary constituencies shall not be submitted to Parliament until after the fourth anniversary of the start of the new Parliament.”
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, the amendment seeks to ensure that in the event of an early general election the constituency boundary review would remain synchronised with the cycle of general elections, and new constituencies would be approved by Parliament only at the latest practicable time in the life of a Parliament.
We were told when we were debating the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that this was a sacred principle for the Government. They made great play of the importance of the provision in that legislation to ensure that there were boundary reviews every five years and that their timing should bear a sensible relationship with the date of the next general election. Although many of us argued that there were other factors that the Government ought to bear in mind about registration and the undesirability of destabilising constituencies and political parties at such frequent intervals, the Government stuck to their guns and said that it was very important to have a five-yearly cycle of boundary reviews.
However, on this legislation the Government take a very different position. When the Minister, Mr Mark Harper, appeared before the Constitution Committee he was asked:
“Do the Government envisage amending the review period if the two cycles move out of synch in the future?”,
I was struck by what he said:
“We thought about this carefully … We did not think that it was absolutely necessary to synchronise them. You will know that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill sets out that we want boundary reviews once every five years—broadly once per Parliament—but I do not think that it is that important that they are absolutely synchronised. We will see how it works … we did not think it important to align them or make provision in this Bill or in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill to tie the two together”.
It is fairly odd that such contradictory positions have been taken by the Government in two concurrent pieces of constitutional legislation. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us more. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I readily recognise where the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, is coming from on this. As the Committee will know, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 requires boundary review reports to be published on a five-yearly timetable, starting in October 2013. Once this Bill is enacted, general elections will occur at five-year intervals, starting in May 2015. In the absence of any early elections, the effect would be that boundary reviews generally would be published 18 months before each general election. Our debates on the previous Bill were about allowing an opportunity for the political parties and electors to become familiar with new boundaries and, importantly, for the electoral administrators to gear up accordingly.
I understand that the intention behind this amendment is to realign the five-year cycle for boundary reviews in the event that an early election causes them to get out of sync. Unfortunately, the amendment does not achieve this. It relates only to when the order is submitted to Parliament; there is no provision made to adjust the cycles that the Boundary Commissions themselves will work to. That is not simply a technical objection but an important and fundamental one. Broadly, I have sympathy with what the amendment is trying to do to ensure that there is one boundary review in each Parliament so that constituencies remain of roughly equal size and votes remain of equal weight. We looked at the interaction between the boundary reviews and the provisions of the Bill. The conclusion that we reached, which may be an echo of what some Members said in earlier debates, was that we simply could not legislate for every scenario under a fixed-term Parliament provision. This is one where it would be far better for judgments to be made by future Parliaments, in possession of knowledge of the circumstances, depending on when the early election—if such there was—took place.
I give a brief example. If, for the sake of argument, an early election was to occur before a full boundary review had been completed—say, in early 2018, when the report from the Boundary Commission would not be due before October that year—this amendment says nothing about what should happen to that boundary review, which would be well under way and ready to report in October 2018. It says simply that the next order should not be brought into force until 2022—that is, before the election of 2023. That raises questions about whether the review that was due in 2018 should be implemented in 2022, which would mean that the boundaries could become out of date. Is it the intention that the first review after an early election should have a 2022 deadline, in which case additional provision would be required to define which register that review should use? Without that additional provision, the commissions would have to use the December 2020 register, which would give them a very short time in which to conduct the review.
As I indicated, while it would be preferable—and may still be possible for the dates of some early elections—to continue the cycle of reviews that is there, it is far better left to a future Parliament to deal with the specific circumstances if it felt that boundary reviews were not keeping pace with the cycle of elections. In any event, even without doing anything, future elections are likely to be fought with more up-to-date registers than was the case for England in 2010. I welcome what I am sure is the well intended purpose of the noble Lord’s amendment, but I do not believe that it achieves that purpose. I therefore ask him to withdraw it.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Does the Minister envisage Parliament dealing with the issue by primary legislation each time?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
As things stand, it probably would have to be by primary legislation. It might be a very simple Bill, but I think in trying to be too prescriptive at this point you could run into difficulty. As I have said, there may well be circumstances in which the early election, should it occur, would nevertheless be one in which the actual scheduled date would still fit in quite readily and allow a reasonable time for the political parties and electoral administrators to make the necessary arrangements. That is why I do not think we can predict what is going to happen and it is better to leave it to the future—to see whether it would in fact be necessary—in the belief, and indeed the knowledge, that even under the present system, without anything further, we are likely to be fighting elections on more up-to-date electoral rolls than was ever possible prior to the passage of the 2011 Act.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I am not at all surprised to be advised that my amendment is defective, as these are indeed knotty matters, and it takes specialists to formulate legislation to get it right. However, if the Government think—and I have much sympathy with that point of view—that it is desirable to align the boundary reviews with the cycle of elections, maybe they would go back and think a little bit further about this and see whether they can find a better means to do it. I do not think that the Minister’s optimism that primary legislation from time to time in Parliament to get the relationship back in to a reasonable synchronicity would be straightforward, because whenever Parliament debates boundary review matters, a lot of Members become intensely interested in that and these proceedings are never very short or straightforward. If the Government wish to hold consistently to the principle they articulated in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, I hope they will go back and do some more work on this. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Cormack
“Early parliamentary general elections
(1) An early parliamentary general election is to take place if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government.
(2) A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if the House of Commons—
(a) passes an amendment to the motion thanking Her Majesty for the Gracious Speech which would have the effect of negating it;(b) denies a second or third reading to a Finance Bill or any Bill defined by the Prime Minister of the day as being essential to his or her administration continuing in office;(c) passes a motion of no confidence tabled by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition; or(d) defeats a motion of confidence tabled by the Prime Minister.(3) If the provisions of subsection (2) are met, the Speaker of the House of Commons will issue a certificate to certify this.
(4) A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes.”
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to move this amendment. I have listened with great care to all the debates today on Clause 2 and, as I have listened, I have become more and more convinced of two things: first, that there are tremendous advantages in having an unwritten, flexible constitution; secondly, that Clause 2 is, frankly, incapable of proper improvement and should be deleted and replaced by something else. It is in that spirit that I have tabled this amendment, ably supported by—and I am most grateful to them—the noble Lords, Lord Armstrong and Lord Norton of Louth, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, all three of them constitutional experts of great eminence. We all feel very strongly not that this amendment is necessarily perfect in every particular but that it offers a better and clearer approach to a problem that the Government themselves acknowledge needs to be addressed.
The Government feel there must be an escape clause in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. If we are to have a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill—and again I have become more and more convinced that we really do not need one—then the escape clause must be clear, simple, understandable, not capable of misinterpretation and, in the light of that very interesting debate that we had shortly before the dinner break, not something that places the Speaker of the day in an intolerable position. I am attempting in this amendment to clarify and simplify, and to remove the Speaker from that invidious position about which the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, spoke so eloquently.
I am trying with this amendment to define a vote of no confidence. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, has already referred in the earlier debate that we had just a few moments ago to the fact that in the Parliament Act there is a clear definition of a money Bill. He asked very sensibly why, if the Government are picking, they do not have, as a precedent, both the Deputy Speaker provision and the definition. Why did they choose the one and not the other? My noble friend the Minister has already in a number of remarks today given me some quiet encouragement, and I hope that that will be confirmed when he replies to this debate because he has indicated that there is merit in having a definition of a no-confidence Motion.
I have sought here to list the occasions on which there clearly would be an issue in the House of Commons where the Government of the day had forfeited the confidence of the other place. The first is if the House of Commons,
“passes an amendment to the motion thanking Her Majesty for the Gracious Speech which would have the effect of negating it”.
I believe that that particular provisional clause could be slightly improved in the light of what we have said earlier today. Maybe we should say, “In the second or later Session of a Parliament”, because I accept that if a Government have not had any programme and their Queen’s Speech is rejected within weeks of the election, that is slightly different, as it was in 1924. However, if the Government have been in power, have governed for a Session on the Queen’s Speech, and lose the confidence at any time, there can surely be no doubt that that is an absolute rejection of them.
Secondly, if the House of Commons,
“denies a second or third reading to a Finance Bill”,
no Government can continue. My noble friend Lord Forsyth referred earlier today to the prime function of the other place to grant supply. If they are not in a position to do that, the Government of the day cannot continue to provide the government. It is therefore self-evident that if a Finance Bill is rejected on Second or Third Reading, there really can be no future for that Government.
I have also put into proposed new subsection (2)(b) in the amendment,
“any Bill defined by the Prime Minister of the day as being essential to his or her administration continuing in office”.
At Second Reading a number of noble Lords referred to Mr Edward Heath saying at the time of the Bill that took this country into what was then the Common Market that if that Bill was rejected at Second Reading his Government could not continue. Every Government have a flagship Bill, and if they lose on it they really cannot continue in office. Again, that is generally self-evident.
Then, if the House of Commons passes,
“a motion of no confidence tabled by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition”,
and if that sort of Motion is carried, it is clear that Members on the government side, or Members who normally support the Government, have withdrawn their support. Many of us in the debates on the Bill have referred to March 1979, the defeat of the then Labour Government led by James Callaghan, and his exceptionally dignified conduct in defeat. His words have been quoted yet again today. He said that his Government had lost the confidence of the House and must now take their case to the country. It was clear cut, it was simple and everyone understood it.
The case is similar if the House of Commons,
“defeats a motion of confidence tabled by the Prime Minister”.
Many of us will remember that John Major tabled a Motion of confidence in his Government. However, it was carried, so the Government carried on. Had it been defeated, they could not have carried on.
If we seek to have a definition of a vote of no confidence along these lines, we are improving this Bill very considerably. How undignified is all this business of having 14 days in which to scrabble around to try to save a Government who have clearly become discredited in the eyes of Members of the House of Commons. Then there is the business of the two-thirds majority of the Members of the House of Commons, not of those who vote. In a House of 600, as it probably will be after the next general election, 400 have to vote. At Second Reading, in a very amusing and wry speech, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, said in effect that the Whips have means of making you vote. Of course, he knows that better than most people; he practised the dark arts with a consummate artistry that has rarely been rivalled. If in March 1979, after the Government had lost by one vote, there had been a period following that, I doubt very much whether a few would not have changed their minds, either when being offered inducements or maybe even by being not so gently threatened. The noble Lord is laughing in assent; he knows that that is the case. We all know that these things can happen.
Those of us who were there in March 1979, on the very rare occasion of a Government being defeated, on a vote of no confidence, all know what happened. I referred to it in my maiden speech. We had the wonderful spectacle of Frank Maguire coming to abstain in person. We know that the Welsh and the Scottish nationalists, disgruntled with the Government following the devolution votes, were not going to support them. I am delighted to see my noble friend—and I call him that deliberately—Lord Wigley on the Benches over there, because he remembers that as well as I.
Lord Wigley
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. On that occasion, he is right to say that my Scottish friends voted against the Government but, after concessions on pneumoconiosis, we were persuaded to support the Government. Those are examples of what happens in such circumstances.
Lord Cormack
I am deeply grateful both for the correction and for the explicit example. Of course, we all know, too, that the Ulster Unionists voted both ways, because they did not want to be seen either to have propped up an unpopular Government or to have defeated a Government who had given concessions in Northern Ireland. All these things can happen.
A clear-cut defeat followed by the dignified recognition of that defeat and taking the case to the country is how we do it in the United Kingdom and it is how we should continue to do it.
In proposed new subsections (3) and (4) in this amendment, I say:
“If the provisions of subsection (2) are met, the Speaker of the House of Commons will issue a certificate to certify this”.
This is not a discretionary thing; it is on a par with the money resolutions. I took clerkly advice when I was drafting this amendment and was assured that this provision would in no sense place the Speaker in an invidious or difficult position. The Speaker of the day would have no choice other than to sign the piece of paper. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has an amendment to delete subsections (3) and (4) in my amendment, but while I admire his vigilance I do not think that the deletion is necessary, because the Speaker is not being put into a difficult or invidious position.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Can my noble friend help me if I ask the same question that I asked of my noble friend on the Front Bench? Why is the Speaker’s certificate necessary?
Lord Cormack
I was advised by the clerks that this would be the tidy way of doing it—the certificate is issued, it is automatic and it would be expected. However, I am not desperately wedded to this proposal. What is truly important is the first part of the proposed new clause, subsections (1) and (2). I was merely saying that proposed new subsections (3) and (4) do not place the Speaker in the same invidious position that the provisions that we were debating earlier today do. I hope that your Lordships’ House will feel that this clause or something very similar—because, as I said, it is not perfect—would be a vast improvement on what we have, which is complicated, convoluted and thoroughly unnecessary.
If we are to have a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, it is the duty of this House to try to ensure that it is as compatible with our constitutional arrangements in this country as it can be. Many of us feel that all that was really needed was a declaration of intent to serve until May 2015. I, for one, applaud that declaration of intent. However, if it is to be given legislative form, for whatever reason, let it be a legislative form that is both comprehensive and comprehensible; let it be a legislative form that people can understand in both Houses and in the country beyond. Do not let us connive in any arrangements that would allow a discredited Government to indulge in endless days of horse-trading to try to sustain themselves in office. Do not let us give to those who might practise the dark arts of sinister persuasion a power to redress a vote that the House of Commons has already passed. I beg to move.
Amendment 51 (to Amendment 50)
Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, my amendment to the new clause tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his very distinguished co-signatories would delete subsections (3) and (4) of his new clause, which require the Speaker to issue a certificate and assert that the Speaker’s certificate shall be conclusive.
I have three grounds for proposing to the Committee that we should delete these provisions. There is the difficulty of defining a vote of confidence or of no confidence. The noble Lords’ new clause goes some way to achieving this but I do not think that it is the whole story. Notwithstanding the reassurance that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just offered, I believe that there is a risk to the Speaker that he would be placed in a damagingly contentious role. There is the risk of intrusion by the courts into parliamentary proceedings, which we debated very fully on Amendment 42, and I do not propose to say any more about that in this debate. I do question the wisdom of the attempt, made with the very best of intentions by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his co-signatories, to specify and define in this new clause the varieties of no confidence vote that there could be. I fear that the more we try to write down the constitution, the more specific and detailed we need to be. We shall be chasing our own tails in more and more circles, yet the task is impossible to accomplish.
I do think that the new clause is an improvement on what the Government have provided in Clause 2. The Government’s Clause 2 is vague. It appears to elide a no-confidence motion with a confidence motion. My noble friend Lady Jay asked Mr Mark Harper, when he was before the Select Committee, whether votes in various circumstances could be confidence or no-confidence votes. The Minister replied:
“I think the intention is that the Bill would encompass those examples”.
Yet the Government’s drafting does not make it clear, for example, whether a defeat on a motion or an issue of confidence would count as a vote of no confidence.
The conventional no-confidence vote is entirely obvious. It is what it says on the tin:
“That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.
No problem would arise with that variety of no-confidence vote, but after that it gets harder. There is an excellent note on confidence motions and votes provided by the House of Commons Library, which I commend to everybody. It says that,
“despite their central importance, there is no certainty about the rules on the form and applicability of confidence motions in the UK Parliament, as it is established by convention rather than by statute or standing order of the House”.
The note goes on:
“Broadly speaking there are three main types of motion which act as tests of the House of Commons’ confidence in the Government: ‘confidence motions’ initiated by the Government; ‘no confidence motions’ initiated by the Opposition; and other motions where because of the particular circumstances can be regarded as motions of censure or confidence … There is no standard formulation for confidence motions”.
