House of Lords
Big Society: Church of England
Baroness Perry of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to work with the Church of England in further developing the Big Society.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, the Government are actively working with faith community leaders in order to create the big society. The Secretary of State and my noble friend Lady Warsi have discussed these matters with the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and other senior church figures, and more meetings are planned. Faith communities including the Church of England have been a focus for philanthropic activity for centuries, and my department will continue to work with them.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. Would she agree that the Church of England is particularly well placed geographically, because it has a presence in every community and also because its Christian values have long rested on caring for our neighbours and those in the community who most need help?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I can certainly agree with what the noble Baroness has said. The Church of England is well placed because, as she says, it has—I was going to say fingers in every pie—tentacles in every part. The Question is about the Church of England, but I emphasise that we work happily not only with the church but indeed with all faith communities.
Lord Tomlinson
Will the Minister acknowledge how much damage her party did to the big society when it promoted the demutualisation of building societies and mutual societies, which were the very origins of the big society?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, we pass on in time, and the big society is something that we all now understand. [Laughter]
I am truly astonished at that response from the Opposition. Do they not understand that the big society is based on communities, on the value of the work that people do for other people and on neighbourliness? I do not understand why they are laughing.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, as county youth services have diminished, the number of youth workers employed by the Church of England has increased considerably. Faced with inflation, reductions in gift aid and the other challenges to charitable giving faced by the voluntary sector, what steps will the Government take to help the Church of England develop further the community provision so essential to building the big society?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, as I am sure the right reverend Prelate knows, the near neighbours exercise is currently under way, for which my department is providing over £5 million to the Church of England’s initiative, part of which is to ensure that people are trained, to ensure that there are interactions between faith communities and to help the big society in action.
Lord Borrie
My Lords, can the Minister now answer properly the question of my noble friend Lord Tomlinson by indicating whether she and the Government are indeed in favour of the mutual approach to which he referred?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, there is always value in mutualisation in various areas. I am not going to comment on the question that was raised; I have replied to it as I can. The relationships between people in local communities are invaluable.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, can the Minister do everything she can to encourage an end to the practice whereby local authorities refuse to give grants and support to organisations which have a religious dimension or conviction? This means that many organisations which do great charitable work are unable to get the support of local authorities, something which seems completely at variance with the big society agenda.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, my department has been working closely not only with the Church of England but also with other faith societies to ensure that the work that they do in local areas is understood and supported. Where contributions and grants are made from local authorities, we would expect them to be given to faith organisations and the Church of England for the work that they do, and in line with that. We would not expect local authorities not to do so just because it was the Church of England.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, the Minister has mentioned the value of what we do for others. Can she give us the Government’s reaction to today’s announcement that the value of the work of unpaid carers in the big society has been re-estimated from £87 billion to £119 billion every year?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I understand fully the interest of the noble Baroness opposite. She has been working in this field for a long time. My response is that I would not be surprised. The amount of voluntary work and caring in this country is enormous. We all recognise that many people are looking after members of their family full time, largely unpaid and unrecognised. The first thing we have got to do is recognise what they do, and I would not underestimate the value of their contribution. What the noble Baroness says is correct.
Lord Tope
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as an executive councillor in the London Borough of Sutton, which is one of the Government’s three vanguard communities for the big society. What steps are the Government taking to remove regulatory burdens at both national and EU level to enable local authorities to provide practical support in facilitating faith-based and other community organisations to deliver services and grow community spirit?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, unless there are regulations standing in the way of that, we would want to look at it very carefully and see what is stopping that work. I am not aware of either the Church of England or any other faith community being debarred from helping people in the work that they need to do. I pay tribute to the work of those organisations and their presence in the community, and express the appreciation of the people who rely upon them.
Lord Inglewood
Does the Minister agree that the beginnings of implementing the kind of society that the big society envisages are in everyone recognising their responsibilities to other people in that society—
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, order! The noble Lord is standing in the Gangway. He should be speaking from the Bench.
Lord Inglewood
Does the Minister also agree that those interested in promoting the big society must recognise their responsibilities to others, and that this includes faith organisations as well as other elements in civil society?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, as I indicated, the big society is all about people helping others in local areas, neighbourliness, philanthropy, practical help and recognising that each of us owes a responsibility to others in the course of our lives.
Media: BBC
Lord Touhig
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will introduce legislation to compel the BBC to open its books for audit by the National Audit Office.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, the Government are committed to allowing the National Audit Office full access to the BBC’s accounts for the purpose of undertaking value-for-money investigations. Her Majesty’s Government did consider, but disregarded, the use of legislation to secure full access. The objective will be achieved by amending the BBC agreement. The Government are not seeking to appoint the NAO as the BBC’s auditor, as we do not see this as central to delivering the coalition commitment.
Lord Touhig
I thank the Minister for her reply, and I very much agree with the Government—I do not believe that legislation is the way to resolve this matter. However, the fact remains that the BBC is the only publicly funded body that will not allow the National Audit Office to do value-for-money audits except on terms dictated by the BBC. That cannot be right—and the Culture Secretary agrees with me. Eight months ago, he said that there was an agreement for the NAO to audit the BBC. Two weeks ago, he said that the NAO should have unfettered access to audit the BBC. Can the Minister tell us when the Government will actually make this happen?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for asking this Question, as it provides me with the opportunity to clarify the present situation. The talks with the BBC that he mentioned have not broken down; indeed, the Secretary of State discussed the matter with my noble friend Lord Patten when he met him just this Monday. The details of the new arrangements have still to be finalised. However, the Government’s commitment to the target date of November 2011 will be met and an announcement will be made at the appropriate time.
Baroness Deech
Does the Minister not agree that talk of compulsion in this field is entirely inappropriate given the independence of the BBC and its ownership by the licence fee payers; that services such as the World Service are expensive to provide but priceless to receive; and that number-crunching is not necessarily the answer?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. The Secretary of State, in Question Time in the other place, has announced that he will allow full access to the BBC World Service, S4C and all the accounts.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the public feel a need for transparency in these things? As she said, there will be no compulsion, but the National Audit Office will publish something for the public to see. What will be published? Will there be enough information to give the public an idea of what is happening? How will this be managed without conflicting with the lack of legislation? Personally I agree with her—I would prefer there to be no legislation on this subject.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Gardner brings up a very good point. It is essential for the public to have all the knowledge possible regarding the accounts of the BBC, and the NAO will have access to all the information that it considers relevant. However, publication of information by the NAO will, of course, need to be consistent with the existing legislation on privacy and data protection.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, does the Minister agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patten, in his evidence to the Lords Communications Committee this week that the BBC should be transparent and accountable, but also that the NAO’s programme of inquiry should be properly planned and not just a random exercise or simply responsive to the whims of the media?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am sure that I agree with the Secretary of State—and you would not expect differently. Her Majesty’s Government are not seeking to appoint the NAO as the BBC’s auditor as we do not see that as central to delivering the coalition commitment. However, we are aware that the BBC Trust is happy for the NAO to compete for this role when the current contract expires in 2012.
Lord Addington
My Lords, will my noble friend take this opportunity to assure us that no matter how the BBC is audited, it should not be at the whim of people—particularly politicians—to accuse it of bias; and also that there is a recognised process to go through, because the BBC has shown a remarkable capacity to annoy Governments of all colours?
Baroness Rawlings
My noble friend Lord Addington makes a valid point. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced in its structural reform plan of July 2010 that the National Audit Office would be allowed full access to the BBC’s accounts for the purpose of value-for-money investigations. This will be achieved by November 2011. It is more important to clarify the details, rather than rushing into implementing the new arrangements before the scheduled date. We are confident that this target will be met.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, as the BBC is owned by the licence payers, when can they be told how much the BBC presenters and stars are being paid?
Baroness Rawlings
I am sure that, when the time is right, the Secretary of State will announce—
Lord Inglewood
Does my noble friend agree that while it is proper that there is appropriate transparency and accountability in the books of the BBC, it is of overriding importance that, as an institution, it remains independent of any form of political control or direction?
Baroness Rawlings
I am sure that we would all agree with my noble friend Lord Inglewood. The most important thing is for the BBC to remain independent and to keep its very high standards, which we all respect.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, does my noble friend not agree—as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, suggested in his initial question—that we are making a mountain out of a molehill? No legislation is required. The BBC is already subject to external auditors. Its books are published in an extensive report and accounts each year. The governors have to appear before the Select Committee. Ofcom actually has enormous powers over the BBC which very few people know about and which cost the BBC—and therefore the licence payer—a huge amount of money. All that is required in this case is an agreement between the Secretary of State, as my noble friend stated, and the new chairman of the BBC for this extra transparency to come about.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ryder, with all his long experience in this area, is absolutely right. It does need only a little tweak. As I said earlier, the Government did consider, but disregarded, the use of legislation to secure NAO access. Implementation of legislation to override the BBC agreement would run counter to the principles on which the BBC is established and its relationship with government.
European Financial Stability Mechanism
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Willoughby de Broke
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of the constitutional convention that no Parliament may bind its successor, they will review the commitment made by the previous Government to participate in the European financial stability mechanism.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, the constitutional question is a red herring in this case. The Government are focused on looking ahead. At the December European Council, the UK secured an agreement for the European stability mechanism to be replaced, by 2013 at the latest, with a permanent mechanism for assisting eurozone countries. The UK will not be participating in the permanent mechanism.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, and I am sorry that he thought that part of my Question was a red herring. I will try a fish of a slightly different colour. I remind him that at the Davos economic forum President Sarkozy of France said:
“To those who would bet against the euro, watch out for your money … Mrs Merkel and I will never—do you hear me, never—let the euro fall”.
Given that unambiguous recognition that the eurozone ought to be able to sort out its own problems, will the Government now stop pouring good money after bad and give notice that they will withdraw from the European financial stability mechanism?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we inherited the UK’s participation in the European financial stability mechanism from the previous Government. The decision was made between the date of the general election and the change of Government. We inherited that position. We have taken rapid action, and reached agreement at the European Council in December 2010 that the current mechanism will be replaced by a permanent mechanism by 2013 at the very latest, and that the UK will not participate in it. It is great to hear that the eurozone leaders, who the noble Lord quoted, are completely committed—as we understand they are—to supporting the eurozone. That is for them, and the UK will not be part of that future mechanism.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there is widespread surprise that the original financial stability mechanism was allowed to be established under Article 122 of the European Union treaty, which deals with natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, not sovereign defaults, and that that was done despite Article 125, which specifically prohibits sovereign debt bailouts? Although my noble friend is absolutely right that the new stability mechanism is to come into place, that requires unanimity. If that is not achieved, is it not possible that Britain may be dragged into bailing out not just Ireland, for which there was an argument, but Portugal and Greece? If those provisions of the treaty are going to go on being ignored, surely the only result will be more scepticism and cynicism about the way in which the EU operates.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, my noble friend embedded a number of questions in what was apparently one question. As to the use of the different articles, another key part of the agreement at the European Council in December 2010 was that Article 122 would unequivocally not be used in future for these purposes. Without going into the debate about whether Article 122 should ever have been used for this sort of operation, it will not be used in future—that is agreed. As to Article 125, that is used for loans for medium-term financing under things such as the balance of payments facility and quite other purposes, and that will continue. As to the UK’s participation, the new mechanism has been agreed by the Council. Its resolution is completely clear. A treaty amendment will bring in the new mechanism. That position could not be clearer. As to Portugal, my right honourable friend the Chancellor has made it completely clear that as the negotiations go forward to completion, the UK will not participate in any bilateral loan to Portugal. Ireland was a special case, and the same considerations do not apply in the case of Portugal.
Lord Davies of Oldham
The House will have noted that the Minister brushed aside the constitutional preamble to the Question. I have some sympathy with him on that, but will he confirm that what took place after the general election had produced an inconclusive result and during the interim period was an entirely proper action by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Alistair Darling, who sought consensus from the Conservative Party before he went to ECOFIN and subsequently had that consensus confirmed by the Government when the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Justine Greening, confirmed it on 21 July? Will the noble Lord take the opportunity to clear that up?
Lord Sassoon
I am very happy to clear up the matter; I thought we had done that a week or two ago. Let me be absolutely clear. The previous Chancellor, Mr Darling, took the decision—it was still for him and the previous Government to take that decision. He consulted the Opposition. My right honourable friend the current Chancellor made it clear that he did not agree with the decision. The previous Chancellor consulted him on the course of action that was proposed and, in the words of my right honourable friend, it was for the previous Chancellor to reach that decision. The previous Chancellor reached the wrong decision. That was his decision; he made it.
Lord Harrison
Once again, the Minister is providing inaccurate information. The EFSM, to which we contribute through membership of the IMF, and the ESM, which we will contribute to until 2013, will be conflated into the new European stability mechanism, which we will still be funding through our membership of the IMF. Will he make that very clear?
Lord Sassoon
The position as set out in the decision of the European Council is completely clear; it is that the new permanent mechanism will replace the current one. The current mechanism will cease to operate and the new permanent mechanism will deal with any matters that might arise after it comes into operation.
Crown Prosecution Service
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Whitaker
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, given the reported intention of the Home Secretary to transfer decisions about whether to charge a suspect from the Crown Prosecution Service back to the police, the same officers will carry out investigations and take decisions to prosecute.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the proposals build on existing practice and are designed further to improve charging efficiency. The police already have responsibility for charging decisions in 67 per cent of cases. Custody officers, who play no part in investigations, will continue to make the decisions, in accordance with the provisions in the guidance of the Director of Public Prosecutions, on whether to refer cases to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that half-satisfactory reply. However, is she aware that, when I was a magistrate and the decision was made to set up the CPS and give it responsibility for prosecutions, it was universally greeted as a great step forward, not least because it removed the incentive, or perceived incentive, from the prosecutor to tailor the investigation so as to fit it for a charge—I am trying not to use the word “fit”, advisedly? How will HMG guard against that perception?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness has raised a number of interesting points. However, the point is that, through modernising our charging programme, we are building on the trust that we have with our police forces and also making sure that we build in greater efficiency and reduce bureaucracy.
Lord Dear
Is the Minister aware, as I am, of the steady growth of the use of fixed-penalty tickets by the police in an expanding range of offences, which now includes theft and assault, as well as perhaps traffic offences, and which is giving rise to some disquiet, not least among the judiciary? Does the Minister agree that we have reached a point where it would be proper, and indeed sensible, to institute a full inquiry into this practice and to consider whether we have gone too far?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord that we are going down a route from which we cannot back-track. We are monitoring everything we do. However, there are of course offences where it is best to go through fixed-penalty processes, and that reduces the queue of serious cases to be heard at trial in court.
Lord Goldsmith
My Lords, is the Minister aware that what she said about charging creates some disquiet? The present position in relation to charging approved by this House and the whole of Parliament, under which the Crown Prosecution Service makes the decisions, was recommended by an independent criminal judge—one of our most senior—and was followed by pilots, which demonstrated its efficiency and effectiveness? Is she also aware that there will be some concern, particularly in the light of anxieties already expressed in this House about the potential politicisation of the police, if independent prosecuting decisions are not still taken by the prosecutors? Can she assure us that what she has told us about the present system is not just the thin end of the wedge?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is also aware that the greater powers that the police have to charge came about under the previous Administration. We are just following through and building on that programme. The noble and learned Lord will also be aware that the CPS will keep control over serious offences but it will also have an overview of every single case that goes through the legal system.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
Is my noble friend aware that, when charging was transferred from the police to prosecutors seven years ago, attrition rates declined rapidly, pleas of guilty soared by some 40 per cent and the conviction rate rose? Does she recall that the reason for those improvements was that, when the police were responsible for charging in the old days, the courts were invariably expensively stuffed with too many badly flawed cases that were always going to fail? Why does she think that the situation is going to be any different seven years on?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I can only repeat to my noble friend that serious cases will remain with the CPS, which will still have an overview of every single case that comes through the courts. However, what we are doing is leading to reductions in bureaucracy and, I hope, an increase in the efficient use of police time. The piloted programmes have indicated a saving of 50,000 police hours. Building on that, by June of this year a further 40,000 police hours will be saved.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, will the noble Baroness address the second point raised by my noble and learned friend that it is the combination of the police being given prosecution powers on the one hand and the Government’s proposal for elected party-political commissioners on the other that brings a great deal of fear? Why are the Government pursuing these two policies, which will undermine confidence in the police force?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I completely disagree with the noble Lord. As he is aware, we are trying to introduce efficiencies to the way in which charges are brought. First and foremost the lesser charges are with the police because it is much easier and quicker for them to deal with them. The serious cases will be with the CPS. As to the noble Lord’s second point, he knows exactly where we stand on that.
Baroness Seccombe
My Lords, in 2010, 20 per cent of the abandoned cases came about because the CPS failed to review the cases before they came to trial. This obviously caused great distress for victims but was also very wasteful. Can my noble friend say what is being done to put that right?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend raises an extremely poignant point. Police charging of some offences will clearly cut out that time-wasting and it will also help do away with the duplication of case preparation. The need for the police and the CPS to co-operate and work together from a very early stage is crucial as it will ensure that victims, who are at the heart of this, can feel assured that achieving justice is not weighted against them.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether the Director of Public Prosecutions was consulted about these proposals? If so, will she place a copy of the director’s response in the Library?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, we have probably consulted an awful lot of people, including the director. However, to ensure that I am completely safeguarded on that, I will write to the noble Lord.
Education Bill
Business of the House
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That Standing Order 40 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Monday 16 May to allow the Motions standing in the names of Lord Avebury and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath to be taken before the European Union Bill.
Business of the House
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the debate on the Motion in the name of Baroness Byford set down for today shall be limited to three hours and that in the name of Baroness Newlove to two hours.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the next debate is time-limited to three hours. If the debate is still continuing when that time is up, the noble Lord on the Woolsack will invite my noble friend Lady Byford to withdraw her Motion. I therefore invite noble Lords to do their utmost to keep their contributions within the time limits indicated on the Speakers List so that my noble friend Lady Byford has time to respond before the debate is brought to an end. In a helpful manner, I hope, I remind noble Lords that the Chamber Clocks show the time that has elapsed, indicating that noble Lords have already reached their speaking limit and will then be exceeding their time.
It might be helpful if Whips take the opportunity to remind noble Lords of these guidance rules in the Companion so that all noble Lords who have signed up to speak can make their full contribution to the House.
Agriculture: Global Food Security
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Byford
To call attention to the future contribution of British agriculture to global food security; and to move for Papers.
Baroness Byford
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as set out in the Register.
It is a year since the formation of the coalition Government and I welcome the fact that the new Government have welcomed the importance of farming and placed food security high on the agenda. We have seen: the establishment of the regulation task force, which is due to report next week; the setting up of the new animal health and welfare board; a reduction in the number of quangos; and a welcome £26 million of new money for research at Norwich research park after years of research programme cuts. In the pipeline are the natural environment White Paper, the grocery market ombudsman, disease controls relating in particular to bovine TB, decisions on the use of GM technology, and, finally, CAP reform beyond 2013.
All of these issues affect the way in which we produce food and the level of security that we achieve. The RASE report, Working for the Future of Agriculture, offers this definition:
“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active, healthy life”.
The report states that food production will have to increase by 40 per cent by 2030 to meet world demand.
Raising world food output is a mammoth task. Even as world population expands, agricultural productivity in some areas is falling. David Richardson, writing last month in Farmers Weekly, quoted some frightening figures. In 1985, there were some 74 million ewes in New Zealand; today, there are 30 million. In Australia, the number of ewes has fallen from 200 million to 70 million. In the UK, in 1990 there were 21 million ewes; today there are fewer than 15 million, and the number of sows has fallen from 700,000 to fewer than 400,000. Over that period, annual net migration into the UK has been between 200,000 and 400,000, and our self-sufficiency in food has fallen. In part this reflects the growth in world trade that has enabled UK citizens to eat a wider range of food and consume some foods out of season. It also reflects the paltry rewards received by many farmers.
In a Written Answer in March, my honourable friend Jim Paice stated that the farm business survey calculated that the average farm business income from grazing livestock in 2009-10 was £22,000, which is below average earnings. The figure is an average; many farmers’ incomes are lower than that. The fall is partly due to the higher input costs and lower prices for finished cattle. Pig prices are dire: farmers are currently losing £16 to £18 per pig. This reflects the volatility and uncertainty that producers face when formulating their business plans.
Thankfully, many people are now aware of the threat to food security worldwide, and a number of committees and research groups are turning their attention to finding solutions to these problems. In January this year, the Foresight report into the future of food and farming was published. It bids fair to be to this decade what the Curry report was to the last. The report drew on the expertise of several hundred specialists across the world and received more than 100 evidence papers. It identifies the main future pressures as: the growing population; more demand for a variety of high-quality foods; greater competition for land and, in particular, for water and energy; the emerging effects of climate change; and new economic and political pressures.
The CAP after 2013 will be a crucial influence on the progress of European agriculture. The Commons Select Committee described the CAP’s role as the achievement of sustainable intensification of agriculture without causing irrevocable damage to the environment, and stressed the need for this to be done without disadvantaging UK farmers. I believe that the promised alteration to the CAP will be successful only if it does not disincentivise the production of any staple commodity. The world needs large quantities of high-quality nutritional food. However, it cannot be right to cap those who achieve higher production levels, just as it cannot be right to award subsidies for growing items such as tobacco.
Most taxpayers seem to be in favour of the ending of subsidies, but that will be viable only when primary producers receive a fair reward for their efforts. The CLA briefing makes the point that, over the past two years, Governments have made positive statements that must be achieved, but it queries where the action is. The CLA considers the CAP to be a major policy for the protection of managing Europe’s natural resources. This implies not only a cohesive structure but also the dedication of considerable funds—certainly not less than now.
The NFU in its latest paper, The Recovery: Why Farming Matters, states that the industry must be able to respond to domestic demand and contribute to global food supply. I heartily endorse those sentiments and ask the Minister how the Government will ensure that we make common cause with agriculture in the devolved Administrations. The interdependence of the agri-food sector as a whole should not be undervalued. An efficient viable farming base is critical for UK food processors to ensure their long-term access to raw materials.
We must farm in an environmentally sensitive way. Water, as I said, is key to food production, and we know that less will be available in the future. This is particularly true of countries in the southern hemisphere, where water and food shortages have caused riots recently. Dr Bruce Lankford from the University of East Anglia has produced a paper which expresses his concerns and explains his concept of virtual water. He claims that the UK received some 65 billion litres of water from other parts of the world embedded in imported goods. That comes in the main from areas which have less water than we have and which are likely to have less in the future. Every day each of us uses more of this virtual water than we consume for drinks, food preparation and hygiene. Can that situation continue? Surely, it is not sustainable when we know that the ground-water supplies are dangerously low. How much longer can we rely on access and global trading to meet our needs?
The whole question of food security is endlessly challenging. The traditional farming questions include what to plant, when to plant it, how to grow it, how to harvest it, how to conserve the soil, how to ensure sufficient water supply and how to maximise output. Farmers have no control over the weather. March and April have been the driest for years. Planting and harvesting are planned but often disrupted. Add to that the conundrums which include the use of energy and water for processing, transport, extension of shelf life and the reduction and disposal of waste, and one realises that food production is indeed a complex task.
I am glad that initiatives are being taken. The TSB sustainable agriculture and food innovation platform is funded to the tune of some £18 million per annum—50 per cent from BIS, 30 per cent from Defra, 10 per cent from BBSRC and the remainder by Scotland and AHDB. Its first programme was on new approaches to crop protection and its second will be on protein production and utilisation, including aquaculture.
The farming industry is also contributing to looking at new methods. In April this year, the English pig industry launched its road map, Towards Better Performance, which testifies its commitment to reducing the pigs’ carbon footprint and detailing targets it has set for itself. Earlier this week, I was at the launch of the dairy forum’s road map, which reflects the commitment of the whole dairy sector to minimising environmental impact throughout the chain. It sets targets for dairy farmers, processors and retailers, and shows how reducing the carbon footprint has already made economic sense.
Many other projects are underway, funded, for example, by the companies which supply seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and machinery. Government departments and agencies fund basic research. There is still some central support for applied research and the process of translating laboratory results into farming practices. In his response, will the Minister outline the Government’s programme for extending field trials and the application of research results into general farming, and will he also update us on the progress being made on the Taylor report?
Knowledge and skills development is essential if we are to meet the challenges of the future. EU Sub-Committee D is currently involved in considering innovations in agriculture. While I cannot predict its recommendations, knowledge transfer from scientific discovery taken through to farm application has been included in much of the evidence taken. Advances in machinery technologies such as GPS systems have resulted in fewer applications of chemicals on to the land, saving farmers money and, more importantly, lessening pollution. That is a win-win situation.
Sharing knowledge is crucial if we are to meet the predicted demand for food. I am glad that universities and colleges worldwide have become involved in this. For example, for the past 10 years Harper Adams University College has been working with a Beijing agricultural college on a joint degree programme that involves two years of study in China and a final year at Harper Adams. The focus is on food production and food quality. In addition, 18 out of the 30 applied research students are from overseas. They are looking at various aspects of agriculture such as poultry production, crop production, the effects of climate change and, what is most important, ways of improving food production both here and worldwide.
One of the important things facing us is the use of genetic modification. It has been around for a long time. The USA has embraced it in principle and parts of the Far East are using it widely. Its rejection in Europe and many parts of Africa can be traced to a number of factors that, quite honestly, I find irritating. Does the use of an antibiotic marker gene really threaten the health and safety of any of our population? How far can seeds travel unassisted? The French put it at 3 kilometres, a considerable distance. However, there are people who take a different view. I believe that we cannot go forward without appreciating and accepting in principle this technology. However, should the growing of GM crops be approved for the UK, which I hope it will, we must have regular scientific reviews. Climate change seems to be worsening and the incidence of animal and plant diseases spreading further afield is rising. Genetic modification, provided that it is carefully controlled, seems to be a logical and preferred way of helping to reduce some of these new challenges.
The “Farming Today” programme broadcast on Monday had an item on renewable energy, but I am afraid that it was not hopeful of success in meeting the stated targets. Once again, I feel that many more targets could be met if only we were able to unlock sufficient funding to take the necessary steps of monitoring and reviewing progress, as well as to chuck out what is not working and speed up that which is. Organisations such as LEAF and many others produce commercial food for us but are also working closely with others to link in with the environment. There is an enormous role for this type of farming enterprise in the future.
Finally, we have just two or three months of extremely cold weather followed by several weeks with very little rain. Watching the frantic efforts of birds to find enough food to eat, I was struck by the similarity between their plight and that of millions of people in other parts of the world. The UK is vibrant and positive. Over the centuries her people have travelled the world, using their skills to enable others to progress and live better lives. The threats facing us now are perhaps the most serious yet, but I believe that if we abandon entrenched attitudes and encourage our most original thinkers to devote their time to solving these problems, we will master them and we will survive. I beg to move.
Lord Carter of Coles
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on securing this important and timely debate. I declare my interest as chairman of Sub-Committee D of the EU Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, which scrutinises, among other things, EU agricultural policy. I am also a farm owner. Allocating resources to a wide range of security issues has always been a challenging priority for government. Should there be more police; should there be more prisons; should there be more soldiers? These are frequently debated, yet probably one of the most critical issues that the world faces at the moment—food security—is rarely debated. That is why today’s debate is so valuable.
The past 50 years or so in agriculture have been a relatively benign period. Technology has increased productivity and more land has been brought into production. Generally, apart from in recent times, that has held down food prices. It has enabled us to feed the rising world population, which in that time has risen from 3 billion to 7 billion. That is quite an achievement. However, looking back over recent times, there are various occasions when the predictions of Malthus may have seemed to have become a reality. I think back to the 19th century and the famine in Ireland, the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s and the Bengal famine in the 1940s.
It is interesting that, in the lifetime of many people in your Lordships’ House, the Second World War showed us what the issue of food security meant. In 1939, 70-odd per cent of food was imported to this country; by 1945 we had got that down to 25 per cent and were still able to give everybody in the country—around 42 million people—2,200 calories a day. Contrast that with today when we import 40 per cent of food and still give everybody 2,200 calories a day. I suppose it might explain something that the decrease in manual labour has been tremendous in that period, so you would have expected the calorific intake to go down. Maybe that partly explains some of the healthcare challenges that we face. Looking forward, there is the challenge by 2050 of feeding a world population that will increase from 7 billion to 9 billion. Even as we seek to increase the yields from agriculture, we need to avoid the adverse environmental effects of some types of farming—hence the need to practise the sustainable intensification of agriculture.
As we look around, there are doubts that Europe and the UK can meet this challenge. In the medium term we are told that, already having suffered 10 years of stagnation in the rise in output, in the next 10 years agriculture output in the EU will rise by only 4 per cent. That will contrast with the United States, where it will rise by between 10 and 15 per cent, and Brazil where it will rise by 40 per cent. Various factors explain these differences. Those countries do not have the constraints of European agriculture, in which there is a great deal of focus on the size of farms and preserving rural communities. On that point, the average size of a farm in the United States is 420 acres. Contrast that with a country such as Hungary, where the average farm size is seven acres and the policy works as follows. If you have a back yard with two or more trees in it and you intend to sell your plums, apples or pears, you are eligible for an EU subsidy. It seems rather a strange policy.
The issue of rural policy, then, is important and will continue to be debated. I sense a shift in this. It is interesting that in the run-up to the French presidential election, Marine Le Pen really challenged the whole basis of France’s membership of the common agricultural policy, possibly challenging the whole compact that has existed between urban and rural citizens.
The key to the future of this must be technology. On the one hand, a country such as Brazil has expanded its output by bringing more land into use, by taking established technologies from Europe and the United States, and by embracing GM cropping. On the other hand, we have to look at the choices around the technology of things such as biotechnology and how we introduce that. The choice that Europe must make is whether it wants to do this. Will it embrace or reject the technology? Under current EU policies, the need for EU-level approval of cultivation of GM crops—which at this time offers the greatest prospect of increased productivity—means that there is an impasse in the adoption of this technology. Rich countries such as Germany may wish to remain GM-free, confident that their economic strength will enable them to sustain a more expensive food policy. This is notwithstanding the fact that 35 per cent of the animal feed imported into Europe is GM and is in the food chain anyway. It is a fact of life that is already here.
Others may choose to accept GM crops but with adequate controls, as the noble Baroness referred to. In my view, this is a position that demands to be considered. We cannot stand back from this technological revolution. It would be rather like a handloom weaver in the 19th century saying, “I just reject all this” and society saying “We support you”. We would thereby have missed the great technological revolution of the 19th century, in which we played a key part and from which we went on to build industries, with prosperity following.
Neither the UK nor the EU is doing enough to build up the intellectual property that is needed to develop and sustain a green agricultural industry. Thirty or 40 years ago, the UK was a world leader in soil technology, plant breeding and, above all, the know-how to transfer the work of the laboratory into the hands of farmers. Yet there is currently no domestically owned manufacturer of heavy farm machinery—for example, tractors—in the UK and the technology of GM has gone largely to the United States and China. When we have spoken to people in the United States, I cannot work out whether they have been amused or bemused by the position of the EU on the adoption of GM foods. They cannot believe why we do not just get on with it.
In order for Britain to help other parts of the world, we need a more dynamic approach to agricultural technology. We can do some of the simpler things to help the developing world such as building better grain storage so that rats do not steal it, but we need technology to help improve the quality of soil and minimise the use of water and chemicals.
On the subject of overseas development, the Prime Minister's announcement to the G8 summit last June that we would commit £1 billion over three years to food security in the developing world was most welcome. It is interesting that the All-Party Group on Agriculture and Food for Development thought that the contribution should be 10 per cent of our total aid budget. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how he feels we might get to that figure one day.
I am a naturally reluctant exponent of state intervention, but in the case both of the UK and EU, I believe that there is a strong case to be made for two things. The first is leading our citizens to make the choice on GM. If we do not, we will not get the right technology to meet the choice being made. If we decide to go GM-free, we will have to go one way; if we decide to embrace GM, we need to go the other. We need to make those decisions, push for these matters to become clear in the EU and then get on with it. We need then to support our R&D. If we look back at most technological developments, certainly in the 20th century when we moved into scientific development, we see that most of that basic research was generally funded by two groups, the state or people who had a monopoly-supply position such as the telephone companies, which had enormous research departments protected from market forces. I should like to hear from the Minister whether he can give us some comfort on continued support for R&D. GM or no GM, we need to step up our R&D so that we can create a green industry around solving the problems and helping to meet food needs worldwide.
Lord Plumb
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for so ably opening this debate. If I was at a farmers’ meeting, I would probably stand up and say, “Hear, hear. I agree with every word”, and then sit down again. However, she might like to hear a few words from an old farmer who has been associated over many years with the struggle and progress in farming and food production.
The growth in the quantity and quality of food produced is very much down to the application and development of technology and science, funded from both private and public sources. I pay tribute to the many research workers who have been involved over the years.
It is 59 years since my father died. If he came back today, he would have a considerable shock and would be surprised at the development and the progress that has been made throughout the whole land in this country over the years. He would recognise, as we all recognise, that the farming sector faces many challenges—from the pressures to scale-up production and the growing demand for affordable food to the impact of disease outbreaks, many of which still occur in this country. One cannot bypass the importance of trying to move towards the eradication of TB, something that I know has to be done correctly to ensure that we are on course to eradicate that scourge, which is causing the country and those in the business of producing cattle great concern at the moment. We also face greater market liberalisation throughout the world.
The industry has been and still is remarkably resilient, adapting to the many policy changes and coping with the complicated rules and regulations. They apply whether a farmer is farming in the uplands or in the more fertile lowlands, on arable land or in the livestock sector, on the hills or the lowlands. As we face the next reform of the common agricultural policy, we surely have to look forward to greater simplification and incentives to improve the balance in policies for all sectors in agriculture. We know and must surely accept that the challenge for the next 50 years is likely to be of even greater magnitude.
The problem at the moment is that agriculture has never been more out of balance from one sector to another. I heard the other day that the average price of lambs at Lancaster market was £150 per head. It is not many years since they were £20 per head. There is a reason for that; the demand in other countries where a lot of our products are already going. That has happened on one side. The cost of input affects all of us, not just those involved in agriculture. The problem is the input against product price and the volatility that is linked to oil and energy. Some of our energy needs could be met from renewables in this country. We are way behind countries such as Germany in using renewables such as the waste products on farms, which are going to infill sites instead of into anaerobic digesters. Planners should wake up to the importance of getting through legislation and allowing this to happen in order to make better use of those products for energy.
Looking at costs, a local farmer told me only the other day that the cost of putting oil into his combine harvester last year for a day's work was in the region of £500 a day. He recognises as he starts the next harvest that it will be more than £700 a day for the same product, for use in the same job that it did last year. As my noble friend Lady Byford said, the weather in April has meant increased costs. I am told that wheat had to be irrigated on many farms, which farmers do not normally do at that time of year, and it cost something like £100 an acre.
In all this, our natural resources—our soil, water and biodiversity—must be safeguarded. That is the priority as we see it. To meet those global needs, farmers everywhere need to respond, and indeed they will. The young farmers who are entering the market, contrary to some opinion, are so enthusiastic. If you had been at the young farmers’ conference in Blackpool last week—I was not but I know all about it—you would have seen those young farmers keen as mustard to get on. I was, when I was a young farmer. Of course, we see the difficulties as time passes, but it is wonderful that those young farmers are there and that the colleges are bulging at the seams at the moment with young people who really want to get into the business. However, much of the market share in the global economy will of course come from elsewhere—India, China and developing countries, where there is tremendous potential. In the interests of our economy, British agriculture has to play a very important part.
It is right to question why agriculture is unique in benefiting from an integrated European policy in the form of the common agricultural policy. Without that common policy, member states would determine a policy that could distort the single market. The CAP helps to address the failure of markets to deliver fair returns; and, contrary to a lot of public opinion, without a single market there would be massive adverse consequences for consumer benefit. Farmers share the aspiration of reducing the reliance on public support. They will all say that at the moment, but at the same time they want a fair deal and a fair marketplace. To achieve that, we need a strategy that ensures that there is a process around the world. Our higher production and welfare standards are not always matched by our competitors, which often means that imports have a price advantage, so the objectives of the CAP are still valid: increased productivity, a fair standard of living, stabilised markets and the availability of supplies at reasonable prices.
As my noble friend said, to face the future after 2013 we have to maintain that production capacity and increase it. I am so pleased that both she and the noble Lord, Lord Carter, referred to the importance of developments in genetic modification, which is obviously there on the doorstep; we are consuming vast quantities of genetically modified products at the moment but are ignorant of the fact that they are coming in and are not allowed to compete on an equitable basis. There is also a greater role for food security—with fewer food miles, hopefully—so that we can produce more on the doorstep and prepare for the effects of climate change, which can, ultimately, as we learn more about it, be to our advantage; provide a buffer against the threat of market volatility, which undermines investment; and improve environmental performance, which is very much an overriding factor.
Successive reforms of the common agricultural policy since 1992 have sought to reduce the interference of the European Union in managing the market. The two pillars of European support should of course continue: to embrace the economic components of the CAP and to cater for different environmental needs in the different states. I believe there should be a third pillar that focuses on applied science and investment in a knowledge-based economy and deals with targets for research, development, training and education. What we are after is key consumer satisfaction.
The Minister will be aware of the Defra survey, which said that two-thirds of consumers regard British food products as important, that three-quarters look to buy British fruit and vegetables, and that half say seasonal food tastes better. I did not think I would live to hear the day when one-third of those same consumers support and like British farmers. It does not, I hope, mean that two-thirds of them do not. I am optimistic that farmers will accept the challenge and satisfy consumers and still remain competitive in the export market. We can play a big part in the economy, with more than £7 billion of gross value added supporting 500,000 jobs. In the interests of meeting those growing demands for supplying the food chain for distribution, I look forward to less form filling and the introduction of a grocery code adjudicator—an essential role in the food chain. Freedom to farm and care for the countryside in a friendly environment is all that we seek.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my own and my husband’s interests with our farm and of my role as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agro-Ecology. I congratulate very warmly the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, not only on securing the debate but on framing the question as she has. She framed it in a very accurate way, and it is particularly well framed because it raises the right issues. It does not suggest that we as a nation or even Europe can have food security without it being global security. We are not suggesting pulling up the drawbridge and just being quite satisfactory on our own. This is an incredibly timely debate, too, with food prices soaring; even though we have seen a slight drop this week, the overall trend in staple foods has been upwards at a rate that quite outstrips earnings here in the UK, in Europe and certainly throughout the world.
When the Minister was kind enough recently to reply to my Written Question about the increase over the past five years in staple prices and the factors that he saw as the reasons for that, his reply reflected the complexities—but the underlying trend was due to the unpredictable climate happenings. So the urgency with which we must address the effect of climate change on food production is there for all to see in the prices. The link between oil and food prices shows graphically why we must break the massive dependence of food production on fossil fuels. So there are immense challenges.
The reason why I struggled slightly with the question before us today is that our British agriculture has a long and proud tradition of improvement and innovation and many examples of excellence—and I am sure that we will hear about many more of them in the debate today. There is the quality of stock-breeding programmes, welfare and the excellence of all sorts of individual practice as well as research and knowledge. But no Government since the Second World War have really had a comprehensive food policy, so all that excellence in agriculture is not reflected in our diet. We recognise that we can produce the food in quantity and certainly in high quality and we can store it well. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, mentioned the amount that is lost globally. The inadequate storage issue means that globally we are losing upwards of 40 per cent of food produced, and probably much more than that, which means that adequate storage could answer a lot of the need for increased production to feed an increasing world population.
The overall effect of our agriculture is not reflected in the effect on consumers in the country today. There are more and more obese people—about 13 million now—eating the wrong sort of food in the wrong sort of quantities, and at the same time there are malnourished people. Also more and more food is wasted. A significant proportion of food waste, about 6.5 million tonnes, is produced by domestic households, and retailers are generating a further 1.5 million tonnes. Supermarkets have been criticised in particular for wasting damaged or unsold items, which the industry calls “surplus food” although it often remains edible. Most of the 7 million tonnes have been not only produced but transported, then probably wrapped, sold and transported again only to be thrown away. That is an expensive way to make compost or biofuel. While turning waste food into compost or biofuel is certainly better than throwing it into landfill, the aim must be to drastically reduce that waste mountain. In mentioning that, I commend the work of WRAP—especially its online toolkit, which shows those wishing to reuse food waste how to go about it.
As for producers, smaller and family farms have to rely on working outside the farm for much of the time to produce even a living wage for the family. At the same time, the profits of those nearer the market continue to show that there is money in food. I know that this statistic is often quoted, but Tesco is currently on record as making profits of about £10 million a day. I therefore join those who call for the speedy introduction of the groceries code adjudicator. Farmers also have to cope with the unpredictable weather that climate change is producing. As I speak, I am particularly aware of those whose crops have seen no decent rain for over a month, with temperatures last month being nearer to the post-harvest levels of August than to April’s.
There have been new entrants. However, if anyone is brave enough to go into farming today, they will discover that unless they have a family farm, finding new land is like finding hens’ teeth. The number of local authority tenanted farms has halved since the 1940s, covering about 100,000 acres today. The current financial squeeze on local authorities is likely to diminish the number further still; and, disgracefully, the previous Government decided not to take up the support offered under the new entrants’ part of the rural development regulation. Life for farmers in the UK is also made difficult because of a tremendous lack of support for co-operatives—for machinery rings, marketing co-operatives and all the other things that make life easier for the smaller producer. Those are problems for all of us because this is about assets for the future of food production.
Finally, we still have to work on soil and water quality in this country, let alone in the rest of the world. We also have our own problems with biodiversity. Defra, for example, has been measuring the number of farmland birds as an indicator of farmland health. It says that these bird populations are a good indicator of the broad state of wildlife on farmland because they are near the top of the food chain. Still, the number of farmland wild birds has decreased at a rate of about 10 per cent over 10 years. That may not sound much but it is an awful lot of birds to be lost in 10 years. Those who listened to “Farming Today” this morning will have heard about the plight of the bumblebee. The general health of that population is very worrying indeed.
Although our agriculture model is fit for export and could make a contribution, it is not a model that the rest of the world would want to take up more generally in relation to diet.
Perhaps the jewel in our crown is our knowledge and research base. On this point, however, I differ from some of the other speakers. I would worry tremendously if we concentrated only on GM research. I would not rule it out, as it might have a part to play in the future, but in view of what is happening with some of the other incredibly valuable research going on, there are other things to worry about. For example, in a letter to the Times last September, the leading academics in the world of entomology underlined how drastic the situation is:
“There are now less than ten pest management specialists teaching in all UK universities”.
If you think of where pests are likely to be, the increases that will happen under climate change and the threat that insects pose to our global food production, that is really serious.
I make a plea that research does not concentrate on GM and that it starts to address the wider issues as well. Another example is the Rothamsted Institute, home to much excellent research, which saw a win-win situation when it looked at the issue of stem borers in east Africa and striga weed. The ecologically based system of intercropping that it came up with increased animal forage, increased soil quality and fertility and managed the borer problem, so it was a win-win-win. If it had simply had a crop that was resistant to borers, those other things would not have been realised.
It is important that our contribution to global food security is to underpin with resources the research base that this country has given the world throughout the past decades—indeed, the past century. That is in danger. What is the project in real terms over the next three years for research funding for UK agriculture, food storage and, in particular, entomology?
The Earl of Selborne
My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as a farmer and as chair of the partners’ board of the Living with Environmental Change research programme, a collaboration of public funders and research agencies. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Byford on this timely debate. It is extremely appropriate that, only a few weeks after the publication of the Foresight project report on the future of food and farming that she mentioned in her excellent introduction to the debate, we have an opportunity effectively to address the issues that are so well analysed in that report. The Government Office for Science commissioned that report. As my noble friend reminded us, it took advice from all around the world. Now that it has made such an analysis and pointed to the global challenges that are being faced, it is, as I said, extremely appropriate that we should today address the issues of which of these challenges have implications for the United Kingdom, not just in agriculture but wider afield, and of how that should impact on our land management and agricultural policy in Europe as a whole.
The analysis points to at least four main tranches of issues, each one of which on its own would present real problems of food security. Put them together and they amount to a powerful combination. The issues are demographic, economic, environmental and political. Never underestimate how little support agriculture gets in the parts of the world where one would assume it would be a high priority. Together, these four pressures amount to substantial challenges, and the UK must consider how we can contribute to meeting them.
What is inescapable, whether at national or global level, is that the only way we are going to be able to meet these food security issues is to produce more food from the same quality of land or less—there will not be any more—using fewer inputs, fewer resources and less demand on natural resources, particularly water; with reduced emissions of greenhouse gases, and indeed of other pollutants; and with a reduced environmental footprint. That sounds like a tall order. It is summed up in the Foresight report as “sustainable intensification”, and I like that expression. The problem is, of course, that most people seem to object to the word “intensification”—illogically so. Rather in the way in which people object to the word “pesticide”, it sounds as though it is a force that should be denied as a tool. You cannot produce the food or achieve food security without increased intensification, but it must be sustainable. We have to think through very carefully what we mean by “sustainable intensification”.
Globally, we are trying to balance future demand and supply, but we are also trying to ensure stability. It is no good having spikes up and down; they are equally disastrous. We have seen two spikes in the past three or four years. We must also ensure that, even if we produce enough food, there is adequate access for those who at the moment are deprived of it. There are areas that are exporting food alongside communities who have no access to that food themselves.
Then there are the environmental issues that have been touched on, which cannot be divorced from the issue of food security. How do we manage these food systems while mitigating the effects of climate change? And, of course, how do we maintain our biodiversity? It is asking too much for every culture to enhance biodiversity, but we must certainly maintain it and, of course, the ecosystem services on which we ultimately all depend. The national ecosystem assessment will, I believe, be published next month. That will be an enormously important document from Defra, which will remind us just what we mean by ecosystem services and what must be done by land managers and others to ensure that we protect these services.
Whatever our contribution back here in Europe, one thing that we cannot go back to is protectionism. We all recognise that. Indeed, during the food spikes in 2009 and later, countries such as Russia imposed export bans on grain, which of course exacerbated the problem. Protectionism is a disastrous reaction. We cannot promote self-sufficiency by that means. However, that does not mean that we should neglect the interests of our own population. It is perfectly legitimate for this country—indeed, it has a moral responsibility—to promote the improvements in productivity that will be needed to meet future increases in demand, always supposing that those increases are sustainable.
Agriculture has always relied on its research base. We farmers tend to take a lot of credit for increasing our yields, but a moment’s thought shows that the agricultural engineer, the animal husbandry and plant sciences and the like have served us very well. When the Prime Minister of the day, my noble friend Lady Thatcher, came to the Royal Show in 1983, she reminded us that if other sectors of the economy had been able to adopt new technology so rapidly and successfully the country would not have faced the problems that it faced then in its balance of payments and economy. Agriculture has a proud record, and it should not allow its reputation of intensification to cloud the fact that, through such intensification, we have helped disprove Malthus, who has already had a mention.
The problem is that for 30 years our research base has been whittled away, although not so much in the basic sciences, such as plant sciences, which in fact have done really rather well. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, who did a lot when he was Science Minister to ensure that the basic sciences were protected. In the 1980s, to which I referred, when the Government of my own party were so impressed by the contribution of agriculture, they were saying at the same time, “Well, really, you should be standing on your own so far as applied research and extension services are concerned. These, in effect, will be privatised”. That is what happened.
Worse than that, whole tranches of research that had been commissioned by what was then the Ministry of Agriculture were simply cut and replaced by research that was deemed more relevant to policy-makers of the day. It was certainly not cut to support agricultural production. I am sure that there was feeling that the cost of the common agricultural policy was running out of control, and that if there was nothing else you could control you could at least hit the applied research budget. That is what happened, and we were left with a research spectrum—research, development and extension—that was patchy, to say the least. It no longer had the regional representation, the experimental husbandry farms and the experimental horticulture stations. They all went, and we were left with an inability, very often, to take the rapid advances in genomics and animal health through to the farm because there was no longer the applied research.
These problems have been recognised in recent years—all too late, given the lack of capacity—not least by the Taylor review, which, again, has been mentioned. It is an excellent report, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to assure us that that, in turn, is being addressed. We are losing disciplines such as agronomy, soil sciences and animal husbandry.
There are enormous opportunities for agriculture to reduce its emissions globally and nationally, and to increase its carbon sequestration. The management of soils, particularly peat soils, can with adequate research demonstrate how much more we can do to reduce carbon dioxide levels. Second-generation biomass is another very exciting prospect. I do not think that any of us are suggesting that research should concentrate on GM, although I recognise that GM will certainly have a contribution to make in global terms, at least. We need to remind ourselves of the gaps in applied research and put together a coherent collaboration between the public and private sectors, something for which there has never been an overarching plan. It is time that we had one now.
Lord Dixon-Smith
My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer, still practising, and landowner in Essex. Essex is a peculiar place and not particularly well understood. When I discuss my rainfall average with foreigners—I have kept records since 1961—or even with Londoners, who never have to think about this sort of thing, they say, “But that is arid”. My rainfall would suggest that it is arid. My average rainfall over that period has now pushed up to about 19 inches per annum. Anywhere else in the world, that would be semi-desert. We need to remember how enormously privileged we are in this country to live in a temperate climate. I farm land that is highly productive.
My life has to some extent been coloured by the experience of accompanying my father, who was an active member of something that most people have forgotten: the War Agricultural Executive Committee. I used to accompany him on farm visits during the war. Those people began the revolution that has brought in modern agriculture as we see it, with its highly productive state. However, I fear that if we ever face another crisis such as that which we faced in 1940, we no longer have the capacity to expand our output to meet such a crisis. When we consider the way in which our population is developing, when we are already highly dependent on imports, and look at the global economy, with a world population of 6.5 billion going up to 8.5 billion, becoming more prosperous and therefore competing more for the food imports upon which we depend, we need to worry.
It is perhaps worthwhile putting ourselves into perspective as a nation. I pulled some figures off Wikipedia, which put us right in our place. The global landmass, including Antarctica, is roughly 148.5 million square kilometres; of which 49 million square kilometres are classified only as agricultural; of which 14 million square kilometres are classified as arable land. In this country, our total area is 41,000 square kilometres. We have 1 per cent of global population. In 2050, by neat coincidence, we will still have 1 per cent of global population. We are bit players, but we are of course highly vulnerable to international competition for food supply as the global food circumstances become more difficult. It is estimated that agriculture must double its global output to meet demand in 2050. We have no capacity to double our output so we shall become increasingly dependent, which means that we will have to develop our economy in other ways to sustain the people who will live in our islands in the future.
As my noble friends Lord Selborne and Lady Byford stressed, if we are to increase our farming output we will have to rely hugely on technical developments, technical change and intensification. Indeed, we do rely on them hugely. We face particular problems. We have extremely good plant breeders in this country but they will not undertake research if they know that their remit is limited. On my wish list is something that would revolutionise global agriculture. I desperately want to see a nitrogen-fixing wheat with the same characteristics as plants in the legume family. That would enormously reduce the need to apply artificial fertilisers and would increase soil fertility and enable us to produce good nutritious food. Such a wheat does not exist and cannot be achieved through conventional breeding. That implies that genetic modification must be used, yet, on a psychological level, genetic modification is not accepted in Europe. One hears people speak of dreadful Frankenstein foods. However, our future survival will depend on developments such as I have mentioned. Therefore, I ask my noble friend, when he winds up, to say how he proposes to persuade the European institutions that rule our agricultural lives to change their ways. We need these developments if only because, as the rest of the world increases its output of genetically modified agricultural products, we will cease to be able to purchase the non-genetically modified imports on which we depend. There will be no alternative.
The same attitude applies to herbicides and insecticides. In the old days I used to burn every field of straw on the farm, which I found exciting. I took extreme care over it as a main road runs through my farm but I never had a problem. However, that practice was stopped, and rightly so because one of its bad effects was that it increased what I call the mining aspect of farming—that is, the amount that we extract from our soils. One of the benefits of stopping that practice is that all our waste organic material now remains in the soil and our soils have reverted to the condition they were in when they were originally ploughed up and converted from permanent pasture. That has happened in the past few years and constitutes a highly beneficial change. If we are to maintain our farming going forward, we have to look at that. I have always envied the Fenland farmers who farm highly organic soil. However, they are “miners”, and that practice cannot be sustained.
The use of agricultural by-products for energy production has not been raised but is worth mentioning as a lot of people talk about it. Given the factor that I have mentioned, certainly those of us who farm in the solidly arable parts of the country have no biological waste products as we need to put them back in the soil. The other day I heard it said that even if we used all the agricultural land in the United Kingdom to produce energy, apart from the fact that we would produce no food, we would be able to produce only half the energy that we require. That represents an even lower proportion of our national requirement than is the case with food so we would be better off by far sticking with agriculture and finding our energy from other sources, of which there are plenty.
Speaking from a narrow perspective, we need to keep a very close eye on our long-term vulnerability. Although I have some sympathy with those who want to keep the countryside pure, unsullied and environmentally friendly, I have to warn them that in the longer term that simply may not be practical. The attitude that prevailed in my youth, with which my noble friend Lord Plumb will certainly be familiar, when food output had to take priority over planting trees and other such measures, may well have to be reasserted. If we do not, we may not be able to survive in the way that we would wish.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, like others I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for introducing this debate with, as has been stressed, its global dimension and its perspective on global food security. I congratulate her on her introductory speech.
I begin by picking up the theme of research and development that has been referred to by a number of speakers, not least because, as we are all acutely aware, in times of financial cuts and stringency R&D is so often one of the earliest casualties. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked the Minister what funding will be made available over the next three years in the light of the reductions that have taken place over the past 30 years, about which we have already been reminded. What resources will the Government continue to devote to this area, and will they increase those resources? What encouragement will they give to our universities and other institutions to broaden their research to cover many areas other than GM as we need that breadth of research?
The Future of Food and Farming picks up a number of the areas where research and development is so vital. Those include, for example: producing more food efficiently and sustainably; securing ecosystem services; keeping pace with evolving threats such as the emergence of new and more virulent pests and diseases; and addressing new challenges, many of them arising, as we have been reminded, from climate change, including resistance to increased drought, flooding and salinity. Although much of the research and development that goes on is rightly and necessarily undertaken with our international partners, some of it has to be specific to the context of these islands. Our geography, and therefore our climate and geology, have a particularity which means that the research that we need is very much an essential part of the sustainability, continuity and development of our farming here in Britain. It is not enough for us to rely just on partnerships with others elsewhere in the world.
If we are to sustain and develop our farming, that requires, naturally enough, among other things, fair prices for our farmers. We do not want businesses to collapse, nor do we want there to be a lack of money for financial investment in the future. Achieving fair prices requires all of us, including the Government in terms of the contribution that they can make, to play a role. For a long time, the church has championed the important role of farmers in producing our food, securing the UK’s food supply and receiving a fair price for what is produced. At the same time, as an institutional investor, the church holds shares in and meets with major supermarkets.
In 2007, the Church of England produced a report, Fair Trade Begins at Home: Supermarkets and the Effect on British Farming Livelihoods. That report clearly stated the damage that was being done and that continues to be done to farming livelihoods by inappropriate and, I regret to say, at times pernicious practices applied by supermarkets during purchasing. Labelling, promotions, payments, contracts and working practices were, and remain, of particular concern. The Church of England contributed to, and has consistently supported, the implementation of the Competition Commission recommendations and welcomes the proposals for a groceries code adjudicator.
Recent conversations with farming businesses have elicited examples of barriers to new products coming on to the market or to scaling up supply, such as prohibitive payments for listing. Squeezes on the profitability and indeed the viability of primary producers, who find it hardest to get fair prices, remain recurrent complaints. This is particularly relevant for the dairy sector, beef production and pigs, where the prices paid are often below the cost of production.
When one party holds the power in a relationship and the other holds the risk, this can lead, at best, to unbalanced transfer of risk and, at worst, to abuse of power that is extremely damaging and, if I may say so, immoral. With the appropriate powers, the adjudicator will have the potential to address these injustices, which are impediments to the successful operation of the grocery supply chain in the long term, and to UK agriculture contributing to global food supply. I therefore ask the Minister to bring forward the proposals in the coalition programme for government about which we have heard a good deal in many ways. However, we still need a groceries code adjudicator and the terms of reference. We still need this to happen.
I turn to a different area. If UK farming and agriculture are to be sustained, we need a proper farming ladder and points of entry for those who want to come into farming for the first time. The national chairman for the Tenant Farmers Association, Jeremy Walker, spoke yesterday to the RABI at its AGM. Among other things, he said:
“County Council smallholdings are vital for continuity of access into the industry and for the maintenance of a proper functioning farming ladder”.
We agree. It is alarming to know that the number of local authority smallholdings has reduced by nearly 10,000 in the past 55 years. That represents a massive reduction of 77 per cent. As we know, these county farms have often been the way into farming. If they are taken out in the way that they have been, huge difficulties are caused for the whole industry. As Sir Don Curry said in 2008, the county farms should be considered to be a national asset. I should again be pleased to hear from the Minister in what way, as a national asset, the Government are seeking to safeguard the remaining number of county farms, whereby the farming ladder can be as secure as possible.
Another aspect that Jeremy Walker picked up on was about ensuring that there are not only entry points but dignified exit points for older farmers. He continued:
“The Government should consider a number of measures including tax incentives for landlords who provide accommodation to retiring tenants”.
I should again be pleased to hear whether the Minister agrees with that and whether he can say what can be done to help those who want to retire to do so, again to help new people come into farming and therefore continue to sustain the farming that we not only have but want to grow and develop further.
The emphasis in the debate is on global issues and, therefore, exports and fair trade, about which we have heard, are vital. We have been reminded of the statistics and that we will need to double food production by 2050. We cannot afford, as we have been reminded, any trade barriers or dumping that destabilises food production in other countries. We need to continue to address the issue of waste, whereby 7 million tonnes, as we have been reminded, and up to 40 per cent of what is produced are wasted. These are urgent issues for us all to face and we must play what part we can in ensuring that continuity is there, and within the UK to address this global need, and to ensure global food security.
Lord Lyell
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for giving us the opportunity to hear a number of incredibly good speeches. I apologise very swiftly to my noble friend Lord Plumb because I missed his marvellous contribution, thanks to a minor emergency. I shall certainly read his speech carefully tomorrow. The six-letter word, wisdom, comes from my noble friend.
Your Lordships may discover my interests in agriculture in the booklet, so I shall say no more than that. Further back in my parliamentary career, your Lordships may find that in 1984 I was, if I may put it politely, catapulted across St George’s Channel to Northern Ireland. I hope that I do not tread on any of my noble friend Lord Arran’s toes or say anything out of place, but one of the first things I learnt in Northern Ireland was that we are on the other side of the United Kingdom to that area so beautifully described by my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith. He was very humble about rainfall. Although he did not mention it, my understanding is that there is less rainfall in Essex than in Israel. That is something to take on board and appreciate when it comes to agricultural production in the United Kingdom.
What I certainly discovered in Northern Ireland were the skills of men in adapting what you can produce and the tools of the trade to the climate. There is enormous rainfall in Northern Ireland, but the skills of everyone in the agricultural industry, including animal production and welfare, and its products, meat and fish, were second to none. The environment in Northern Ireland very much met what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, was so keen on. Perhaps it was a tribute to me that when I went to Northern Ireland, I was told that drainage was particularly important. By the time I left it was called—never use one word when three will do—water course management. Nevertheless, it was a crucial aspect of agriculture in that neck of the woods.
I hope that the right reverend Prelate will accept that I take on board—I hope we all do—what he said. I was told that one duty of the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland was to advertise, if not necessarily to sell, the wonderful products that we had. Extraordinarily, I found a tiny use for my qualities, I would not say talents, in foreign languages when I went to ANUGA—what a marvellous acronym—one of the world's biggest food fairs, in Cologne. I went on to Paris, to SIAL, another colossal food fair. I finished up in Berlin at what they call Green Week, which was more or less retail, it was not giant corporations, it was everyone coming to see what was available. All those great expeditions gave me a huge insight into presentation and notification to the public of what we have available and what is available on a world basis in food and agricultural products.
One of the main themes of my noble friend’s subject for debate is food security. If we open the newspapers, we read about enormous grain shortages—we shall hear more about that later. In 2011, 2010 and 2009, there were huge shortages in Russia and serious problems in Australia. Thanks to much improved worldwide communication and markets, there will not, we hope, be a serious problem of world hunger. That may come, and we shall hear more about that from the Minister.