Apart from motions of confidence and of no confidence, there are,
“Other motions put down by the Government or the Opposition treated by the Government (whether expressly declared as such or not) as, or because of the particular circumstances can be regarded as, motions of censure or confidence”.
Examples of all the motions and votes of confidence that have taken place over a long period—the whole of the 20th century, I think—are described in that brief. There were, for example, substantive motions of no confidence during the Suez crisis. On 1 November 1956 the Prime Minister, Mr Eden, spoke but the leader of the Opposition, Mr Gaitskell, did not, so you cannot necessarily define a motion of no confidence in the terms that the party leaders speak on it. In the debate on 5 and 6 December of that year, Mr Gaitskell spoke but Mr Eden did not—admittedly, because he was ill and unable to do so. On a much earlier occasion, there was a motion in 1895 to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State for War which led, after a short delay, to the resignation of the Rosebery Government.
There have also been motions to adjourn. On 11 March 1976, following the defeat of the Government on its public expenditure White Paper Mr Wilson, the Prime Minister, did not take defeat on that matter of central importance to the Government’s programme as a vote of no confidence. He used a vote on the adjournment the next day as a device to avert his resignation and during the course of that Parliament of October 1974 to 1979 Mr Wilson, in very specific terms, narrowed the interpretation of confidence motions. He advised the House that the Government would only regard a motion as a confidence motion if every Member was aware in advance of the vote that that was its status. It was as well for him and the Labour Government that they did, because they were defeated 17 times in the short 1974 Parliament and 42 times in the October 1974 to 1979 Parliament.
Practice has evolved and there is not a set orthodoxy in these matters. Previously, historic Governments accepted defeats on major policy items as votes of no confidence. Yet how assured can we now be when it is now the case that only votes specifically stated by the Government to be matters of confidence or by the Opposition to be matters of no confidence count? I think that is the latter-day view.
The Clerk of the House of Commons, giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, said:
“I think that what is a confidence motion—other than the very straightforward one, ‘There is no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government’—is an ambiguous matter”.
Would not votes on intensely controversial issues such as tuition fees and going to war now be widely regarded by the public as confidence votes, and perhaps the more so with coalitions?
The tendency in our politics appears to be that we shall have more coalitions because of the declining proportion of the vote for the major parties. Certainly, if we get the alternative vote, it seems likely that we will have more coalitions and more minority Governments. At the same time, we are very properly encouraging increased public engagement with and accountability of Parliament. Petitions submitted by members of the public may in certain circumstances now be debated in Parliament in a way that they never were before. The Government are about to introduce legislation to provide for the recall of Members of Parliament.
In these new developing political and constitutional circumstances, can we not expect that the public will take a very much closer interest and that they will not necessarily be content to leave it to the party leaders or the traditional authorities to define a confidence motion? In these much more confused circumstances that I think we can reasonably anticipate, is it fair and sensible to legislate to require the Speaker to adjudicate on whether a particular vote will be, is or has been a vote of no confidence or, indeed, of confidence?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Perhaps I have this wrong, but my understanding of the present position is that the Government may be defeated on a serious matter such as whether to go to war and may take the view that it is not a confidence motion. However, in such circumstances, the leader of the Opposition would table a confidence motion, which takes precedence over all business. If there is an argument about whether the issue is a confidence motion, it is up to the Opposition to bring forward a confidence motion on which there will be a vote, so why is this such a big problem?
Lord Howarth of Newport
I would very much like to be comforted by the noble Lord’s suggestion, but we are in an evolving state of affairs. I am not as confident as he is that the traditional formulations and conventions will necessarily be the only ones that the public will find acceptable in the future.
We have to think of what the role of the Speaker will be when it is contentious whether a particular vote may have this status. Let us imagine what would have happened if the Speaker had been required to issue a certificate as to whether, on 18 March 2003, the House of Commons had passed a motion of no confidence in Mr Blair’s Government, had that Government been defeated in the vote on the Iraq war. Mr Blair said later that he regarded that vote as a confidence vote, and that had he been defeated he would have resigned. How could the Speaker have certified in advance in those circumstances when the Prime Minister himself had not made it clear in advance that that was to be a confidence motion?
However, that is what the Minister, Mr Harper, confidently expects would happen. He said to the Constitution Committee:
“Our view is that the Speaker would make it very clear before such a vote took place whether it was a vote on which he would issue his certificate”.
Lord Cormack
The noble Lord is repeating the earlier debate because in this new clause the Speaker does not have that discretion. He may say that what I have put in is superfluous to requirements, but nevertheless it is not a question of putting the Speaker in the invidious position of having to determine the matter because, if one of those conditions is fulfilled, the Speaker has no option.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord is assuming that all the circumstances that he has specified in the four categories that he has set out in his subsection (2) would be the only circumstances that would be regarded as a vote of confidence. Subsection (2) states:
“A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if the House of Commons”,
passes amendments in the various terms set out. I am suggesting that, in political reality, there may be other votes which are not included in his survey of the possibilities but which would be regarded as votes of confidence.
The situation in March 2003, had the Government been defeated, illustrates the point quite well. I do not see how, as the Government expect, the Speaker could have certified that in advance, nor am I sure that the Prime Minister would have said in plain terms there and then when the result was announced that he treated it as a confidence matter. If he had not, was the Speaker to make a judgment there and then and certify that the Government had lost the confidence of the House, or perhaps some time later was he to issue a certificate that would have had the effect of bringing down the Government? It seems that the Bill as drafted leaves open these possibilities. I am not entirely confident that that would be avoided if it were amended by the noble Lord’s proposed new clause.
Lord Cormack
However, the amendment removes the existing Clause 2. I agree with the noble Lord that that should be removed and that the Speaker should not be put in that position. However, my new clause, imperfect as it may be in other respects, would not put him in that position.
Lord Howarth of Newport
If the provisions of subsection (2) in the noble Lord’s new clause are met, the Speaker is required to issue a certificate to certify that. Therefore, it seems that the certification requirements in the new clause are closely similar to, if not the same as, those already in the Bill. The merit of the noble Lord’s new clause is that it makes a brave attempt to define what would be motions of no confidence.
Let us take the case of Libya. The House of Commons voted with a very large majority to support military intervention in Libya. However, let us suppose that the intervention drags on, that the mood of the country turns sour, that sentiment in the country becomes as hostile to our military engagement with Libya as it has in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan, and that in due course the Government are defeated on a motion relating to the continuation of military engagement with Libya. Mr Cameron insists that it is not a confidence motion and Mr Miliband insists that it is. Is the Speaker to be required to adjudicate between the two of them? Is he to be required to umpire? In another circumstance, which the Committee has certainly recognised could occur under the legislation as the Government have produced it, what is the Speaker to do if the Government engineer a vote of no confidence? Is he to collude with the Government in that process?
Speakers of the House of Commons have to be sturdy people—they are always being shot at—but is it reasonable or realistic to expect such preternatural wisdom, courage and authority on the part of the Speaker if he is placed in what will inevitably be this very invidious position? That was certainly the view of the former Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, who spoke in our previous debate. I have not only great respect but personal affection for Mr Speaker Bercow, but can we assume that every future Speaker will have this wisdom, courage and authority? I think that laws and institutions are best not predicated on an assumption of individual perfection. Even if the Speaker is such a paragon of all the relevant virtues, I think that the burden that certification places on him is excessive. A decision taken by the Speaker in the best of conscience could still be so contentious that it would damage the authority of the office of the Speaker. How would an individual Speaker who issued a certificate that was contested by the defeated party and resented by that party and its supporters in the country ever recover his personal authority?
I suggest that another consideration is that, if a certificate is issued in advance, as the Government advocate and foresee, that process will in effect pressurise Back-Benchers to rally to their party Whip. The Speaker, contrary to the role that we expect of him, would in effect be suppressing Back-Bench discontent. He would be suppressing the honest expression of individual views on great issues that the House was considering. He would be acting as a recruiting sergeant for the Whips. The Constitution Committee went some way towards recognising that. It foresaw a temptation for a Government in a position of political weakness to press the Speaker to certify that minor issues, or issues that were controversial within the party that came to the vote, were votes of confidence.
The Government assert that there is nothing new in the provisions. In their response to the Select Committee in the other place they talked of the traditional mechanism of no confidence motions and foresaw it as being straightforward. But creating legal consequences of no-confidence motions is new and potentially very important. As to the position of the Speaker, as we have noted, the Parliament Act requires certificates to be issued in quite different circumstances, as does the freedom of information legislation.
This Bill, as presented by the Government, places the Speaker in a new constitutional role which risks being highly politicised and which I believe will have disastrous implications. This all arises out of the Government’s desire to create escape hatches from the trap that fixed-term Parliaments create. It is one more instance of the dangers of making constitutional legislation in a hurry. If we damage the Speaker, who personifies Parliament, more than ever in an age of broadcasting, to the people and the world, we damage Parliament, and the reputation of Parliament is fragile. I do not think that we need this legislation. The evolving conventions have worked well, as they did in 1979. The House of Commons knows an issue of confidence when it faces it and knows how to deal with it, but an issue of confidence depends on the political context; it cannot be defined in advance. At least let us not put the Speaker in an impossible and damaging position.
Lord Howe of Aberavon
My Lords, I have listened to the discussions today—and indeed on this subject—with anything but joy in my heart. I have been struck by the contribution that this Bill is making to the pile of legislation that this coalition Government have already brought to Parliament and which we are still ploughing through. The Attlee Government at one time had the record for the number of Bill pages in legislation presented in one year—2,288. I am sorry to say that the Thatcher Government some years later outstripped that with 2,581. My fear is that the present Administration may well be running well ahead of that. It is not only for that reason that I am very unenthusiastic about the Bill—all the more so when I see the problems that we are now getting deeper and deeper into.
I shall comment on those quickly. I respect the extent to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has taken part in well considered detail in all the discussions. However, his last point does not take account of the fact that the proposed new clause moved by my noble friend Lord Cormack specifies in clear terms that the provisions are beyond doubt to be recognised as no-confidence motions. Moreover, they are so cast that they do not impose any real burden of judgment on the Speaker at all. He is certifying something that is as plain as a pikestaff as already set out. Even so, I commend the provisions in the proposed new clause as being better than those in the Bill, but I wonder whether we need to be going through any of this at all. The attempt to define in detail what it has to fulfil reminds me of the task of definition and how difficult that is. It is now 15 years since I chaired the steering committee of the Tax Law Rewrite Project. We were engaged in the task of rewriting, reclassifying and redefining almost everything on the existing tax statute book. I know from that experience how harsh it is.
We really need not put ourselves into this morass. The impact of the no-confidence motion has always been recognised. I cannot think of a past example in which somebody has repudiated the attempt to dissolve a Parliament because of the passage of a no-confidence resolution. You can sometimes get into great mistakes by trying to define too much in too much detail too often. I have no enthusiasm for the fixed-term Parliament proposition, but, if we have it, I do not see the need for this kind of detailed definition. Let me go one stage further back. We have survived many decades and a whole series of varying circumstances, but without any equivalent of the fixed-term Parliament provision. On different occasions, the Prime Minister, the nation and Parliament have had to make up their own minds as to whether the circumstances being exercised or exploited have been properly reacted to. This has worked.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
My Lords, I have put my name to this proposed new clause because it provides greater clarity and certainty than Clause 2 in its present form. It defines clearly and unambiguously what constitutes a vote of confidence in the other place for the purposes of this legislation. It is not a total definition of all votes of confidence but of what would constitute a vote of confidence for the purposes of triggering an early parliamentary election. It may not be perfect, but I think it is a very good shot at that. It provides the additional safeguard of a certificate by the Speaker that a vote is indeed a vote of confidence within the meaning of the Act, but I hear the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on that subject, and we can consider whether that needs to be retained, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, suggested.
This proposed new clause also specifies clearly the consequence that is to follow the defeat on a vote of confidence, as defined, in the Government in another place: that there is to be an early and immediate parliamentary general election. It does not provide, as the existing Clause 2 would provide, for a cooling-off period of a fortnight between the vote and the decision to dissolve Parliament and hold an election. That seems to me an improvement, not a weakness, as compared with the provision in the Bill. That fortnight would be, as has been pointed out, a period of prolonged political uncertainty, not to say crisis, and of paralysis in government, which would be better avoided.
I suppose that that provision is intended to allow for the possibility that after a defeat on a vote of confidence a new Administration might be formed, perhaps under a different Prime Minister, which could carry on government without the need for a general election. I suggest that this possibility is more theoretical than real. In real life, if a Government were faced with the prospect of a vote of confidence, the loss of which would certainly trigger a dissolution of Parliament and a new election, they would do their utmost to try to ensure that they did not lose the vote. If they failed to do so, it would be clear enough that a Government who had lost a vote of confidence as defined had run out of time and political credit to such an extent that the only realistic remedy for the problem would be a Government with a new electoral mandate.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has suggested, the drafting of this amendment could well be improved or tidied up in various ways by further consideration and refinement but, for the reasons I have indicated, it seems to me that a new Clause 2 to the effect proposed by this amendment would be a marked and useful improvement to the Bill, if we have to have the Bill.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, the authors of this amendment are so distinguished that I speak with even more trepidation than usual. They have shown characteristic confidence in proposing a complete removal of Clause 2 and its replacement with their own model. However, I suggest to the Committee that their self-confidence may in this case be misplaced.
The Bill, if we are entirely candid, does not fix parliamentary terms; it codifies how long they should last, but also provides for them to be foreshortened in very specific circumstances with very specific safeguards, and it is those safeguards that we are looking at this evening. Indeed, for all the debate in this House about how a simple majority vote of confidence should precipitate an election, the Bill already has, just about, that provision in it, albeit with a 14-day government-formation period, referred to by the noble Lord as a cooling-off period. I think it is actually going to be a hotting-up period if the media are camped on the green outside waiting to see what is going to happen.
I suggest that if we were to accept Amendment 50, we would be going even further in negating the principle of a fixed-term Parliament. That may be what some Members wish to do, but it is not, I think, the view of the Official Opposition, nor is it the position of the Government.
There are several veterans in your Lordships’ House of the long debates about the Maastricht treaty. Therefore, I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the way in which that was handled in the other place. I happened at that stage to be largely on the side of the Government. There was a sort of informal Lib Dem/Conservative alliance but there were also many people on the Conservative Party Back Benches who were opposed, in principle, to the Bill. That was a matter of policy but it was turned into a matter of confidence in the Government. Philip Stephens, a distinguished Financial Times columnist, wrote subsequently that,
“the rebels understood the choice was between supporting ratification of Maastricht and certain defeat at a general election four weeks later. Major won the confidence vote comfortably”.
In those circumstances, MPs were effectively circumscribed in their judgment by virtue of a prime ministerial power to make MPs choose between incumbency and defeat.
Amendment 50 codifies that power in proposed new subsection (2)(b), suborning matters of controversial policy to raw short-term political objectives. That same subsection also sets up a lawyer’s paradise. I am not a lawyer, but from the legal advice that I have been given the amendment is more likely to be justiciable, for reasons that I will come to in a moment, than the situation previously described very eloquently by two distinguished former Speakers, because it is about a Prime Minister’s entirely subjective definition of a Bill,
“being essential to his or her administration continuing in office”.
That is a sort of papal absolute, which could be questionable in court or subject to judicial review—a point to which I will come back—because that is an executive decision. It is not the decision of the Speaker of the House of Commons. It is the decision of a Minister in a political role in an executive position. At the time of Maastricht, the Major Government could have continued in office without the Maastricht treaty. They would have lurched even more absurdly from crisis to crisis if they had but they could have survived.
Why and how should a Prime Minister—the very person from whom the whole point of the Bill is to remove that absolute power—be accorded an absolute right to define those Bills which he or she thinks should be the subject of this provision? Why would not a Prime Minister use it for every substantial piece of legislation?
It seems to me that the provisions of this amendment could encourage unnecessary brinkmanship when there are perfectly legitimate disagreements, whether they are among coalition parties or within majority Governments, which we all know are coalitions anyway. I invite your Lordships to look carefully at the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Norton of Louth, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon, and the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. My noble friend Lord Cormack was very fair in saying that he thought that it could be improved but proposed new subsection (2)(a) and (b) would give extraordinary executive opportunity to the Prime Minister of the day. It might remove from the Speaker the invidious role that was described earlier so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Martin, but it could create in its own way even more difficult circumstances.
Let us suppose that the Prime Minister of the day, under proposed new subsection (2)(b), decides that a particular Bill and a vote on that Bill is essential to his or her Administration continuing in office. Under the amendment as it stands, the Speaker would have to specify that to be the case. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the fact that the Speaker would have to specify that that was the case—that the Prime Minister had said it, so it is the case. But that decision of the Prime Minister of course could be subject to judicial review, perhaps several days after the Speaker’s certification. What situation does that place the Speaker in? It is not his decision that has been challenged. It is the decision of the Prime Minister. Nevertheless it puts the Speaker in an extremely invidious position. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness is no longer in her customary seat but the strictures that were being applied earlier to your Lordships’ House in terms of putting the Speaker in an invidious position would be even worse under this amendment.
Lord Cormack
Who is going to challenge the decision of the Prime Minister? Will it be the Leader of the Opposition? Will it be one of his own supporters? If the Prime Minister has come to the conclusion that particular legislation is essential to the Government’s survival, it is hardly likely that he will be taken to court over that.
Lord Tyler
I do not agree with the noble Lord. There are people who will always want to subject the decisions of a Prime Minister to judicial review. As I understand it from the legal advice that I have received, such applications are much more likely to be considered by a court and to take time. That is the situation described earlier in the Committee. I hope that everyone will accept that the certification by the Speaker is a parliamentary act, but the executive, political decision of a Prime Minister to say that he or she considers a particular Bill to be a matter of confidence is open to much greater interpretation by the courts.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, quite rightly said earlier that we should avoid artificial certainty of definition. I fear that that is precisely what the distinguished authors of the amendment have produced. For example, how many parliamentary Questions would be tabled along the following lines: “Will the Prime Minister define the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill as essential to his continuing in office under Section 2(2)(b) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act?”. Would the Prime Minister always say no? What would he say? There could be endless entertainment in the other place on this position.
I am sure that the amendment is well intentioned but it will take us down a dangerous route. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, says about the subsequent decision of the Speaker following such a decision by the Prime Minister in an attempt to force a vote of confidence, but I still think that the amendment, with or without his subsequent amendment, is extremely damaging and potentially dangerous.
I noted what my noble and learned friend Lord Howe said about not being particularly enthusiastic about the amendment to which he had put his name, any more than he was about the Government’s position. I accept that there is some lack of enthusiasm for the amendment, even by its authors, but it is a dangerous route for us to take. It would be justiciable and challenged in the courts—and that would be extremely dangerous.
I and my colleagues have put forward an alternative which is a great deal simpler. It is that rather than trying to codify the status quo, as the amendment attempts to do, we should have one specific rule—that the Motion of no confidence should be tabled by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. It is difficult to think of any circumstance—even when the second and third parties are of comparable size—when the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition would not in practice have to table that Motion. It would be so firm and clear that it would ensure that Governments could not use such a vote as a way of cutting and running early. That is one of the key purposes of the Bill. The cut-and-run tendency is not good for the governance of our country, but we have seen it happen in the past.
The amendment undermines the purpose of and hollows out what is an already modest Bill. Some noble Lords on these Benches, and perhaps in other parts of the House, think that the fixed term should be even firmer than it is under the Bill—after all, it operates perfectly well in the United States. The Bill is already a compromise from that position; I suggest there is no need to compromise it further.
Lord McAvoy
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, has described better than I ever could the Alice in Wonderland nature of the debate. I can understand my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport picking credible holes in the amendment brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and it is certainly easy for the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to do so.
We are holding this debate against a background of a Bill which is unnatural and is opposed by an overwhelming majority of Members of this House. A party which lost seats in the previous general election is blackmailing its partners in a coalition to accept constitutional change. We shall all end up being twisted and contorted by trying to take part in a debate on a Bill which is utterly flawed and goes against the natural flow of political events in this country. It is easy to criticise, but we are taking part in a debate on a Bill which is a strange and unnatural beast in British politics.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has tried within the context of that debate to play the constructive, revising role that people in this House look for and to make the Bill better. I do not think that he supports the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, but we have got it in front of us and it is what he is trying to improve.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause outlines the instances in which a vote of no confidence will be deemed to have been passed. They would amount to votes of confidence anyway. They are issues where, if a vote goes against the Government, Parliament is entitled to pass a vote of no confidence; that is the new world. Paragraph (b) states,
“denies a second or third reading to a Finance Bill”.
We all know that a Government need a Finance Bill to be passed. I take the point about a Prime Minister defining it, but that is his or her judgment as the Prime Minister of the country. Paragraphs (c) and (d) state,
“passes a motion of no confidence tabled by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition; or … defeats a motion of confidence tabled by the Prime Minister”.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is using real life to bring forward instances which determine whether there is a general election in this country. I, too, was in another place at the time of Maastricht. It is not the first time that people have combined in quite such dishonourable—in some ways—alliances.
I presume that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, supported the 14-day provision. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—I had better not call him my noble friend for the purpose of this debate—was paying me compliments in talking about black arts and sinister persuasions. That 14 days would allow all sorts of things to take place. There would definitely be no physical violence, but imagine the sheer pressure that you can generate by being able to say to somebody that you hold in your hand the power to determine whether, in my case, a Labour Government fall, or a Conservative Government, in the case of other people.
This is really nonsense, but we are all being forced to discuss it because we are being led by the nose—I hesitate to say anything that would upset or insult noble Lords on the Conservative Benches—by a comparatively small group of people, the Liberal group, who are hell bent on changing the constitution of this country. They are tinkering with it and coming up with all sorts of ill thought-out, ill advised and quite nonsensical proposals. In the likes of the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Cormack, and my noble friend Lord Grocott, we have people here who are prepared to listen to ideas for change but to take the best of this place to keep it going. We are in an unnatural situation where we are all discussing something which we know is not right and not practical.
I was particularly struck by a phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which was that he was trying to get a comprehensible Bill. That sounds to me like common sense. As long as we are forced to discuss a Bill such as this, we will all come forward with positions that we do not really believe in or like in a vain attempt to make a better Bill. We know full well in our heart of hearts that a majority of people in this House know that the Bill is nonsense; but as long as we are prepared to discuss in an Alice in Wonderland way, we can pick holes in reasonable suggestions.
Lord Martin of Springburn
I am very interested in the amendment and agree a great deal with the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Armstrong, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe. A common argument put here is that we did not need a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. I come from engineering. My foreman used to say, “Michael, if it works, do not fix it; do not touch it”. There is nothing to stop the present Administration, the alliance, going for five years if they want to; but, as others have said, we are past that point now. I remember when the Labour Party decided that it would have mandatory reselection of MPs and that was made part of its constitution. We were warned that if you kick a ball into the constitution park, it can roll in many ways. That is what we are seeing here, when we do not need a change. Now people are attempting to fix it by ensuring that the legislation is watertight.
On the idea of a Speaker signing a certificate, the fact is that every decision of the House of Commons is then put in the Journal of the House. There is a dedicated Clerk to the Journal who makes sure that the Journal records the decisions of the other place and of this place. Perhaps the legislation should have a mechanism whereby someone would be presented with the Journal, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, stated that a decision had been made by a two-thirds majority or that a vote of no confidence had been carried.
I think that it is on the steps of the Mansion House that someone comes out to say, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye”—there is going to be a general election. There is a delay while it goes up to Edinburgh because in the old days, someone went by horse and the announcement was made in Edinburgh a bit later—a lovely tradition. If I had my way, I would rather that that certificate did not have to be issued by the Speaker. It is different with Money Resolutions and other matters that the Speaker has to deal with.
I would rather that the provision be left out; if it is to be left in, I would rather that subsections (2)(a) and (b) be left out, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, what would happen if the gracious Speech was defeated and negated by a brand-new Government elected by the people? It would be hard for people to understand and very difficult for a Speaker to sign off a certificate in those circumstances. But what would happen if he or she denied the certificate? An element in the country would say, “Oh no, you have it in legislation. Sort that out”. I certainly would be uncomfortable. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that paragraph (b) is open to interpretation. For a Prime Minister to say, “Get this through or it is a vote of confidence in me”, is not the way things should go. However, a Speaker would be in a difficult position.
I mentioned earlier about the pressures on modern Speakers. I used to read some of the lovely stories in the beautiful books in Speaker’s House telling us what previous Speakers had to worry about. In one case, the Speaker had to worry about the price of coal being delivered to Speaker’s House. That was a big worry, and I wish I had had that worry. In the old days, perhaps in Edwardian times, the Speaker stayed in the big house, and would then go to his constituency or a place in the country. No one would bother him. Even if people wanted to apply pressure on him outside parliamentary hours, there was not the modern technology that we have just now. Nowadays, there is texting, e-mails and the mobile phone. As a result, I can envisage a situation in which, even if the period in which a Speaker had to sign this certificate was only 48 hours, he would be pursued and the pressures that would be put on him would be enormous. Forgive me, this applies also to lady Speakers.
The black arts of the Whip have been mentioned, and there are many black arts. There is the direct approach, when the Chief Whip comes in and gives the Speaker the rough edge of their tongue; or there is a more subtle way, when the pal of the Speaker is used. Bear in mind that the Speaker is elected from the ranks of the House of Commons, and he has friends. The pal is sent up and says, “You know, Michael, everyone in the Tea Room is worried”; but it is not everyone in the Tea Room who is worried—the Whips sent him. You get the friendly approach and then the Gypsy warnings, and so on.
There is another thing that we have to remember in these modern times—the 24/7 media. I mentioned the Edwardian Speaker who went away to the countryside. When I got to my home at weekends, if there was anything controversial going on, there were people at my door from the media, and they were not very nice at all. In fact, it is rule and convention of the House that the Speaker does not make statements anywhere other than in Parliament. A spokesman phoned me and said, “If you do not give a statement, this newspaper will doorstep you”. I said, “ I am bound by the rules of the House”. While I was speaking to that spokesman at 9 am on a Saturday, two reporters from a Sunday newspaper were outside in a car. The caller said, “I will phone the editor back and say that you are not going to speak”. One of the two reporters went to the side door of my home and the other went to the front door and battered it so hard. That is not a decent way to carry on. Had I or any of my family been in bed at the time, I would have thought that there was something very serious going on. I would have rushed to the door, opened it and been confronted by a newspaper editor.
I tell you that the pressures are tremendous. There is worry in every city about housebreaking. I even had a situation when a clown was outside my door—I describe him as a clown, although he called himself a journalist—from Sky TV, using big satellite television equipment. There he was, outside the house while I was in London. He said, “We cannot get him; the house is empty”. Anyone who is involved in security will tell you not to advertise that you are away from home, but here was somebody broadcasting live television, saying that my house was empty. That is the type of pressure I am talking about.
Something else must also be remembered. I was appalled when I heard that the Prime Minister of the day had a spin doctor whose only job—he had other spin doctors—was to put out negative stories about people in other parties and anyone else who was felt to be a danger to the Prime Minister. I do not wish to use the privilege of this House to mention his name. That person was sacked. It was public knowledge that he was putting out nasty, negative stories about members of the shadow Cabinet and their families. It absolutely horrifies me that the public purse was paying for this man and that the Prime Minister of the day was willing to employ him. Despite all my differences of agreement with Margaret Thatcher, I do not think she would have employed someone like that. Jim Callaghan would not have employed someone like that, and Ted Heath would certainly not have employed someone like that. That spin doctor was not the only one putting out negative stories, but he was paid by the Prime Minister of the day. If the Speaker of the House was going to do something that the Prime Minister was not happy about, there would be tough pressure on him with these people around.
We must also consider the public. We represent the people of this country. We must make sure that, if there is a vote of no confidence, the people understand what is happening. We are the anoraks of politics: we live and breathe politics; we look at politics in our spare time. However, there are other men and women who say, “We’ll leave that to the politicians”, although they want to know what is going on. They would not necessarily understand A and B.
Lord Glentoran
I have listened to the noble Lord with great care. He is somebody I have respected for a long time. However, I wonder where he is taking us in this debate, which is on an amendment to a very serious Bill. We have listened for 10 or 15 minutes to the experiences of a Speaker in the House of Commons. The evening is moving on and we have a lot of business to get through. Will the noble Lord, as an experienced former Member of Parliament, be good enough to tell us in a short sentence the point that he is trying to make?
Lord Martin of Springburn
If the House wants me to cease speaking I will do so. I am sorry—the noble Lord has put me off, but I think he will get my point in a moment. I will try not to take so long the next time I speak.
If a Speaker has to sign a certificate, it should be simple. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that the public outside should know exactly what is being voted on in the House. It will be very clear if it is a vote of no confidence: a clear resolution or Motion will have been put down, saying, “We have no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”. If that was voted on, at least the Speaker would be in the position of knowing what he or she was going to sign. A vote of no confidence will have been carried, the House will have made a decision, and the Speaker will be conveying the wishes of the House and putting that on a certificate. I hope that has helped the noble Lord.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I have added my name to the new clause as well. I will just begin by disagreeing with my noble friend Lord Tyler, because I do not agree that this new clause undermines the Bill—quite the reverse. The Bill as presently drafted requires the Speaker to certify whether a vote of no confidence has been passed. However, there is no definition in the Bill of what constitutes that. This new clause seeks to adumbrate what constitutes a vote of no confidence as presently understood. If the Speaker is required to determine a vote of no confidence, all he has to go on is present understandings; otherwise he has to devise a definition of his own, which would be a sure recipe for undermining, if not destroying, the office of the Speaker.
What constitutes a vote of no confidence is a serious concern, and one that has been acknowledged by Ministers. When the Deputy Prime Minister appeared before the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House to discuss the Government’s constitutional reform programme, he conceded,
“this is a really important area and it is a classic example of where we could perhaps work away at the Bill if necessary, to strengthen or clarify it”.
He went on:
“In a sense, we have provided the tramlines in this draft Bill, but at the same time, I clearly want to retain as much flexibility and autonomy as possible for the House to decide for itself how it then interprets that. That is exactly the kind of thing that now needs to come out in the scrutiny that the Bill will receive”.