One of the most useful things for me to read in preparing for today's debate was the report produced by Sir John Beddington, the Foresight report, which has been referred to by my noble friend and many others. In the O-level copy given to me, on page 3, it refers to the cold northern areas having a longer growing season. On a UK basis, those of your Lordships who follow me, let alone my noble friend Lord Caithness, to the far north, to Wick, will discover that we may get shorter nights in winter but by gosh, in summer we get much longer evenings. That has given me some education as to why Speyside is one of the great producers of one of our natural product in Scotland, Scotch whisky, because we get at least an hour or an hour and a half longer of growing time and sunshine than may my noble friend in Essex. The wise words in the Foresight report about northern areas chimes with what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, about global warming and environmental change. There may be global warming and threats of grapes being grown in our neck of the woods—although my next-door neighbour, the Earl of Strathmore, was growing grapes in greenhouses in his garden five years ago. That was not global warming, but it shows what can be done if you take great care.
Further on in his report, Sir John Beddington uses the marvellous phrase “a perfect storm” by 2030. He refers to genetically modified crops. I just add the word “please”. I hope that the wonderful research institutes can push their studies a little further and use the enormous knowledge not just in the UK and Europe but around the world to piece together the scientific knowledge to ensure that those new techniques can be brought into production without damaging the environment or human health or presenting a danger to anyone. I read about one example—it was not in the specialist press; I think it was in the Financial Times, which I have tried to study because it gives me education. Genetically modified cotton and other crops tend to use substantially less water, let alone need substantially less sunshine—sometimes up to 50 per cent less. Please let us keep, with all humility, studying genetically modified crops and, above all, use the wonderful talents of humans in research.
I hope to stay under my time and that my noble friend on the Front Bench will lower her blood pressure mildly, because I shall sit down fairly soon, but my noble friend Lady Byford was concerned that agriculture be sustainable. Several speakers have referred to Defra—that happy acronym for the ministry. My noble friend Lord Arran may have more to say about that. In Northern Ireland, I saw the unique talent of our research department in the Department of Agriculture at a place called New Forge Lane in Belfast. It had unique talents in grass management and animal welfare.
One morning in Belfast, I was rather startled to find a delegation from Saudi Arabia. I wondered whether it was a full moon, or that I had not looked at the seasons. I thought, “Good heavens, what are they coming here for?”. Dr Sullivan, the head of the research department said, “Oh no, Minister, they are coming to look at”, not poultry—as is typical in Northern Ireland, he never used one word where two will do, “the fowl sector”. That is spelt “fowl”; I do not discuss football. I made suitable noises, but I was stunned and delighted that we had experts from Saudi Arabia who could have gone anywhere in the world and anywhere in the United Kingdom. They came to Belfast because of our unique experience in producing hens, eggs, poultry and the beloved fowls. They came there to learn.
I hope that when my noble friend comes to wind up the debate, including the far wiser remarks than I have made, he will be able to reassure us that finance and support will be available for research in agriculture throughout the United Kingdom. In my neck of the woods, in Scotland, that is devolved. Just 20 miles from me, in Invergowrie, we have world experts in soft fruit and raspberries. I declare an interest in considerable consumption of them. I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure us that agricultural research into boosting our sustainable agriculture will be encouraged and that he will give all support to it.
I conclude by thanking my noble friend for her wisdom today and for a long time. We know that she is an enormous expert in her neck of the woods in Lincolnshire.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Byford on securing this important debate today. My noble friend is of course a formidable expert in agricultural matters and a stalwart supporter of the industry and those involved in it. I should declare an interest: I used to farm, very badly, in Shropshire and Staffordshire, and my youngest son is a producer of free-range eggs in Lincolnshire. I agree entirely with all the right reverend Prelate said regarding supermarkets.
It is both right and important that British agriculture should contribute to global food security. Our agriculturalists are renowned worldwide for their expertise. Our methods and practices are the envy of the world. Our standards of animal welfare are among the highest. Yet the UK has allowed her self-sufficiency to decline steadily over the years. Since 2008, Governments of all political colours have realised the need, in the face of high prices and shortages of raw materials and energy supplies, as well as a less benign geopolitical climate, to ensure that the UK has adequate food security. That is to be welcomed but, for example, the proportion of home-grown vegetables fell from 70 per cent in 1997 to 58 per cent in 2007, while self-sufficiency in eggs fell from 87 per cent in 2000 to 80 per cent in 2010. It is the egg industry on which I wish to concentrate today and, as my noble friend Lord Lyell just mentioned, the fowl sector.
Free-range egg production has been one of the few bright spots in agriculture over the past couple of decades, but that star has waned somewhat of recent months. Year-on-year growth has been steady and, most recently, in double figures, which is remarkable in that industry. It has been consistently profitable for producer and packer alike. However, two events occurred last autumn which have made life very difficult for all free-range producers. The first was a massive jump in feed costs—and the industry would very much welcome GM crops—over which the industry has absolutely no control. Secondly, at the same time, the egg market in general was in oversupply both at home and on the continent. The cage sector situation was probably down to some parallel-running of old conventional cages which were closing, with some of the new enriched colony cages already in production. In most cases, the moves on cages have meant building new farms rather than re-equipping existing ones. I understand that the industry has had to invest well north of £400 million in the move to the new colony cages in order to comply with the new EU legislation, which is the welfare of laying hens directive. The oversupply in the cage production sector has been rapidly eliminated by the market conditions and has hastened the closure of the old cage farms.
At this stage, I should like to ask the Minister what message Her Majesty’s Government have for egg producers in the United Kingdom who, at considerable cost to themselves, will have complied with the requirements of Council Directive 1999/74/EC—the welfare of laying hens directive—as against other producers elsewhere in the EU who have not, and will not do so by 1 January 2012, but none the less will still enjoy unfettered market access to the United Kingdom.
Free-range egg production is still suffering. The overexpansion of this sector probably came about by some packers encouraging expansion when they did not have a market for those eggs. Because the market had been growing so well, they simply assumed that they would be able to sell them somewhere to someone. In addition, capital grants available in Scotland and Wales for free-range production have not helped and have encouraged production in areas where the egg is not going to be consumed locally. In addition, because of this glut, the packers have been unsuccessful in achieving a price rise to justifiably cover the increased cost of production. This is where the supermarkets come in. That is a typical example of supply and demand.
Significant changes to the way in which egg production is allowed across the EU threaten to impact on the UK’s egg sector. This new legislation, which prohibits the use of conventional battery cages for laying hens from 1 January next, has already cost UK producers around £25 per hen housed. That is a massive cost for producers to bear. However, while this country will be fully compliant, as we always are, not all producers in the EU will comply with the ban.
What view do Her Majesty’s Government take of a partial derogation, for a defined limited period, of the requirements of this Council directive, which would allow the continued production and sale of eggs and egg products produced from conventional cages not in compliance with the requirements of the directive within the member states producing such eggs and egg products?
In conclusion, the United Kingdom egg industry employs 10,000 people directly, with a further 13,000 indirectly. It has a turnover of some £1.5 billion annually and is a massive user of cereal corn. Ninety per cent of eggs produced in the UK meet the stringent standards of the Lion quality code of practice. British Lion quality eggs are consistently rated the safest in the world and are produced to the highest possible welfare standards. This really is a huge success story for British agriculture and we need to support it.
The Earl of Sandwich
My Lords, it may be appropriate for a Sandwich to follow both chicken and egg. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, who is as conscientious now as she was in opposition in bringing these issues forward. My name may be for ever associated with fast food, and I have to declare an interest in both agriculture and the food industry, but, as the noble Baroness knows, today I shall concentrate on world food issues.
Most of us are fortunate to live in rural Britain and not in parts of the world where people are starving. Yet, the noble Baroness has already described the shrinking production and income, and the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, has said that farming is out of balance. Farmers in the West Country near to where I live face severe droughts this week, in spite of the rainfall, while being urged to maintain or increase production for the benefit of mankind.
Feeding the hungry also costs lives. Across the world in southern Sudan, three weeks ago a senior programme assistant of the World Food Programme was killed in an ambush when his vehicle was attacked. He leaves behind a wife and two children. Every year, dozens of aid workers and their drivers are killed, and hundreds of lorries are hijacked or destroyed. That is the price of bringing food to the hungry during conflict, and perhaps it should be costed as part of the waste of food in the world.
Sudan is the World Food Programme’s largest mission. It brings food to up to 6 million people, including those on the front line in Darfur, Abyei and several other areas of conflict. In the south, it is currently providing food assistance to 1.5 million people, including returnees to the south and communities recovering from decades of instability and conflict.
Another 5 million are awaiting food in the Horn of Africa this year, but here the story is a little better. Following the drought in east Africa two years ago, there were areas of surplus in Kenya, Uganda and even Ethiopia last year, and the WFP was able to buy grain from all three countries at a value of $139 million. Therefore, with Zimbabwe still out of the grain market, it is a relief to see surpluses coming from Africa, especially east Africa.
I was in northern Ethiopia in March and, although I saw ox-ploughs and drills in action on semi-arid land, there is now concern that the current long rains are below normal. In some areas, the maize price is going up from 25 to 120 per cent, and cereal prices may increase by 40 to 50 per cent, compounded by rising fuel prices.
The Foresight report is an authoritative document and benefits from the wisdom of both farming and international development experts being brought together—people such as Dr Camilla Toulmin, who has vast experience of the environment and development. The report says that our present system is unsustainable, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has already described the need for sustainable intensification. On a global level, we have more than 900 million hungry people to feed out of a total population of 7 billion, and that may reach 9 billion by 2050. Incidentally, considering that it is the lunch hour, it is worth mentioning that perhaps 1 billion people overeat and that the problem of obesity should also be addressed.
I was glad to read in the CLA briefing for today that its emphasis is on maintaining, not increasing, productivity. We all remember the rush to use those embarrassing subsidised grain surpluses incurred at that time, with the farmers’ Send a Tonne to Africa campaign, and a well known Cambridgeshire farmer actually following his surpluses out to Eritrea. In the 1970s, when I first joined Christian Aid, aid agencies were still paying for Land Rovers full of grain to cross the desert to reach the starving.
Now, the crisis seems further away. The surpluses have gone and we speak in more measured tones about the need to sustain and broaden our own agriculture and support the “greening” of the CAP. However, there is no less urgency to feed the world. It is the language that has changed and the questions now, both here and in developing countries, are all about inputs, GM crops, biofuels, more applied research and the careful handling of natural resources.
On GM and fertilisers, like the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, I still have misgivings about the concept of the highly irrigated green revolution because of the amount of irrigation and inputs that it requires and the social divisions it can cause. It is all right for the Punjab but not for most of the Deccan, for example, and I doubt whether it would pass the stringent tests of the Foresight report in terms of carbon emissions. As the noble Baroness said, there are many available alternatives and dry-land farming is now a highly developed and respectable science which benefits from research right across Africa and India. I am not a biofuels enthusiast either because of the amount of land and forest they consume in countries such as Brazil where the sugar industry is based literally on the backs of forced migrant labour. I hope that Africa does not follow Brazil down that route.
I notice in looking at the DfID website that while climate and environment is one of the emerging policy areas, agriculture is not. It seems that the first millennium development goal, eradicating poverty and hunger, will not be met in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Investment in agriculture in Africa, which also means infrastructure—especially rural roads and bringing more land into production—has been long neglected and is still at a very low level. I was encouraged by the conclusion in the Foresight report that there was a lot of potential in Africa and that investment is recovering. However, DfID estimates that with a 2 degree increase in temperature, up to 400 million could be at risk of hunger and up to 2 billion could be short of water. I suspect that these are not new numbers. Most of these people are already included in the world’s hungry. Perhaps these alarming figures will be a catalyst to getting more investment in water conservation and rain-fed agriculture.
A lot of sensible, practical agriculture, of the kind already undertaken out of necessity by the poorest communities, can be done under the heading of climate change. It is the same old story under a new environmental label. To take, for instance, Ethiopia, in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the arid central belt in India, stone walls, terracing and tree-planting are essential, and have been for many years, to prevent erosion and deforestation. DfID says that it is climate-proofing all its aid programmes, and this is also the EU Commission’s policy. The same is true of the CAP. We are relabelling farming as sustainable agriculture and attempting to move further away from outright productivity. It is difficult and the Minister will agree that we are in a dilemma here. We are entering discussion on the EU financial framework from 2014 and there is very little room for manoeuvre. Will the Government, as our EU Committee has recommended, move away from direct and environmental payments towards rural development and a more flexible farm policy in Pillar 2? That means adjustment which will not necessarily go down well with our own farmers.
Finally, the Minister will remember my interest in the Government’s decision to establish a groceries adjudicator, and many voices have been heard in support today. If the office is now established, there will be a lot of staff in proportion to the interest that has been expressed.
The Earl of Arran
My Lords, I join all your Lordships in thanking once again my noble friend Lady Byford for securing this very important debate. She has always been a tremendous supporter of British agriculture in your Lordships’ House and she always brings issues of food production to our attention—and very important they are, too. I start by declaring an interest in that my wife is a farmer with an extensive dairy herd in Devon. I am also on Sub-Committee D with the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, as my chairman—and a very good chairman he is.
We have had an extraordinarily well informed debate from a variety of experienced contributors covering a broad range of topics. I do not make much of an apology for covering those topics again, though briefly, because each is critically important. I should like to concentrate, although not exclusively, on the role that retailers and processors play in the food supply chain, as already so ably expressed by the right reverend Prelate, and how their attitudes and actions impact on Britain’s ability to feed itself and, where possible, the rest of the world. While the dominance of the supermarkets is often highlighted in debates around the viability of farming, it is still a vital issue in the context of this debate.
It is undeniable that we have an inequitable food supply chain. The pig sector, for example, provides some concrete evidence of this. Over the past three years, it is estimated that retailers have maintained a profit level of more than £100 per pig and processors have maintained a profit level of £40 per pig. Meanwhile, producers are currently losing more than £20 per pig and have been moving from loss to profit and back into loss again for years. It is not just the pig farmers to whom this applies. Something must be done to remedy this wholly unsustainable situation, and it seems that the supermarkets are not willing to take responsible action themselves to secure the future of the British food industry. It has therefore fallen to government to address this issue and save the British farming industry from predation by retailers. Part of the problem is that retailers have shareholders but their food is of a different kind, which is profit. There is nothing wrong with profit, but it must be balanced with sensible returns to producers, which at the moment it is not.
The greatest chance the Government and your Lordships have of ensuring greater equality in the food chain is by establishing, as already mentioned, a grocery code adjudicator to police the existing grocery supply code of practice. The coalition’s programme for government contained a pledge to introduce such an office but a year on, we have seen little action on this. In addition to the timely introduction of the GCA, the office must have enforceable powers to take firm action against injustice and irresponsibility. Naming and shaming of retailers who breach the code is simply not enough. The GCA must be given authority to issue punitive fines to those who flout the agreed rules. In addition, complainants to the GCA must be allowed to remain anonymous should they desire. If the retail and processing industries were allowed to create some sort of blacklist of dangerous producers the whole regime would be undermined and innocent farmers simply trying to claim their rights would be punished and could be forced out of business. It is imperative that the GCA has real teeth, which need to bite when necessary to deal with issues of abuse in the supply chain. It will fall to this Parliament to ensure that the legislation, which is due to appear in draft form imminently, contains the necessary provisions. The GCA must not—I repeat not—be a mere talking shop that purely pays lip service.
I now turn to wider issues in the farming industry, many of which have been covered already, but I shall do so briefly. The efficiency of British agriculture is obviously central to the debate around food security. Britain has long been a centre of agricultural research and development but it is imperative that it remains so in future. There are two substantive points here which I will deal with in turn. First, there is research and development, already strongly mentioned by many of your Lordships. There are a variety of technologies related to farming which play an important part in ensuring global food security. Research into these fields must be supported so that it can continue to flourish. British agricultural R&D has been in savage decline over the past few years and is now at a critical level. The agricultural industry already contributes to research funding through levies on industry participants but this needs to be reinforced by government, not only through direct financial support but through mechanisms, such as taxation, science policy and other initiatives.
Secondly, briefly, I shall refer to GMOs. It is a fact that Europe lags far behind the rest of the world when it comes to revolutionary technology. In 2009, there were roughly 35 million hectares of GM maize grown worldwide, compared to a pitiful 9,000 hectares of GM maize within the EU. These are not good statistics and show just how damaging the emotive issues around the development of GM crops are to the farming industry in Europe. GM crops allow for increased yields, which will be a key tool in helping farmers sustain production levels amid reducing water resources and increased pressure from climate change. We must push Europe for action on GM crops to allow us to take advantage of this powerful technology. Before that, the Government will need to demonstrate clearly the safety and reliability of GMOs. Unless they do so, the public will be sceptical and will remain unconvinced.
I turn to the grave issue of bovine TB. Many of us are all too familiar with the problem and the disastrous effect that it is having on the British livestock and dairy industries. The Government are taking their time on the issue, given the need to ensure that the policy is implementable, effective and legally sound. However, this does not allay the constant fears of stockmen that their herds will contract the disease. This is yet another issue that on the surface may seem to have no direct impact on food security. However, if one looks a little deeper, it certainly does. Bovine TB is forcing some farmers out of business. This closes down supply chains, reduces breeding stock and diminishes the overall farming industry, as well as having wider impacts on the industries that feed in to farming. That is why the Government must come forward with an effective plan to deal with bovine TB, and the reservoir of the disease in wildlife.
Badgers are causing very severe problems, particularly in my part of the woods, the West Country. As they are protected and unchecked, they move from herd to herd, spreading the disease across the country. Vaccination and culling both have a part to play in eradicating the disease from wildlife, but we must have an effective policy in place or risk the disease becoming endemic and creating a disastrous situation for wildlife and livestock. I understand that it will take up to four years to provide an effective vaccine. We cannot wait that long.
The crux of the issue of competitiveness and food security is ensuring that each country plays its part in feeding its own people and, where possible, the people of other nations. In order for this to happen, we must ensure that all countries remain competitive so that their food production industries are sustainable. Self-sufficiency is not a silver bullet for the problem of food security, but reducing unnecessary imports and unfair exports will help to ease the problem. British agriculture has to remain competitive for the sake of the rest of the world.
This point ties up all the issues that I have mentioned. First, supermarkets must not be allowed to undermine domestic production with the threat of cheaper imports. Secondly, we must continue to develop and share new technologies that will allow more efficient production. We must allow European farmers to produce their own GM feed and crops, rather than relying on and being undermined by those countries that already embrace the practice; and we must stop the spread of bovine TB, which is severely damaging our livestock industry, with all that that entails.
I cannot overemphasise the importance of the points that I have raised. The Government have the authority and responsibility to deal with them—and quickly. Britain has a huge part to play in global food security. We have a responsibility, not only to our own people but also to our neighbours, near and far, to live up to expectations and contribute to our full potential. As concrete steals across the western world, the scarcity of land continues to increase at an alarming rate. This does not bode well for an ever-increasing global population that needs to be and must be fed.
Lord Selsdon
My Lords, I am extremely honoured to be able to speak in the debate introduced by my noble friend Lady Byford. However, I feel a sense of nervousness, surrounded as I am by landed Barons and belted Earls—although I am not sure what a belted Earl is. I doff my cap to them because I have the humility to be a peasant farmer. I am a French peasant farmer, with a numéro SIREN and SIRET, in a vineyard in Provence from where wine shipped to the United Kingdom in the second century BC arrived at Hengistbury Head. It was in this area that vin clair was first introduced, which later became claret and Bordeaux. As noble Lords will know, Bordeaux of reasonable troisième cru is selling at £124 a bottle, and China is buying more wine from Bordeaux than the United Kingdom and America put together.
As a peasant farmer, I suffer and feel for others around the world. We suffer inevitably from the dangers of flood, pestilence and frost. This year has not been good—and when a year is bad, there is often intervention by the state. The river has risen by 12 metres three times this year. The house has had to be redecorated and the roof taken off. At the moment we are struggling to find sufficient vines to replant to replace 8,000 that were lost. Wild boar ate nearly six tonnes of grapes last year while we only managed to get one. Here there is a problem with bureaucracy. You cannot eat a wild boar unless it has been slaughtered in an official EU slaughterhouse. Six people with guns do not qualify as an EU slaughterhouse, so I have not been able to eat any part of a wild boar.
Against this background I raise certain issues. When there are problems, the state helps. However, it surveys you from above. It counts the number of vines to make sure that you have no more than a certain number of empty ones, otherwise you may lose your appellation contrôlée. It is confusing because they are not used to having an idiot like me down there. I am meant to be Lord Selsdon, but the name does not matter because I have to be called “Monsieur Lord”. I have the great privilege to announce further benefits in kind. I have received a grant from the state—and an international one at that. It was addressed to “Lord Catastrophe Naturelle”. For a long time I have been a walking disaster at most things in life, but I am proud of this.
In my job around the world, I have always looked at peasant farmers and the community that comes with agriculture. My interest in the subject of global food security goes back to when I found myself, aged four and with my two year-old sister, in a strange British nursery school that had emigrated from Rottingdean to Canada because the Germans were coming. I did not know my parents at all in Canada, but I liked the war because I liked ships. Sometimes I listened to Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt. I wanted to know why all the ships were being sunk by U-boats. Someone said that it was because England—I was Scottish but they did not mention Scotland—would starve without food. It never entered my mind that war and lack of food were related. Starvation was coming because of a lack of food.
As one looks around the world today, one concludes that there are plenty of places to produce food. When I came back to England, I went to my grandfather's farm. I did not know much, but I was put in charge of chickens, ducks and rabbits. There was rationing, which I was not used to because I had been well fed. We had to send the eggs to people in London, unless they were laid in hedgerows, when you could not tell their age. You could float them, but you were not allowed to send eggs that had been laid in hedgerows because they might be bad by the time they arrived. These eggs were put into that lovely substance called isinglass, where you would keep them for ever and a day. Occasionally, one of the ducks would kill a chicken. We did not have to send off the chicken, but could eat it. We had an American airborne division nearby. They wanted eggs and, as a small boy, I would do a trade. They would give me petrol from the Jeep and that would enable my grandfather to let me, at the age of six, drive the green van.
All my life I have been interested in agricultural production. After I left industry, I went to work in a team doing agricultural and economic research. We looked at the world. Like the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, I asked: “Where does food come from?”. When I was trying to save the shipbuilding industry in England, which failed, the Department for Transport kindly gave me a chart which I still value desperately. The chart shows the position of Her Majesty’s ships at sea and in harbour 14 days after I was born, in 1937. I should add that the figures for British commodity imports at that time—the amount we had to import as a percentage of the total—from 20 world regions were: wheat, 64 per cent; maize, 93 per cent; barley, 86 per cent; rice, 72 per cent; meat, 80 per cent; coffee, 79 per cent; cocoa, 90 per cent; tea, 96 per cent, and so on—including rubber and other agricultural products. I realised that we would never be self-sufficient in this country, but also that we had a duty to our Commonwealth countries.
The first job that I took on involved agricultural work for the States of Jersey. We found that Jersey royal potatoes were being priced out of the market but that we could get a higher price if they were shipped on a Sunday from Southampton and were all the same size and put in round, rather smart buckets. This idea of agricultural production led us also to sell daffodils in bud to families—you could not sell them to boyfriends and girlfriends. Daffodils in bud could be shipped cheaper. From there I moved to economic work for the Government of India and what they could produce—namely wool and, mainly, minerals, but not much food. My job always was to work out the most economic way of getting something from its place of growing to the market, and that taught me a lot. When I chaired the Government’s Middle East trade committee we looked at food shortages and where things came from. We went on missions together, often pushed by Lord Shackleton and Lord Jellicoe, to such places as French West Africa. I never realised that the Ivory Coast produced so many pineapples or what happened in other countries. Products from French territories would arrive the next day fresh in the markets at Les Halles and later in Rungis.
I now turn to one of the forgotten opportunities. One of the main reasons for our being in all the British territories—the Commonwealth, as we call it today—was to produce food, at which we were very good. It was highly organised and highly efficient, with very good security of transport. We have forgotten that. Of the other territories, the greatest in my view is the Sudan, where I spent a long time looking at the production of grain. Sudan was meant to be the breadbasket of the Middle East. We had the Gezira scheme for cotton, which produced some of the best in the world. All those areas and territories could return.
I thought that I would make some suggestions to some of your Lordships, in particular to the rich, belted Earls and Barons who might join in. We have a certain technology in the United Kingdom. I have already declared that I am intending to order six agricultural satellites. With the new technology we can plot from satellites the growth pattern of deserts and everywhere else over the year, and predict where there will be famine. We have forgotten this technology. Although we may be able to produce things here, the British in one form or another may often be better at managing other people’s affairs than they are their own. At 44,000 kilometres, the Commonwealth has the longest coastline in the world. We look at global food security, which must inevitably include the sea, and we say that there are great opportunities for our resources, particularly our human and technological skills, to be used worldwide. I would hate for us to concentrate just on little Britain.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, we owe a debt to my noble friend Lady Byford for introducing this debate. Over the years, she has done so much to focus the eyes of British Governments on farming, especially real farming and the problems of farming. This debate is particularly useful at this time. Without any dispute, agriculture is the oldest industry in the world, and unlike many other industries it is quite certain to survive for the wholly foreseeable future. However, it will have great demands put on it and the problem will be seeing how these demands can be met.
I shall talk primarily about British agriculture, but I was very glad that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, went further and spoke about some of the terrible problems that there are. I was rather struck when he talked about the billion obese people, which is a tremendous reflection of the imbalances among human beings. Hundreds of millions of people are starving, yet a lot of people are obese. That is a big problem in Britain, which I know the Government are addressing. It is very sad. The problem is soluble in only one way and it is not by fad diets and all these other things. Very simply, one must eat less. I wish that people would recognise my own recipe, which I hand over freely to anyone; for the lives we lead, most of us need only two meals a day. You need breakfast and one other meal. You do not need three meals a day. If anyone tries that, it will work more certainly than any of the fad diets on offer.
Farming is a wonderful life. It is very demanding but it gives farmers tremendous scope for entrepreneurial management. Farm workers are having increasingly satisfactory lives because they are getting increasingly responsible lives. They have more capital at their disposal and use more highly complicated and very expensive machinery. Therefore, a life in farming is a very good life, which, not surprisingly, many people wish to continue to have.
Above all industries I can think of, farming must be based on free enterprise. The greatest case history ever to show that is collectivisation in the Soviet Union. One of the tragedies is that in Russia today that legacy lives on. Agriculture in Russia, like many other industries, has made virtually no progress since the end of the Soviet Union. I have talked to people who have been there and have looked at some of its crops, and the yields are staggeringly low. Countries in Africa put Russia to shame in what is happening. Therefore, we must never forget that farming, above all industries, is an industry for individual farmers and entrepreneurs, whatever the scale. Peasants can be just as entrepreneurial as larger farmers, but this industry must be as free as possible from bureaucracy.
Sadly, we are all dependent on a huge amount of subsidy, which is primarily a substitute for market prices. I am very glad that so many noble Lords, starting I think with the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Hereford, talked about the need to get a better balance between farming and the marketing of the products of farming. The subsidies are a curse, but they are a necessary curse at present. They cause huge bureaucracy. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who was here earlier, for what he did to improve the Rural Payments Agency. It was the most ghastly mess when he took it over and it now performs very much better. I declare an interest as a farmer and as a receiver of the RPA’s single farm payment, about which I have no complaints because I got it in full very early. The administrative system is a great deal better than it was. Further, I am glad that my honourable friend Jim Paice, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, has now taken on a role as chair of the oversight board of the RPA, which is an extremely good move. There is inevitable bureaucracy under the CAP and we must continue to try to minimise it.
Some very large-scale mistakes are being made, one of the biggest in the world being the business of growing food for fuel. Much of it started with the Americans, who were anxious to subsidise their maize producers. It has gone on increasing and it is a very bad idea. Those subsidies come from the taxpayer and they are a distortion. I suggest that for the foreseeable future what is needed is the production of food to eat, not food for fuel. It is a distortion that has been dressed up, as have so many other things, in spurious arguments about climate change. The Americans in particular are doing that. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will look very closely indeed at food for fuel, subject it to rigorous questioning, and greatly reduce it.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, would not the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, agree that recent studies in the United States show that there is actually net carbon expenditure in the creation of these biofuels because of the enormous costs of processing? It is as much of a delusion as the noble Lord has implied.
Lord Marlesford
It is a huge mistake; I totally agree with the noble Lord. The carbon-generating inputs to turn food into fuel are colossal, arguably sometimes almost as great as the fuel that is eventually produced, and at a considerable cost to many people who need the money. In my view, it is therefore an immoral activity.
On the technology side of agriculture, a lot of discussion about GM has reflected some incredibly Luddite views, even in this House. I am surprised by my noble friend Lady Miller, for whom I have much respect in many ways. I made a note of what she said in her remarks: “GM may have a part to play in the future”. When I was very young and enthusiastic in the early 1960s, I tried to persuade the British Government to use computers more in the administration of hospitals, prisons and so on. A very senior civil servant said to the young pipsqueak that I was then, “Mark, before we spend public money on computers, we have to be sure that they are here to stay”. I was reminded of that by the attitude that some people take towards genetic modification. Let us remember that genetic modification is something that has always happened. The business of moving from wild agriculture to organised cultivation and selecting plants is genetic modification by selection, although not under the microscope. I very much hope that we will not oppose what is probably going to be the single biggest advance in agriculture.
Let us take one example. In Suffolk, which is my part of the world, we along with others are now suffering hugely from drought. In our case, we have actually halved the estimate of the wheat yield that we are going to have this year, so serious is it. There is the irrigation of wheat, but at £25 an acre inch it is very expensive. In March and April alone we were short of four inches of rain, so irrigation is £100 an acre. It is questionable whether the yield can in fact make up that expenditure.
I hope that the agricultural policy approach of this Government will concentrate on two things. The first should be to correct some of the mistakes made, such as growing food for fuel, and the second should be to reduce bureaucracy so that farmers can make the best use they can of the land. Finally, in case anyone thinks that farming does not have a spiritual side to it, one thing farmers have in common is the care of the countryside. No one could mind more than me about the beauty of the countryside. There are very few things that we can leave behind us in this world, but one of them is a more beautiful countryside than we found.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, like everyone else, I welcome this debate and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on securing it. I think she will agree that it follows well on previous debates in the House, such as the one a few months ago on the reform of the common agricultural policy, and more recently our debate on the report produced by the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles on EU agriculture and forestry in the context of the important business of adapting to climate change. Indeed, the debate also follows well on previous debates initiated by the noble Baroness, and I too pay tribute to her assiduity and the knowledge that she displays in such debates. Some time ago she initiated a debate on the Royal Society report, Reaping the Benefits, in which she rightly made great play of the contribution that British agriculture can make to the future.