The problem with the present provision is that it does not leave it to the House how it interprets a vote of confidence—it is left to the Speaker to determine what constitutes a vote of confidence. As we have heard, unlike with money Bills, there is no statutory definition to guide the Speaker and there is an obvious ambiguity with the current wording. Defeating a motion of confidence is not the same as passing a vote of no confidence. Last week, the Minister referred to the case of Germany, where he said the Government had engineered a vote of no confidence in order to trigger an election. I pointed out that they had not engineered a vote of no confidence; they had contrived to be defeated on a motion of confidence. What happens if the Government consider that a Division on a major issue of policy is one of confidence and the Speaker takes a contrary view? Worse, what if it is the other way round?
As we have already heard, the danger is that the Speaker will be dragged into political controversy. In the event of an expected close vote on the Second Reading of a major government Bill, the Speaker could, in effect, be holding the fate of the Government in his hands. The potential to damage the office of Speaker is immense, and it should be avoided. If we are to have a Speaker’s certificate—and I say “if”—then we need to define what constitutes a vote of no confidence in the Government. As we have heard, there is a statutory definition of a money Bill, and I believe a statutory definition is required of a vote of no confidence. My noble friend's amendment seeks to provide that.
Last week, the Minister mentioned that I had undertaken research of all votes of confidence. In fact, my research was of government defeats in the House of Commons in the 20th century and, as part of that research, I was able to determine what were deemed to be votes of confidence—and, equally, what were not. In essence, as has already been touched on, there are three types of vote in which the House of Commons expresses its lack of confidence in the Government. First, there are Motions that stipulate that the House has or does not have confidence in Her Majesty's Government. The House may carry a Motion of no confidence or negate one expressing confidence in Her Majesty's Government.
Second, there are Motions on measures that the Government consider so central to their programme that, if defeated, they cannot sensibly continue. Confidence has therefore attached to some Second Readings and on occasion particular provisions of Bills. I have previously cited—again, this has been touched on—the example of the Second Reading of the European Communities Bill in 1972, when the Prime Minister stated that, if defeated, the Parliament could not sensibly continue. As an aside, I would mention that, if one went down the route where the Speaker did not certify it as a vote of confidence, it would still be open to the Prime Minister to say that the Government could not sensibly continue.
The third category is that of implicit votes of confidence. A small number of issues are taken to be confidence votes even if not explicitly worded as such and without the Government having declared them to be so. This is essentially a residual category deriving from the Government’s need for supply—my noble friend Lord Forsyth touched upon it earlier. Failure to grant supply is regarded as the traditional means by which the House can demonstrate its lack of confidence in the ministry.
My noble friend’s amendment seeks to encapsulate these categories in his new clause. It provides the clarity I would regard as necessary for the Speaker. I have some sympathy for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. It may be that the definitions provided are such that no verification from the Speaker is required because, if a Government attempted to argue that a particular defeat, say, on an amendment to the gracious Speech, was not one of confidence, then it would be open as now for the leader of the Opposition to table an explicit vote of no confidence.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, the hour is late so I have no wish to detain the House. First, I would like to congratulate my noble friend on this amendment, which I think is a great improvement on Clause 2. I have been reading Clause 2 again and it is like some kind of pre-nuptial agreement. If you look at the reasons behind it, clearly this is a clause put together by two parties who are not quite sure whether this marriage is going to work out. The reason we have the provision of more than a simple majority is clearly because the Liberal partners in the coalition were worried about the Prime Minister cutting and running and calling an early election when they were very unpopular. You can see how the architecture of this Bill has been created and it has nothing whatever to do with the proper functioning of the House of Commons.
Clause 2 is completely unnecessary, but I respect my noble friend’s very constructive attempt to try to go with the grain and not be too confrontational, as perhaps I am being now, about this clause. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that my preference would be to leave out the proposed new subsections (3) and (4) for the reason that, as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, has so eloquently explained, we should not be putting the Speaker in a position where he is involved in this.
Throughout the evening my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace has been very patient and very good and very constructive. I have asked him on several occasions why we need to have the certification process at all. It goes back to the pre-nuptial agreement. Normally, if the Prime Minister wants to call an election, people accept that, but people have thought we cannot have the Prime Minister doing it so we have to have somebody else. You can see them sitting in a room thinking, “Well, who could we have? Well, we will have the Speaker”. It has not been thought through. It is not necessary. We do not need the Speaker to sign a certificate saying that a Motion of no confidence has been passed.
Where I take slight issue—I support my noble friend’s amendment, but it is not perfect—is with the list of what constitutes a Motion of no confidence. As has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, I do not think that you can have a Bill,
“defined by the Prime Minister of the day as being essential to his or her administration continuing in office”.
My noble friend Lord Tyler is absolutely right about that. If a Bill that was central to the Government’s programme, a flagship Bill, was defeated in the House of Commons, any leader of the Opposition worth his salt would the very next day table a no-confidence Motion, which would take precedence over all other parliamentary business under the rules and conventions of the House of Commons. Presumably, Members would either vote for or against that Motion. I do not see the need for this list.
In my noble friend’s amendment, I like the bit that says, “Leave out Clause 2” and I like the bit that says:
“An early parliamentary general election is to take place if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”,
but then I think, “Why do we need any of the rest?”. I would be very grateful if, during the course of these proceedings, we could answer these very simple questions. You do not need the Speaker to sign a certificate and, if the House of Commons can pass a Motion of no confidence, that Motion does not need to be moved by the leader of the Opposition. But if the House of Commons no longer has confidence in the Government, there has to be a general election. That is a tried and tested thing that has continued for years.
I agree, too, with those who have said, “What is the point of this Bill?” If a Prime Minister wants to have a fixed-term Parliament, he can say, “I am not going to call a general election till the fifth anniversary of the previous election, or the last possible moment”—and there we have it. Normal conventions will apply.
We have this Bill, but it is a muddle, and if we are going to proceed with it we need something like my noble friend’s amendment, which leaves out Clause 2. If we could do away with the list or reduce its scope—perhaps continuing to include the Finance Bill but certainly taking away the requirement on the Speaker to issue a certificate—we would end up back where we started. The great advantage to where we started is that we know that it has worked and it has worked for centuries.
Lord Norton of Louth
Before my noble friend sits down, I shall answer his question about the list. The reason why we need the list is because it has been our understanding about what a vote of confidence is for about a century. He is now being extremely radical in trying to limit the list in saying that only in certain circumstances would there be an explicit vote of no confidence. That is quite a constitutionally radical proposal.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I stand corrected by my noble friend, who is very expert on these matters. However, a Motion that says, “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government” is absolutely clear, and it would trigger an election. In the context of this Bill, with a fixed-term Parliament, it is going to change. I accept that, because the nature of the Parliament will have changed. But I would much prefer something clear-cut, simple and explicit. If you want to bring down the Government, you have to pass a Motion of no confidence. That is absolutely clear. If such a motion is passed, the Prime Minister has to go to the country.
I was going to sit down, but my noble friend has set me off again. To turn to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, the idea that a Prime Minister should somehow be prevented from going to the country to get the consent of the people for what he is trying to do, to call a general election, is also a deeply worrying change to our constitutional pattern. But I sit at the feet of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and I am perfectly prepared to alter my view and go along with this amendment, at least in part under his instruction, because it is a far better thing than Clause 2 as it stands.
I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will accept the good advice that has been given him tonight and that at a later stage we will be able to discuss something that is more practical and workable and does not threaten the integrity of the office of Speaker of the House of Commons or the ability of the House to hold the Executive to account.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
This debate has demonstrated the need for the Government to reconsider Clause 2. I am very grateful to all my noble friends and all those who have supported the amendment for raising the issue again and in a different context from the previous debates. The intention is to remove the opportunity for Governments to fiddle with arrangements in any way, and that is a desirable purpose. The amendment also seeks to clarify the circumstances in which a vote of no confidence is deemed to justify the holding of an election. However, although noble Lords have raised the debate, I do not think they have concluded it. There are defects in the drafting of Amendment 50 that need to be considered. No one has suggested that this is a perfect drafting, but I would like to suggest two or three points that could be considered when the Government come forward at a later stage.
The first point is that proposed new subsection (2) states:
“A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if the House of Commons”,
does certain things, but those things do not appear to be an exclusive list. It would still allow other circumstances to occur that enabled it to be said after the event that there had been a vote of no confidence. The rubric of statutory interpretation that springs to my mind is the Latin tag, “inclusio unius est exclusio alterius”. That might be the answer to this if that were still the law and still the rule of statutory interpretation, but it is not sufficiently clearly the case to avoid the possibility of a further circumstance being deemed to have been a vote of no confidence.
It also seems to me that there has been a slight conflation between a vote of no confidence and the inevitability of a Government’s fall followed by an election. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, with great respect, as I always do, but it seems to me that, even if the Wardlaw-Milne Motion of no confidence had been carried—and of course it was not—it would have been perfectly understandable in wartime if that had led to the demise of the particular Prime Minister or a significant change of Government without any election being held. I think the constitution was sufficiently flexible at that time to make it likely that that would have been the outcome. What we are considering here is the circumstances that trigger an election, and I think that needs to be put beyond doubt. I do not believe, even in the case of the European Community Bill in 1972, that despite what the Prime Minister of the day said it would have inevitably resulted in an election. It seems to me that it might have led to the departure of the then Prime Minister. However, he could easily have been told that there were others who would have been prepared to take his place and preside over the parliamentary majority that existed.
If we want an escape clause—and clearly an escape clause is necessary, even with a fixed-term Parliament—in a constitution that is prime ministerial and not presidential, we must have the possibility of having a vote of no confidence. However, I think the better solution to that is the one proposed already by my noble friend Lord Tyler, which is that the Motion of no confidence should come from the leader of the Opposition. If the Government appear to the party in government itself to be in a shambolic condition, it does seem highly probable that a leader of the Opposition would seize the opportunity to declare that the House has no confidence in the Government. I hope that that is the line that will be taken by the Government in reconsidering this clause, but that the case for reconsidering it is strong I have no doubt. Clause 2 as it stands is ill defined and gives no certainty on what the circumstances are within that two-week period which could lead to the holding of a general election. Amendment 50 is a good stab at trying to clarify which issues need to be addressed. The debate tonight will have given my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness a lot to think about and to discuss further with his colleagues, as I believe is definitely necessary.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this has again been an important debate. I pay particular tribute to the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. It was forceful and effective in determining the importance of the role of the Speaker in the new Bill and had the experience of the Speaker in dealing with that. As far as I was concerned, it was absolutely clear throughout his whole speech where he was going with it. I also pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Cormack, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, for bringing this amendment forward. However, this proposed new clause slightly illustrates the problems again.
I will try to identify four principles within which we should be operating. Proposition one: whether we like it or not, the purpose of this Bill is to deprive the Prime Minister of his absolute discretion to determine the date of the general election. Proposition two: the Bill does not intend to disturb a constitutional principle that any Government should continue only for as long as they have the confidence of the House of Commons. Proposition three: currently, the House of Commons itself determines whether a Motion, when passed, indicates a lack of confidence in the existing Government. Proposition four: the Bill, whether in the form advanced by the Government or as amended by Amendment 50 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, seeks to try to produce a legal definition of what constitutes an indication of a lack of confidence in a Government, as opposed to leaving it to the politics of the time in the House of Commons.
The critical change which the Bill is making—if I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his fellow tablers have been lured into it—is in trying to provide a legalistic definition of a vote of no confidence. It is not for the courts to intervene. I assume it will have to be the Speaker who does the job. When he sees the words “Motion of no confidence” in a Bill or an Act of Parliament, he will look to see what their preceding meaning was.
Noble Lords should read the Confidence Motions note, which is incredibly helpful on this. A Motion of no confidence can have two meanings. It can mean any motion which puts the confidence of the Government to test, and that can include an adjournment motion if the Prime Minister has said that it is a motion of confidence. It can be a motion moved by a Back-Bencher. It can be the Second Reading of a Bill. It can be the Finance Bill or the Queen’s Speech. It can be anything which puts the confidence of the Government at issue. Whether it is or not is not solely determined by the words of the motion, since it does not need to use “confidence” or “censure”. Neither is it determined, if it does not use those words, by the Prime Minister of the day simply saying, “This is a Motion of confidence”. It can be a motion of confidence even if it does not use those words and the Prime Minister does not treat it as one, because the House of Commons itself would treat it as one. Equally, it could be a motion that is not a motion of confidence even though “confidence” or “censure” are used in it, because Governments are repeatedly being censured for what they have done by motions, but everybody in the House of Commons understands that they are not motions of no confidence that would bring the Government down.
This matter is incredibly difficult to identify in a legalistic way. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is looking confused, but you could have a Motion that said: “We censure the Government for their determination to sell off the forests”. If we assume that such a Motion was passed, everyone would understand that it would not lead to the Government falling. I wish to quote examples of Motions of confidence or censure that do not use the relevant words. The first Motion of confidence states:
“That this House deplores the action of Her Majesty’s Government in resorting to armed force against Egypt in clear violation of the United Nations Charter, thereby affronting the convictions of a large section of the British people, dividing the Commonwealth, straining the Atlantic Alliance, and gravely damaging the foundations of international order”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/1956; col. 1631.]
That Motion was put down by the Opposition. A month later a further Motion of confidence was put down by the Prime Minister. It stated:
“That this House supports the policy of Her Majesty’s Government as outlined by the Foreign Secretary of 3rd December, which has prevented hostilities in the Middle East from spreading, has resulted in a United Nations Force being introduced into the area, and has created conditions under which progress can be made towards the peaceful settlement of outstanding issues”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/12/1956; col. 845.]
Both those Motions fall on one broad understanding within the definition of a Motion of no confidence because, loosely, as I say, that is sometimes taken to mean any Motion that puts the confidence of the Parliament in that Government at issue.
Clause 2(2), as drafted, says:
“An early parliamentary general election is also to take place if the Speaker of the House of Commons issues a certificate certifying that—
(a) on a specified day the House passed a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government (as then constituted)”.
Is it intended that the phrase,
“a motion of no confidence”,
should embrace anything that puts the confidence of the Commons in the Government in issue? Therefore, does it include Motions, for example, on the Queen’s Speech? Does it include a Motion on the Finance Bill? Does it include anything that under the current definition in Erskine May would constitute a Motion of no confidence? We need to know the answer in order to know what the Government intend in relation to it. The problem that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, rightly identifies is that it is such a compendious phrase you do not know where you stand in relation to it, and it gives the Speaker much too wide a discretion, which then brings him into issue politically. Subsection (1) of the new clause in the amendment states:
“An early parliamentary general election is to take place if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.
That raises precisely the problem that the Government’s reference to a Motion of no confidence raises. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, seems to me to be completely right in that, as a matter of construction, subsection (2) in the amendment does not say that a vote of no confidence will only have been deemed to have been passed. It states:
“A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if”,
the conditions in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) in the amendment are met. Here are some examples, although they are not conclusive. The consequence of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, is that, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and his very impressive constitutional cohorts behind him, the amendment does not even begin to solve the problem that he has identified. However, the position is worse than that as the amendment states:
“A vote of no confidence will have been deemed to have been passed if the House of Commons … (c) passes a motion of no confidence tabled by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition”.
Does that include the following Motion that was put down by Mr Attlee when he was Leader of the Opposition on 4 December 1952? It states:
“That this House regrets that Her Majesty’s Government is dealing with the Business of the House incompetently, unfairly and in defiance of the best principles of Parliamentary democracy and the national interest, and records the view that this is in part brought about by the efforts of Ministers to force through measures, unrelated to the needs of the nation, for which they have no adequate support in Parliament or the country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/1952; col. 1783.]
Is that a Motion of no confidence? I should tell noble Lords that that is a trick question because I am reading from a Motion that was regarded, and treated, as a Motion of no confidence on 4 December 1952. If Erskine May says that that is a Motion of no confidence, the effect will be that if an identical Motion is put down by Mr Ed Miliband, then, irrespective of what the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, says, it will be treated in a legalistic way as a Motion of no confidence.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
The noble and learned Lord is giving examples of Motions that were treated as confidence Motions. Am I missing something here? Surely the context has changed. Those Motions are in the context in which a Prime Minister can say, “I am putting this policy to the House. I regard it as a matter of confidence. If I don’t have the support of the House, I’ll go to the country”. However, the Bill, as the noble and learned Lord has pointed out, removes the Prime Minister’s ability to call a general election—to go to the country and take his case to the people ahead of the conclusion. In that context, what would constitute a Motion of confidence is quite different from the position in which the Prime Minister cannot go to the country, and I think that the reason why my noble friend has had to fall back on a specific Motion that says that the House has no confidence in the Government arises from that. Therefore, the Erskine May examples arise from a situation in which the Prime Minister can call a general election at any time in order to secure support in the country.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
If the noble Lord is right, a massive constitutional change is being proposed. I did not realise that that was the intention. Is it intended that the fundamental principle of our parliamentary democracy—that if you lose the confidence of the Commons, you have to resign—should go? If that is so, then the principles underlying a Motion of no confidence presumably remain the same as they are referred to in Erskine May. It would be extraordinary if they did not, because the phrase that is being used is precisely the same as the phrase used in the Bill for determining whether there will be either Dissolution or a resignation. A Motion of no confidence is a well recognised phrase in Erskine May and there must be a reference to that in the Bill. The fact that there would not necessarily have to be a general election does not change the fundamental principle in our constitution that if you lose the confidence of the Commons you have to go. That, as I understand it, is what is intended by this provision.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Under the present rules, it is perfectly possible for a flagship policy to be lost in the Commons and for the Prime Minister of the day to move a Motion of confidence that wipes the slate clean. Therefore, it is not as straightforward as the noble and learned Lord suggests.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble Lord may or may not be right. He has been in the Commons, I have not, so he will understand the situation better than I do. I do not have the experience of the noble Lords, Lord Martin and Lord Forsyth, but from looking at the history books it would appear that, by a process of general consensus, the Commons understands what is and is not a Motion of confidence. The best example of what was not a vote of confidence occurred on 10 March 1976, when the Labour Government’s public expenditure plans were defeated. I should have thought that the Government would have had to go on that basis, but they did not.
The next day there was a vote on whether the Adjournment was a confidence Motion. Presumably the Prime Minister said, “I’m treating this vote on the Adjournment as a vote of confidence”, and the Commons understood it to be such. How is the Speaker supposed to determine that a vote on the Adjournment as a legalistic matter is a vote of confidence? He could not, either under the Bill as drafted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, or under the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.
Lord Norton of Louth
As the Bill now necessitates, instead of saying that we are on the Adjournment and that this will be treated as a Motion of confidence, one would put down explicitly worded confidence. That would be the essential change.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Is that right, because the wording in the amendment is:
“passes a motion of no confidence tabled by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition”?
The noble Lord is obviously right, but what about the position in relation to the Egyptian Motions to which I referred, or the Motion in which Mr Attlee, lambasting the Conservative Government in 1952, did not use the words “censure”, “Motion” or “confidence” once, yet regarded it as a motion of no confidence?
We already have a well understood definition of no confidence. The phrase is well known. What it means at any particular time depends on a consensus view that emerges from the Commons. The Commons understands when there is a Motion of no confidence. What it means is not something that is capable of being written down in a statute. I respect what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is trying to do in trying to define it, as it obviously is not working the other way. The Government’s problem is that they use the phrase “a Motion of no confidence”, as if it is a single, static thing that can be defined at any moment. Is not the obvious difficulty that it is not a static thing? One moment something will be a Motion of no confidence and 10 years later it will not because political circumstances have changed. As a consequence of what the Government are seeking to do, they are in effect changing the basis and moving it on from a political judgment made by the House of Commons to a legalistic issue that has to be resolved by the Speaker of the House of Commons. That is a fundamental change.
Lord Cormack
Much of what the noble and learned Lord says about the deficiencies of the Bill is completely right. The amendment seeks imperfectly—I made that point from the word go—to make the Bill less bad than it is at the moment by giving a definition of a vote of no confidence and by relieving the Speaker of the day of the invidious position of having to make a political judgment. We might have tabled the amendment imperfectly, and I am sure that there is room to improve it, but the general consensus in the House tonight appears to be that this is an improvement on what we have in front of us in the Bill.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am not sure. I think that there are two alternatives. The one is to be lured into the trap that the Government are laying of the legalistic route; the other is to take the route that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, seeks, or that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, who has somewhat confusingly put his name to the amendment, although he also said to rely more on conventions, which I found quite forceful.
Let us suppose that instead of proposed new subsections (2), (3) and (4) we simply had one proposal which stated: “An early parliamentary general election may take place if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”. You would end up in the position whereby the Speaker is not being asked. You preserve the current position of allowing the Commons to determine whether it is a motion of no confidence, which has not caused a problem in the past. By using “may” rather than “is to”, you also deal with the problem of the Queen’s Speech being defeated before the Government ever get going, and you deal with the Narvik situation. You effectively and essentially pass a Bill that is not drawn into difficult and damaging legalism, which is the danger that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is trying to avoid.
I wait to hear what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, says. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right that there is a considerable sense around the House that his amendment is better than the honourable but rather ineffective try that the Government have made. However, is it not better to try to preserve, as much as possible, the current arrangements that work rather than ending up in a legalistic situation with great difficulties about interpretation? I see the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, shaking his head. I am willing to be persuaded that I am wrong. However, using the phrase,
“passes a motion of no confidence”,
twice drags him into a situation where he is freezing the definition of something that cannot be defined. I am open-minded as to the right answer but I am not at all sure that the submission of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is it.
I identify two other difficulties. As drafted, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, does not deal with the defeat of the Queen’s Speech before the Government have got going, which he acknowledges. It does not deal with the Narvik situation, where you have a strong sense within Parliament that the Government should fall because they are defeated in a vote of no confidence and a new Government should emerge. Assume that in the Narvik example the Government are defeated because Parliament wants, say, Winston Churchill to become Prime Minister and a national Government to run the war. It would not be appropriate in these circumstances to force a general election. The effect of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is that there would have to be a general election whenever there was a defeat in a vote of no confidence. However, I see I am wrong.
Lord Cormack
The noble and learned Lord is trying to rewrite history in the most peculiar way. During the war, each year a Bill was passed so that there would not be a general election. General elections did not take place for 10 years. This agreement was in force at the time of Narvik. There was no question of the Government falling. The Prime Minister lost so much support on his own side that he felt that he had to resign and Mr Attlee made it quite plain that he was not prepared to serve under Lord Halifax, who appeared to be the preferred choice at the time, so we had the Government of Churchill and we all know what happened after that. To try to rewrite history in the way that he is doing is not exactly helpful to any of us.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The account of history given by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is entirely accurate. However, if you are passing a Bill that is intended to set out what our constitution is, what happens when there is not a suspension of elections and the Commons wants rid of a particular Government because it, quite legitimately, wants a national Government? The effect of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is that you are not allowed to have a situation where you cannot avoid an election. I envisage circumstances in which a vote of no confidence might well reflect both a Commons view and a national view that the Government of one party be changed, for example, into a national Government. We have to be able to deal sensibly with this. The current arrangements allow for a defeat in a vote of no confidence followed by a replacement of the national Government, which the amendment does not deal with. It is not a comprehensive definition of motions of no confidence and so leaves the Speaker as exposed under these arrangements as he is under the old arrangements. I share the desire of the mover of this amendment to get to a point where the Speaker is not exposed in the way that he is at the moment. I do not believe that the amendment quite succeeds in doing that. I am open-minded about the other efforts to do it, but currently, I can see force in the sort of amendment that I suggested.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it is obvious that we have had an important debate following a number of other debates on amendments where we have looked at the structure of Clause 2. In this case, the intention of the amendment is to seek more certainty about what will constitute a no-confidence vote. It is clear from the amendment—indeed it was said by the mover, my noble friend Lord Cormack, and the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster—that an early election would inevitably follow specific types of no-confidence votes being carried in the House of Commons.
It is interesting that the concern of all contributors has been about how we ensure that we are certain about what a no-confidence motion is. My noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart made the important point that even the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Cormack does not necessarily exclude other possible amendments. That indicates the difficulties. I have tried to be open about the objective, which is to try to devise a means by which there can be a trigger mechanism for an early election but with a degree of certainty and without opening the door for abuse.
If I can helpfully work on that basis, I respect the views of those who say that they are totally against fixed-term Parliaments, but this Bill is designed to bring in a fixed-term Parliament; a number of noble Lords set out specific arguments based on our having a fixed-term Parliament. I think there is some agreement that if we have fixed-term Parliaments, there must be a mechanism to trigger an early election. I have not detected any desire in your Lordships' House for a very fixed, rigid system.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in introducing his amendment, rightly indicated that if we are to have what he described as the escape clause, it must be clear, simple, understandable and not capable of misrepresentation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, asked what was the thinking behind the Government’s position as we set it out. Why had we not specified words? My noble friend Lord Norton encouraged us to have a statutory definition of a no confidence motion. The reason why—
Lord Howe of Aberavon
With great respect to my noble and learned friend, he said we are trying to set up a situation in which, with fixed-term Parliaments, we can trigger an early election. That seems to be something that we are all groping for. We already have a fixed-term structure in the sense that there is a maximum term with the existing pattern of being able to trigger it for different reasons. I emphasise the significance of what he said, I think not per incuriam. We are working in a fixed-term situation but finding a way in which we can trigger an early election. If that is what he is after, we are not far away from it as we are.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That is indeed what I said because there is a difference between a fixed term, as set out principally in Clause 1, and recognising that you could have a situation, as they do in Norway, where the term is fixed and nothing can allow an early election, even if the Government were to lose the confidence of their Parliament. That is not what anyone has argued for in our deliberations. There is a distinction between a fixed term and a maximum term during which, under the present system, the Prime Minister of the day can opt to have an election at a time of his choosing for partisan advantage. We do not disguise the fact that that is what we are seeking to move away from.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I completely understand that it is different under the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill but remember that the consequence now of the Government losing a vote of confidence is that they at the very least have to resign and at the very most have to have a general election. There is a very high price to be paid now in relation to losing a vote of confidence or no confidence. Can the noble and learned Lord identify historically any occasion where there has been a dispute over whether something is a vote of confidence?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I seem to recall in one of our earlier debates that there was a suggestion that in the 1970s Mr Harold Wilson indicated that he would not accept as a motion of no confidence motions which on some occasions hitherto had been seen as votes of no confidence. I think that that point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, not on this amendment but in a debate on an earlier amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
It was earlier in this debate. It has been going on for so long, it is difficult to remember. The point was that the House accepted, it appears, the redefinition that the Prime Minister had proposed to the House at that time and recognised the political circumstances in which that Labour Government had a tiny majority. It did not really have a workable majority.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Perhaps the House accepted it because it was quite clear that if the Prime Minister had decided that he was not going to go to the country it could have tabled a motion of no confidence. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Forsyth keeps coming back to what seems to be a very straightforward way of addressing this issue: that if there is any doubt, the Leader of the Opposition or someone could table a motion of no confidence. The more one thinks about it, it tends to be the motion which has no ambiguity and is very clear, about which something further might want to be said.
The amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Cormack would replace the entirety of Clause 2 and therefore would not allow the provision of the trigger mechanism of a Dissolution if two-thirds of the House of Commons was voting for a Dissolution. We have had debates on this in the past but if at some date in the future, in a fixed-term Parliament, there is a consensus in the House of Commons that there should be an election—and 1951 has been identified as a possible example when this may have happened—I would rather the option remained for the Dissolution to be triggered on a cross-party, consensual basis rather than having a motion of no confidence brought forward simply to achieve a Dissolution which two-thirds of Members believe is necessary. That option is lost by my noble friend’s amendment, but it is a worthwhile provision to maintain.
On the question of what constitutes a motion of no confidence and whether it should automatically trigger an election, I recall that in our earlier debates my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth indicated that that should not necessarily be an automatic consequence. However, a consequence of the amendment is that there would be an election. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, suggested a way round it and, in introducing his amendment, my noble friend Lord Cormack suggested that if it was after the Queen’s Speech in the first Session there could possibly be other ways.
It is important, therefore, that we reflect on circumstances in which an election should not automatically be triggered, the most obvious one being immediately after a general election when a party does not yet have the confidence of the House and there is still an opportunity for another Government to be formed. Equally—I cannot say this is a Narvik situation because it is not—there may perhaps at a time of extreme national crisis be a view that a Government should not continue and that there is a case to be made for a national Government. Indeed, it occurred to me that the Bill as drafted would provide for that. There could be a motion of no confidence and a period of time—we can debate whether or not it should be 14 days—for a new Government to be established which could in such circumstances enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. I find my noble friend’s amendment defective in that regard because there are circumstances where the automatic triggering of a general election would not necessarily be the right way to proceed. I will not elaborate on the point about an incoming Government after an election and the fact that we do not want election after election after election.
A number of colleagues have indicated that there are problems with the amendment. As I have indicated, I do not want to take technical issues— it used to annoy me greatly in opposition if Ministers said there were technical problems—unless they are very fundamental.
On the second branch of what would constitute a vote of no confidence—namely, a Bill defined by the Prime Minister of the day as being essential to his or her Administration continuing in office—my noble friend Lord Tyler expressed scepticism; the noble Lord, Lord Martin, felt it would be unwise and was concerned about the Speaker; and my noble friend Lord Forsyth also expressed concern about that. Quite apart from trying to get a definition of what constitutes a Motion of no confidence, a Government facing a problem with their own Back-Benchers could simply decide that they would make a particular vote a matter of confidence—the black arts may well come into play—for the purpose of imposing party discipline. As we are trying to initiate a switch from the Executive to Parliament, that would be a regrettable consequence of that trigger point for a general election. Likewise, as my noble friend Lord Tyler indicated, that would be a decision of the Prime Minister and not of Parliament or the Speaker, and therefore it would be an Executive decision which, in certain circumstances, could conceivably be open to challenge.
I know my noble friend Lord Forsyth has strong reservations on fixed-term Parliaments—I probably understate his position—but he made an important point in his exchange with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. He said that the examples the noble and learned Lord was giving were not operative within the framework of a fixed-term Parliament. If that is the case and we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, the rules will change. As he pointed out, the simplest thing in these circumstances may be to say that a motion of no confidence is what it says. On what constitutes confidence or no confidence in the question of supply, my noble friend Lord Norton said in his article of 1978, Government Defeats in the House of Commons: Myth and Reality:
“The most effective means whereby the House could declare its lack of confidence would be through an explicitly-worded motion of no confidence”.