As the noble Earl, Lord Arran, said, we have benefited from a great deal of the personal experience of Members who have talked about their involvement in a variety of agricultural sectors and regions. Those range from arid Essex, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, to the slightly less arid Northern Ireland, as described by his neighbour on the Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Lyell. Reference was made to many agricultural sectors, whether they be arable, livestock, dairy or the egg industry, which was mentioned in some detail by the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury and Waterford. There has been a lot of consensus around the themes that have arisen in the course of the debate, not only on the problems and challenges but on the opportunities for British agriculture in the years to come.
I also detect a lot of continuity between the approach of the coalition Government and that of the previous Government to these issues. In 2010, the Labour Government produced a food strategy that, in its detail, shows a lot of continuity with the pronouncements made by the coalition on its food strategy for the future. As the background briefing for the debate stresses, including the useful note from the House of Commons Library, UK food security is structured around six themes, which were outlined by the previous Government and confirmed by this Government: global availability, global resource sustainability, UK availability and access, UK food chain resilience, food security at the household level, and confidence in the safety of our food supply.
Not surprisingly too during the course of the debate, there has been a lot of consensus around the huge challenges that we face in feeding the world and tackling climate change. Mention was made of the 1 billion people in the world who actually suffer hunger, and another 1 billion who, while not technically starving, suffer from malnutrition and undernutrition in many ways. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, pointed out, and as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, echoed, there is also the rather grotesque contrast with the 1 billion people in the world who are claimed to overconsume, leading to the problem of obesity, which was referred to by several speakers. Another important stimulus for the debate was the report of the Foresight project published in January this year, entitled, The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability. In the words of the Ministers’ preface, the report,
“makes a strong case for governments, the private sector and civil society to continue to prioritise global food security, sustainable agricultural production and fisheries, reform of trade and subsidy, waste reduction and sustainable consumption”.
All speakers have referred, as does the debate as a whole, to the issue of food security. Several speakers rightly made the point that this is not the same as food self-sufficiency. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said that we are not pulling up the drawbridge and retreating into isolation. That would be impractical and wrong, as speakers pointed out. Food security involves many things as well as production. It certainly involves such things as supply routes, port infrastructure, supply chains and transport policy. As one of the Library notes in the information pack for this debate points out, food security is closely related to energy security—again, a point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, referred.
Given, therefore, that when we talk about food security we talk about several different interests across government, co-ordination across government on this issue is very important. Obviously Defra has an important role to play, but so have DfID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in our relations with other countries, and developing countries in particular; the Department for Transport; the Department for Education and higher education in training and research; BIS; the Department of Energy and Climate Change; and, indeed, the Treasury. Could the Minister tell us when he replies what discussions have taken place across government on these issues? What mechanisms exist to take the co-ordination forward for the future? This is something that the Government need to concentrate on.
It would not make sense to talk about these issues simply in the context of the UK. Not surprisingly, for this reason the debate has had a strong international focus as well. I welcome that. For a start, we are part of the European Union. Reform of the CAP, which is so vital in this area, is a very important issue for the future. A briefing prepared for us by the CLA, which contained many excellent points, stresses the importance of the EU for many aspects of this debate. That means not only the CAP but external trade policy, food health policy, large areas of environment policy and areas of research policy.
On CAP reform, my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles rightly referred to some of the choices that Europe has to make for the future and some of the challenges that it will have to face up to if reform of the CAP is to make economic sense and make sense to the general public who, after all, support that policy through their taxes. The Society of Biology has said:
“The CAP should achieve a balance between the economic, social and environmental benefits of agriculture”.
It also said:
“There should be no public subsidy without public goods”.
Certainly, the public will support spending in this area if they believe that clear environmental and other public goods will accrue as a result. To change the CAP in the way that many of us would like, the Government will have to build up allies within the EU context and take into account some of the changing attitudes—which, again, my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles mentioned—among EU countries that have traditionally perhaps been strong supporters of the CAP but are now starting to see things slightly differently.
We have a duty to promote free and fair world trade, as was mentioned by many Members in this debate, and to get the best possible relationship with developing countries. This includes transferring technology that could help those developing countries to increase their productivity. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, despite recognising the problems that exist, pointed out some positive sides and signs of hope in production, particularly in Africa.
We must also honour our international climate change responsibilities. In this respect, and thinking of some of the issues that were raised in the other place in agricultural questions this morning, I hope that the Government are still committed to mandatory carbon reporting. It would be good to get the Government’s reaction to that. The extreme weather events that have taken place also concerned many Members over the course of this debate. It is vital, therefore, that there are changes in water policy, for example.
Research was mentioned by virtually all Members in this debate. Time does not allow me to pick up on the many excellent points, but the message about the importance of research will come over very strongly to the Minister today. In that respect, I also say to the Minister who deals with higher education policy that it is somewhat concerning that, when we are trying to get new and well qualified people into agriculture, most of the universities with specific agricultural and farming courses are charging the highest tuition fees. Far from this being the exception, it now looks as though charging at the highest level will be the rule, particularly for students taking agricultural degrees.
I have run out of time but I shall say finally that this is my swan-song as the member of the Front Bench who deals with these issues. I am standing down from the Front Bench, and I take the opportunity to thank the Minister. We have not always agreed but there have been quite a large number of issues on which we have agreed. I thank him for his courtesy while I have fulfilled this role. Although I am neither a belted Earl nor a peasant farmer, to use the phrases of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, I will remain interested in and committed to the future of agriculture and our countryside. I wish my successor well. I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to discuss these issues today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I declare my interests as listed. I should add to these, since poultry has been mentioned by several speakers, the ownership of five maran hens and two Barnevelders. They are very free range and I occasionally get some eggs from them.
I start by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, who, as she has just announced, is stepping down as the Opposition’s official spokesman on Defra matters. She ended with two rather tricky questions. One, on HE and the level of fees, was directed to me. Since her successor has put that Question on the Order Paper for next Wednesday, I look forward to answering it then. Her other very good point was about the extreme weather that we increasingly face in this country, and how we must adapt to climate change. I remind her that we published our own department’s report on adaptation to climate change earlier this week, which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, launched here in London. I will make sure that we get hold of a copy of the report and send it to the noble Baroness as part of her retirement package. She can look forward to reading that in due course. I am sure we look forward to the noble Baroness taking part in debates of this sort from the Back Benches in the future.
Like all other speakers, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Byford for the timeliness of this debate. It was earlier this year that the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, issued his Foresight report. I will certainly say something about that in due course; it is very important that we cover that subject. Since noble Lords have ranged far and wide over the course of this debate, I will cover, albeit briefly, several of the subjects that have come up before I move on to the Foresight report. A whole range of different subjects, all of which are connected, have come up.
I start with water quality. Noble Lords have ranged from Essex, where my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith lives and which is very dry, to Northern Ireland, which can be very wet. There is a range of water problems within England, but we also face a range of water problems worldwide. For that reason, it was right of my noble friend Lady Byford to talk about the problem of our imports of embedded water—that is, the amount of water that we in effect consume when we import salad crops or cotton in our shirts. My noble friend referred to the report from the University of East Anglia. I am not aware of it, so I cannot confirm or deny the figure it gave, but we use the WWF figure of 46.4 billion cubic metres of water imported in agricultural products. That is about 45 per cent of the UK’s total water use, embedded or otherwise. It is a fairly horrific figure which we should take into account in any decisions we make on these matters. I was grateful to other speakers, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who talked about the problems of drought that people face worldwide as well as, on occasions, in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, was the first to talk about biotechnology and GM. He was followed by a great many other speakers, the vast majority of whom—I shall not identify them all—seemed to think that we should be doing more to encourage GM and to persuade our colleagues in Europe to follow a more pro-GM route. The noble Lord quite rightly said that others overseas, such as in the United States, were “bemused” by the EU’s attitude to GM. We believe that decisions here should be taken on the basis of the scientific evidence that is before us, but it is also important—as was touched on by my noble friend Lord Arran—that we take the public with us. There is a degree of public scepticism, although I find it quite extraordinary, particularly so when it seems to be an alliance—dare I say it?—between the Daily Mail and Friends of the Earth, with their use of the expression “Frankenstein crops”. All scientists have a duty to help get the explanation over and to try to push these matters forward. It is important that we take public opinion with us in this matter. That will be important, as others have made clear, if we ever want to feed the extra people in the world during the coming 50 years, with its population likely to increase from 6 billion to 9 billion.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford, and my noble friend Lady Miller were all right to talk about problems of waste, particularly in less developed parts of the world—waste that comes from inadequate storage and poor transportation. It was said that something like 40 per cent of food is wasted in those parts of the world, sometimes on its journey from the farm to where it is consumed and sometimes on the farm. Some of the solutions to these problems, as many people have pointed out, are very low-tech and simple, such as improving storage in green silos—indeed, simply to keep the rats out. That should be looked at. For that reason, the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, was again right to say that these are matters not just for Defra; they should also be considered across government because they affect DfID and all those, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, will be aware, in the aid world.
My noble friend Lady Miller was right to talk also about the problems of food waste in this country. Where local authorities are persuaded to collect food waste and provide buckets for people to put it into, we see a reduction in the amount of food waste as people become aware of just how much they are throwing out. If we can collect our food waste in the right manner, it is right that we look at anaerobic digestion as a means of disposing of it—I shall say a bit more about AD in due course. I was grateful to my noble friend for stressing that it is far better to prevent waste than to have it to dispose of in the first place.
Supermarkets get knocked quite a lot, but they have quite a low level of waste. However, because they get through so much food, that very small percentage can seem quite a large amount. Although some of that waste will have to be disposed of by means of AD and other such methods, there are other ways of doing it. I refer my noble friend to a very worthy charity called FareShare, which takes food that supermarkets cannot use but is still perfectly viable and has not reached its sell-by or use-by date and sends it off for charitable purposes. If my noble friend wishes to know more about that, I shall certainly make her aware of it in due course.
Noble Lords expressed great concern about supermarkets’ buying behaviour and demanded to hear more about the grocery code adjudicator. However, before we knock the supermarkets too much, we should always remember what they deliver. They deliver cheap food to a very high standard and in very great variety, and we should be grateful for what they provide. However, I accept that, within the food chain, there are many people who feel that they have been badly treated by the supermarkets. For that reason we accept that there is a need for a grocery code adjudicator. I can therefore assure all noble Lords who asked about this, especially my noble friend Lord Arran, who seems to be particularly well informed, that we are close to publishing a draft Bill, which will emerge from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I cannot give a precise date, but, for those who have been in government, I will say that it will be published shortly or very soon—that is an expression that I think most Members of the House will recognise.
I promised to return to AD when I was talking about waste. This was first raised by my noble friend Lord Plumb, who thought that we were making some progress on waste and that there was a need for more anaerobic digestion. I agree with him that anaerobic digestion is a very good way of dealing with a certain amount of farm waste and one often needs some crops, but not many, to go into it. However, I stress that the Government are very keen that we do not go down what I would call the German route, where there has been excessive growing of crops, particularly maize, purely to feed into on-farm anaerobic digesters. We do not see that as a great use of land; we would prefer for that land to be used for growing food.
Perhaps I may make just one point about the virtues of anaerobic digestion from my personal experience of visiting a number of digesters. One that I visited recently when it opened in east Yorkshire in effect provides free products from its digestates. Not only is it producing energy and saving that waste from going to landfill but it is also producing a solid, manure-type material from the digestate. It is also producing a concentrated liquid digestate that could be put on to the land or used in farms and, importantly in terms of other concerns raised earlier, clean water that could be used for crop irrigation. So there are great many things that can be produced from anaerobic digestion, which can be a very useful way of diverting waste from landfill.
The right reverend Prelate raised the problems of getting into farming. I recognise his concerns about the county farms, which came up a few weeks ago in Questions in this House. I make it quite clear that it is a matter for the local authorities and county councils that own those farms as to whether they sell them. We have no powers under existing legislation to prevent that. Again, one should be wary of implying that county farms are an effective ladder in terms of assisting people into farming. It seems that those who go into county farms tend to stay there instead of moving on. Therefore, they can be a blockage in the system.
Moving on to the importance of biodiversity, we all recognise that we have to increase food production and try to improve the biodiversity of the land that we farm. The point raised by my noble friends Lady Miller and Lord Selborne is that we need to do that while improving production. My noble friend Lady Miller talked about the problem of farmland birds and said that the numbers were still declining even after the number of years that we have had various agri-environment schemes that allegedly help increase numbers. When you look at land management practices and some of the research about what can be done—and there is possibly a case for further tweaking of these agri-environment schemes—we should be able to do something to increase the numbers of farmland birds. Again, as was made clear, they are a crucial indicator of what is going on in terms of the biodiversity of the land that is farmed and our land mass as a whole.
My noble friend Lady Byford mentioned the Taylor review. I discussed this only recently with colleagues in the department and also with my noble friend Lord Taylor himself, who was the author of that review. I assure my noble friend Lady Byford that we will be progressing it further. If she goes to the Defra website she should be able to find out exactly what is happening. A grid shows exactly how the different recommendations in that review are being progressed as is appropriate.
My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury mentioned poultry. He was right to say that we in the UK have been fully compliant with the changes that were made to cages at considerable cost to the producers. There is a worry that there will be an import of eggs in large numbers from countries that have been less compliant. We strongly urge the Commission to put sufficient enforcement measures in place to protect compliant producers if other countries do not meet the 2012 deadline. We would favour a time-limited intracommunity trade ban. We have suggested that opportunity to the Commission to prevent member states that still have conventional cages from selling their eggs outside of their borders. That is one of the enforcement options that is being considered by the Commission. I will let my noble friend know if further developments take place in due course.
My noble friend Lord Arran raised the question of bovine TB. I agree that it is having a devastating effect on many farm businesses. Last year, something of the order of 25,000 cattle in England were slaughtered because of it. We will announce a comprehensive and balanced TB eradication programme for England by July. This will include whether the Government intend to proceed with the proposed badger control policy, which we consulted on at the end of last year. My noble friend is fully aware that this is a difficult and sensitive issue and it is important to take the time to make sure we get our approach right. Many people, whatever decision we make, will consider that we have made the wrong plan.
I turn now to the amount of money spent on research. I agree with all noble Lords that this is an important matter. It is important that we do what we can through R&D. I can give an assurance that the Government spend £365 million a year on food and farming research. Defra and BBSRC are the main funders, but there is also an indicative budget allocation for global food security in the BBSRC’s delivery plan of some £104 million per annum in the next four financial years.
Sir John Beddington’s report, The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability, was published in January this year. The report identifies the scale of the challenge posed by global food security. Put simply, the global food system is consuming the world’s natural resources at an unsustainable rate.
The Foresight report highlights the vulnerability of the global food system to: population growth, which as I stressed earlier is likely to reach 9 million by 2050; changes in per capita demand for food as populations become wealthier and are likely to want more meat; governance of the food system both nationally and internationally; climate change, which we touched on earlier; competition for key resources such as land—as my noble friend Lord Selborne reminded us, they are not making it any more—energy and water; and the ethical stance of consumers, particularly around the new technologies of GM, cloning and organic farming and production methods, sustainability and biodiversity.
The report also discusses the problems caused by recent increases in the volatility of food prices—an issue that is now being studied by the G20 under France’s presidency. As my noble friend Lord Plumb made clear, volatile prices cause problems for producer and consumer alike. In particular, they make it difficult for farmers to plan the investment needed to increase capacity and competitiveness in order to cope with the challenges of growing more food with less impact on the environment. In the G20, Agriculture Ministers will be looking at ways of helping this situation.
The report concludes that if we are to be able to continue to feed the world’s population, doing nothing is not an option. Put simply, we must act now and grow more food at less cost to the environment. The report recognises that the farming and food industry in the UK contributes positively to the transition to a green economy by increasing sustainability, seizing opportunities and providing innovative solutions for the future. We should all be grateful to the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser for that report. Again, I am grateful to all noble Lords, and in particular my noble friend Lady Byford, for their contributions.
Baroness Byford
My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, which reflected the enormity of the challenge that we face—not just within the UK but globally. I am very grateful for the variety of contributions that we received. As my noble friend has just said, the report warns that doing nothing is not an option. That was the thing that struck me straightaway. Another thing that struck me was the huge urgency of this. The sad thing is that while we have food on our shelves 24 hours a day, people do not stop and think that it may not always be there. Clearly, the Foresight report draws to our attention the challenges that are coming with coping with greater numbers of people.
Many noble Lords spoke about GM technology. I was particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for saying that it is nothing new. It is not, but for some reason the general public people think that it is new and it is bad news. In fact, it is an extension of what has happened over the years as we have managed to increase yields. Our continued care for water and soil quality is the most important thing we can do. It is of huge import for the future.
Volatility was mentioned, particularly in terms of the cost of imports. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury talked about the egg industry. At the age of 16 that was the profession I wanted to go into. The problem was raised with me only this week by one of our big suppliers of eggs. He said that he could not get GM-free feed and how difficult the problem is—not only the expense, but in getting hold of it. It is something that the debate has highlighted, which is well worth while.
I again thank noble Lords for participating in the debate. I also take the opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for the work that she did when she was in another place and was an Agriculture Minister. We are grateful for the way she has done her work and led for the Opposition in this House. My sincere thanks go to everybody for enabling this debate to take place. I wish it would go across all government departments to say, “Wake up, there is a huge challenge ahead”. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Communities
Baroness Newlove
To call attention to the report Our Vision for Safe and Active Communities; and to move for papers.
Baroness Newlove
My Lords, I thank you for the amazingly warm and supportive welcome to your Lordships’ House following my maiden speech just two weeks ago. It is just 10 months since I joined this House, was made Government Champion for Active Safer Communities and produced the report that is being debated today. I have not learnt the ropes yet, so I apologise to noble Lords for not ensuring they had a chance to join this debate and will know for next time to warn them personally in advance. Please excuse me if my voice is strained—nothing, including this infection, could stop me standing before you today.
I want to explain why I feel so passionately about anti-social behaviour and building more active and safe communities. As a victim myself, my mailbag yields sad, shocking examples of people whose lives are so devalued by it. I know of one elderly man who creeps around in silence and darkness, with curtains drawn. He is too scared of intimidation and violence to show any sign of life, because he knows that it will be magnet for these feral people to start harassing him again. Other examples across the country are too shocking to list here: you would find it unbelievable that they exist in our country. This is the harsh, gritty reality of our lives. I am sure that, like me, all noble Lords will leave this House to return to a warm, comfortable and safe home. Please spare a thought for those who do not have the same security; and we are not talking about challenged, deprived areas, for this exists as much in leafy country areas as it does in tough inner-city estates.
I thank all noble Lords who have put their name down to speak on my report and I am sure that I echo all present when I say I am particularly looking forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Noon. There is such a bank of knowledge, experience and wisdom in this House and I am begging you to help me, as a representative of ordinary people everywhere, by supporting some of the recommendations in my report, Our Vision for Safe and Active Communities. I am humbled, but also delighted, that this debate has been tabled as I feel so very passionately that together we have to solve some of the worst of society’s ills—particularly for those most affected, who are the vulnerable and sidelined victims of cruelty and crime.
I was put here to be champion for activists and victims, by people power. This is a golden opportunity for their voice to be heard nationally. Although reported crime might continue to fall, I support the plans of my colleague, Police Minister Nick Herbert, to keep focused on driving it down faster and deeper through new approaches. Nick has said that there is no room for complacency, and he is so right. Speaking from bitter experience, statistics are meaningless if you are the person whose existence is a living hell, day or night, thanks to bullying, thuggish behaviour; or someone who fears for your child’s safety every time they leave your sight. The public remain concerned about levels of crime, particularly anti-social behaviour. As I have said before, anti-social behaviour is viewed as low priority. However, it is an evil, insidious growth. Its spreading roots undermine the very foundations of decent society and if we let it grow unchallenged, its fruits and its malignancy can kill.
The British Crime Survey says that around one in four of us has issues with public drunkenness, drug dealing, loitering teenagers, rubbish, litter and vandalism. We cannot sit by and allow any more neighbourhoods to be fearful places where residents scuttle to bolt their doors and feel sanctuary and safety lies only in retreating to a fortress. My report is a work in progress, as we have to start somewhere. I have total faith that if we make radical changes and adopt its recommendations in approach, delivery and accountability and, more importantly, breathe fresh life into stale bureaucracy, we can help roll back the years and recreate that country where everyone is able to walk safely, day and night, and children roam free to explore and enjoy their childhood.
The journey of 1,000 miles starts with one single step, and this report is, I hope, that threshold for the voyage we make together. It may have to be small steps to start with, but I hope we will be taking giant strides very soon towards our goal. We will be guided by our powerful national moral compass, which has steered us so well for generations and which makes us such a great country. It will be our faith leaders who, united, can help uphold our resolve when we falter. We must encourage every citizen to embrace the word “home” and understand that it does not apply to bricks and mortar of their four walls, but is a concept that includes other houses, the environment, the people and the services around them. Personal responsibility should be the norm, not abnormal. Parents who are unable or unwilling to look after their children must be encouraged and supported. However, if they wilfully expect the rest of society to shoulder their responsibilities for bringing up their children, that is totally unacceptable and we cannot allow that to continue. Their out-of-control offspring cannot terrorise decent, hard-working people and cause blight on their neighbourhoods.
Agencies in England and Wales, such as the 43 police authorities and some 450 local government authorities, depend on charities, volunteers, active citizens and thriving businesses to be effective in carrying out their own jobs. I am sending out an SOS for them to join this national movement. My report recommends more transparency, the sharing of resources and devolving decision-making to the very people affected by their service delivery. I want to see the creation of resource hubs; a national hub that will act as a signpost to anyone wanting to get out of their comfy armchair and work for better communities so that they have access to the knowledge, help and finances that they need to do that. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” is never so true as needed here. Parts of our society are broken, and we need common-sense, easy toolkits if we are to “DIY” it—to fix it ourselves.
That is why I welcome my move to the Department for Communities and Local Government. This year, I will be helped to implement my recommendations, which started out in the Home Office. It is a very lonely life being an active campaigner and I welcome this Government’s support, which I hope will make a difference to people’s lives. Too often, good ideas from ordinary people wither and die because it is just too difficult to navigate rules, red tape and regulations. Let us turn on the lights and lift the gloom of ignorance. It is more than time to lose some of the stranglehold of big, unwieldy and expensive government, and empower the small, potent big society, which is lots of small groups of activists and neighbours changing their part of the world.
My local hubs should be transparent ports of call, giving councillors access to people’s concerns and giving people access to their local representatives. The people put them in power in the first place. This is what I understand by the term “localism”. Local people should have a say in how the money that they pay in taxes and community charges is spent. I want to see money directed to a proper community-led cohesion project, signposted at the very lowest level. I also want to see “Bling Back”, whereby money confiscated from criminals such as drug dealers is spent in the very communities that were robbed in the first place. If communities help to keep a young person out of an offender unit by supporting them within the community, turning their lives around, and save huge amounts of money in the process, why should not they get rewarded for their efforts? It is odd that when areas help to reduce anti-social behaviour, their reward is to have their police numbers reduced. To me it is the carrot-and-stick scenario in reverse. Why punish those who produce the right result? That is so wrong. We should give them incentives to get more involved and drive down crime, which means spending money on whatever community project they choose in order to build resilience in their neighbourhoods.
I have been travelling the length and breadth of England and Wales looking at what triggers anti-social behaviour, who is working at grass-roots levels to address it and what is really happening in our communities. I cannot pretend that I have seen every good practice, but I can share the fact that there is an amazing network of good citizens willing and able to make the changes that we ask for. We have to connect them, learn from them, support them and most of all celebrate them—but for them the most important thing is to make the climate easier for them to roll up their sleeves and just get on with it.
The heart of my report is to showcase and applaud some of these wonderful people. They run local Cubs, Scouts, Girl Guides and youth clubs; they help with shopping for the elderly, infirm and vulnerable; and they work unpaid to support charities. They do this willingly and for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do. I have seen fantastic role models, champions and projects in my travels, good police and public servants who are really reaching out to engage and work alongside the people they serve. I have been amazed how this new way of working can break down those huge walls that prevent people having a say. Read their own words in the report and see how they have tackled their community problems and won through—but despair also because of the stupid, pompous obstacles still being placed in their way.
When I am asked how I expect busy people to get involved in volunteering in this way, I have only to point to Hayley, a mother of eight young children, one of whom is in poor health, who started play activities with her own children in her own area. She extended it to others and in only 18 months has tackled anti-social behaviour on her estate, which is now down 40 per cent.
I am sick and tired of hearing the phrase trotted out so many times, “Lessons will be learnt”, when obviously they have not been because we see and hear over and over again tragedies and neglected cries for help. We should hold to account those who should have learnt lessons and if necessary remove them from positions of power and replace them with people who have learnt and can behave with humanity and understanding. So how can we tackle violent anti-social behaviour? Is there any evidence that it is already happening? The charity, Victim Support, runs a ground-breaking project in Southampton, pulling together all parties in a multi-agency partnership, with tenants, residents, housing managers, Neighbourhood Watch, police and others throwing a protective arm around victims of anti-social behaviour. These victims come from all ages and social backgrounds. Many have mental health issues and learning disabilities; each victim has tailored support, including emotional and practical help, signposting to specialist help, and advocacy with other agencies. Nearly 550 victims in the past 12-month period have had help through their darkest days to find light at the end of the tunnel. We need more of this joined-up work.
Also on Monday I accompanied Housing Minister Grant Shapps to Liverpool, to another Westminster—a blighted housing estate with a thriving residents’ association whose members are the eyes and ears of the community. Monthly “Have your Say” meetings pressurise other residents to take responsibility for the behaviour of friends, families and visitors on the estate. They keep diaries of incidents and take an active part in an intensive community payback scheme for offenders. Elaine and Harry are truly the pillars of their society. The outcome of this work has been a 50 per cent drop of reported anti-social behaviour in just three months. That is a huge success.
One of the main factors of the violent gang behaviour that led to the murder of my husband, Garry, was underage binge drinking. I intend to use my report to enlist support from the alcohol retail industry to reclaim our streets and reduce violence on alcohol abuse. I know that there is a way to return us to the days of social, not anti-social, consumption, and to take back our streets at night.
I have always been an optimist, even after my experience, and as a loving mother to three young women, I demand a better world for them. I am not swayed by the argument that we have to throw tonnes of money, meet loads of targets and use mountains of resources to make change. I look forward to shifting the resources already allocated to be more cost-effective and more in line with the people’s wishes. My report challenges the mindset of what I think is a complacent nation and one which has allowed the quality of life in our country to slide down to a totally unacceptable level in some areas. This is a national disgrace. I look forward to hearing your Lordships’ suggestions in the coming debate and afterwards, and to learning how you feel you can add your many talents and contacts to help us reach our final destination. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, it is with a great sense of humility that I rise to address your Lordships. For nearly 13 years, until last May, I had the privilege of serving in this House in the office of the Leader of the Opposition and assisting the work of the usual channels. For that opportunity, I must thank the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, and my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. They were both remarkably kind to me, and occasionally they even made the eccentric mistake of repeating to your Lordships something I had recommended them to say. I toyed with the idea of allowing my noble friend the Leader of the House to get his own back by asking him for advice on my own speech, but the risk was too great that noble Lords would recognise his own choice phrases.
One of my earlier perceptions of this House was formed 20 years ago in Downing Street at those regular morning meetings, often quite impatient, when the then Leader of the House came to explain to the then Prime Minister how your Lordships had ventured to vote against legislation that always seemed at the time something without which not only the Government but the entire universe would collapse. I rather suspect those meetings are still going on. But when I came to work here in 1997, I soon found that what, from the standpoint of the Executive, were seen as the capricious actions of your Lordships' House were usually rooted in common sense and deep humanity. In short, the more I listened to this House, the more I learned. I did not always agree, but I grew to respect this place beyond almost any other I have ever known, and then hold it with equally great affection.
I could not be more grateful for the kindness with which I was received, back then, and again when, to my surprise, I returned as a Member earlier this year, not only by your Lordships on all sides of the House but by the staff of this House, many of whom with my service here I am proud to count not only as old colleagues but old friends.
I spoke a moment ago of this House's common sense and deep humanity. That, of course, brings me to the subject of this debate, and my noble friend Lady Newlove, whom I warmly thank for introducing it and allowing me to speak. It is daunting to follow her; I agreed with every word that she said. She will forgive me if I do not follow entirely on the subject only of anti-social behaviour, because what she said applies to so many other areas of life. In the way that she has turned a savage, personal loss into a commitment and prospectus for common good, my noble friend exemplifies the qualities of common sense and humanity—and how much we need those as we survey the shards of a society which is in all too many places broken but which the noble Baroness inspires us to believe can be built again. I believe that it will be built again if those in authority truly listen to the calls that my noble friend brings to us to help people take small steps to big ends.
I have the privilege to be leader of a local authority, the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is in many ways a comfortable authority, where some of the issues set out in this report might seem less pressing than they are elsewhere. Yet I believe that many of my noble friend's ideas are as relevant in prosperous areas as they are in poorer ones. Anti-social behaviour and crime, as she said, respect no borough boundaries, and anxiety, alienation and disengagement know no economic frontiers. In my view, it is the urgent calling of all of us, in whatever capacity in politics, to join in the task of rebuilding broken bridges of trust and confidence between politics, public bodies and the citizen. We need to remember, as my noble friend reminds us, who are the employees and who are the employers in the relationship between public bodies and those we are elected or appointed to serve.
As my noble friend's report eloquently tells us, bureaucracy, complex language and slow responses deter active communities and community action. Perhaps I may give a small example from last month's uplifting national coming together, the royal wedding. Shortly after we were elected to office in Richmond, I enjoyed that horrible moment—which many of your Lordships who have been in office will well remember—of being rung up by my press office to be told that, quite unexpectedly, we were being targeted by a national newspaper. We were being cited as the local authority most restrictive of street parties, with the highest insurance requirements, the most prescriptive rules on street signs and so on. Be there so much as a whiff of a sizzling sausage in the streets of Richmond, the report suggested, and Councillor True’s enforcers would be down on you, probably dressed in uniform.
I did what any worried politician under fire does—I called for a report, courageously. That report told me that, in all essence, the story was true. It was not that my predecessors or the council officers had wanted it, but simply that a well-meaning climate of risk aversion, health and safety first and written policies on almost everything had led to an accretion of complexities in rules and regulations, which no one had ever sat down and planned or even really wanted. The response was obvious—to scrap most of those rules. We simplified the rules for approval, with the result that what had been targeted as the most restrictive council in England ended up hosting more street parties on 29 April than any other. How much I agree, then, with what the noble Baroness says in chapter 5 of her report about providing services on the public’s terms and about simplifying processes. I also find her idea of a general power of competence for local residents highly compelling.