I did say that we were in listening mode—and, indeed, reading mode. That was an important point.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, spoke of his concerns about the Speaker’s certificate. I do not wish to rehearse our earlier debate; I undertook then to reflect on that. However, what I found difficult was his suggesting that the more we try to write down and define matters, the more difficult it is, yet seeming to have an objection to the Government’s position where they did not seek closely to define. That seemed to be a contradictory view. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe said that we should keep it as simple as possible. That is what we have sought to do by setting a background where it is possible to recognise a motion of no confidence rather than trying to define it. This matter has been looked at many times, including in the other place. Whenever efforts are made to bring some definition to it, other than perhaps a very simple one, one seems to conjure up more difficulties.
I said at the outset that I wanted to hear the arguments about structure and definitions. Members on both sides of the Committee have expressed a number of views. I clarify again that I shall speak with my colleagues on these matters. The principles that we wish to establish are that, within a context of having a fixed term, there should nevertheless be a mechanism to trigger an early election if there has been deadlock in the other place, if a Government lose confidence, and if no Government can be formed who maintain confidence. There is an argument for having consensus about Dissolution and proper provision being made for it, as well as for trying to minimise the potential for abuse of the trigger on the part of the Executive and to get clarity as to what constitutes a vote of confidence. There may well be circumstances in which a vote of no confidence does not necessarily have to trigger a general election. How do we clarify those circumstances in a way which is acceptable? These are the general principles and issues which I want to put flesh on. Various ways as to how we might do that have been suggested. The amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Cormack has been very helpful in suggesting one way. It has a number of problems to it, but the comments that it has triggered will help shape our thinking as we move to the next stage of the Bill.
I reflect that perhaps we have got it right because these are very complicated matters, but I undertake to give serious consideration not only to what was said in response to this amendment but also to earlier amendments and those which were heard on the second day of Committee. On that basis—
Lord Norton of Louth
I understand the argument that my noble and learned friend is developing. One of his objections to my noble friend’s amendment was that it seeks to encapsulate what is the current position, where the Prime Minister can say, “Well, if we lose on this Second Reading of a major government Bill, we cannot continue; we make it a question of confidence”, and uses that to mobilise government supporters.
My noble and learned friend is objecting to maintaining the current provision, whereby the Prime Minister can simply say: “If we lose, we go”. I touch on the point that it is still open to the Government to resign. If the Prime Minister says, “This is crucial to our programme; if we lose, we resign”, and therefore goes to the Palace in the wake of that to tender the Government's resignation, under the Bill, what happens?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
We debated this under Amendments 35 and 39. I said then and as part of our general debates that, in my understanding, if the Prime Minister resigned—nothing in the Bill stops the Prime Minister resigning in those circumstances—the Queen would invite another Member of Parliament to form a Government. If that other Member of Parliament tried to form a Government but there was a motion of no confidence in that Government, there would be an election. Alternatively, the Prime Minister may have resigned and it may be evident to everyone that there is stalemate and that the sensible thing—with agreement across all parties—is to have an election. In that case, two-thirds of Members could vote for an early Dissolution.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)
My Lords, I think that it would be for the convenience of the Committee if the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, were first to respond on his amendment, as it is an amendment to that of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, noble Lords who have spoken in this debate are people of great political experience, experience of government and profound knowledge of the constitution. It has been a very helpful debate. I share the regret of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, that we have to grapple with these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, caught the sense of the debate very well when he said that at least there is widespread agreement around the Committee that Clause 2 needs careful reconsideration.
The intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, was, as in our earlier debate, of the utmost importance to the House. We should not lose sight of the eminently simple and practical point that he drew to our attention: the Journal of the House records the Divisions of the House. That may well be the authoritative point of recourse that would satisfy the legalistic requirements created by the conception of the Bill. In that way, we might avoid the need for the Speaker to issue certificates. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, explained to the House the pressures under which a Speaker may come in the ordinary day-to-day circumstances of modern politics—how very unpleasant and intense they are. That is a foretaste of the pressure that a Speaker might experience were the Speaker to be required, as the Bill proposes, to certify motions of no confidence.
If the definitions in the new clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, are clear and comprehensive, certificates might not be needed, but I fear that events might not be as cut and dried or mechanistic as it suggests. I suspect that other votes, beyond those that he itemises in his new clause, might be regarded as confidence votes—in which case, if the Speaker is to issue certificates, it will be contentious and dangerous, as two former Speakers of the House of Commons have warned us this evening.
My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer explained that it is incredibly difficult to tie down a motion of confidence, or of no confidence, in legal terms; I suggest that it is impossible. That is why I like the simpler solution suggested by my noble and learned friend.
I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, for the tone of all his remarks, for his recognition of the reality of the problems that noble Lords have sought to identify, and for his willingness to reflect on whether there may be better ways than the requirement that the Speaker should issue a certificate to enable the Government to pursue their purposes in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Cormack
First of all, I apologise for jumping the gun ahead of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. I echo his remarks to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness on his constructive response to an interesting and important debate. I did not claim at the beginning, and I do not claim now, that the amendment I tabled with the support of my noble friends is perfect—of course it is not—but it has focused attention on a number of important issues, and I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.
There has been a surprising degree of consensus. Almost everyone who has spoken would agree that in most circumstances—I am trying to choose my words carefully, accurately to reflect what has been said—a vote of no confidence should be enough to see a Government resign. There is fairly widespread distaste in all parts of the House for 14 days of horse-trading. There is a degree of scepticism in the House on the two-thirds majority, although I of course note what my noble and learned friend said on that subject.
There is total opposition to involving the Speaker of the day in contentious matters. My amendment certainly did not seek to do that, but sought, by implication, to equate the certificate with the sort of certificate that is already applicable to money Bills. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for his constitutional expertise and for the things that he has been able to point out.
Like the famous Irishman, I would rather that we had not started here. The Bill is not a great adornment to our constitution. It is a real threat to many parts of our constitution. I do not want to repeat what has been said by so many, but almost no one in this House would oppose the notion of the Prime Minister of the day expressing a determination to see through a full five-year term. However, there is also an overwhelming consensus that, fixed-term Parliament or not, one has to have an escape clause.
I tried to approach the Bill, not as one who loves it, but as one who accepts that we have a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. I want to make it as workable as possible, I want it to inflict as little damage as possible upon our constitution, and I want it to allow as much flexibility as possible to remain. I hope that in the discussions that I trust will take place, formally and informally, between now and Report stage, we will be able to consolidate the consensus that has been implicit in much that has been said tonight, and that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will come forward with a Clause 2 that is far more acceptable than the present clause in the present Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, our debates on Clause 2 have been very significant. Would it be possible for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to suggest some process? He has been accommodating and conciliatory, and he has broadly shared the aim, expressed all around the House, of there being no uncertainty about the circumstances in which an election would be triggered. As I understand it—I may have misunderstood—the Minister is not seeking to dislodge the basic principle that, when a Government lose the confidence of the House of Commons, that Government have to go.
Could I invite the noble and learned Lord to convene a meeting of all interested parties—I do not mean political parties—from all over the House to discuss this, with a view to agreeing a Clause 2 that reflects the concerns that he appeared to share? The noble and learned Lord—I hope that this will not be a case of “once bitten, twice shy”—was accommodating in indicating during the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that he would come back with things, and he is leaving me with the impression that he shares many of our concerns. Perhaps the way to move forward is for those who are interested to meet him to try to agree a clause that reflects the sort of principles he just went through. Does that suggestion find favour with the noble and learned Lord?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am certainly more than willing to meet. I will need to discuss with ministerial colleagues—it will not be just I who have to reflect on this—but I am certainly willing to meet, although I do not know whether that can be done constructively with a large number, or whether it is better done with a smaller number. The noble Lord, Lord Martin, has already suggested that he and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, would be willing to meet. I have said that I would welcome that opportunity, although that would be to deal with a discrete part of the Bill. I am sure that, through the usual channels, we can devise some way of meeting, either individually or by convening a much larger meeting. I am sometimes sceptical about how far you can get without convening a larger meeting. I will work out the best way to take that forward, with an undertaking to meet and include those—without, I hope, being exhaustive—who have made an important contribution to our deliberations in Committee.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord. One of the things that very much infused the debate on Clause 2 is the question of what the Government have in mind when they use the phrase “motion of no confidence”. For example, it was never clear—I am sure this is my fault for not listening; it is very late—whether a motion of no confidence includes being defeated on a motion of confidence. Does a motion of no confidence include things that are not explicit? Does the definition of a motion of confidence in Erskine May apply in helping us to construe the reference to a motion of no confidence in Clause 2? We need to know the answers to those questions. If the noble and learned Lord does not want to answer now, I am more than happy for him to write. However, we do need clear answers to those questions.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I tried to answer on this in response to the previous debate, when I indicated that we recognised that no-confidence motions could take and have taken many different forms, and that our desire in the Bill was not to be prescriptive and not to restrict flexibility. That is where we started from and that is what we sought to do. I think a vote of no confidence would not include a vote of confidence, but it would not be beyond the wit of a leader of the Opposition to table an amendment inserting the word “no”. That is clearly part of the discussion that we can have. The noble and learned Lord asked what our proposed statutory definition of a motion of no confidence was. In response to the earlier debate, I said that we recognised the many different forms that it could take, as he himself illustrated in his speech. Our desire was not to restrict flexibility. We will enter the discussion, as I have said, bearing in mind the comments that have been made from various parts of your Lordships’ Chamber.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
There was just a flicker there, in that the noble and learned Lord said a vote of no confidence would not include a vote of confidence. Therefore, you could have the strange situation where the Government are defeated on a vote of confidence but do not resign at that point. Indeed, there could not be a general election under those circumstances; under this Bill, there would then have to be a vote of no confidence at that point. How nutty is this Bill?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
“Parliamentary general elections coinciding with scheduled elections to a devolved institution
(1) A parliamentary general election shall not be held within 30 days of a general election to the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales or Northern Ireland Assembly (“the relevant devolved institutions”).
(2) Should an early general election be called under section 2 of this Act such that it would occur within 30 days of scheduled general elections to the relevant devolved institutions, the Prime Minister shall, after consultation with all of the relevant devolved institutions, lay orders before Parliament to move the date of either the parliamentary general election or any of the general elections to any of the relevant devolved institutions so as to ensure compliance with subsection (1) of this section.
(3) Any order laid by the Prime Minister under this section shall not move any of the general elections either to Parliament, or to the relevant devolved institutions, by more than 35 days from the date on which they would otherwise have taken place.”
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this amendment deals with the question of the potential coincidence between elections for the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Our draft gives the Prime Minister the ability to lay an order to ensure that a general election must take place at least 30 days apart from the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, to avoid a coincidence of these occurring on the same day.
I put my amendment down to probe the Government’s position on this. Everybody understands that the first general election under any Fixed-term Parliaments Act is likely to occur at or near the same date as the elections for the institutions I have referred to. Subsequent to my putting my amendment down, the Government, in consultation with the relevant institutions, have now reached some sort of agreement and have now put their amendments down, as Amendments 55B and 55C. Would it be convenient to your Lordships if we heard what the Government have proposed first, because I do not fully understand it? Once we hear what the Government have proposed, it would then be possible to see whether we need to proceed with our probing amendments.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I hope this will be a helpful way to proceed, because Amendments 55B and 55C standing in my name implement agreements reached with the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales in relation to the coincidence of elections in 2015. It is important to say from the outset that this Bill has not created the possibility that elections to the UK Parliament and the devolved institutions coincide—that could have happened anyway. However, the Bill has given us prior warning and has allowed us an opportunity to plan for the eventuality.
The Government believe that there can be tangible benefits from combining elections, in terms of voter convenience and cost. These were factors which led to the decision to combine the voting systems referendum with other polls on 5 May. However, combining elections for two legislatures arguably poses issues which did not arise from the combination of the polls with a referendum. I have outlined to your Lordships’ House previously—both at Second Reading and in one of our earlier debates in Committee—that concerns have been expressed by the Scottish Parliament, by the Welsh Assembly and in the other place that if the two sets of elections coincide it could be difficult to ensure that voters are able to differentiate between the manifestos for each election for each separate parliament, and that might inhibit the candidates’ ability to campaign effectively. There is also the added complication of different voting systems in the different elections; the 2015 UK general election could be held using a new electoral system, if the referendum on 5 May has an affirmative outcome, and will in any event use different boundaries.
This set of circumstances meant that it was not appropriate to combine the polls to the devolved institutions and the House of Commons in this instance. To that end, we have been in lengthy discussions with the Presiding Officers of both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I made it clear at Second Reading that we wrote to the Presiding Officers on 17 February proposing that if the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly passed a resolution, with the support of at least two-thirds of all Members, agreeing that the 2015 Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly general elections should be moved up to one year earlier or later, the Government would then table an amendment to this Bill which would seek to set the dates of these elections on a one-off basis. Copies of the letters to the respective Presiding Officers have been placed in the Library of the House.
The Scottish Parliament passed a unanimous motion on 3 March confirming that it wished the United Kingdom Government to bring forward a provision to defer its 2015 general election to 5 May 2016. A similar motion was passed by the Welsh Assembly on 16 March. To this end, the amendments in my name will provide that the general elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly currently scheduled for May 2015 will be deferred by one year in line with the motions passed by the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. That will ensure that the two sets of elections do not coincide in 2015.
Lord Wigley
Before he sits down, can the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, confirm that the Government’s amendment covers everything that had arisen in discussion with the National Assembly for Wales and in the debate that took place on this matter there? When he says that this is a one-off solution, how might this be handled in future? Does it mean going through all this again every time there might be a coincidence or is there some agreement to get some stable basis ongoing for however long?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I was not about to sit down. I was about to address how we might proceed in the future. I point out that this was not a question of the Assembly Members or the Scottish Parliament awarding themselves an extra year—the motions were passed unanimously by the outgoing Assembly and Parliament. A new Parliament and a new Assembly will be elected on 5 May but we believed it was important to bring forward provisions now so that, at least when people go to vote on 5 May, they will know the period of the Parliament or the Assembly which they are electing.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The Minister says that people will know. Does he envisage that the Bill will be passed by 5 May 2011?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
People will know our intentions. I stand corrected by the noble and learned Lord. We thought it was important that we flagged up that intention, subject to these amendments being carried this evening and in the Bill itself. If the Bill is not passed there will not necessarily be a coincidence but there still could be a coincidence of elections on 7 May 2015.
Subject to these amendments being accepted, in the longer term we would then need to carry out a detailed assessment of the implications of the two sets of elections coinciding at a later date. In the light of this we would consider whether to conduct a public consultation in Scotland and Wales on whether the devolved institutions should permanently be extended to five-year terms. While the 2015 general elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly will be deferred by one year, these will be treated as ordinary elections and subject to the usual rules. For instance, a subsequent ordinary general election will be scheduled to be held on the first Thursday in May in the fourth calendar year following the deferred election. Additionally, the power to vary Assembly or Holyrood general elections by one month earlier or later under Section 2(5) of the Scotland Act 1998 or Section 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 will apply. In both instances Holyrood and the Welsh National Assembly may still vote for an early dissolution with the two-thirds majority, in line with the existing provisions in the respective devolution Acts. Such an early general election does not affect the subsequent ordinary general election unless the extraordinary election was in the six months prior to the scheduled election.
A number of noble Lords have expressed the view that if the Government had proposed a four-year term for this Parliament then the problem would never have arisen. We have debated at length the Government’s reasons for preferring the five-year term and I do not propose to rehearse them now. It was recognised when the debates took place that we were willing to look at future possible coincidence of elections and, on the back of that, to look at the possibility of extending to five years the lifetime of the devolved Parliament and Assembly. We do not believe that it would be proper to do that on a permanent basis without having that further discussion. I also ask your Lordships to bear in mind that there is always the possibility of the coincidence happening in any event. This has allowed an opportunity to address the possibility now rather than finding ourselves in April, May or March 2015 seeing that a coincidence was about to happen.
Following correspondence with parties in Northern Ireland on this issue, Northern Ireland Office Ministers concluded it would be better to await the outcome of the combined polls scheduled for May this year before taking a decision on whether special provision would be needed for Northern Ireland.
I am happy to stop there and allow the noble and learned Lord to speak to his amendment before going on. I simply observe that it is possible at the moment for the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament or the Secretary of State for Wales to move the election by 30 days. Whether 30 days would be enough to get a proper disjunction of the different election campaigns remains to be seen. I look forward with interest to what the noble and learned Lord says about that. The problem was identified. We engaged with the respective institutions and sought their views on what they would wish their response to be, and these amendments deliver on the way forward agreed with the respective Parliament and Assembly.
Lord Wigley
In the first place, I thank the Minister and the Government for moving on this, following the discussion that took place in another place and the misgivings expressed quite widely. It is very helpful that these changes are proposed. None the less, there is an issue with regard to the 30 days. There would be considerable complications if two elections took place within that time, not least for those who have to organise the elections. In the context of Wales and, I suspect, Scotland the elections would be on different boundaries, as well as the possibility of there being different electoral systems. I hope that the Government will look again at the 30 days and see whether it could be elongated to two or three months. Can the decision be put in the hands of the National Assembly and not just the Secretary of State so that there is no question of any political tension arising out of this?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I have two or three difficulties with the Government’s proposal. First, if Parliament decides that it should be a four-year fixed term rather than a five-year one, the extension of the lives of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales would have been entirely unnecessary and not justified. What then are the Government going to do in relation to it? That suggests to me that the issue should have been dealt with only once it was known what the length of the fixed-term Parliament was, which you could not know until after the Bill had passed—which suggests that the Bill is coming at the wrong time in the cycle.
Secondly, it strikes me as wholly unsatisfactory that this provision deals only what the first of the elections and none of the subsequent elections. If there is always a five-year cycle, there will not be a coincidence again for a long time. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, acknowledges, this could happen at any time. In those circumstances, while I fully accept what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is saying, and maybe my proposal to separate the elections by at least 30 days does not leave long enough, a mechanism needs to be properly addressed in the Bill for going forward and ensuring that when the clash occurs there is some process by which it can be dealt with. The Bill does not deal with that. This looks like a rather unsatisfactory sticking plaster to deal with something that had not been thought through before the Bill was introduced. What are the Minister’s proposals going to be for dealing with the problem as a permanent problem? Will there be another Act of Parliament in addition to the Acts of Parliament that we can expect to deal with the boundary revisions from the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, to which the noble and learned Lord referred earlier in the evening? Is this another loose end left flapping in the wind? Is it intended that the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly should have five-year terms only on this occasion, or for ever?
Thirdly, why has Northern Ireland been treated differently from these other two institutions?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I sometimes wonder if the noble and learned Lord listened to what I said. I have answered those three questions, but perhaps, with respect, I did not explain clearly enough, so I shall try again.
The first question was with regard to whether we would have a four-year or a five-year Parliament. Clearly that is a debate that we will come to at Report, and I am not going to rehearse again the arguments why I believe the five-year option is preferable to the four-year one. If the Committee agrees today that these amendments in my name should be passed, I believe that they should stay because people who will be voting on 5 May should at least get some indication of what the length of the Parliament or Assembly that they are electing is likely to be.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Is the noble and learned Lord saying that it would be four years or five years?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am saying that they would still get five years. I do not think it would be right to elect people on the basis that they believe they are getting five years and then to say, “By the way, you’re not”. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, shakes his head. I think we would attract even greater criticism if there was an expectation of five years, and then we said, “Oh, by the way, we’ve changed our minds. You’re not getting your five years. You’re being cut back to four”. That would be the source of some legitimate criticism. Of course, if that is what happens and we do have four years—I will not again emphasise the reasons why we should not—the chances of it recurring are probably less likely, because then you could get yourself on to a four-year cycle, depending on whether there was an early election.
The noble and learned Lord asked what would happen in the longer term. I did seek to explain that we have also indicated that, subject to these amendments being accepted, in the longer term we would carry out a detailed assessment of the implications of having two sets of elections coinciding on a later date. Obviously the Electoral Commission would be involved in that. In the light of that, we would consider whether to conduct a public consultation on whether in devolved institutions the term should permanently be extended to five years. We do not proceed to do that in the context of this Bill, but we have indicated, as I have done in earlier debates, that that is our proposal. I hope that I have made it clear on this occasion that that is what has happened.
The noble and learned Lord also raised a question about Northern Ireland. I thought that I had answered that but, for clarity, the situation there is that there was correspondence with the parties in Northern Ireland on this issue. Northern Ireland Office Ministers concluded that it would be better to await the outcome of combined polls scheduled for 5 May this year before taking a decision on whether special provision would be needed in the future for Northern Ireland. It was a reflection of the dialogue that had taken place within Northern Ireland, and I see nothing wrong with this Parliament being sensitive to the views expressed in different parts of our diverse United Kingdom. I think that is to our credit, so I do not think that it would have been appropriate to have made provision for Northern Ireland if that was not the feedback that we were getting in the consultations that had taken place.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
It was my fault for not having heard that. Having heard what the noble and learned Lord said now and understood it—having been so dim-witted in not picking it up before, for which I apologise—perhaps that indicates that this Government should not have come forward quite so hastily with this Bill, but instead should have consulted on those issues, which are very important, before bringing forward the Bill. It is not too late.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, my amendment is very straightforward. It allows for four extra working days from the Dissolution of Parliament to the general election. Why is that important? My amendment allows a few extra days to get everything right. People have quite rightly expressed serious concern when things have gone wrong in the electoral process. Seventeen working days is a very short period in which to deal with all the matters that need to be dealt with in the time from Dissolution to polling day.
Many noble Lords will have contested elections in the past or been involved in elections and be aware that you have to get your nomination papers completed and submitted, and in some cases pay a deposit—certainly for all parliamentary elections. Printed materials can be prepared to some extent in advance, but often the cut and thrust of the campaign will determine how your campaign goes. Having a few extra days is of great benefit to candidates and parties. I also contend that it is of benefit to the public to have a slightly longer look at who they are being asked to vote for locally, as often the campaigns as reported by the broadcast media and national newspapers focus on the bigger picture and the leadership of the respective parties.
We should also place particular emphasis on the administration of the election. Running any sort of election places a big responsibility on returning officers and their staff. Giving them a few extra days to prepare and ensure that everything is correct is most desirable. The printing of ballot papers, the sending out of postal votes and getting everything ready for polling day can be done only when an election is under way. I can see no reason why this amendment should not have wide support across the Committee.
If the Government are not going to support the amendment today, I hope that the Minister can give a detailed reason why. My only motivation in moving it is to have well run and well managed elections where citizens can exercise their rights to participate in elections and choose their representatives. I hope the Government will see my amendment in that light and accept it. I beg to move.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, briefly, I support the broad principle of extending the election timetable, largely for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. In particular, I feel strongly that we have too short a timetable for elections, which denies many service voters the opportunity to vote because of problems with issuing postal votes, getting them back and so on. However, it seems to me that the length of election timetables should be dealt with for all elections—council, European et cetera—not just Westminster general elections. However, while the problems that he suggests are very real, they will be addressed for general elections if we establish the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, which is the primary purpose of the Bill.
Lord Bach
My Lords, in supporting my noble friend on his amendment I invite the Government to think very carefully indeed before rejecting it, if that is what they intend to do. I speak from personal experience: in a former life, my noble friend was the regional secretary of the Labour Party in the east Midlands, so I worked extremely closely under him for many years and I can speak to his expert knowledge about running elections. I dare say that the Minister could talk about other individuals whom he worked with in that capacity and, no doubt, those from the Conservative Party could as well, while the fame of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, goes before him. When you have such experts as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, speaking with one voice, it behoves the Government to think carefully before rejecting what they suggest.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for his amendment. Clearly, it seeks to dissolve Parliament 21 working days ahead of polling day rather than 17 working days. It is fair to point out that a 21-day timetable would be novel. It is not currently used in local or parliamentary elections; that in itself raises issues. I understand that the Electoral Commission, with which I know the noble Lord has an association, has previously suggested that the electoral timetable might be extended to 25 days. That would, not least, support participation by service voters. The commission has highlighted problems caused by the current election timetable and its associated deadlines for electors, candidates, political parties and electoral administrators. Those were reflected in the experiences that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned. My noble friend Lord Rennard also has experience of them.
The Electoral Commission notes that this change should not be made without a review of further changes that might then be required to the electoral timetable. I assure the Committee that the Government agree that this is an important issue. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister indicated during Second Reading in the other place that we believe there is merit in exploring an extension to the timetable. I note that, at present, there are different timetables for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and, I think, the Northern Ireland Assembly. Therefore, there is merit in looking at this not just in relation to this Bill and future elections to the House of Commons but in looking generally at the election timetable.
The Electoral Commission has pointed out that the matter requires a thorough review to ensure that any change is coherent across the piece. There are practical issues and consequential complexities that have to be considered. It is not as simple as omitting “17” and replacing it with “21”. There are issues about the judgment on where particular milestones would best fall within an extended election timetable. For example, there may be competing views as to when they should fall with regard to nominations. We are anxious that, if we are to extend the timetable, we should find the most effective solution. The deadline for registering to vote is another important issue, as are the current deadlines for postal and proxy votes.
As I have indicated, we do not have experience of a 21-day timetable but the Government agree that this is an important issue and we want to set out our proposals on how we might address it in the future. In asking the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, I hope he will accept that the Government recognise that there are much wider issues to deal with here, and that 21 days is perhaps not the appropriate length of time. We should look at the totality of a longer electoral timetable, but it would not be appropriate to amend it in this Bill.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble and learned Lord for his response. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord Bach for their comments. I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
“( ) Parliament may otherwise be dissolved if—
(a) Her Majesty appoints another Prime Minister;(b) a Government of a different coalition is formed;(c) the Prime Minister considers it appropriate to seek the endorsement of electors following a change in government policy;(d) the Prime Minister considers a Parliament not to be viable;(e) the number of MPs in receipt of the governing party’s or governing coalition’s whip falls below a majority of 10 over the combined members of the other parties in the House of Commons.”
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I do not detect a huge zest in the Committee for considering the remaining amendments on the Marshalled List at this time of the morning. However, if that is what the usual channels have agreed and wish to insist on, it is not for the rest of us to argue.
In moving Amendment 55, I wish to speak also to Amendment 55A. Both these amendments would widen the range of circumstances in which Parliament may—not must—be dissolved beyond the two contingencies that are provided for in the Bill, which are the eventuality of the two-thirds majority and that of a vote of no confidence. My first suggestion is that if a new Prime Minister is appointed by Her Majesty, there should be the possibility of a general election quickly following that. I do not think that when Mr Major replaced Mrs Thatcher in 1990, and certainly when Mr Callaghan replaced Mr Wilson in 1976, there was widespread public demand that there should be a general election. It was accepted that it was reasonable and appropriate that the Government should be headed by a new Prime Minister without a general election taking place. On the other hand, when Mr Brown replaced Mr Blair in 2007, there was a very discernible feeling in the country that there should have been a general election. Professor Bogdanor has suggested that that may be because our politics had become more presidential by that time, but I think that when Mrs Thatcher was our counterpart to President Reagan our politics were already fairly presidential, so I am not sure that that is the explanation. Be that as it may, there was that feeling in the country.
It is also interesting that before the recent election Mr Cameron proposed that a new Prime Minister taking office should be required to go to the country within six months of doing so. It would be helpful if the Minister was able to cast any light on why that proposal was dropped and is not incorporated in the Bill. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats thought that it was a bad idea for whatever reason—I do not know. However, it was an interesting suggestion and one that should not be forgotten. If we are likely to have more frequent hung Parliaments, and there are indications that that may be so, it follows that there is a greater likelihood that there will be a change of Prime Minister within the Parliament. If we are to have a situation in which one Prime Minister gives way to another but there is no election, that raises questions about accountability, not least in the context of the coalition’s own insistence that its reforms are designed to improve the accountability of politicians to the people. That is one set of circumstances in which it would be appropriate to allow a general election.
I then propose in the amendment Dissolution if a Government of a different coalition are formed, so we are not just talking about a new Prime Minister of the same party continuing in government. However, if we get a new coalition, I suggest that again accountability to the people should require at least the possibility of a new election without having to resort to devices such as Motions of no confidence and so forth, or indeed getting a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons, which might still be difficult.
Thirdly, I have suggested that if,
“the Prime Minister considers it appropriate to seek the endorsement of electors following a change in government policy”,
it should be legitimate for him to go to the country. At this time of night, my memory is rather failing me, so perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, can help me. Did Mr Baldwin go to the country on tariff reform? I think that that may have happened, and in fact I see nods from better informed noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber. Had Mr Heath, when he performed the famous U-turn and adopted an incomes policy in 1972, thought that it was appropriate to go to the country, I do not think that anyone would have objected. If a similar situation were to develop now, surely that, too, would be appropriate. It should be possible for a major change of policy to presage an election in which the Prime Minister seeks the endorsement of the country for that new course of policy.
Fourthly, I have suggested that, if in the view of the Prime Minister a Parliament is no longer viable, again he should be able to seek Dissolution and go to the country. We talked in an earlier debate about just such a judgment made by Mr Attlee in 1951. Had this fixed-term Parliament legislation been in place, that Labour Government might have had to struggle on unable, by the Prime Minister’s own acknowledgement, to govern effectively unless it had been reprieved by a two-thirds majority. I think that there should be a surer way to provide that an election can take place in those circumstances.
My final suggestion is a bit arbitrary, if not even possibly whimsical. It is that where,
“the number of MPs in receipt of the governing party’s or governing coalition’s whip falls below a majority of 10 over the combined members of the other parties in the House of Commons”,
again it should be possible for a general election to take place. That is, in a sense, a variant of the situation in which a Prime Minister judges that a Parliament is not viable. However, in this case it would not necessarily be just the opinion of the Prime Minister that would count.
Amendment 55A is a little different. It picks up a suggestion made by Mr Gordon Brown that a Parliament may, not must, be dissolved if the House of Commons approves by a simple majority a Motion that the Prime Minister should request Dissolution from the Queen. This seems to be an elegant and simple solution to what the Government have stated as the key issue that they wish to resolve through this legislation. They think it is objectionable that the Prime Minister of the day should have the power to call the election whenever he wishes. Gordon Brown suggested that the Prime Minister should no longer have the power to seek Dissolution on his sole judgment—a power which I think was originally assumed by Lloyd George and which has rested with subsequent Prime Ministers. The Prime Minister would have to go to the House of Commons and secure a vote there before he could go to the Palace and request Dissolution. This would solve the main problem that the Government have set out to solve. It could be legislated for, although I do not think that it really needs legislation; it could be accepted as one of the conventions under which Parliament operates. I beg to move.