However, I believe that local authorities can and should be catalysts to the creation of active communities. The will is there—I do not believe the cynics. Last year we asked people in our borough to define for themselves their own communities and say which things they most valued and which they most wanted to change in their own area, and cynics said that only a few hundred people would respond. In fact, getting on for 14,000 people did, and we are now following that up with a process of public meetings and plans that cover the 14 different self-selected communities which local people chose. Predictably, their priorities are different. Some are concerned about crime, some about school places, some about improving open spaces, some about losing their high-street shops and some about parking. We must accept that different areas have different priorities and be ready to implement different solutions.
Top-down, one-size-fits-all, town-hall-knows-best has had its day; I welcome that, as I know that people on all sides of politics do. However, I agree with my noble friend in her report that that does not mean sitting back and waiting for things to happen bottom-up. We need to go out and meet people in the middle. Helping active communities to plan and create a better future is just as much about creating and defending the spirit of place, which is what I think local authorities must do; and it is infinitely more rewarding than creating the umpteenth centralised strategy document and calling in the PR men to sell it to those who have had no say at all in writing it in the first place. The role of local authorities evolves, but I am sure that they have a constructive role in meeting the challenges that my noble friend’s report lays down.
I will not trouble your Lordships further on this occasion. However, I must conclude by saying that I do believe that there is an immense opportunity for the creation of community enterprise. When I looked, coming here today, for example, at the hideous scarring of our urban railway lines by graffiti put up by those selfishly intent on imposing their identity, or their vile gang's identity, on public space, I asked myself, “Is there not scope for creating a great enterprise to remove this blight from our lives? Would not hundreds of young people wish to be involved in doing that?”. I am certain that there is, and we should take that challenge, with support, to Network Rail.
There are myriad things, great and small, that people, once allowed across the barriers marked “health and safety” or “risk”, could and will do for themselves. My noble friend’s inspiring report points us along this road. Along with many other local authority leaders, I look forward to helping her achieve her vision across our country, in all regions, whether rich or poor, and in other areas of policy, as well as in the crucial war on anti-social behaviour in which she so powerfully calls us to engage.
Lord Addington
My Lords, it is my very pleasant duty to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord True, on his maiden speech. When I looked at his CV I discovered that, in his relationship with the Liberal Democrats in Richmond, he has been someone who—as his colleagues have described best—has exchanged heavy blows with relish, punched his own weight and could take a shot, but who was also a gentleman afterwards. The borough of Richmond, Surrey is well represented among the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, but it was actually a clean fight down there. That relationship is probably something on which the noble Lord will go far in this House and in Parliament, and I congratulate him on that.
It is also very unusual to welcome to this House someone who probably knows more about it than do some who have been here for more than 20 years. That degree of knowledge and grounding in local politics will be extremely useful to this House. It will, I hope, build up the sum of knowledge and the ability to reach out which is so necessary for this House. I again congratulate the noble Lord on his speech. It was good and thoughtful. We hope to hear many more such speeches from him, because we can use them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, introduced a thoughtful and considerate discussion on the backdrop which makes the big society necessary. Over the years, by accident and by design, problems have arisen in society whereby people have allowed society to disintegrate and some unacceptable behaviour to become the norm. It is also true that, when dealing with these problems, the perception can often be far worse than the reality; it depends on who and where you are and what has happened to you personally. The noble Baroness's experiences in life will of course give her deeper insight into what can really go wrong, but how can the rest of us get involved?
The central theme of what the noble Baroness said is the fact that we have to take on much of this responsibility ourselves, and that the Government have to allow that to happen. When I was reading about the report, some of the comments said that however local the activity, volunteer-based groups cannot do all the work themselves. There is a balance here, aimed primarily at ensuring that we allow volunteers to grow. We should provide the fertile soil for these fertile ideas to bloom in.
How is that done? Regulation is a great thing for bashing. We are all against regulation—or, rather, every single one of us is against regulations that inconvenience us but not against regulations that do not inconvenience us and that we think might be a good idea in order to stop someone doing something that we do not like. That is the eternal balance.
We all want to have a drink in a pub now and again. Some of us may think that closing time, to take an extreme example, should be 12 am on a Friday or a Saturday, but if you happen to live on that pub’s main exit route on the way home you will have a different point of view. I have been in both camps. Unless we try to balance that and make that interaction more positive, we are going to get it wrong; we will always lurch from the red-top tabloid description of what is going on—“Society is never going to be the same again”—to the reaction against it from the killjoys, often in the same newspaper on the same day. The two sides are constantly getting at each other. You can imagine the editors of these newspapers or programmes saying, “Now, how much coverage are we going to have about overregulation and how much saying that it’s disgusting and shouldn’t be allowed?”. In the middle there is usually a revelation about the love life of someone whom you have never heard of.
This is something that we have to try to get a hold of in adult ways. It struck me as I was researching this that it is important not to allow areas to be thought of as forgotten, as not counting. Much of the work that has gone on around here has concentrated on little things, like ensuring that rubbish is not allowed to sit on the streets for any length of time. We tackle things like fly-tipping, and involvement from local government, or possibly even other forms of government, allows that to happen. We get involved and that creates a better atmosphere.
If you do not like teenagers sitting on a corner of the street, you make sure that they have somewhere else to go at reasonable times of day. Wearing my other hat, I worry about sport; if you say, “No, we can’t have anyone noisily kicking a ball around. No ball games”, and then wonder why they are kicking a can around and shouting at you, you have created that situation yourself. By denying them a chance for personal responsibility, society has created the problem. If you say that you are going to provide somewhere that a game of football or basketball can take place, if it is well lit and if local law enforcement officers come round, have a chat, have a look and go away again at regular times, you will probably have a safer environment to allow people to interact than you would have otherwise, even if it is slightly noisy and there are a few teenagers outside. If those officers do that job properly, you will probably have an interchange of information that will make it less likely that there will be unreported crime. If, however, you simply turn around and say, “No, someone doesn’t like the noise”, you have enhanced the problem.
We are always going to find this balancing act difficult. It is as important to ensure that community groups have a place to meet and interact as it is for teenagers—they should not have to rely on meeting in someone’s crowded house—but those groups will require support, effort and back-up. Unless the noble Baroness’s ideas are allowed to flourish in a positive environment, unless you allow this space, all the good ideas will come to nothing.
When I started looking at this, I considered talking about the importance of other groups apart from amateur sports clubs. They are my favourite because they embody much of what is good in society. Any amateur association that brings people together, whether that be for train-spotting or for amateur dramatics, and gives them some sense of responsibility for themselves, is something of a model. If you can encourage these groups and allow them to function, and if local government is encouraged to allow them to function, you have taken two steps forward: the first by example, and the second by providing a focus.
I do not have to tell politicians that if you get a bunch of people together who know how to organise, every now and then the problem is to get them to stop organising. We have to try to allow these things to happen. Hopefully, the noble Baroness’s report is the start of an ongoing process that will allow us to get the best out of what naturally happens and to take what can happen everywhere into everywhere.
Lord Noon
My Lords, I am very honoured to be making my maiden speech today and to follow the eloquent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord True.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for introducing this very important debate. Her contribution in this area is significant. Her maiden speech greatly moved this House, and I am sorry that it was born out of such a great personal tragedy. I commend the noble Baroness on her most excellent report, Our Vision for Safe and Active Communities. I hope that I can do justice to the wisdom of that report as I talk about my experiences and understanding of how we can make safer, stronger and more active communities.
I take this opportunity to thank my noble friends Lady Jay of Paddington and Lord Sainsbury of Turville for having introduced me on the Floor of the House in January this year. Since my arrival here I have been most graciously and respectfully received by everyone. I have been made to feel most welcome. I acknowledge and thank the officials of the House for their courtesy and their time.
It was only a few years ago that I was made to think that I might not be here today to make this speech. I am of course referring to the night in November 2008 when I was trapped in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai while it was attacked by a group of terrorists. So I have had my own close encounter with terrorists, which made me realize how quickly life can be taken away. On that November morning in 2008 I woke up in my hotel bed as a businessman. By nightfall I was a hostage of a terrorist cell.
I had taken a small trade delegation from my parent company, Kerry Foods. The terrorists were hunting down British and American nationals, which we all were. We sat in the dark room listening to the sounds of grenades and bombs exploding in the building. Smoke soon poured in from under our door and we panicked. Had I known then what I was to learn later—that the terrorists were in room number 360—then we would really have panicked. For, you see, we were in room number 361, right next door, separated by only one wall. It was the longest night of my life.
Next morning, in the light of dawn, we saw the fire brigade on the street below. My suite was on the third floor. We frantically waved to the fire brigade. They sent their long ladder up to our balcony, broke the glass and hoisted us on to a platform. The TV images of our rescue went round the world as it was happening. The handlers of the terrorists were also watching TV and directing their foot soldiers by mobile phone. As we were coming down, they shot at us from inside the hotel. We were lucky that we all escaped with our lives, but 176 others who died in the Mumbai attack were not so lucky. The terrorists attacked two hotels, a railway station and a tourist café, as well as targeting a Jewish centre. The victims were all ordinary people minding their own business and were killed randomly. These matters go to the very heart of our debate today. If we are to have safer communities, we must deal with all the forces that seek to harm us and threaten the very fabric of our society.
Just a few days ago we got the news of the death of the terrorist mastermind who had dedicated his life to murder and mayhem. The religion of Islam has been hijacked by such people. Let me say here what I believe Islam stands for. My beloved mother, Bilquis, instilled in me the Islamic values of peace and tolerance. I grew up in a household in India where we were on very friendly terms with people of other communities. Our neighbours were non-Muslim. The community was fully integrated and it seemed to us the natural way to live. It was a cosmopolitan society.
London, too, is a cosmopolitan city and this great country gives its people many benefits. Britain provides its citizens great freedom to worship, to educate and to work, and let us not forget our compassionate National Health Service. There is also the benefit of retiring with a state pension. The citizen is given all these things by the nation. In return, we owe the community, society and country our allegiance. We all have a moral obligation to fulfil our duties as citizens. We must live with honour. The freedoms we enjoy in the UK, including the freedom of religious belief and practice, are given freely. However, with freedom comes responsibility. It is our responsibility to be active, to take part and do what we can to make all our lives better. It is inevitable that there will be friction at times, difficulties of adjustment, but we are all the same under the skin.
On a personal level, I have worked hard to create a food industry and provide employment in Great Britain. I have even made chicken tikka masala our national dish. At the same time, I have not forgotten that I am a member of a greater society and have tried to pay back through my Noon Foundation, a charity personally endowed by me. Through our projects I have come across everyday heroes who work in hospices and community mentoring projects, the brave soldiers of our Army and many selfless people who make life worth while. In our democracy, we have the freedom to speak up, to comment and to criticise. There is room for every shade of expression. No matter what our origins, no matter what our faith, no matter what our culture and opinions are, we are ultimately stronger and safer in the community with each other. We are better off when we watch out for each other.
I thank your Lordships for listening to me. I look forward to taking part in many more such debates.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Noon, and hope that we will indeed hear from him very often in your Lordships’ House. His services to the British food industry have been enormous, and I imagine that quite a number of us in the Palace of Westminster have taken advantage of the ready meals produced by Noon Products Ltd, especially after late sittings. I am sure that he has fed many of us already with his products; now he is feeding us with his words. The company that he founded in 1989 has become a tremendously substantial employer, and he is known for the quality of his employment practices. We pay tribute to him.
We have of course heard why the noble Lord is so well qualified to speak on this subject today, since he knew what it was to fear for his personal safety when trapped in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai during those ghastly terrorist attacks. His powerful denunciation of extremists within his own Muslim community, which he has gently repeated here today, is matched by his many positive community engagements. I understand that his company collaborates with the Prince’s Trust in setting up in-school clubs for 14 to 16 year-olds at risk of truancy, exclusion and underachievement—causes of so much of the anti-social behaviour that concerns us in this debate. In addition, he is vice-chair of the Maimonides Foundation, which focuses on promoting Jewish-Muslim relations. All this illustrates why we hope to hear much more from him in future. It has been wonderful to have two marvellous maiden speeches in this same debate.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, on her report, which is written from the heart and with many refreshing turns of phrase. Quite apart from its other strengths, the report has a pleasing absence of bureaucratic language and dense, impenetrable jargon. For that alone, much thanks. It also has the merit of passion. Of course, it includes the passion of the noble Baroness, which she brings to her theme through her own very painful experience, which she has made, remarkably, the springboard of creative service to others. Her report is also grounded in the passions and stories of so many other people. What unites them is a desire for a better community life. These pioneers in community self-help have made their neighbourhoods safer places.
As the Bishop of Norwich, I am naturally glad to see Norfolk mentioned honourably, although this is generally a report with a very strong urban bias. I know that the noble Baroness does not think this, but we must not imagine that that is because rural communities are all active and safe already. They are not. A rural location is no defence against low-level anti-social behaviour and sometimes much more serious social disruption, too. One can, indeed, lead to another. As the noble Baroness illustrated, as the irritation level grows people retreat into themselves and into their homes. Isolation from neighbours breeds fear of crime, which is surprisingly high in rural areas. Where there are relatively low levels of crime, there are very high levels of the fear of crime. That diminished social interaction creates fertile territory for the growth of more serious offending. This does not happen so easily in communities where there is a strong sense of neighbourliness and social engagement. Where people meet each other a lot, they care for and look out for each other. What the noble Baroness recommends in her report seems to me to be nothing less than what humanity is actually for.
As I have mentioned, I was glad to see Norfolk mentioned on page 26 of the report, which stresses the value of community panels in identifying the tasks to be done in their areas by those serving a community sentence. Far too much community service has been prescribed by statutory authorities and has not always felt beneficial to communities themselves. We need to change this. This report is a spur to doing so more widely, not only in Norfolk.
The report also commends restorative justice at page 22, but I was surprised to see that it did not feature in the recommendations. Will the Minister comment on the place of restorative justice in relation to the picture presented in the report? As your Lordships know, in restorative justice people who have been the perpetrators or victims of a crime or incident come together to consider what happened, to repair harm and to develop a strategy together that will avoid a recurrence. In Norfolk more than 12,000 people have been involved in restorative justice since 2007, and 89 per cent have been satisfied with the outcome. That figure has gradually increased and in the past year was well over 90 per cent. These people believe that this is the best way to deal with low-level crime and anti-social behaviour. The percentage of those reoffending in Norfolk after restorative justice has been just 10.4 per cent for juveniles and 14 per cent for adults. Those are impressive figures. They also illustrate, because the bias is towards the young, that restorative justice is even more effective for younger people as their characters and dispositions are still being formed; you have a chance with juveniles. That is why Norfolk is bidding to become one of the first restorative counties with a designated champion for this work.
However, restorative justice needs a neutral, trained facilitator so that those involved in an incident can engage constructively with each other. It is not a matter of putting perpetrators and victims together, hoping for the best and trusting that they will produce a solution; the third party is essential. That is where someone from one community can help people in another, since we are talking almost entirely about volunteers. The dynamic of care extends. Our communities cannot be silos of safety; they learn from one another and give to each other. The report of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, helps us raise our sights.
There is one other passing comment in the report that I wish to endorse and develop more fully. The noble Baroness says:
“If communities are to build trusting relationships with their services, then services need to be available when their community needs them. It is crazy … that many staff whose prime function is to support and assist the community only work standard office hours when most people are busy at work or in education”.
That makes good sense, but it illustrates an uncomfortable truth; most of those providing statutory services to our most needy communities do not live in them. A long time ago, when I was working as a curate on a large council estate in Peterborough, my vicar brought together many of the social workers, probation officers, health visitors and some of the teachers working on that estate to share our experiences. It is a commonplace initiative now but 35 years ago it was a bit more radical. I vividly remember from all that time ago that at our first session we discovered two things. The first was that about 10 families on an estate of more than 15,000 people occupied a great deal of all our time. We had not got our act together, nor had we recognised that so many of the problems on the estate were caused by so few. However, only two of us—my vicar and me—actually lived on the estate.
The clergy live in the communities they serve; they do not go somewhere else after office hours. Rectory and vicarage families often experience the same levels of anti-social irritation as their neighbours, even sometimes worse, as an increasing number of tragic incidents illustrate. It is not surprising, therefore, that when there is a major incident the media often seek out the vicar as a community spokesperson. You see it on the television all the time. He or she is often the only official person to be found living in the place they visit. I say this not simply to illustrate the value of the parish system of the Church of England, although I believe in it and believe that it is incredibly valuable, but to endorse the contention of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, that those who live in a community are best placed to determine how to make it safer. The devolution of decision-making, which we hope will be a characteristic of the Localism Bill, is to be welcomed. Therefore, I confess that I was a bit surprised to see that churches seem strategically marginal to the report, despite the very good example of the Church of England parish of St John at Hackney. I hope that, in following up the recommendations of this report, churches and other faith communities will be fully involved; we are certainly willing to be.
Therefore, I should be grateful if the Minister indicated what steps the Government are taking to extend restorative justice and, in particular, what steps will be taken to ensure that decisions affecting the well-being of communities are increasingly taken by those who live in them.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. The predecessor of his whom I knew best was Launcelot Fleming, now long-since dead, but I cannot help feeling that his spirit emerged in all the speeches I have heard in this debate, and that has made it the richer.
I join others in congratulating both noble Lords who have made maiden speeches. Of course I congratulate my noble friend Lord True. He had the good fortune to have been born into a family with a name to which everyone is likely to respond enthusiastically and warmly. Those with the ill luck to have been born into families who are less happy gradually manage over the years to change that. However, I am personally sorry that that admirable firm of solicitors in County Sligo, Argue and Phibbs, which I always looked up in the Irish telephone directory every time I went to Ireland, has finally and at last gone out of business. As to the noble Lord, Lord Noon, he and I met only once. He may well not remember it, but we broke bread on the subject of cricket. Anyone with that avocation is bound to be worth listening to on almost any subject. I congratulate him most warmly.
Of course I congratulate my noble friend Lady Newlove, not only on providing us with the opportunity for this debate, but on the quality of her report. I do not know how many noble Lords who are not taking part in the debate, but are sitting in the Chamber, have had the opportunity to read the report. To those who have not done so, I commend it very warmly indeed. It is comprehensive, and the fact that it has more than two dozen footnotes is itself an index of the extent of the reading that my noble friend has done. I am enormously impressed by the great storehouse of material that it fulfils.
My noble friend has a particular characteristic in the way in which her views come through, which was reflected in a remark long ago by Ronnie Knox, the Catholic convert theologian, who said that history has been changed by people who start their sentences with, “I believe”, rather than, in the English manner, “One does feel”. I have to say to my noble friend that throughout her report, “I believe” came through very strongly in every sentence. I have to say also that those thoughts remind me of my noble friend Lady Thatcher. I cannot conceive of the words “One does feel” falling from her lips. My noble friend Lady Newlove has the same adamantine convictions. I hope we can envisage a pocket version of her report in a Penguin format that we can slip into our pockets, because there is so much material in it that is sensible to carry about one’s person.
I particularly admire her insistence on clear purposes. When I was brought up, I was once taught by someone who said, “If you do not know where you are trying to get to, any road will get you there”. There is much to be said for having a clear idea of where you are trying to get to and how you are going to do it. The report has lots of suggestions, stories and recommendations. Beyond my noble friend’s conviction comes through the sense of her stamina. During the war, Winston Churchill had 10 ideas a day; one was normally good and the other nine were less good. My distant kinsman, the 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, a great-granduncle to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, had the responsibility, as Churchill’s CIGS, of explaining to him that the last nine ideas were not very good. That was not the easiest thing to do. The great thing about my noble friend’s report is that she will have a much higher strike rate and—I think she realises this already—although some of the ideas in the report may not necessarily find acceptance among those to whom they are directed, she gains greatly by the rich number and variety of ideas that she has put forward.
My qualifications for speaking in this debate, I suppose, are that I represented for nearly a quarter of a century the inner-city seat of the Cities of London and Westminster, known as the “Two Cities”. It was an interesting seat to represent because of its particular profile. The European Union, with slightly mistaken statistics, believed that it was the richest area in the whole EU. I will not go into what the statistical error was, but it was also almost certainly the only Tory seat in the country which came in the top 50—or the bottom 50, if you like—for poverty, and possibly the only Tory seat in the top 100.
An inner-city seat is likely to have considerable poverty. I may not be able to produce examples to which my noble friend will respond, but my two favourite examples were in the wards of Soho and Pimlico. When I was first elected, there were 10 candidates standing. We all received an examination paper from the Soho Society to find out how much we knew about Soho before we arrived, which was an extraordinarily good stimulus to subsequent research. It is a community where 2,000 people live and 40,000 people work. The marvellous thing about it is that it is a totally united community, from both quarters. In 1981, it had 164 sex establishments. Although that is a different kind of antisocial behaviour than that which my noble friend is talking about, it was a major task to transform it, but transform it we did, so that old ladies who had hitherto not been too keen on having to walk down the street past Sodom and Gomorrah suddenly found that their visits to the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers had become possible again.
The drugs tsar under the previous Administration was against the silent majority giving money to beggars in Soho because she knew perfectly well that it was all going to go on drugs; but as an index of the integrated society, it was a Soho beggar, invisible to most people as they walked up and down the street, who made a significant contribution, literally at street level, as an observer, to the swift arrest of the bomber whose third attack was on the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho. Everybody plays their particular role, however they are operating within the community.
I entirely endorse what was said earlier about living in the neighbourhood. When we were taking the Licensing Bill through in 2003, when the Government were moving powers to magistrates, it was noticeable to everyone who lived in Soho, the people who were going to be on the receiving end of the changes, that the magistrates who would be making the decisions lived 50 miles away and would not themselves have any experience of what it was like to be in Soho at three o'clock in the morning.
As for Pimlico, in 1987, the Peabody Trust, which has a large estate not only in Pimlico but in Victoria and elsewhere—it has at least 2,000 homes in my former constituency—decided that no priority was to be given to those who came from families who had been living in Peabody accommodation for the past four generations. I told the trust that I thought that it was making a significant mistake and that the integrity of an inner-city community such as that was greatly assisted by continuity. I am glad to say that, 10 years later, in 1997, it agreed and introduced a quota system to make it possible for families to remain. That was wholly to the good. The noble Lord, Lord Best, who knows much more about these matters than I do, says that the shift that I described in 1997 is now prevalent throughout housing management. Although it is 10 years since I was the local Member, I have a continuing interest in the St Andrew’s youth club, half a mile from here, which is, if I may say, oxymoronically described as the oldest youth club in the world.
To the wide variety of subjects in my noble friend’s report, I add a few grace-notes. I respond extremely well to her emphasis on thinking outside the box. Personally, I believe that help is defined by the receiver rather than the giver, and it should be our watchword to make more important the Duke of Wellington's insistence on working out what is happening on the other side of the hill. The drugs tsar whom I quoted a moment ago had previously been the homelessness tsar, and she actively discouraged charitable groups from the Midlands who were paying away-day visits every two or three months to provide a soup kitchen in Soho. That was not the most effective way of responding to the problem and it was better done by those who were living with the problem on a day-to-day basis.
One problem that my noble friend Lady Newlove identified was the level in government departments and other public bodies at which decisions are taken. I am personally in favour of decisions being taken in organisations at the lowest possible level, but I am conscious that government departments vary, and that shows up in the level at which submissions to Ministers are signed off. Some take it right back up to the top before putting them in front of the Minister; some, happily, can even do it below the level of an assistant secretary. However, that is something of which anyone who deals with public bodies has to be aware.
I concur with my noble friend’s observations and ideas about funding and incentives. I commend to her the practice followed by Mr Ben Whitaker, the husband of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, when he was the United Kingdom director of the Gulbenkian fund. In the distribution of small grants, he identified a single individual to be the distributor in each county, and he then drip-fed them with cash as their money ran down so that consistency was maintained in that area.
I have one question for my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, to whose wind-up speech I greatly look forward. What are the lottery guidelines of the Big Lottery Fund, which has taken over the combined original roles of the Millennium Commission and the charities distributor, established in 1993 and 1994? My noble friend Lord Heseltine, who was the only Millennium Commissioner to go right through from the beginning to the end, was very keen on matching funding. However, as my noble friend identified, matching funding is potentially a problem. It would be helpful to know what the Big Lottery Fund’s instructions are, because the big society is a prime potential target for the Big Lottery Fund as a client.
I concur with my noble friend’s request about simplifying paperwork. I understand what she implies about auditors but, as Oral Questions frequently remind us in connection with the European Union, audits and auditors are necessary concomitants in the use of public money. When I was in the private sector, we did pro bono work for appropriate causes but at a level of 10 per cent of our ordinary fee. We insisted on 10 per cent because that left the client with a stake and an ownership. Therefore, when we served Jack Profumo in finding a chief executive for Toynbee Hall, he got a bill which stated the whole fee and we then gave a discount of 90 per cent, leaving him to pay the last 10 per cent himself.
I strongly approve of my noble friend’s ideas about people having to spend one day in outside organisations. In a longer speech I would refer to one that I did myself in my constituency. Given the present excitement about House of Lords reform, it would be no bad thing if Members of the House of Commons had to spend a day here in order to get a rather better idea than they have at the moment of how we operate. I totally agree with my noble friend’s views about having people in continuity.
Finally, I much admire the projects that she cited at the end. I hope that my noble friend is moved by her clients calling her projects “Newlove projects”, and I hope that in the fullness of time her clients will say in suitable gatherings, “Yes, we’ve been Newloved too”. I realise that, as 14 appears on the Clock I have to sit down, but my last words must be, as she recommends in her report, “Thank you”.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I start by adding my congratulations to those already expressed to the noble Lord, Lord True, and my noble friend Lord Noon on their thoughtful and informative maiden speeches. I, too, hope that they will both be regular contributors to debates in your Lordships’ House as, clearly but not surprisingly, they both have much to contribute.
I also add my thanks and words of appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for the debate that she has introduced and for her report after what has clearly been a thorough and painstaking investigation into the issues she has addressed. It is to the eternal credit of the noble Baroness that she did not allow herself to be overwhelmed by the truly appalling and sickening experience that she and her family have been through, and no doubt continue to go through since you cannot forget—or perhaps want to forget—such a traumatic happening. Instead, the noble Baroness has shown great mental and emotional strength in her determination and resolve to campaign assiduously and make the case for action to encourage local activism and create more safe and happy communities, in a bid to reduce the likelihood of others having to endure a similar experience.
I read the report with great interest and I agree with the thrust of its message and intent. It was refreshing to read the noble Baroness’s statement:
“The ‘Big Society’ is already out there”.
That is a welcome riposte to those who appear to think that it is some great new policy or concept. Such a stance is in reality a bit of a slap in the face to all those thousands and thousands of good citizens who for years, quietly and without seeking publicity and celebrity recognition, have been doing the kind of work to which the noble Baroness refers in her report.
As the report says, levels of volunteering in the United Kingdom are higher compared to many of our European neighbours. That is despite having longer working hours than most if not all of our European neighbours. Rather than trying to present the big society as some new concept, the report puts forward a range of proposals to encourage more people to become active in their localities, and to follow in the footsteps of those who have successfully gone down this road and whose work the noble Baroness has highlighted in the case studies in the report.
One of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, makes, is that to encourage more participation, people need to feel that they will have a direct influence over decisions affecting their own communities and that their time will not be wasted through existing organisations and agencies simply ignoring their views, ideas and aspirations rather than treating them as partners. Accordingly, I am sure that after all the time, thought and effort that the noble Baroness has put into her report and recommended courses of action, she will be expecting to hear something more than warm words from the Minister in response. Having said that, I think that the noble Baroness may well now be in a position to ensure that her recommendations are enacted since she has recently joined the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The Minister may refer in his response to the Government’s Localism Bill and the intention to devolve power. I am sure that when we consider the Bill in your Lordships’ House there will be much debate on the extent to which the Bill does or does not achieve that objective, the potential implications of devolving power, and where in reality decision-making power and influence will actually rest. Last night your Lordships’ House showed that it did not share the Government’s view that handing over considerable power with few checks and balances to single individual elected police and crime commissioners, responsible for large and diverse areas, was a move that would in reality increase local accountability. The Government stating an intention is not the same thing as the Government actually putting forward proposals that will be accepted as achieving that intention in a reasonable and realistic way.
The statement in the report by the noble Baroness about the popularity with local communities of neighbourhood policing teams and police community support officers will be welcomed by many. I have had local police community support officers knocking on my front door to introduce themselves and to ask me about issues of specific concern to me in my locality. I hope that the Government will stick to their pledge that levels of front-line policing will not be affected by the cuts and that there is no dubiety that neighbourhood policing teams and police community officers are regarded as front-line positions.
In that context, perhaps I may digress for a moment and thank the Minister for sending me—finally—a reply to my Written Question of 16 March asking for the Government's definition of “police front-line positions”. It is quite a coincidence that I finally received the delayed and long awaited reply on the very morning of this debate, in which I was down to speak and in which the issue of front-line policing was likely to be raised. Bearing in mind that the reply simply refers to a definition in an HMIC report published on 30 March, it is not clear why the response took so long—way beyond the accepted timescale for responses to Written Questions. This is not the first time recently that this has happened with the Home Office. Unless there is a good reason why it has taken so long to reply, one can conclude only that this is a failure at ministerial level, since statements have previously been made—at ministerial level—that such delays should not occur. It is perhaps also a reminder, following last night's debate, that the presence of an elected person at the head of an organisation should not be taken as meaning that it will be responsive to those with whom it has dealings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, stresses in her report that it is crucial that individuals and communities, statutory agencies, the voluntary and community sectors and central government work together and regard each other as equal partners. One such statutory agency is the police. From my experience under the Police Service Parliamentary Scheme, with just one police force, certainly the willingness and desire to do so are there. The police know better than anyone the value of reliable information and intelligence; the value to them of being regarded as vital and respected parts of the communities that they serve; and the importance, if they are to be regarded as part of the solution to problems, of addressing the issues of most concern to local people. I well remember a meeting I attended a considerable time ago in which the local police divisional superintendent spoke about the work they had been doing to identify the principal issues of concern to the local population. Those issues were not about major crime, but about anti-social behaviour of the sort that the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, addresses in her report, which can impact so heavily on the quality of life, and on what I recall the divisional superintendent describing as a desire for tranquillity and a feeling of well-being in the neighbourhood.