Lord Norton of Louth
I thought that I would speak briefly on the amendment. I can see the argument that it drives a coach and horses through the intention of having fixed-term Parliaments and I can see that it may attract some support in the House for that reason. I have problems with how the amendment is drafted, as it says:
“Parliament may otherwise be dissolved”.
Who determines that? It may otherwise be dissolved if Her Majesty appoints another Prime Minister. Is it the incoming Prime Minister who determines that there should be a dissolution? It also states that,
“the Prime Minister considers it appropriate to seek the endorsement of electors following a change in government policy”.
One can see how any Prime Minister could have a fairly minor change of policy and decide, “I’d rather like to have a general election”, and it could be used as an excuse presumably for triggering the election. There is no requirement here; it has to be a major change in public policy. There are obvious drafting problems because I am completely unclear as to who would be responsible for triggering a Dissolution. That is my problem with it, but some may find that quite attractive since, in effect, it would undo the whole Bill.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am not sure that it would. There are drafting issues and the noble Lord is right about that, but there has been a mood around the House that when John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher or Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair, it might have been appropriate to have a general election. I understand that my noble friend Lord Howarth is saying, “Let’s define some circumstances which don’t say you have an absolute discretion, which is the current position, but there are certain defined circumstances”.
I agree that some of them, such as,
“the Prime Minister considers a Parliament not to be viable”,
and,
“the Prime Minister considers it appropriate to seek the endorsement of electors following a change in government policy”,
are a little vague. Would it be a change in any government policy, including where we stand in relation to the Forestry Commission? That might be a little bit unjustifiable, but if you wanted the Brown-Blair, Thatcher-Major; a change in the complexion of the Government; the Heath situation; and the October 1974 situation—there is a broad consensus round the House that those would not be bad—it is not necessarily a bad idea to say that tightly drafted provisions should be included at the end of Section 3.
We are dealing not with the safety valves but specific occasions when the nation would think it appropriate for there to be an election. I do not see that as being necessarily inconsistent with a fixed-term Parliament. As the noble and learned Lord rightly said, we are not in the Norwegian-type situation where it is X years come what may, and you soldier on to the end, come what may. You are identifying certain circumstances when the norm, whether four or five years, can be departed from. It is when there is a vote of no confidence, or questions when certain well recognised events occur, which justify the then Government seeking the endorsement of the electorate, even though there was no vote of confidence and even though there was no two-thirds vote, which would be, as I understand it, a Prime Ministerial discretion.
What the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is getting at is that if it is a Prime Ministerial discretion, you go straight back to where you were before. Let us suppose that the provision said that the Prime Minister—meaning the new Prime Minister—can go to the country if he takes over mid-Parliament. That would not be an absolute discretion; it would be a very constrained discretion, usable only when there was a change in Prime Minister. That would not strike me as driving a coach and horses through the Bill, although I can see that the noble Lord is dying to tell me why I am wrong.
Lord Norton of Louth
Yes, I was going to suggest that he is. In circumstances that he suggested that it is the incoming Prime Minister who can opt to do that, as with Anthony Eden in 1955, presumably it will be used to the Prime Minister’s advantage. When the noble and learned Lord suggested that the mood of the nation perhaps favoured a change, one can see situations in which the very last thing an incoming Prime Minister plans to do is call an election.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Think, like the right honourable Nick Clegg, about giving the public more control over their politicians. There is always a sense of frustration that comes when a new Prime Minister comes in and the public get no say in whether this change is right. This would reflect this mood and give the public more control.
The noble Lord is right. I cannot think how I would have taken over as Prime Minister and at the same time been unpopular. It is an unlikely scenario. However, it is a way of avoiding lots of clubhouse politics, where you move from one to another. It does not necessarily drive a coach and horses through the Bill. It would do so if the viability provision or the change in policy were there. It would, however, be worth the Government thinking of a circumstance in which, for example, a Government totter on with a majority of one and want to have a general election but the Opposition will not give them a two-thirds vote. Why should there not be a general election in those circumstances? It might well be that the country is not assisted by there being weak government in those circumstances.
I completely understand why the Government would wish to knock out the very general reasons for Dissolution. However, if the Government are serious about trying to improve the constitution, it is worth them considering whether or not there are more specific reasons of the sort proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, that might be worth including in Clause 3(2) of the Bill that says that,
“Parliament cannot otherwise be dissolved”,
except in those situations that we have dealt with before, which is the two-thirds majority, the expiry of the fixed term or a motion of no confidence.
Amendment 55A says that Parliament cannot otherwise be dissolved,
“unless the House of Commons has approved on a division a motion tabled by the Prime Minister that the Prime Minister should request Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament”.
The effect of that provision is that it would not be in the discretion of the Prime Minister alone, which is the current position. Put aside everything else. Assume no Motion of no confidence. Assume no two-thirds vote. Assume no change to the Bill to allow any special measures. The Prime Minister could nevertheless table a Motion that says, “I think there should be a general election”, and, if Parliament backed him by a simple majority, there could be a general election. This is probably the position anyway because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, says, there is nothing to stop the Prime Minister from procuring a vote of no confidence to get rid of himself so that, for example, in the Heath situation, he could have an election to deal with a particular crisis that had struck the Government. Would it not be more sensible for there to be a straightforward mechanism that allowed that to happen? If it can happen by the back door, why should it not be allowed to happen by the front door? It does not offend against the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill because its stated purpose is to take away the right to call a general election from the Prime Minister and give it to Parliament. Amendment 55A does not offend against that principle
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, for these amendments. My immediate response was to share the view of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth; that they do run a coach and possibly some horses though the Bill—although I do not agree with him that that is what should commend it. The other thing I noticed was that there was no certainty as to whether Parliament would in fact be dissolved in these circumstances. Parliament might otherwise be dissolved. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, suggested that it would be the new Prime Minister who would trigger this. If there is a discretion, the Prime Minister taking over in circumstances that might not be propitious for his party might not necessarily exercise it. I think we are back to the situation that the Bill seeks to avoid. My noble friend and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, recognised that issues such as changing government policy or a very subjective view about the viability of a Parliament would put the power back into the hands of the Prime Minister that this Bill seeks to remove.
I also observe that another Prime Minister may be appointed on the grounds of death or serious illness, and I am not sure that that would necessarily be good grounds for triggering Dissolution. I simply observe that in Wales where there are fixed-term Parliaments, there have been circumstances in which the First Minister resigned and a new First Minister was appointed, and I do not remember the Labour Party clamouring for an election. When subsequently the minority Government became a coalition Government, there was no suggestion then in the context of a fixed-term Parliament that there should have been an election. Nor was there any suggestion that an election would have been appropriate following the death of Donald Dewar in 2000 or the resignation of Henry McLeish in 2001. In circumstances in which we have had fixed-term Parliaments and there has been a change of First Minister, it has not been thought appropriate that there should be an election; rather, the fixed-term Parliament has seen itself out in circumstances in which the Government have the confidence of the Parliament. That is crucial because if the Government do not have the confidence of the Parliament, the provisions elsewhere in the Bill will kick in.
I do not really understand the point about the majority falling below 10. Historically, a majority of 10 could be quite a high number. I do not believe that that would be an appropriate circumstance in which there may be Dissolution.
On amendment 55A, I cannot share the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, that it is somehow consistent with the principles of the Fixed-term Parliament Bill. I think it drives more than a coach and horses through the Bill. I have said on a number of occasions that the situation is open to abuse. The Prime Minister of the day could contrive Dissolution by the back door, but I do not think that we should put a red carpet down to the back door or to the front door for him to do it. There would be a degree of opprobrium attached if he was thought to be bending the rules, or indeed if he went to the country on the basis of a vote of no confidence in him that had been expressed by the House of Commons. We all know the reality of this amendment; if the Prime Minister wanted to have the date of his choosing for his party’s best advantage, it would not even need the black arts of the Whips to get his Members to turn out and vote for it. It defeats the object of a fixed-term Parliament. In these circumstances, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I was quite wrong. This has been a very zestful debate—positively sparkling. I congratulate all noble Lords who have spoken on their effervescence at this time of the night.
I tabled these amendments because I think that the Government have restricted the Bill to permitting elections to happen before the end of the fixed term in too limited a range of circumstances. I think there are circumstances in which it would be in the interests of politics and of the country that there should be an election. I apparently differ from the Government in thinking that elections are a good thing. I do not think that it is desirable to stave them off so that they can happen only once every five years, if you can get away with it. A general election is a great moment in the life of the country, and we should be willing to recognise that there will be situations in which an election would be a thoroughly positive thing that would be welcomed by the country and that would be good for our politics, for the quality of government and for our democracy. It may well be that I have not sufficiently tightly defined all these circumstances, and given that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, and the Minister have drawn attention to the palpable inadequacies of drafting in Amendment 55, I beg leave to withdraw it.
“General election for Scottish Parliament not to fall on same date as parliamentary general election under section 1(2)
(1) This section applies in relation to the ordinary general election for membership of the Scottish Parliament the poll for which would, apart from this section and disregarding sections 2(5) and 3(3) of the Scotland Act 1998, be held on 7 May 2015 (that is, the date specified in section 1(2) of this Act).
(2) Section 2(2) of the 1998 Act has effect as if, instead of providing for the poll for that election to be held on that date, it provided (subject to sections 2(5) and 3(3) of that Act) for the poll to be held on 5 May 2016 (and section 2(2) has effect in relation to subsequent ordinary general elections accordingly).”
“General election for National Assembly for Wales not to fall on same date as parliamentary general election under section 1(2)
(1) This section applies in relation to the ordinary general election for membership of the National Assembly for Wales the poll for which would, apart from this section and disregarding sections 4 and 5(5) of the Government of Wales Act 2006, be held on 7 May 2015 (that is, the date specified in section 1(2) of this Act).
(2) Section 3(1) of the 2006 Act has effect as if, instead of providing for the poll for that election to be held on that date, it provided (subject to sections 4 and 5(5) of that Act) for the poll to be held on 5 May 2016 (and section 3(1) has effect in relation to subsequent ordinary general elections accordingly).”
Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, it is me again, but this is the last time. The Bill abolishes the monarch’s power to dissolve Parliament but not the monarch’s power to prorogue Parliament. If the monarch is removed from the dissolution process, should she continue to exercise other prerogative powers, such as the power of prorogation or the power to summon Parliament? It is a question worth pausing on and it would be helpful to hear the Government’s account of why they have sought in this Bill to remove one very important prerogative power but to leave others in place.
I am not a great believer in consistency in constitutional matters. A constitution breathes and relaxes through its anomalies and is able to be responsive to the complex circumstances of the different parts of a country through the very existence of anomalies. I am rather of the view of Ralph Waldo Emerson who said:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen”.
I think that we would all reject such consistency—I hope so.
At a practical level, the Bill leaves a loose end. The continuing power of prorogation is, in principle, open to abuse. If a Prime Minister were to be defeated on a vote of no confidence he could, under the terms of the Bill, ask the Queen to prorogue Parliament to get around the 14-day constraint. There was such an incident in Canada not very long ago. Following his re-election, the Canadian Prime Minister asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament. The Prime Minister was seeking to avoid losing a threatened vote of confidence. Parliament was prorogued for two months. By the time it came back, the threat of that vote of confidence had pretty well gone away, so his continuing lease on power was ensured. The Constitution Select Committee thought that the likelihood of such an abuse occurring in the circumstances of this country was very low, with which I agree. I think that if any Prime Minister were to attempt to manipulate and abuse the power of prorogation, it would certainly backfire on him politically.
This amendment seeks to provide a safeguard against prolonged prorogation if a Prime Minister did seek to avoid the consequences of a no-confidence vote and get the election deferred to benefit himself or his party. The amendment should probably have been framed to guard equally against an abuse of the power of adjournment. Without such an amendment, the only safeguard that would remain would be the refusal of the monarch to accede to a request for prorogation. I think that we would all take the view that it is not a good idea to place the monarch in a politically contentious position. There is a loose end to be tidied up here and I should like the Minister to explain why the Government have left the power of prorogation as it is. I beg to move.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I have absolutely nothing to say on prorogation but I would like to mention the significant contribution that my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport has made to the Committee stage. I also congratulate the noble and learned Lord who has conducted Committee stage completely alone on behalf of the Government. Although I have disagreed with very much of what he said, he has done an absolutely first-class job.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, for his kind remarks. I also thank—as I have done on a number of occasions—the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for introducing amendments that have allowed us to look at important parts of this legislation. Indeed, I thank in general all others who have contributed to our constructive debates.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked about prorogation. There is a distinction between the prerogative power of dissolution and the prerogative power of prorogation. We have identified that the prerogative power of dissolution, which this legislation seeks to remove, can be used by the Prime Minister, in advising Her Majesty, for partisan purposes. By contrast, the prerogative power of prorogation is different. It is the mechanism that is used to bring to an end a Session of Parliament and determines, subject to the carry-over procedure, when Bills have to complete their passage through both Houses so that they become law; it is also used at times in the run-up to Parliament finishing its business pending Dissolution.
An incumbent Prime Minister, even today, could prorogue Parliament to prevent the other place considering a forthcoming no-confidence motion, as happened in Canada some two or three years ago. That risk exists today but the convention is that the Government and Parliament find time to debate a motion of no confidence tabled by the Official Opposition. It is instructive that the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House considered the question of prorogation as part of its examination of the Bill and decided that the risk of abuse of the power of prorogation is very small. It therefore concluded that Her Majesty’s power to prorogue Parliament should remain.
The noble Lord raised the possibility of abuse in relation to the 14 days to frustrate these ends. It is perhaps thought that preserving the prorogation power could mean that a Prime Minister who wants a general election can, after a no-confidence motion is passed, prorogue Parliament during the 14-day Government formation period and thus deny the new Government the opportunity for a motion of confidence in them to be passed. It is highly unlikely that would happen. There are two basic scenarios. The first is that there is no obvious alternative Government and therefore nothing would be achieved by proroguing Parliament. If it was the wish of the Prime Minister of the day to go to an election, he would simply proceed to an election after the expiry of the 14 days. The second is that there are political factors, such as the Prime Minister resigning after a no-confidence motion and Her Majesty appointing a new Prime Minister. In such a scenario the outgoing Prime Minister would have agreed to resign and it is inconceivable that he or she would resign and then not allow the new Prime Minister to test the confidence of the House. Even if the new Prime Minister took office and found that, in the mean time, a prorogation had been slipped through by the outgoing Prime Minister and the House had been prorogued, he or she would be able, through the Queen, to recall Parliament under Section 1 of the Meeting of Parliament Act 1797.
These are hypothetical examples but it is right that we should examine them. The power of prorogation can still be used properly and sensibly and is not in the same category as the power of dissolution. I hope that with these reassuring words the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I draw much comfort from what the Minister has just said. Indeed, we need not be too scared of the possibility of an abuse of the power of prorogation and, subject to what my noble friends consider in the mean time, I anticipate that we will not need to return to this issue on Report.
I am grateful for what my noble and learned friend said and for the tolerance of the House. If I have been a little overzealous it was because, very shortly before the first day of Committee on the Bill, only a small handful—perhaps not more than eight—amendments had been tabled. As we have all acknowledged, this is a constitutional reforming measure of first-rate importance. We attach great importance to the role of this House as a revising Chamber and it is appropriate that we have had a good range of amendments to consider and have given the measure useful scrutiny in Committee. I apologise that the House has had to put up with the sound of my voice for far too long. However, we have done a good job, as we shall again when we get to Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.