I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, is suggesting not that the recommendations she has made would be a complete answer to the issues that she has addressed, but rather that they could make a significant and important difference, particularly if they lead to the change in culture and in mindset to which she refers. As the noble Baroness says in her report, the reasons why people engage in anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime must also be addressed if we are to improve the position. The reasons are many and varied, but if someone has been brought up in a home environment where anti-social behaviour, indifference and lack of thought for others appear to be accepted, one can hardly be surprised when that approach is copied and carried forward.
Other things can also lead the less determined and resilient to adopt such behaviour even when it does not seem to flow from the environment in which they have been brought up. Unemployment, boredom, a lack of constructive things to do and a lack of money to do anything much other than survive can also contribute. These are issues that local community action, or action by individuals, may also be able to address, as some of the case studies in the report show. They are also issues on which actions by central government can and do impact through, for example, the economic, social and financial policies that it pursues. The Government have a choice over the extent and the speed at which, for example, they invest to address the financial situation through growth and a resultant increase in tax revenues and reduction in unemployment and benefit claims, and over the extent and speed at which they decide to address the current financial situation by cutting expenditure and jobs, cutting levels of benefits and cutting facilities provided by central and local government. The Government will argue that they have currently got the balance right but that is not a view that we accept. However, I ask the Minister whether the Government, in determining their view on how they would address the financial situation, made an assessment of the likely impact of their decisions on the issues of the levels of anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime that are the subject of the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. If such an assessment was made, what were the conclusions?
Levels of crime have fallen not inconsiderably in recent years, which we should remember, albeit acknowledging, as the noble Baroness has rightly said, that such a statement can have little meaning to all those who have experienced as victims either directly or indirectly the horrors of crime and its impact. The noble Baroness’s report addresses in particular the increased contribution, with the necessary vital and appropriate encouragement and changed attitudes to which she refers, that individuals and local communities can make through their own actions and involvement to help address in particular anti-social behaviour and the cultures and the environment that seem to increase the likelihood of such behaviour. If the noble Baroness has found not the answer, but an answer to reducing anti-social behaviour, and creating safer, happier and closer communities, a great many people will be eternally grateful to her. I am sure that the Government will give the recommendations in the report the careful consideration that they most certainly deserve. I know that the House will be looking forward now to the Minister’s response.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this has been a very valuable and constructive debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, immensely for giving us all the incentive to read her report carefully: part of what debates are for is to give wider responses to useful reports. This report deserves to gain a wider reading and a much wider debate. As we talk to others, I hope that all of us will help to contribute to that. I should also like to thank both maiden speakers. I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, in particular, for his emphasis on the role of local government in rebuilding stronger local communities, which was one of the things I felt was not touched on as much in the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, as might have been the case and why I particularly welcome that she is now moving to the Department for Communities and Local Government to take on this work. The DCLG, with its responsibility for the Localism Bill, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred, and for grabbing hold of the issue of how we effectively decentralise power, is very much the right place for her to continue. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Noon, particularly for stressing the importance of faith communities in helping to build and maintain a sense of community solidarity and in bringing and holding people together.
The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has been tireless in her efforts as a community campaigner and it is not just her report but also her example of which we should be conscious. That things get done only when people get off their backsides to do them is one of strongest messages of this report. We all face this problem that Britain has become a more passive society. The report several times refers to the need for more active citizens, which is a problem. Again, all of us recognise—this is not in any sense a partisan point—that we need a more active society and more active citizens. We have got to turn around some of the long-term trends which have led to that. The noble Baroness has conducted an intensive and thorough review of the ways in which local people can get involved in having a say on how they are policed and on making communities safer. She also looked at how a number of areas had overcome the barriers in the way and she highlighted the successes they had achieved.
The noble Baroness noted, and I strongly agree with this, that communities have become overly dependent on professional agencies, expecting them to sort things out on their behalf. As we all know, that is one of the problems we face. I have to say that it is there far too much in the younger generation. I recall my wife and I talking to a young acquaintance of ours last winter who was complaining that the path to the station had not been cleared of snow. “Why have they not done something about it?”, he wanted to know. We chorused, “Who do you think ‘they’ are?”. That is an attitude from which we have to pull back, saying that we have to do something about a lot of things, not simply depend on the state or the professionals. Everything in the report suggests that in our local communities we expect everything from clearing the snow to keeping an eye on our neighbours, to joining neighbourhood watch schemes or whatever it may be, to be done for us. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that one piece of quite substantial evidence that the Government have collected is that communities with neighbourhood watch schemes have lower levels of crime, even when adjusting for other things. There is evidence that this sort of approach is extremely valuable.
The noble Baroness says in her report that people do not see the safety of their community as something they have any influence on or control over. Those of us who have been in politics, particularly in the inner cities, know of the sense of powerlessness that many people feel, particularly in the big inner city estates. You do not know who to go to, you do not know how to do anything, and you are often told by council officials that such and such cannot be done. The winter before last, I recall an agonised and irritable debate we had with a local official who assured us that it was almost impossible to have a 20 mile an hour speed limit in Saltaire. We happen to be a world heritage centre and we think we are entitled to a speed limit. However, all sorts of bureaucratic obstacles were being put in our way. We are a fairly articulate, middle-class collection of people, and we did not see why they should.
That, of course, is partly the difference in our communities. We also have to recognise that one of the long-term trends we have suffered from is the extent to which we have separated out different classes of people into different communities. As the right reverend Prelate remarked, the professionals often live somewhere else. Single class estates do not help to build integrated communities. So I very much welcome everything that is said in the report about the culture needing to change. We need a radical culture change in which neighbourhoods no longer see crime, anti-social behaviour and disorder as somebody else’s responsibility.
What are the long-term trends and changes we need to reverse in order to build a society in which citizens recognise that rights have to be balanced by personal responsibility? We have seen social change, such as in the revolution of the position of women. So often they were the people who actively held communities together. I am sure that many of us remember our mothers taking part in informal and formal voluntary activities because, when they married, they were not supposed to go on working. Their energies were poured, first, into their children, secondly, into their extended families, and, thirdly, into their wider communities. We now have a world of two-career and two-job families, so we have to look elsewhere to find active volunteers, asking people to take a day off a week, a day at the weekend or an evening, or to use the fit retired, that large new element in our society who are now beginning to take over that role.
The disappearance of local shops, pubs and schools and thus the loss of points of easy contact and informal information exchange has also weakened local communities. There is also the extent to which we have become a car-borne society, so that you do not mix easily with your neighbours because you can go somewhere else for your social activities. It is a real problem increased by the extent to which we have been building new estates where each house has two car parking spaces. You go five miles in one direction to the supermarket and 15 miles in a different direction to work, so you do not interact with your neighbours. I have some sympathy in this respect with what the Prince of Wales has for some time argued: we build our communities and we have, to some extent, been building poor communities through the way in which new housing has developed. I declare a very strong interest. I live in the village of Saltaire, where most of the houses are terraced. The community is very concentrated and it is impossible not to know your neighbours. That is one of the reasons why we have built a very strong community.
Secularisation has weakened communities, as the right reverend Prelate remarked. There has been a weakening of the social glue that churches and faith communities provide. The right reverend Prelate talked about rural crime, but I recall the Church of England’s excellent work on Faith in the City and how difficult it was in one or two Yorkshire dioceses to persuade rural congregations that the city and its problems counted and were high priorities.
The long-term trend of weakening local government over the past 40 years, through successive Governments, has also weakened local communities. That is why the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, to the Department for Communities and Local Government will be so valuable. There have been some very useful experiments, under the control of different parties in different cities, in decentralising responsibility below the level of now very large councils to local communities. There have been experiments with urban parish councils and community councils, as well as with other community groups. That is clearly something that we need to take much further. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, we have a long way to go in finding consensus on what we all mean by localism.
Then there is the long-term trend of declining trust in the state and in state agencies as a whole. When yesterday I was looking at a report by Policy Network—a European organisation in which the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Mandelson, are very active—I was rather shaken to find that in Britain 29 per cent of those asked said that they saw no advantages in the state intervening to improve matters. How many people have now given up on trust in state action is a real shocker.
We have a culture in which too many people believe that only professionals can act. We have the health and safety culture, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, also referred. The idea that all responsibility for tackling social problems lies with “them” is another of the things that we need to reverse. The report of the noble Baroness is extremely welcome in encouraging communities to be more self-reliant, giving them real influence and ensuring that agencies are ready, willing and able to back them up when needed, working in genuine partnership. Her report touches on the most difficult issue, which is finance.
Lord Newton of Braintree
I intervene with hesitation but I will be brief. There seems to be a certain amount of time. My noble friend has listed many of the down-side factors, which are difficult in comparison with when we—probably I rather more than he—were young. There have been a lot of changes. My mum had to give up work when she married in 1936. She put a lot of energy into being a pillar of the local Red Cross, which would not now happen. However, there is one factor on the plus side: a gathering army of people who are older than what used to be regarded as retirement age, and who are fit, active and want to put something back into the community. They are not all in here, although there are quite a lot of us. There is a new resource to be tapped, which is a positive factor in looking to the sort of objectives that my noble friend Lady Newlove is looking for. I hope the Minister will acknowledge that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. I had indeed referred to the fit retired as a new resource. I would like to have been among them but my wife complains that I am at present working much harder than I have ever worked before. It is clearly a resource; we see it in local communities; and I hope that we will benefit more from it as more of us go on living longer and being fit.
I was just about to touch on finance and the problem of transparency and accountability. It is a real problem; we all know when the sources of finance are public. There is much more to be considered in the noble Baroness’s report on how substantial public finance can be transferred to autonomous community groups. That raises all sorts of questions about the relationship with local authorities, but, as she rightly pointed out, there are also local charities and contributions from private business to consider. I am afraid that I cannot answer the question on the exact guidelines for the Big Lottery Fund, but I shall write to those who spoke about it in the debate.
The right reverend Prelate referred to restorative justice, which is also recommended in the report. I have followed a number of the experiments in this area, particularly the very successful experiments in south Somerset. The Government’s intention—the previous Government followed all this with interest, too—is to take restorative justice further and as far as we can in helping to resolve local conflicts and tensions. We should recognise that we have lost a certain amount of ground by building fewer magistrates’ courts. In a health and safety culture which has demanded decent steps up into buildings and all sorts of other things, we have taken justice further away from localities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, suggests, we have to find ways of bringing justice closer again to local communities.
There are a whole host of other things that we can do to reduce crime. My wife and I visited some weeks ago an excellent voluntary group in Bradford, Together Women, which focuses particularly on young women who have been caught up in first offences and tries to help them to put their lives back together so that they do not get caught up in repeat offences. I am sure that all noble Lords here who are familiar with life in the cities know that there are some young women of all ethnic groups who fall out of the community. The work which Together Women and others have done has reduced reoffending by between 50 per cent and 80 per cent over the previous five years in different parts of Yorkshire. That is the sort of thing which we have to do. It can be done only at the local level because one is often working with different ethnic groups and different local circumstances.
I am very pleased that the noble Baroness will continue the work begun in the Home Office in her new role at the Department for Communities and Local Government. She will cross over from the Home Office, where neighbourhood policing and other issues are considered an important part of this. She will not entirely forget that. I should reassure the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that neighbourhood policing is regarded as the front of front line. I should apologise on behalf of the Home Office for the extreme delay in answering his Written Question.
The Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government will work closely together and with other departments to formulate the cross-government response to the report, which we hope to produce this summer. I hope that noble Lords here will all agree that this work needs to be done to build stronger, safer and more active communities. As the noble Baroness’s report has shown, there is enormous commitment and passion in communities on which we can build. There is a real appetite among individuals to get involved and make a difference, often accompanied by their not quite knowing how to do so. It is very much one of the values of the report that it reminds us that we have to connect people to mechanisms and groups which can tell them how to use their energies in a constructive community fashion. In responding to the noble Baroness’s report, we will do all that we can to create the right environment for this to happen.
Again, I thank everyone who has contributed to this excellent debate.
Baroness Newlove
My Lords, I thank each and every speaker for their positive, insightful contributions to this debate. The two excellent maiden speeches were entertaining and thought-provoking. I am so pleased that the noble Lord, Lord True, a seasoned local authority leader, feels that elements of my report can make a difference and I look forward to learning from him how to approach his counterparts.
The noble Lord, Lord Noon, a well-known benefactor, has had his brush with death and appreciates the fragility and the precious nature of life. His thoughts on the other side of this noble House warm my heart as my work transcends politics, creeds and geographical boundaries. We are one nation.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich will be pleased to hear that I believe very strongly that it is people of faith and integrity who possess the leadership skills to help support community activism. Indeed, in one of my neighbourhoods that I visited in Shepway, many faith sectors have opened youth clubs.
I also believe in what happens in our rural communities where perception of crime is low. I support the neighbours who patrol duckling watch as well as tractor watch. To them, it is their life and they need to be there.
I also thank all noble Lords who have written such kind words to support my maiden speech and now my report. I am overwhelmed and humbled. It lifts my heart to know that we are united in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that he would welcome my solutions. Anyone who knows me personally will know that this is a path that I will fight until my last breath: to make sure that when I close my eyes we have made sure that our communities are active and safe and that we get to know one another for who we are. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Education: Vocational Subjects
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement on vocational education made earlier in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to a make a Statement today on the next stage in this coalition Government’s radical reform programme to make opportunity more equal. I should like to outline our response to Professor Alison Wolf’s ground-breaking report on vocational education. In her work, Professor Wolf stresses the importance of fundamental reform across the board to improve state education and I would first like to update the House on our progress towards that goal.
It is a year to the day today since the new Department for Education was created to raise standards for all children and narrow the gap between rich and poor. In that year, we have introduced a pupil premium, £2.5 billion of additional spending on the poorest pupils. We have extended the free provision of nursery education for all three and four year-olds and introduced free nursery education for all disadvantaged two year-olds,
We have launched the most comprehensive review ever of care for children with special needs. We have overhauled child protection rules to ensure that social workers are better able to help the most vulnerable. We have allowed all schools to use the high-quality exams which the last Government restricted to the private sector. We are ensuring spelling, punctuation and grammar are properly recognised in exams.
We have recruited Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson to restore proper narrative history teaching. We are doubling the number of great graduates becoming teachers through Teach First and doubling the number of great heads becoming National Leaders of Education. We have also created more than 400 new academies, tripling the number that we inherited, creating more academies in 12 months than the last Government did in 12 years. I can confirm to the House today that we have now received over 1,000 applications from schools wishing to become academies and more than 300 applications to set up free schools, many from great teachers like the inspirational head Patricia Sowter and the former Downing Street aide Peter Hyman.
These achievements have been made possible by the united strength of two parties with a shared commitment to social mobility working together and I would like to take this opportunity to underline my thanks for the part they have played in pushing this programme forward, to the Deputy Prime Minister, my right honourable friend the Member for Old Southwark and Bermondsey, my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families and my right honourable friend the member for Yeovil. It is my personal hope that we will all be able once more to make use of his talents in the country’s service before very long.
We will be building on the momentum generated by our reform programme by today accepting all the recommendations in Professor Wolf’s report on vocational education. Professor Wolf found that while there are many great vocational education courses and institutions providing excellent vocational education that are heavily oversubscribed, we also have hundreds of thousands of young people taking qualifications that have little or no value.
That is because the system is overly complex. After years of micromanagement and mounting bureaucratic costs, it is also hugely expensive; and there are counterproductive and perverse incentives to steer students into inferior courses. In short, the damaging system of vocational education that we inherited is failing young people and must be changed now before the prospects of generations of young people are further blighted.
Securing our country’s future relies upon us developing our own world-class education system, from which young people graduate not just with impeccable qualifications and deep subject knowledge but also the real practical and technical skills they need to succeed. This Government do not only support high quality vocational education for its utility—vocational education is valuable in its own right. It is part of the broad and balanced curriculum that every pupil should be able to enjoy. It allows young people to develop their own special craft skills, to experience the satisfaction of technical accomplishment and to expand what they know, understand and can do.
As my honourable friend the Minister for Further Education has repeatedly and eloquently argued, we need to elevate the practical and treat vocational education not, as it has been seen in the past, as an inferior route for the less able but an aspirational path for those with specific aptitudes; which is why we are taking immediate steps to rebuild the currency of vocational qualifications. As recommended by Professor Wolf, we have reinstated several qualifications which lead to professional success—for example certificates in electrical engineering and plumbing—which we know are highly valued by schools and colleges and admired by employers.
Because we know that the current set of qualifications do not meet all needs, we will work with awarding bodies and others to ensure that more high-quality courses are available for all students of all levels; because we know that the current league table system does not reward the progress made by students of all abilities, we will reform league tables to recognise the achievements of the lowest and highest-achieving; and because we know that not all qualifications are equal, we will further reform the league tables to guarantee that vocational qualifications are given a proper weighting. Their value will no longer be inflated in a way which encourages students to pursue inappropriate courses, nor overlooked in a way which unbalances achievement. Because we know the current funding system creates perverse incentives, we will reform it. At the moment schools and colleges are incentivised to offer lower-grade qualifications which are easier to pass because they get paid on those results. That must end. The dumbing down of the past has got to stop if the next generation are to succeed. Students should choose the qualifications they need to succeed, not those which bureaucracies deem appropriate.
However, while choice in the qualifications market is crucial there are certain inescapable facts in the labour market no student can ignore. Employers rightly insist that students are properly literate and numerate. They remind us that there are no more important vocational subjects than English and maths. However, as Professor Wolf’s report lays bare, huge numbers of students leave education without proper qualifications in those areas—making it increasingly hard for them to secure jobs.
This Government will put an end to that by ensuring that all 16 to 18 year-olds who were unable to get at least a C in English and maths at GCSE continue to study those subjects through to 19. The best-performing education systems not only offer a strong grounding in the basics such as English and maths, they ensure a good general education which cements the ability to reason, to assess evidence, to absorb knowledge and to adapt to new opportunities. In this fast-changing world, few 16 year-olds know exactly what they will be doing at 21, let along when they are 25, 35 or 45. So we need to ensure that every 18 year-old has followed a broad programme of study and has a core academic knowledge that provides them with a secure foundation from which to progress. That is why Professor Wolf backs our English baccalaureate as a springboard to future success in a rapidly changing world and stresses that it gives students the maximum freedom to choose between academic and vocational pathways throughout their life.
We know that the most prestigious vocational pathways require a rounded school education as preparation. Professor Wolf’s report underlines that some of the best vocational education in the world exists in our private sector apprenticeship programmes. The best are massively oversubscribed. BT typically has 15,000 applicants for 100 places each year. Rolls Royce has 10 applicants for every place and Network Rail is similarly oversubscribed. There is far greater competition for some of these courses than there is for places at Oxford or Cambridge.
We want to ensure that all employers get the support that they need to offer high-quality apprenticeships. My honourable friend the Further Education Minister is working to reduce the bureaucracy that employers face and ensure that every penny spent by Government and employers on apprenticeships can be used to the very best effect, including by studying best practice with similar schemes around the world.
Professor Wolf emphasised the need for clear routes for progression, but for greater flexibility within them. She was right to do so, and we will consider, alongside the general educational component, what further programmes of study are needed to give 16 to 18 year-olds the broad education they need.
For more than a century, there have been numerous failed attempts to reform vocational education. It is now more important than ever that we finally bring an end to the two-tier education system that has scarred our country for too long. Professor Wolf’s report, together with wider reforms, such as the fantastic university technical colleges being pioneered by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, sets out a clear map of what we need to do.
I am delighted that Professor Wolf has agreed to continue to provide regular and ongoing advice to government as we implement her recommendations. I cannot think of anyone better qualified to help us offer young people the genuine and high-quality technical education they have been too long denied. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, we found much to welcome in Professor Wolf’s vision for a higher quality vocational education. In particular, we welcome the commitment to ensure that every young person reaches a decent level of proficiency in English and maths before they leave school, an area to which we devoted a considerable amount of resource, with some success, and gave them the opportunity to make progress in those important basic skills. I declare an interest at this point, as I am a school governor of my local primary school, which I am pleased to say recently received an “Outstanding” assessment by Ofsted. English and maths are the key sets of achievements when pupils reach year 6.
We welcome the efforts to simplify the system and qualifications to make it easier to navigate for young people so that normal programmes of study lead to progression. Professor Wolf recommends the adoption of multiple measures of school performance, echoing moves that we made in government towards what we described as a balanced school report card approach. The Secretary of State has accepted that and is proposing new performance management measurements in addition to the English baccalaureate. But will teachers’ hearts not sink a bit when they hear that there are to be more targets, and will they not question whether the Government are delivering the autonomy to get on and teach that they promised? Will the Minister give the House an assurance that they will consult teachers before dropping any new measurements on them, as they did with the English baccalaureate? Even with the range of measures, Professor Wolf’s report rightly warns of the consequences if a single performance measure becomes dominant. She says that,
“there remains a serious risk that schools will simply ignore their less academically successful pupils. This was a risk with the old 5 GCSEs measure; a risk with the English Baccalaureate; and will be a risk with a measure based on selected qualifications. It needs to be pre-empted”.
Rather than pre-empt that risk, did the Secretary of State not in fact pre-empt the Wolf report by presenting his English baccalaureate as the gold standard for schools?
More broadly, have this highly prescriptive league table measure and its arbitrary subject selection not already damaged the deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision by relegating vocational learning to second-division status in the public mind and in the minds of schools? Creative and practical subjects are crucial to the quality vocational education that Professor Wolf advocates, but already they are an undervalued currency in our schools because of the Secretary of State’s action. We ask the Government to think again on the English baccalaureate and allow more breadth and flexibility so that it caters for all students. You cannot design a school system that works for everyone around the requirements of the Russell Group.
The deliverability of Professor Wolf's vision is also affected by some of the Secretary of State’s action in other areas. She rightly stresses the importance of a quality careers service to inform young people about their options, which is surely more important in a world where young people are struggling to make their way. Yet, as we speak, the careers service in England is simply melting away. We welcome the vision of an all-age careers service but ask again: where is the long-promised transition plan to deliver it and will it be adequately resourced? At a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and access to further and higher education is becoming more difficult, is not the web and telephony service that the Government propose only part of the solution?
The Government say that they are focused on social mobility but they are, we believe, systematically knocking away some of the ladders of support that help young people to get on in life. More young people in FE colleges on vocational courses are in receipt of the EMA than in schools or sixth forms. They need the money to buy equipment or support their courses. Will the scrapping of the EMA not hit those young people disproportionately hard and, again, make Professor Wolf's vision hard to deliver in practice? Colleges and students are four months away from the start of the academic year but still none the wiser about what the replacement scheme will provide. Is it not now time to listen to no less than the OECD and reinstate the EMA scheme?
Because time is limited, I will focus some of my contribution on apprenticeships, which I am sure will not surprise the Minister. There were three explicit recommendations in the Wolf report. I want to focus on two of them; I am only dismissing the other in the interests of time. In recommendation 14, Professor Wolf says:
“Employers who take on 16-18 year old apprentices should be eligible for payments (direct or indirect), because and when they bear some of the cost of education for an age-group with a right to free full-time participation. Such payments should be made only where 16-18 year old apprentices receive clearly identified off-the-job training and education, with broad transferable elements”.
That is worth pursuing if we are serious about trying to get more and more employers involved with apprenticeships—and we have a long way to go in that area.
I also want to refer to recommendation 16, where Professor Wolf says:
“DfE and BIS should discuss and consult urgently on alternative ways for groups of smaller employers to become direct providers of training and so receive ‘training provider’ payments, possibly through the encouragement of Group Training Associations”.
If I wanted to amend the report, I would delete that “possibly” as we know that group training associations are a tried and trusted formula. We put in hand a scheme to enlarge and expand upon them but we seem to take an inordinate amount of time before taking a tried and trusted formula and expanding it in the way that is needed. Again, I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that recommendation.
On the general question of apprenticeships, I listened carefully to the Minister and if I have a criticism it is that I wish we would not always talk about high-level apprenticeships—remembering that there are well over 200 types of apprenticeships—as though implying that if you are not doing a Rolls-Royce or a BT apprenticeship, it is somehow second class. We need people in the catering industry and I know that it is fashionable to mock McDonald's but it has a damn good training and apprenticeships scheme. You can progress through to management and get a foundation degree, so there should be a little less focus on implying somehow that those are the only apprenticeship programmes which count. They are not, but we need to ensure that every apprenticeship programme has proper training and educational elements to it. We have all the necessary measures in place to achieve that.
I hear what the Government are saying about apprenticeships, but some of their actions are unfortunate in that they undermine their intentions. It was unfortunate that the Government decided to do away with the guarantee that we had in a previous Education Act that by 2013 every young person who wanted an apprenticeship would receive one. It was an ambitious target, I freely admit, and we might not have achieved it, but it was a real signal of intent, of commitment, by a Government to ensure that we did not waste another generation of young people by leaving them unemployed. This Government really ought to reconsider that because it was the wrong signal to give.
I am also puzzled why, every time they issue a government contract, the employers who benefit from those contracts do not have to indicate how many apprentices they will recruit and what training programmes they have. It does not cost any money to do that, and if the Government are serious about trying to engage more employers then, for the life of me, I am baffled why they have not continued with that.
The comments that have been made suggest that, somehow, only private sector apprenticeships count. That is not true. There are lots of very good public sector apprenticeships. I have a concern about the Government’s economic policy. I do not want this to be a debate where we try to score points off each other, because we can do that in debates about whether we believe in the Government’s current economic policy, but the plain fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, we now have 43,000 more young people unemployed.
We are in a situation where we have to do everything we possibly can. The points that I have made about apprenticeships are practical and I hope that the Government will give them serious consideration. We, too, welcome in general the Wolf report and the recommendations contained therein. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I congratulate the noble Lord on the success of the primary school of which he is a governor. It is very much the case that the role of governors in primary and secondary schools is often unsung. They perform a hugely important role, and everyone who has performed it will recognise the amount of time that it takes and the difference that it makes, so I am delighted that his primary school has done so well and been rated as outstanding.
I also welcome his broad welcome of the report. I listened with care to what he had to say about apprenticeships because I know from previous exchanges with him that he speaks with great authority on that subject. I have recently been lucky enough to have a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who spoke along similar lines and made similar points to me. I accept many of the noble Lord’s points. Payments to employers for 16-to-18 apprenticeships, for example, are something that the Government said that we would need to look at in the light of our response to Wolf. I think that that was one of the noble Lord’s concerns; certainly it was one that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, raised with me. I agree that we need to do more to get employers involved.
I also agree that public sector apprenticeships have an important part to play alongside private sector apprenticeships. Many good public sector apprenticeships are being offered. On the noble Lord’s point about how important it is to stress the central role that apprenticeships can play—this is not only about Rolls-Royce—we all need to send that message out.
On the guarantee, which we have debated before and about which I know the noble Lord, Lord Knight, feels strongly, the reason for making that change was not in any way to try to diminish the importance that we attach to apprenticeships; there is more funding going into them, and we all want to see them increase. Rather, it is because ultimately we are dependent on employers to provide work-based apprenticeships, so that is not a guarantee that the Government can give. If employers will not provide that guarantee, we cannot give it. However, I certainly agree with him that we need to try to attract more employers and raise the quality of apprenticeships if we can.
I take the point that the noble Lord made at the beginning of his remarks, about targets and not having more and more complex targets. Getting the balance right between having a set of measurements that does not lead to perverse incentives and providing more varied information so that we can all see what is going on is not easy. However, we need to try.
I agree with the noble Lord about the importance of creative and practical skills in education. The point of the EBacc was not to suggest that an academic route is superior to a vocational and technical route. The Government very much accept that we want good education, whether it is academic, vocational or technical, fitted for the particular aptitudes of the child. The point around the EBacc is that there are children, particularly from poor backgrounds, who are not being given the chance to study academic subjects and are therefore not given as much chance as they might to progress into higher education. That is what we hope that the EBacc will, in part, address.
I am glad that the noble Lord welcomes the all-age careers service. I take his point about the importance of getting the transitional arrangements right. My honourable friend the Minister for Further Education in another place issued a Statement on April 13 giving guidance to local authorities about trying to work our way through the transitional period, but we will need to keep that under review.
So far as the EMA is concerned, I also accept that people want clarity. We are running, as the noble Lord will know, a consultation on the proposals that we announced at the end of March, which runs to May 20. The reason for that consultation was to have the chance to talk to schools, colleges and others in this sector so that we could try to ensure that the arrangements that we outlined in our response in March are practical and can be delivered. We will try to ensure that the funds which we have will go to those who need them most, and encourage them to stay on in education.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I also thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and we, too, welcome the Wolf report. We particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to improving the quality, status and availability of vocational education.
I will pick up two concerns that I heard expressed earlier today in another place. The Chairman of Committees was concerned that, although it is welcome that schools will be made accountable for how they deliver vocational education, teachers and parents may find it rather confusing to have another system alongside the English bacc for holding schools accountable. Given the Government’s commitment to improving the quality of vocational courses, once that has been done to the Government’ satisfaction, would they consider adding an additional section to the English bacc to include vocational courses, and perhaps arts and cultural courses, once they are convinced of the quality of those? Of course we all agree with the objective of giving young people a broad and balanced curriculum. Once we have achieved that quality, surely there is a case for expanding the English bacc.
Secondly, on the amount of timetable time given to the English bacc, will the Minister confirm, as his right honourable friend the Secretary of State did in another place this morning, that the 80 per cent of timetable that is supposed to be spent on English bacc subjects is only advisory and not statutory; and that schools are very open and able to allow young people to choose subjects which would means that they spend, say, 40 per cent on vocational subjects and not just 20?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend for her welcome for the Wolf review and her recognition of the importance of vocational education. One of the performance measures that we are keen to try to develop is a destination measure for schools and colleges so that we can see where children and young people go on to when they leave, and so that parents can see how a school or college is doing, whether it is vocational or academic.
We are keen to have more information generally. As that spreads and people are able to look at data and find their own ways of using them, the measure that my noble friend mentioned of seeing how schools and colleges might be doing, particularly as regards vocational or technical subjects, will develop of its own accord. The point of the EBacc is to try to have a small, narrow basis on which to shine a spotlight, particularly on academic subjects. It is not meant to betoken any kind of judgment and is obviously not compulsory. It is not a qualification in its own right. We want schools to decide for themselves whether it is something that they want to pursue. As my noble friend flagged, there is no statutory requirement on timetabling around the EBacc. There is, indeed, no statutory requirement that anyone should offer the EBacc at all.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I, too, found much of the Wolf report interesting and valuable. The beginning part of the Statement had a slight annual report feel to it with its list of achievements. It may be slightly cheap to say that I noted there was no list of the number of U-turns that the Secretary of State has performed, but it is time that there was a U-turn on the English baccalaureate. The commitment to end the pervasive two-tier system in education, which many of us have worked hard to try to get rid of, would be more credible if the English baccalaureate included practical learning for everyone, so that the Secretary of State’s commitment to ensure that academic subjects are available to everyone extended also to vocational subjects. Then we might be able to make some progress. The 80 per cent of curriculum time devoted to the English baccalaureate subjects leaves 20 per cent not just for vocational subjects but also for statutory religious education, sport—to which I am sure the Minister is committed—and a number of other things that we all want to see delivered in our schools. How can he show that the Government’s commitment to end the two-tier system as between vocational and academic subjects is credible while the English baccalaureate continues?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I know that the noble Lord has worked for a long time to try to overcome the problem that we all see regarding the perception of a two-tier system. I certainly share that objective. Many have strong feelings about the English bacc. I come back to the point that its purpose is not to be discriminatory in the way that the noble Lord suggests—although I know that he did not use that word. The motivation behind it was to tackle the fact that children from poor backgrounds have not had the chance to study certain subjects—such as modern foreign languages, which have declined in number, history or other subjects—as much as one would like. Only 4 per cent of children on free school meals achieve the EBacc. That has a very narrowing and limiting effect on their possible progression to higher education. The measure we are discussing is intended to tackle that situation.
I entirely take the noble Lord’s point that one does not want to entrench a sense of difference in this regard. As he knows very well, alongside things such as the EBacc, which I hope we do not take in isolation, we are committed to university technical colleges and studio schools, which I am very keen to encourage the spread of so that children who are in danger of becoming disengaged get the change to re-engage, learn practical skills and, in the process, pick up some academic ones as well. I understand the noble Lord’s point, but I hope that he and other noble Lords may see the EBacc in the broader context of what we are trying to do across the piece to raise the prestige of academic study, alongside raising the prestige of technical and vocational subjects.
I hope that Professor Wolf’s report, in giving us pointers to how we can give everyone confidence in the quality of vocational qualifications—and I very much welcome the support for that across the House—will be another leg in tackling the problems that the noble Lord identifies.
Lord Baker of Dorking
My Lords, I warmly welcome the Government’s response to the Wolf report. They are clearly trying to find a solution to a problem that has eluded all previous Governments—namely, to dramatically improve the practical, skilled and high-quality training of technicians and engineers, alongside higher academic education. If we do not resolve that, because there is a desperate shortage in our society of technicians, skilled workers and engineers, the great forecasts of this Government will simply not be met.
I welcome, in particular, one or two specific recommendations. The first is that the difference between qualified trainers in FE colleges and qualified teachers should be removed. That is an absurd class distinction. They should be at the same level and paid the same. I hope that amendments to that effect will be introduced to the Education Bill which will come before this House later this Session. Secondly, I hope that my noble friend will recognise that vocational education below 16 in schools is an expensive option. It requires workshops, equipment and qualified trainers. It cannot be left to two hours’ craft studies on a Friday afternoon. It requires much more than that.
Finally, I thank the Minister warmly for the support that the Government, the department and he personally are showing—as well as the support that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are showing—to university technical colleges. The Chancellor granted us another £150 million in the Budget to expand them. The purpose of UTCs is to recognise that youngsters at 14 can make their own choices about the courses of study they want to take. The whole idea of bringing under one roof the training of the hand and the education of the mind is already proving to be very successful. One such college is already operating, and even at the end of the second term two things are outstanding. First, there is behavioural change. At 14, they are adults. Truancy and bloody-mindedness have disappeared. Secondly, there has been dramatic improvement in the quality of English and Maths, because students are studying those subjects alongside engineering. I am glad to say that this programme has all-party support. The former Minister is nodding, and I see that this is something that the coalition also supports. Therefore, I hope that there will be a substantial expansion of these colleges over the coming years.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful for my noble friend’s remarks, particularly on the support that we have been able to give to UTCs. I am glad that that commands support from all sides of the House. I note in particular his comments about trying to break down the divide between people working in FE and giving them the chance to work in schools. Like him, I think that that is a sensible way forward. I look forward to working with him on trying to raise and spread UTCs in the way that my noble friend Lord Baker would like—although never as fast as he would like, because he is an extremely hard taskmaster regarding UTCs. I look forward to doing everything we can to spread them as far and as fast as we can.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I welcome Professor Wolf’s review and the Government’s Statement, in particular what they have said about reviewing the league table system, making it more sensitive and, I hope, looking more closely at the distance travelled by all children in the education system. I would like ask two questions. The first relates to achieving literacy in children, which enables them to be successful in these courses, and the other relates to the quality of mentors in the workplace.
First, does the Minister recognise the important contribution of charities working with children in schools, and indeed within their families, to address their difficulties in attaining literacy? For instance, Voluntary Reading Help works in more than 1,000 primary schools and trains adult volunteers in the community to work on a one-to-one basis, with a commitment over a year to work with individual children twice a week. Also, Learning School Help works with children, in their families and in their schools, to help them achieve literacy. As to the workplace, can the Minister give more detail about how mentors are developed, how good-quality mentoring is recognised and celebrated, and whether there are any schemes to certify good-quality mentoring in the workplace for apprentices?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Earl about the importance of charities. One announcement made today in the broader context of tackling the NEET problem—no one has found a better way of saying it than NEET, because otherwise it takes too long—is a new £10 million-a-year fund to be set up, which I hope will be taken up by charities and the voluntary sector, to come up with solutions to help those children, such as I was lucky enough to see recently, to re-engage, undertaken by Fairbridge, which does a fantastic job in helping to re-engage those children. I very much agree with the noble Earl about the role of charities.
If I have more detail on the noble Earl’s second point about mentoring, I will come back to him. I will follow that up; but he and I may also have a chance to discuss that further outside the House.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
I, too, welcome the report, and may be keener on it than others. I chaired a seminar yesterday in this House with 25 employers, including British Airways and some other big employers, but also some small ones. We started off by talking about schools and what happens in the curriculum. Every one of those employers had the same concern which we have all heard over and again about the lack of career guidance in schools, particularly about apprenticeships. Today, there is still a void in how that is raised with young people, where the push is always for the academic and for those who do not go that way, who go for apprenticeships, to be considered failures. How can we make a serious effort? The previous Government tried to get across the equal value of both those aspects of education.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I would be very happy, if the noble Baroness has particular suggestions, to discuss them with her, because I agree that we need to do that. One of the new duties that we will place on schools in the Education Bill, in which I am sure that she will take a particular interest when it comes to our House—all too soon—is to give schools a duty to ensure that careers advice is independent and impartial. That is in part driven by some of the concerns of the noble Baroness: to try to ensure that a child is not, in one way or another, shoehorned into the wrong choice—either into the vocational route when that is not right for them, or into an academic route when that is not right for them. I recognise the problem that the noble Baroness describes and would be keen to have a discussion about her experience of practical ways in which we might ensure that we get that balance right.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I fear that I may be less in touch with this field than I used to be, but am I not right in saying that one of the difficulties in maintaining standards, which is all-important in any qualification, is the tension between the real interests of employers and the perceived interests of students, which meets in the awarding bodies? They have a commercial interest in increasing throughput and therefore making more qualifications, successful applications, whereas employers want to limit successful applications to those who really deserve them. Is not a possible approach to that to give the employers a financial interest in maintaining the awards equal to that given to the students and those providing them with finance?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My noble friend raises a number of interesting points. One issue that the Government are going to look at concerning employers offering apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds is where the funding goes and whether there should be, as I think Professor Wolf suggests, consideration of some kind of subsidy to employers. We certainly need to make sure that, in moving forward with these proposals, the role of employers in helping to construct good qualifications is fully allowed for. Ultimately, if we construct qualifications that employers do not want, we will not do anyone any service at all.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, perhaps I may thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and say how pleased I am that, among other things—although this is not mentioned in the Statement—the government response equates QTLS status in schools to QTS. There has long been a need for that if we are to get high-quality teaching in vocational subjects. Perhaps I may bring the Minister back to the EBacc and the two-tier system. He has emphasised the degree to which the Government see the EBacc as opening routes to higher education, yet surely one reason why we are anxious to see high-quality vocational education is in order to open up progression routes through different pathways. For example, the university technical colleges, which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has been espousing and whose expansion we are all quite glad to see, are precisely the sort of route that we want to be developed. Very high-quality vocational education has also been a route to technician training, and from technician training on to degree-level training and even on to PhD training.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with my noble friend’s first point about QTLS and I am glad that she welcomes that. I also agree with her basic points about progression, about making sure that vocational qualifications have esteem attached to them, and about there being clear progression that people can see.
Lord Empey
I return to the issue of careers. One experiment with which I was associated was making careers advice available on the high street. Careers advisers were trained and the department made free, impartial and professional advice available on the high street. Younger people with their parents or people of any age could walk in off the street, book an appointment with a professionally trained adviser and get free, impartial and professional advice. If teachers in schools give careers advice only on a part-time basis, they cannot keep up with the dramatic changes that are taking place in all trades and professions. Would the Minister be prepared to look at that and at the results of the experiments that have already taken place to see whether anything can be learnt from them?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I should certainly be interested in seeing the kind of evidence and examples that the noble Lord has mentioned. As I said earlier, we are developing our proposals for an all-age careers service and are trying to make sure that schools have a duty to provide impartial, independent advice. My honourable friend Mr Hayes has responsibility for taking that forward and I shall relay to him the points made by the noble Lord. If he is keen to discuss the matter further, I shall see whether I can arrange that too.
Government: Convergence Programme
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Sassoon
That this House approves, for the purposes of Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, the Government’s assessment as set out in the Budget report, combined with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic and fiscal outlook, which forms the basis of the United Kingdom’s convergence programme.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to debate the information that will be provided to the European Commission under Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993. I also welcome the chance to exchange views on two closely related topics: the UK’s National Reform Programme 2011, the NRP; and the Government’s response to the Lords EU Select Committee’s 5th report. On behalf of the House, I thank my noble friend Lord Roper, my noble friend Lady O’Cathain, as the sub-committee chair, and the whole committee for putting forward these two reports for debate. I assure noble Lords at the outset that the Government look favourably, in principle, on both the committee’s recommendations.
While it might not be possible to synchronise the national reform programme and the convergence programme, since they are intrinsically different documents and therefore produced according to markedly different internal procedures, we will give careful consideration to debating the NRP alongside the convergence programme again in future years. I also note that the timing of the Budget announcement meant that it was not possible to hold this debate in advance of the spring European Council, in line with the committee’s recommendation.
I now turn to the main matter in hand. Each year the Government report to the Commission on the UK’s economic and budgetary position and our main economic policy measures in line with our commitments under the stability and growth pact. By sharing information from the Budget with our European partners, we can help to maintain an appropriate and effective level of economic policy co-ordination and contribute to stability and growth across the economic union.
European economies have suffered considerably in recent years. The financial crisis, bank bailouts and rising national debts and deficits have all left their legacy. As a continent, we have had to learn the hard way that in an open, global marketplace, no economy exists in isolation. The frailties of economic policy in one country can all too easily be exported to other nations and imbalances are seldom constrained by national borders or jurisdictions. That is why it is in all our interests to improve co-ordination of economic policy-making to tackle those imbalances and to increase the resilience and strength of the European Union as a whole. Our position on EU economic governance could not be clearer. We need better macro-economic surveillance and fiscal frameworks because sustainable economic growth across Europe is vital to the success of the British economy. Even though we are not part of the single currency we cannot consign ourselves to being bystanders in this debate. A strong and stable eurozone is firmly in the UK’s own economic interests. The EU is our largest single trading partner with more than 50 per cent of our exports going to other member states and a long history of shared success and prosperity.
However, just as our success has been and is shared, so are our problems. Therefore, we must act to ensure that the EU has the right warning mechanisms to identify future economic crises with a common set of rules in place and tough measures applied to those who step out of line. These rules exist in the form of the stability and growth pact but in over a decade of monetary union the sanctions it contains have never been used. That is why Britain has welcomed the EU’s recent proposals: to strengthen European economic governance; to encourage greater fiscal responsibility across member states; to address the macroeconomic imbalances that have built up between member states; and to ensure that in the future Europe is able to absorb future shocks.
I should like to reassure the House that the UK is not subject to sanctions under the stability and growth pact. The treaty is clear that they apply only to euro area countries. Moreover, the UK protocol to the treaty, negotiated at Maastricht, clarifies that we are exempt from any extension of sanctions, such as those proposed by the European Commission that are currently under discussion. We fully support the Commission’s moves to ensure greater fiscal responsibility across the euro area and its endorsement of the UK’s domestic consolidation plan. The plan that is enshrined in our convergence programme is one that will tackle our record deficit. Even though noble Lords will be familiar with what follows, I should summarise what constitutes our convergence programme. It is a plan with expenditure falling as a share of income in each and every year of this Parliament, and national debt falling as a proportion of GDP by 2014-2015. That is the right approach, and we need only to look across the Channel to see that this is the case.
Britain has a higher budget deficit than both Portugal and Greece. Last year, we had a similar level of national debt to Ireland. Yet our market interest rates for 10-year sovereign debt are a fraction of those of these three countries. In Greece they stand at more than 15 per cent, in Portugal more than 9 per cent and in Ireland they have increased to more than 10 per cent. In stark contrast, Britain’s market interest rates have fallen to below 3.5 per cent and our triple-A credit rating has been secured.
Lord Clinton-Davis
Do experts not forecast that the rate will go up to 5 per cent quite soon?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we are debating the convergence programme and the national reform programme. What is critical about the convergence programme is that we discipline ourselves in the way that eurozone countries are required to discipline themselves, and that the best test of the basic disciplines that we are putting in place is our relative interest rate. Of course, the Government do not forecast where absolute interest rates will go. However, a critical test of the credibility of our policy is the relative interest rate that the UK enjoys. I am pleased that it is at a very low level.
I turn now to growth, which is critical to the convergence programme. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast growth in each year of this Parliament, starting with growth of 1.7 per cent for the current year. This is in spite of the rise in world commodity prices and higher than expected inflation, which in turn has a bearing on interest rates, as the noble Lord suggested. The OBR points out that this effect,
“creates scope for slightly stronger growth in later years”,
than previously forecast. Therefore, while it expects real GDP growth of 2.5 per cent next year, it forecasts that that will then rise to 2.9 per cent in 2013 and 2014, and 2.8 per cent in 2015. The European Commission has published its own economic forecasts. These show that the UK will grow more strongly in the coming year than Spain, Italy, France, the average for the eurozone and the average for the EU.
That brings me to the other document that we are here to debate today: the UK’s national reform programme for 2011. The NRP reports on the structural reform agenda that the Government are taking forward. It paints a comprehensive picture, with which noble Lords will be familiar, of the progress that we are making across the UK. I will summarise its main features and stress that the document has a particular focus on the measures taken by the devolved Administrations and on the ways in which civil society stakeholders are helping the Government to deliver the reform agenda. Most importantly, the NRP sets out the Government’s Plan for Growth, which my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out in the other place as part of this year’s Budget.
The plan has four ambitions at its heart: that Britain will have the most competitive tax system in the G20; that it will be the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business; that it will be have more balanced economy, by encouraging exports and investment; and that it will have a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe. These objectives form the basis of the information that we will submit to the Commission. I will touch briefly on each in turn.
I turn first to taxation. Britain used to have the third-lowest corporate tax rate in Europe. We now have the sixth highest. At the same time, our tax code has become so complex that it is now the longest in the world. This is something that we have to address. Our taxes should be fair, predictable, simple to understand and easy to comply with. They should also be efficient and support growth. Therefore, in April, our corporation tax was reduced not just by 1 per cent, as we announced last June, but by 2 per cent, and will continue to fall by 1 per cent in each of the next three years, thus taking our corporate tax rate down to 23 per cent. That rate, in relation to other European countries, is 11 per cent lower than France and 7 per cent lower than Germany, and will give us the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7. That is alongside our decision to introduce a highly competitive tax rate on profits derived from patents and our fundamental reform of the complex rules for controlled foreign companies making them more territorial.
As I have said, it is also the Government’s ambition for Britain to become the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business. In the past decade alone, countries such as Germany, Denmark, and Finland have all overtaken us in the international rankings of competitiveness. In the Government’s Plan for Growth and, hence, in the NRP, we have taken action to abolish £350 million worth of specific regulations; to implement, in full, the recommendations on health and safety laws made by my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham; and to impose a moratorium exempting businesses employing fewer than 10 people, and all genuine start-ups, from new domestic regulation for the next three years. That will free the private sector from the unnecessary burdens that have been holding them back.
The Government’s third ambition for growth is to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy. In the Plan for Growth we set out specific measures to help a wide range of businesses. In life sciences, 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 we are also taking forward important reforms.
Over the past decade, manufacturing as a share of our economy has fallen by almost a half, yet under this Government we are already seeing a reversal of this trend. Manufacturing, as a sector, has been growing at a record rate. To help that continue the Government are creating new export credits to help smaller businesses, launching Britain’s first technology and innovation centre for high-value manufacturing, and funding a further nine university centres for innovative manufacturing. This will help ensure that we have a more balanced economy with growth across a broader range of sectors and places. Lastly, we want to create a better educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.
It is alarming to see that Britain’s working age population has lower skills than the same demographic in France and Germany, which is perhaps the biggest problem facing our economy in the future. That is why the Government are committed to funding new university technical colleges, which we were discussing a few minutes ago in this House, to provide 11 to 19 year olds with vocational training that is among the best in the world.
However, that alone will not solve the problem. In Austria, Germany and Switzerland around one in four employers offers apprenticeships, while in England fewer than one in 10 employers do so, which has got to change. That is why we are providing funding for another 40,000 apprenticeships for the young and the unemployed, which will deliver a total of 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years as a direct result of the Government’s policies. That will help to ensure that all parts of the country have access to a better educated workforce. In brief summary, that is the content of the two major documents in front of us.
Submitting the NRP and CP to the European Commission is an essential step in the new European semester process but it is far from the end of the road on the process. The Commission will now examine both documents in detail and will shortly come forward with proposals for recommendations based on its analysis. These recommendations will be agreed by heads of state and Governments at the European Council on 28 June.
The Government support the multilateral surveillance of member states’ economies. The role of the European Council is particularly important since it allows for a genuine peer review process at the highest levels and enables member states to take account of the advice addressed to them when formulating future policy. Member states will reflect progress against the recommendations issued to them in their next national reform and stability and convergence programmes. However, it is important to note that the EU’s advice is just that, merely a set of recommendations, and it will be up to the Government, not Brussels, to decide whether and to what extent they should be implemented in the UK. No matter what they decide, as I pointed out earlier, our opt-out from the single currency means that the UK cannot be subjected to any sanctions.
To conclude, our budget, our growth and our spending plans are wholly consistent with the EU’s objectives under the stability and growth pact and under the Europe 2020 strategy. So the Budget document, along with the forecast produced by the independent OBR, forms the basis of the UK’s convergence programme. I have taken up a lot of the time of the House, so I hesitate to stress that in what I have said and what the documents contain, there is no information on the convergence programme. It is drawn entirely from material that has already been presented to Parliament and is in the public domain. The national reform programme also draws on a range of material, including the Budget and the Government’s Plan for Growth, and contains no new information. These documents restate the Government’s plans to deal with the economic problems they inherited and set the UK’s economy on a path towards sustainable growth. It is clearly important that we do not have to include additional information. If we did have to do so, it would show that our own domestic plans were deficient.
The Government are clear that their plans for the economy should be presented to Parliament before they are seen by the EU. That is exactly what we have done. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will support these Motions, which I commend to the House.
Baroness O'Cathain
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for moving this Motion, for his contribution to the EU Select Committee scrutiny of the Europe 2020 strategy, and for giving the committee evidence on the production of the UK national reform programme. Following that session, one of our recommendations was that the NRP should be debated in the House at the same time as the UK convergence programme, and I am delighted that this has happened today. I am even more delighted that my noble friend has just told us that he would hope to be able to do this again on future occasions.
The chairman of the EU Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Roper, would normally move this Motion, but as the Sub-Committee on the Internal Market, Energy and Transport, which I chair, has taken the lead in scrutinising the EU’s Europe 2020 strategy, of which the national reform programme forms a part, it was considered more appropriate that I should be in the hot seat. That is no problem and I am delighted to take part. I am also very glad that three other members of the sub-committee have decided to take part in this debate, and I thank them for doing so, as I do for all the hard work they put into our meetings and witness sessions. Several other members of the committee would have participated in the debate if they had not had previous commitments which were impossible to change at short notice.
Europe 2020 is the successor to the Lisbon agenda, which in 2000 was launched with enthusiasm, but unfortunately did not match expectations. The objective had been to make the EU,
“the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.
But at least one of the problems was that the Lisbon agenda lacked any credible means of enforcement. It had great aspirations but no oomph. One of these days there might be an “emperor’s clothes” moment which could, if we are lucky, result in fewer aspirational mirages and more results-oriented policy. It is not just the EU that is guilty of this, but also many governments, economists and policy wonks throughout the world of business and politics.
In drawing up Europe 2020, the member states and EU institutions have developed a more robust system of engagement, which, if it is given a chance and if it works, will enable close monitoring of the progress of each member state towards the five headline targets of Europe 2020. The five targets are: a 75 per cent employment rate for those aged between 20 and 64; 3 per cent of GDP to be spent on research and development; reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent, increase the share of renewable energy to 20 per cent and increase energy efficiency by 20 per cent—all compared with the 1990 levels—which, as I remind myself, is 20/20/20 by 2020. Unfortunately, some of this has already slipped, so it is not as neat a description as I thought. The fourth target relates to education: less than 10 per cent of the population aged 18 to 24 should have left school early, and at least 40 per cent of the 30 to 34 year-olds should have completed tertiary education. The final target of the five is the reduction by 25 per cent of the number of Europeans living below the poverty line. Yes, it is aspirational, but there is at least some guide to where we should be focusing our policies and effort.
The cycle of economic development aimed at meeting the five targets has been arranged into a system or programme, as we have already heard, known as the European semester. The objective is to synchronise the economic planning cycles for convergence towards the eurozone entry criteria and growth—hence today’s debate looking at both the convergence programme and the national reform programme. The semester commences each year with the production of the EU’s annual growth survey, which analyses progress over the five targets and assesses the macroeconomic and fiscal context. This is followed by the setting of priority actions for member states in respect of achieving the targets. The next step in the process involves discussions in ECOFIN and at the spring European Council.
Progress on the seven flagship initiatives of Europe 2020 is also considered. Noble Lords must realise that the five targets I have already spoken about are not the flagship initiatives for 2020. The seven flagship initiatives are clearly and simply laid out on page 5 of the Select Committee’s fifth report of the 2010-11 Session, entitled “The EU Strategy for Economic Growth and the UK National Reform Programme”. I commend it to Members of the House, who should read and digest the initiatives.
At the end of the process, the European Council provides policy guidelines to the member states. I have tried to be as clear as I can in describing the process. It is a sensible, comprehensive exercise, which should highlight clear actions that we hope will result in economic growth—the ultimate aim of the whole exercise. The penultimate block in the edifice is the embodiment of member states’ specific actions in each state’s national reform programme, submitted in April at the same time as the convergence programme. The deadline for the convergence programme has been put back to facilitate this dovetailing. Finally, the European Commission analyses the national reform programme issues and country-specific recommendations in June before the whole process starts again the next January.
I apologise for this rather lengthy and cumbersome explanation of the process. I felt it was necessary to detail it so that the background to the committee’s report is understood. I know that many know all of this but we have many new Peers. It is also incumbent on all of us to understand better what goes on in the EU. After all, we contribute a lot for the privilege of being a member.
The report that we are taking note of today deals largely with the procedure for parliamentary engagement in the production of the national reform programme. It also takes the opportunity to discuss the process in more general terms and to make suggestions concerning consultation. In November we suggested to the Minister that local authorities, business organisations, trade unions and NGOs might also be consulted. I would be most interested to hear from him whether the suggestions have fallen on stony ground or will blossom and bear fruit. Was this suggestion followed through in the production of the final national reform programme?
In those same discussions, we raised the monitoring and accountability of the European semester process. It would be useful to know how national Governments are to be held to account for performance against their programmes and by whom. In the case of the UK, we have chosen to publish indicators in each relevant area against which progress can be tracked, with performance published each year in the national reform programme. The UK has not published targets in every area as other member states have done, just in every relevant area.
My noble friend the Minister agreed with us in November that there was a role for independent analysis along the lines of the Lisbon scorecard produced by the Centre for European Reform. Has any progress been made on this?
My noble friend was very cautious on the question of policy warnings, suggesting that they should be used very infrequently. He felt that enforcement should largely be as a result of peer pressure and peer review through the process of publishing national performance reviews which would be incorporated in discussions on the annual growth survey and at ECOFIN. The committee, however, felt that the discussion in ECOFIN might be circumscribed.
Since then, ECOFIN has had its first chance to discuss the plans of member states. I ask my noble friend whether the discussion was particularly robust, as, since then, we have had the bailouts for Ireland and for Portugal, and Greece seems to be in trouble again. In view of these subsequent events, does the Minister remain convinced that policy warnings should be used “very infrequently”?
Other issues have been raised, both in the European Union Select Committee and in our Sub-Committee on the Internal Market, Energy and Transport, including the role to be played by the private sector in achieving the targets, whether the targets are ambitious enough and the extent to which the final reform programmes published by member states build on drafts. I am sure that my colleagues in the sub-committee will wish to deal with these issues in more detail, but I thank the Minister for his opening comments.
Lord Haskel
My Lords, my interest in this debate is less in the economics, which we have heard from the Minister today and on several other occasions, and, indeed, have debated on several occasions, than in the way the system works and whether it is all worth while.
I should explain that I am a co-opted member of European Union Sub-Committee B. As the noble Baroness explained, our responsibility is to scrutinise the working of the single market—business, employment, transport, innovation and technology. Our work of course is highly relevant to this debate, so I start by joining the noble Baroness in welcoming the recommendation in paragraph 30 of the EU Committee’s report that the NRP report and the Select Committee's report should be debated together. That is very helpful, and I hope that we will do it in the future.
I also noted in the committee’s report that some members were sceptical of the value of these reports. I could almost hear murmurings of national plans meaning too much administration and too little management. I do not agree. Indeed, I agree with the Minister. In his evidence, he said that, used properly, the reports are a way of galvanising action and of having a dialogue with other countries and among ourselves. Yes, there are problems. One is keeping up with the times—the globalised world seems to be moving very quickly; the other is making the reports meaningful to ordinary people and ordinary businesses.
The NRP report suffers from both of these. The section on bottlenecks may have great meaning to a Treasury economist, but less so to somebody running a business or working in industry. You can correct this by putting it another way. Instead of setting out how we are going to tackle these bottlenecks, we should ask what we actually want to achieve. People would then understand the report better. It would have a purpose; it would point to action. It would be more inspirational, more easily understood and more likely to be implemented.
Let me give an example. One bottleneck is to facilitate,
“an increase in aggregate fixed private investment”.
Quite rightly, business reacted to the recession by cutting costs and it is crucial that as the economy recovers these costs do not return. After all, that additional competitiveness and productivity are helping us to recover. To sustain these lower costs means more investment and lower head count—lower head count with greater skills. Said that way, it means something to people. I put it to the Minister that, if the Government would like to involve the public more, putting things in terms of what we wish to achieve rather than what we need to overcome will mean more.
In his evidence to the committee, the Minister also spoke about consultation. The record of this Government on consultation is pretty poor. Your Lordships’ Merits Committee commented on that and the Minister may have heard the debate on 3 May when I had to point out how decisions in the Home Office had cut right across policy laid down in the Treasury's plan for growth. We must do better at consulting both inside and outside government.
The paper calls for fewer regulations, but if the Government want the support of the general public, they must understand that one man's red tape is another man's polluted water or difficult working conditions. It is the rules that are important—how they are targeted and how proportionate they are. The numbers are of secondary importance. Regulatory failure is because the rules are wrong, not that the numbers are high. More and more of these rules are part of Europe 2020 and are being made in Brussels, outside our direct control. The Government have not made it clear how they will engage with this, so perhaps the Minister could say something about that.
In contrast with Europe 2020, I find the NRP paper pretty thin on the green economy. Certainly, the plan for growth talks about putting the economy on a low-carbon basis, but Europe 2020 makes energy efficiency one of its highlights, especially in transport and buildings. Indeed, it offers financial support. Will we take advantage of that? Our plans seem reluctant to commit investment in this area. Presumably that is because the Government do not want to burden our grandchildren with the debt. However, neither will our grandchildren thank us for burdening them with a high-carbon economy. Debt is less dangerous than global warming.
In these reports, keeping up with the times is essential but difficult because globalisation is moving really fast. I strongly support the intention of producing and debating an NRP each year. Personally, I would find it helpful if there were a section that told us what had changed from year to year. For example, in previous years, all the talk was about the inexorable move of manufacturing to Asia, particularly to China. Indeed, I was one of those businessmen to go there in 1979 when it started the open-door policy.
However, the wheel has nearly turned full circle. Rising wages and an ageing population in China, rapidly rising transport costs and rising productivity here in Europe, mean that it is already attractive to produce goods here in Europe that require frequent design changes or are of low volume. That is especially true for products where labour is a third or less of the cost. Our hourly worker wages adjusted for productivity are now much the same as Germany’s and are lower than those of France and Italy. Yes, that does have something to do with the weakness of a pound against the euro, but this is a very important change for the economy of Britain and Europe. It is an important trend and I would like to see this sort of thing highlighted in the National Reform Programme. It not only points towards a new trend in globalisation, it also justifies our concentration on skills and investment, and on productivity and innovation. That is why I would like to see a section on what has changed over the year.
Another way in which this kind of approach is helpful is that it helps us to address the problems that globalisation has thrust upon us and justifies our impatience to complete the single market as well as the work and the expenditure on doing that. Incidentally, it also helps explain the benefits of the single market, something that we never do enough of. In its NRP 2011 paper, the Government say they strongly support Europe 2020, its challenges and its opportunities. Who could disagree with more jobs, more research and development and innovation, more investment, greener energy, better education and less poverty? It is because we are all in agreement with the aims and objectives of Europe 2020 that I would like to see this support shouted from the housetops and given a much higher profile. Could it be branded in some way, so that projects that contribute towards these objectives are identified as being part of Europe 2020?
The Government’s paper, Let’s Choose Growth, is a start. As well as calling for change, it expresses a lot of the right ambitions and identifies many things that we have to do. But who has seen it? Has it had an impact? Most of the people I know have actually never seen it. Some people would like to separate the economic from the social aspects, but the two are intertwined and cannot be separated. That is why it has to be expressed in terms that explain its impact on the lives of ordinary people. As the committee said in its report, the Lisbon strategy suffered because it had a low public profile and a low political profile. I join the committee in calling for a high profile to be given to Europe 2020. It creates a purpose to which all of us want to contribute. If there is one thing that I would like to take away from this debate, it is that we are all committed to that.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I very much welcome the fact that we are debating the two documents together not least because had we not been debating the document introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, we would have been having the fourth general economic debate in your Lordships’ House in about five sitting weeks on what is happening to the UK economy. Although many of us like nothing better than to discuss the state of the economy, it is a bit like pulling a plant up on a weekly basis to see how the roots are doing. I do not think we would have served any useful purpose by it.
The more important relevance of debating the two documents together is the point that the Minister made in his introduction when he said the UK was not a bystander in the debate on fiscal stabilisation within the EU. The fact that we are not in the eurozone does not mean that we are somehow less affected than before by what happens more generally in the European economy. For example, it is very clear at the moment that when we are looking for additional investment for infrastructure, and into small or large businesses, the funds that might be available from banks based in London to support this investment are not being liberated by the banks, in part because they are worried about what is happening in the eurozone. They are worried that Greece may default, or that their holdings of Greek bonds may take a haircut, and therefore they are hanging back on making investments in the UK. So there is an absolutely direct link between the level of investment here and the stability of the rest of the EU. It is in our absolutely direct economic interest that stabilisation of those eurozone countries that have got into difficulty takes place swiftly. Many noble Lords wish that we were not part of the European financial stabilisation mechanism, but to the extent that our membership makes the stabilisation of those countries’ economies go forward more quickly, that is just straightforwardly in the national interest.
On the Europe 2020 programme, I completely agree with what the noble Baroness said about the Lisbon agenda. Before we were in coalition, that was the kind of thing that Liberal Democrat policy-makers used to do on wet Saturday afternoons. They would write down huge lists of aspirations which at the end of the afternoon made you feel great. But if you had been in government you would not have had the faintest clue how you would have brought them about. The extraordinary thing about the Lisbon agenda is that heads of government did the same; they signed up to this wonderful statement, which they had no means and not even the political intent to try to bring about. They felt very happy that Europe was going to take this leading role and then they sat back and let China, India and the rest of the world take the leading role.
Therefore, the fact that the flagship policies under Europe 2020 are in a way less ambitious is a good thing. However, they fall into two categories. One category includes policies or areas in which the EU itself can make an impact and there are other areas in which the EU can make very little direct impact. I am not an expert on the European platform against poverty, for example, but to the extent that you are taking direct action to deal with poverty, it will be done on a member state basis. The EU has no levers to pull on poverty other than having a framework for growth, which means that the economies of member states are doing better so it is easier for them to pull people out of poverty.
The key thing from Europe 2020 revolves around those actions that the EU itself can undertake. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has taken an initiative on this front, although I think whoever chose the title “Let’s Choose Growth” for the pamphlet needs their head examining. What else are you going to choose—stagnation? The two things that the Government and the Prime Minister were proposing, which I hope the Government will push really hard, because they are pragmatic and will make a big difference, are a series of measures to strengthen and deepen the single market. We are talking about pragmatic things that the EU can do—it is in its competence. Secondly, we should push very hard for the completion of the Doha round. I know that it has had a very long and tortuous history, but trade remains one of the main motors of growth and we need to keep pushing to see what progress can be made. Those are two very specific things. I hope the Minister can reassure me that the Government, having written their letter and pamphlet, will keep the pressure on to see whether we can get concrete movement.
I am more sceptical about the national reform programme, the Government’s programme and the whole process. I have in my mind the sight of 27 national reform programmes stacked on top of each other, sitting and accumulating dust. I do not know how that immense weight of material can be effectively analysed and peer reviewed. I am not sure how the peer review system works, but the document we are discussing says that the NRPs of all member states will be peer reviewed at the ECOFIN council in January. I do not know how you can effectively peer review anything at an ECOFIN council. If you are doing it beforehand, who are the peers and who are reviewing whom? Which named individuals from the UK are doing this review and do they do it for everybody or are we given half a dozen to peer review this year? When you have produced all the peer reviews, you presumably have a long document with thousands of detailed comments. What happens then? The more I think about the process, the more depressed I become because I wonder whether it actually achieves anything—particularly given that, for a number of member states, the noble aspirations of Europe 2020 and their bottlenecks to growth are so difficult to deal with that I cannot imagine this process being of any help at all.
Given what Ireland, Portugal and Greece are going through, does a document called the National Reform Programme with “bottlenecks” have any relevance? When I was attempting to brief myself on this debate, I made the mistake of typing into Google not “national reform programme” but “national recovery programme”. Amazingly, there are national recovery programmes: Ireland has one but it also has a national reform programme. In those circumstances, I wonder whether that has any great value.
I am very supportive of the Europe 2020 approach and of efforts by this Government and by the EU to deal with their own bottlenecks for growth. I hope very much that they can be pushed by the Government. I have a final question for the Minister. We in the UK, and in every member state, have bottlenecks identified by august bodies such as the IMF and the OECD. Does the EU itself have bottlenecks that it is attempting to address? What is the equivalent of the five bottlenecks that we are grappling with—if you can grapple with a bottleneck—that the Commission is dealing with and what milestones are the Commission having to account against as it seeks to promote what is, as I say, an admirable aim?
Baroness Valentine
I declare that I am chief executive of London First, a not-for-profit business membership organisation. I am also pleased to serve on this House's European Sub-Committee B, under the able chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain.
I welcome this debate. The EU Committee’s report says of the reform programme,
“No surprises, no panacea, but still worth doing”.
It is worth doing because transparency and scrutiny by other member states, EU institutions, the OECD and others can only be helpful in establishing good practice. However, I take note of the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, about the practicalities.
Europe 2020: UK National Reform Programme 2011 makes clear the importance the Government rightly attach to growth. The national reform programme states:
“As Europe recovers from the worst recession since the 1930s, Europe 2020’s aims of higher growth and increased employment represent the most important long-term challenges, and opportunities, facing the EU”.
I will focus my remarks on the “bottlenecks” to growth identified in Chapter 3 and suggest some areas where the Government can perhaps do more to overcome these challenges.
First, on competitiveness in financial services and taxation, after tackling the deficit the first challenge identified by the report is,
“ensuring a well-functioning and stable financial sector capable of meeting the financial intermediation needs of the real economy”.
The Vickers commission’s work to improve competition and stability within the banking sector is relevant, but we need to add a third leg to this stool—the global competitiveness of the UK sector. There have been failures in governance, supervision and regulation, but the UK has demonstrable competitive advantage in the financial services sector. We must make sure that any unilateral action does not diminish that competitiveness.
The EU’s annual growth survey calls for Europe-wide co-ordination in the taxation of the financial sector. That is commendable, but London is the EU's only world-competitive financial centre, so taxation in other global financial centres outside the eurozone is just as important. What we actually have, though, is a unilaterally applied banking levy that satisfies neither point. The Government made a good start by consulting on their approach to the introduction of taxation last year. Post credit crisis, politicians attempted to shoot from the hip, but boring, slow, internationally compatible and considered changes in taxation are much better. So, while the tax hike on oil and gas exploration may or may not have been right, its abrupt introduction was almost certainly not.
I welcome the national reform programme’s section on,
“Facilitating an increase in aggregate fixed private investment”,
which reiterates the Government’s objective of creating,
“the most competitive tax system in the G20”.
However, the UK heavily depends on its service sector for growth. We are claimed to be the second highest exporter of professional services worldwide. In this context, the international competitiveness of our personal taxes is important. Recent Treasury signals of a future reduction in the top rate of income tax are welcome. Unfortunately, other changes—to personal allowances for high earners, national insurance contributions, the non-dom levy, pension tax relief and the banking bonus tax—portend anything but a stable and predictable tax regime.
Secondly, on infrastructure and investment, the Government are right to aim for industry to have the confidence to invest in our economic infrastructure. Londoners are relieved that the Government have maintained the much needed and long overdue investment in our transport infrastructure, and we look forward to the forthcoming national infrastructure plan.
However, I would like to highlight some concerns. The Localism Bill, while motivated by an admirable desire for local empowerment, risks giving local authorities powers without resources—again. It risks frustrating development on the one hand by giving weight to the nimby vote while on the other failing to provide the tools to local authorities to fund the infrastructure that underpins regeneration and growth. How does one get the Northern line extended to Battersea power station to create a new economic quarter? While we have good progress with the Olympic Park Legacy Company in sorting out the park and indeed, under the Localism Bill, turning that company into a mayoral development corporation, who will act as client for investment in energy and the public realm south of the Olympic park to catalyse the East End regeneration that we all desire? Surely, alongside localism we need to give local authorities the benefit of the doubt in raising the finance to invest in the infrastructure that is a prerequisite to that regeneration.
The thorny question of aviation capacity in the south-east also remains unsolved. The NRP recommends rebalancing towards net exports. With £20 billion of business services exports driven by London, according to the Work Foundation, the capital’s links to the world are critical. Aviation policy should expand businesses’ international links rather than funnelling them through the most overcrowded airport in Europe.
I turn to Brussels. As the Minister asserts, policies to drive the UK’s growth are largely in the hands of the UK Government, not the EU, but there are important areas of European influence. We need to ditch our little England approach to Brussels. By that I mean not embracing some great Utopian European dream but concentrating on the key areas of policy that affect our businesses and citizens. We must be sure to shape policy-making at the front end of the process and not as a desperate afterthought. In football-speak, we are last-ditch defenders when we have all the skills to be creative midfielders.
I am concerned about two areas in particular: labour laws and financial regulation. Europe 2020 seeks a 75 per cent employment rate across Europe. The Department for Business’s own research indicates that more flexible labour laws lead to higher employment. Well meant protection for existing employees risks reducing employers’ appetite for creating new job opportunities or employing more challenging candidates, when they worry about having their hands tied. The UK and Europe need to get the balance right between what is fair and what leads to more employment.
My second worry is financial regulation. The British financial sector is the most global in the EU and therefore needs more sophisticated regulation, but this regulation must be well informed both about products and about real-world market practice. The UK has 12 per cent of the EU population but makes up just 6 per cent of Commission staff. The UK needs to value people who serve in Europe; it should be seen as a boost to a career in either the public or the private sector. Given the vital role of the new European supervisory authorities in relation to our financial markets, would it make sense for, say, 20 per cent of their staff to have experience of London’s financial services?
In these and other areas, politicians need to get in early and help to set the rules, rather than regarding Europe as a perennial irritation. I wish the national reform programme well.
Lord Clinton-Davis
The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, asked a lot of highly relevant questions. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer them.
I start by paying tribute to the sub-committee’s chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain. She is a guiding example in what a chairman should adopt. She chaired the sub-committee with skill and charm, and has enabled the sub-committee to work with undoubted success. Part of that success has been to enable all members of the committee to have their say. I thank the noble Baroness very much.
Charm, of course, is not always disarming. The noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, has demonstrated that today. I have a high regard for him, as he well knows, but he is something of an optimist, where pessimism is not the right answer but something between optimism and pessimism would not be averse.
To quote the former press secretary of President Eisenhower:
“One day I sat thinking, almost in despair; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said reassuringly: ‘Cheer up, things could get worse’. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse”.
I think the same of the present Government’s policy: things will certainly get much worse. The Minister failed to see that as a possibility in any way. For example, their comments about unemployment are dealt with in paragraph 3 on page 2 of the report, which says,
“getting the unemployed back to work … the Commission calls for Member States to design benefits to reward return to work”—
by—
“linking training and job search … to benefits”—
and by increasing the—
“coherence between the level of income taxes … and unemployment benefits”.
How on earth has that got any relevance to the present unemployment problems? Of course we ought to adopt the ideas, but they are only part of the solution, not the entire solution.
Unhappily, the current facts indicate a rather different situation. They will, in most of Europe, form a vastly different situation: one of rising unemployment, probably to very high levels which will have serious political, as well as economic, problems. In the final paragraph of this report, the commission addresses part of the problem, but certainly not its entirety. It concentrates its fire on some unnamed member states with inflexible labour laws, but who are they? We do not know. That is hidden from view. The UK Government go to the other end of the spectrum. This situation is entirely wrong. In my view moderation, which calls for a modus vivendi, is the preferred remedy.
What does the second paragraph on page 4 really mean? It is full of verbiage but what does it mean? The situation cannot be approached in the way that the Government are doing. They have to be clear about the position, and that is certainly not the case.
I turn to the United Kingdom National Reform Programme 2011. I depart from the complacency which the noble Lord assumed at the beginning of this debate. I cannot endorse the programme that is advanced. It is long on verbiage and short on experience. Myths replace truths. It is extremist in tone and distorts recent history. It lives in hope, ignoring real problems that exist.
Paragraph 1.3 of the introduction is a repetition of the old canards and a strenuous refusal to recognise the mistakes which the Government are making. Is the Minister entirely convinced that the Government have 100 per cent of the answers? No Government have succeeded so far as that is concerned.
While trying to play a constructive role in the sub-committee, I have real doubts about the present European Commission and, indeed, about our Government: one mirrors the other. Despite significant problems, our economy was growing in 2010 at an annual rate of about 4 per cent. Now all that has changed disastrously, with a collapse of consumer confidence and a refusal on the part of many businesses to invest. None of this is confronted by the Commission or the Government.
The current orthodoxy reflected by the European Commission and others is that demand must be diminished by 1.5 per cent over the next four years. Inflation is likely to increase and personal disposable income is likely to decline. Those are not simply my words but those of many economic experts. All this will be accompanied by an inexorable rise in unemployment. My own view is that when all this happens—I do not say “if”—there will be an enduring political fallout. Ordinary people will, regrettably, be affected. They will be worse off than they were 12 months ago.
Labour certainly made many mistakes when in government but it is quite untrue that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling left Britain on the brink of bankruptcy. That has been repeated many times by Ministers. However many times it is repeated, it is completely untrue. I hope against hope that Britain and the European Commission will pursue policies both of job creation and growth over a period of years. Wages must not be cut and the taxes of the squeezed middle should be dealt with in a similar way. Of course we cannot ignore the situation, but it has to be handled in a rather different way from that of the present Government. That is a way to disaster. That is my view. Others may have a different view; but that is what I really think. In my submission, all this demands a radically different approach from that of the Government and of the European Commission.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate, not least because of its focus on the valuable documents before us—those provided by the Treasury, by the Office for Budget Responsibility and, of course, the extensive work done by the European Union Committee of this House. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, on her work in the committee, to which tribute has been paid during the course of the debate, and on her contribution this afternoon.
It is also a timely debate, for while the situation of the UK economy at the turn of the year was grave, today it is worse. In the first half of 2010, it should be recognised that under the recovery strategy put in place by my right honourable friend Alistair Darling the economy grew at an annual rate in excess of 2 per cent, with a beneficial effect on tax revenues that led to welcome reductions in the deficit that were substantially in excess of what the forecasts had predicted. Now the economy has effectively ground to a halt and there has been no growth at all since the third quarter of last year. Indeed, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said last week that the performance of the UK had deteriorated markedly since the autumn, that economic output would grow by just 1.4 per cent and that the weak recovery would feed through to lower tax revenues. That meant that even if the spending plans are met over the next four years, the public sector deficit will substantially exceed the Government’s professed target. Yesterday, the Bank of England downgraded its growth forecasts and added in the extra spice of a predicted rise in inflation in the not-too-distant future to 5 per cent. This is a new coalition of low growth and high inflation.
As this debate is set in a European context, what of convergence? How are our major European partners doing on the road to recovery and in the face of rising commodity prices that we also confront? Germany has growth at around 3 per cent, with inflation at 2.6 per cent. That is almost double UK growth and half our predicted inflation rate. France has growth at 2 per cent with inflation at 2 per cent—higher growth and lower inflation. Italy has growth at 1.5 per cent with inflation at 2.5 per cent. Growth is about the same as ours, but with much lower inflation.
Indeed, despite all the financial problems in the eurozone, the eurozone as a whole is forecast to grow just as fast as the UK this year, with less than half the UK’s rate of inflation. The new UK coalition of low growth and high inflation is just like another coalition that I can think of—it tends to bring out the worst elements in each partner. Low growth undermines productivity, stoking the fires of inflation. High inflation not only cuts growth of demand by cutting real income, it also means that Britain becomes less competitive at home and abroad. Inflation is likely to erode all the advantage that we obtained, particularly in our manufacturing industry, from the devaluation a couple of years ago.
I referred to the Treasury documents. They are indeed valuable, because they contain clear, succinct statements of the Government’s economic strategy. It is particularly well put in paragraph 2.10 of the 2010-11 Convergence Programme for the United Kingdom, which states that the policy has four components: cutting the deficit to promote confidence; monetary policy to secure price stability—it is pretty obvious how well that is working—reform of financial regulation; and microeconomic policies to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business. Underpinning all that is the deficit reduction programme and the rate at which the Government want to see that programme completed. The link that the Government make between deficit reduction and growth is very clear. On page 7, we are told:
“Tackling the deficit is essential as it will: reduce the UK’s vulnerability to further shocks or a loss of market confidence, which could force a much sharper correction; underpin private sector confidence, supporting growth and job creation over the medium term”.
That is what serious economists, such as the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, call the confidence fairy theory of growth, where the confidence fairy is like the tooth fairy, but with a bit less credibility. Sad to say, the confidence fairy does not seem to have sprinkled much stardust on the UK economy. Not only has consumer confidence plummeted over the past six months, the recently updated survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants reveals that,
“business confidence has fallen sharply over the past three quarters”.
The chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply stated last month that in the construction industry:
“Confidence remains at a historically low level as the number of jobs continues to drop”.
We have rising inflation and falling confidence. No wonder that in April, the UK's manufacturing sector grew at the slowest pace for months. On page 8 of Convergence Programme for the United Kingdom, there is a valuable table. It compares the impact on the deficit of what is called the policy inherited by the Government—in other words, Alistair Darling's strategy to halve the deficit in four years—with the Government's policy of eliminating the deficit in four years, the clear implication being that Labour's policy was just a timid version of that of the present Government.
That is a quite incorrect implication. The thinking behind Labour's policy was and is entirely different from the policy stance of this Government. The coalition argues that cutting the deficit is the prerequisite of growth, whether via the confidence fairy or microeconomic measures—something that I will talk about in a moment. Labour argues that the only way to secure a sustainable reduction in the deficit is for the economy to grow. Preserving, as far as possible, a steady rate of demand is the key to securing growth. That is exactly what was happening in the first half of last year. Exactly the opposite is happening now.
It is only fair to ask whether the fourth element in the coalition's economic plan, the microeconomic measures, will achieve what seems to be beyond even the confidence fairy's magic wand. Of course, there are some sensible sounding measures; and I would be the first to recognise them. There is a focus on science and research and development, on apprenticeships and on tax incentives for entrepreneurs. Sadly, when we look more closely, the actual measures are either too small or badly targeted. Research and development tax changes sound good until one realises that they benefit just 7,000 of the 4.8 million small firms in this country. The entrepreneurs’ relief sounds good until one realises that the benefit will go to just a few hundred people. The idea that higher education is being put on a “sustainable financial footing”, when this week David Willetts, the Member of Parliament and Minister, has produced another dimension of uncertainty with regard to higher education, indicates that the Government’s funding projection for higher education is beyond a joke.
However, of even more concern is the idea that at the heart of the growth strategy is a policy to,
“create the most competitive tax system in the G20”.
The Minister emphasised the extent to which corporation tax was going to be reduced. As we all know, the problem with corporation tax is that it is an extraordinarily efficient device for enhancing capacity for tax avoidance. Of course, there is nothing wrong with lowering taxes to create the right climate for business when it is part of a wider growth strategy that includes finance for industry, increased investment in research and higher education, and the maintenance of growing demand, which is the key motivation to invest. However, when cutting taxes and deregulation are central to the strategy, there is a risk of a race to the bottom—a risk that we will be involved in competitive tax-cutting, which has the effect of draining the Government of the funding they need for vital investment in infrastructure and other foundations of competitive success. Will low growth, weak regulation and low taxes build a manufacturing industry in this country to compete with Germany? I think that the answer is clear.
However, we can leave to the Office for Budget Responsibility the final verdict on the Government’s so-called growth strategy, which is at the heart of this debate in relationship to our perspective on Europe. Considering the growth measures in the recent Budget, the OBR concluded that the impact on growth would be “minimal”. No wonder. Without the prospect of growth, there is no incentive to invest, however low taxes might be.
Of course, we all recognise that economic forecasting is a hazardous activity, indulged in when projections over 10 to 15 years enable one to avoid some of the harsh realities of the immediate and clear future. Why do we need the crystal ball when the book is open before us? Under the coalition Government, the recovery has stopped in its tracks, with no growth since the third quarter of 2010. The previous Government’s strategy of supporting the growth of demand in the recovery process has been replaced by the economics of low growth allied with high inflation—a coalition perfectly designed to reduce confidence, discourage investment, postpone recovery and, as the national institute has argued, reduce tax revenues in due course and therefore make the deficit problem more acute. This is the world of the Government’s economics, and the Minister will no doubt set out to defend them once again.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we have had an interesting and valuable debate. It got into a new gear towards the end. We were having some very positive and practical suggestions about the content of the documents that we are talking about today and how they should be handled both domestically and in Europe, and then we suddenly went off into hyperspace, thanks to the contribution of the noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Davies of Oldham. My response, therefore, will be in two parts. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I think my noble friend Lady O’Cathain was criticising Europe for a lack of oomph in relation to Lisbon. She certainly got the debate off with plenty of positive oomph but we ended with a lot of tired hot air coming from certain of the Benches.
I start by confirming that we will be reporting to the Commission each year. We are required to report on the UK’s economic and budgetary position, which is part of our commitment under the stability and growth pact. This is, of course, to ensure that we can help to maintain an appropriate level of macroeconomic policy co-ordination, which in itself contributes to stability and growth across the economic union. This is where the debate, particularly in its second half, presents some difficulties. What we get from certain noble Lords on the opposition Benches is all carping and critique but absolutely no alternative. The NRP and convergence programme is clear and comprehensive—not remotely complacent, to use the charge of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis.
Lord Clinton-Davis
I meant the Minister rather than the Government as a whole.
Lord Sassoon
It would be nice to know what on earth the Opposition have to offer and we could then have a meaningful debate about the alternatives. Only this morning, one of Gordon Brown’s close former Treasury and Downing Street advisers, Mr Dan Corry, wrote an article in the City A.M. newspaper, headed:
“Balls must offer alternative instead of carping”.
I would insert the names of a couple of noble Lords for “Balls”.
The article states:
“Balls and Miliband … should spend time developing and articulating what Labour’s economic strategy for growth is, and why it can work. That is the real task ahead and they need to get to it”.
I very much address those remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, and it would be much easier if next time we had a debate when we knew the alternative.
What underpins the plans is a,
“strong and credible multi-year fiscal deficit reduction plan … essential to ensure debt sustainability”.
Those are not my words but the words of the IMF in September last year, and that is what we are talking about this afternoon. Of course there are issues on which we are not remotely complacent as a Government. We have said all along that the recovery will be choppy and difficult. Yes, we recognise that inflation will be high this year but it is forecast by independent forecasters at the OBR and elsewhere to be coming down very significantly in 2012. We could trade all sorts of critiques about our plans all night, but one of the latest commentators with immense credibility on this, the US Treasury Secretary, said only recently that he was impressed with the basic strategy that had been adopted. He said that if we do not act with force to stabilise confidence, we will be confined to a much worse outcome economically. When asked whether we were going too fast, the US Treasury answered, “I don’t think so”.
We could spend a long time going over the substance of the Government’s basic economic strategy but I would merely say that the debate confirms that we certainly have a very clear strategy. It is at the heart of the documents we are discussing today. As I say, it would be nice in due course for the Opposition to come forward with something of an alternative if they think that our plans are not appropriate for the economy.
In the rest of the debate, many constructive points were made. I will first address issues to do with consultation, the way in which the document was presented and how it might evolve. A number of useful policy and other issues were raised; I may have time to address a few of them. Similarly, a group of points was raised concerning the handling in Europe of the NRP and the convergence programme, and how the process will go forward. I will take the points broadly in those groupings.
I turn first to the nature of the process that led to the document. My noble friend Lady O’Cathain and the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, asked about consultation and the inclusiveness of the process. Certainly I can confirm that as we drew up the growth plan that underpins the document, we consulted all those parts of society that my noble friend mentioned—NGOs, the private sector, civil society partners, local authorities and so on—and we will continue to engage in this process as we consult on the next iteration of the Government's growth plans.
As far as concerns the nature of the document, the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, was suitably challenging and positive about the way in which the NRP and Europe 2020 should be presented. It would be great if the enthusiasm that he shows for making this a more popular document in which a wider set of people was interested could be fulfilled. However, we should not be overambitious in this area. I very much take to heart some of his suggestions about the way in which the document could be structured. We are, in particular when it comes to setting out the bottlenecks, following a template that Europe sets for us. The noble Lord suggested that the document should show what has changed from year to year. I agree with him. This is the first full NRP under Europe 2020, and I am sure that future documents will chart progress from year to year.
The noble Lord has very high standards and perhaps was a little uncharitable about some of the themes that were not in the document, such as the impact on people. Our aim was to give the document more colour, flavour, appeal and interest to a broader readership. Noble Lords will know that there are a number of boxes throughout the document that give practical studies of the way in which some of the reform ideas can operate, whether through colleges, major companies, small businesses or voluntary organisations. I take the noble Lord's point, but we worked hard to make sure that the document contained illustrations from a broad section of society of how the themes in the NRP should operate.
I turn now to one or two specific policy areas to which attention was drawn. The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, referred in particular to employment and labour law. This theme was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis. I should like to assure the noble Baroness that as we go forward with our reform work, employment law will be at the heart of it. As my right honourable friend the Chancellor said only yesterday at the Institute of Directors conference, the Government will publish a detailed timetable for the wholesale review of employment law in this country. It will include plans to review the unlimited penalties currently applied in discrimination employment tribunals, to simplify the administration of the national minimum wage, to review the TUPE regulations and to reform the consultation period for collective redundancies. The Government of course recognise that some of these issues may be controversial but, as we go forward with a challenging reform programme, it is essential and necessary that we leave no stone unturned, including in the area of employment law.
The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, questioned whether the NRP was thin on green detail—for example, on energy policy. Although I am sure that the noble Lord has seen it, I would point out that there is a section on climate change and energy which details the Government’s key objectives and policy actions in that area. Of course they cannot give the full detail, but the underlying policy documents are referenced in the NRP. More generally, on the question of a transition to the low-carbon economy, the announcement in the Budget of the carbon price floor sets a very challenging underpinning and basis on which investment can be made in the range of energy projects which we need going forward in this country, including, critically, in the low-carbon space.
The NRP sets out for each bottleneck and target the Government’s key objectives and details the policy action being taken forward towards meeting those objectives. As I have described already, we have examples of the way in which stakeholders are implementing these policies. Although the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, may challenge the structure of the document, it is very much responding to the way in which the European Commission would like to see it. We have tried to make it as illustrative as it can be, but of course we will take note of any suggestions as we think about the second and future iterations of it.
My noble friend Lord Newby raised a number of questions, including a very important one about trade and the Doha round. Of course he is right that Europe needs to become one of the key engines of world trade. I can confirm that the Government support concluding the Doha development round this year, but I would also bracket that by saying that there is another important European dimension to this. We want the European Union to build on the success of recent bilateral free trade agreements—that with Korea in particular—and further agreements to be concluded with India, Canada and Singapore this year. I am grateful to my noble friend for drawing attention to that. Europe has an important role to play on both Doha and the bilateral agreements and we will be pressing it forward in both those dimensions.
I turn now to some of the other Europe-wide issues and the process points on the documents. My noble friend Lord Newby asked whether the EU has its own bottlenecks and what is it doing about them. That is absolutely the right question to ask, and it will certainly strengthen my own resolve to make sure that we put the institutions at the heart of Europe on the spot in terms of identifying the bottlenecks in the areas for which they are responsible. Principally that means strengthening and deepening the single market, the free trade issues to which my noble friend drew attention, and reducing regulatory burdens at the EU level. Those are issues that we press vigorously with Europe, but his read-across on the bottleneck theme is an interesting one, although this particular exercise is principally one for individual member states.
On how this is now being addressed, my noble friend Lady O’Cathain asked about the robustness of discussions. They are indeed robust and I hope that, as we get into the key discussions that will take place over the summer, they will continue to be so. There are some interesting differences perhaps of expectation about the nature of the process going forward. I have to say that on balance I am probably more in tune with the way the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, characterised at the beginning of her speech the nature of the scrutiny process and the expectations we should have of it rather than with my noble friend Lord Newby. What is critical about this is that these issues will be debated at heads of government level, having first been discussed at ECOFIN. Of course we cannot expect leaders to debate all the fine detail, but what is important about this—I take up a point made by my noble friend Lady O’Cathain—is that there is a basis on which national governments can be held to account. Peer group pressure by discussion at heads of government level is very important, and the UK has certainly put down a document that challenges our partners in a number of key respects.
Lastly, my noble friend asked about independent analysis. We would like to see independent analysis of the sort that the Centre for European Reform has been conducting to carry on, but of course it is independent and it is for the centre to come forward with further analysis. We would welcome that.
In conclusion, this has been a full and interesting debate. The UK has laid down an NRP and a CP which are challenging documents in that they show how we are going to reverse the trend that we have seen over the past decade to create an economy that is more balanced and one in which the deficit is brought under control. These are plans that we will drive through and plans on the basis of which we will participate enthusiastically in exerting peer pressure on our member state partners. We will use this process as far as we can to enhance Europe’s fiscal disciplines and to encourage the structural reforms in Europe that are necessary to underpin Europe’s sustained growth.
EUC Report: Economic Growth and the UK National Reform
Baroness O'Cathain
That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on the EU strategy for economic growth and the UK national reform programme (5th Report, HL Paper 81).
National Reform Programme 2011
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Sassoon
That this House takes note of the National Reform Programme 2011.