Westminster Hall

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 14 June 2011

[Dr William McCrea in the Chair]

Coastguard Service

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Angela Watkinson)

09:30

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Dr McCrea. This is the latest in a long series of debates on the coastguard service and I look forward to debating it again with the Minister.

With the coastguard station, police officers, community support officers and the second fire engine under threat in Crosby, it struck me as odd that the Government had not carried out a risk assessment of the impact of such cuts on public safety. I want to look at the co-ordination between the emergency services and see how police, fire and ambulance services will carry out their duties without coastguard staff, who have immense local knowledge and years of experience. There will also be an impact on the RAF mountain rescue service, the British Transport police and the many volunteers who carry out vital rescue services up and down the country. I plan to look at the ability of other emergency services to support the remaining coastguards to carry out their duties following the cuts to their budgets.

In the spirit of “Have I Got News For You”, I have brought along two guest publications. The Royal Yachting Association’s members’ magazine stated:

“It is clear that changes to the current system are needed to improve the safety of boaters.”

Will the Minister tell us how organisations such as the RYA were involved in drawing up the original plans?

The second guest publication, Firefighter, is probably well known to the Minister because he has a distinguished record in the fire service.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

I would not go as far as that.

[Bill Esterson]

Well, he has served in the fire service.

Firefighter states:

“Voluntarism, good neighbourliness and a desire to perform ‘public service’ have a limited place in the fire and rescue service on safety grounds.”

I raise that comment because cuts in budgets and staffing have led to the expectation that some of the work of the emergency services will have to be delivered by volunteers. The question is whether that is a safe or acceptable risk for the public. It would be helpful to see how the emergency services and public safety will be affected by the planned cuts. Coastguard staff at Crosby work closely with the police, fire, ambulance and search and rescue services.

I have a number of questions for the Minister, some of which he will be able to answer and some of which he may have to refer to his colleagues in other Departments. The proposed changes to the UK-wide service will have a huge knock-on effect and this debate aims to tease out some of the wider issues, many of which have been briefly addressed in our previous debates.

There is a disagreement between the Minister and many coastguard staff and stakeholders about whether an adequate risk assessment was carried out as part of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency plans. It would be interesting to hear what assessment was carried out of the impact on other emergency services and on their ability to continue to support the coastguard. I include in that assessment the impact of funding cuts on voluntary organisations, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution—an organisation’s ability to raise funds may suffer as a result of the economic climate—and local volunteer services such as the Southport rescue service.

I attended a consultation meeting at which more than 200 people were present, including representatives from the Southport rescue service. Concerns were raised by the shipping industry, the oil and gas sector, search and rescue volunteers and pleasure craft users. Will the Minister tell us how far those sectors were involved in the drawing up of the original plans? It is said that staff were not asked for their views, and that has been repeated right the way through this process and by many hon. Members here today. Could the Minister confirm whether the plans were drawn up by former front-line staff with no recent operational experience? Will he tell us whether the police, fire service, ambulance service and volunteer search and rescue teams were asked for their views before the plans were drawn up?

The lack of front-line involvement in drawing up the proposals is a key flaw and a matter of grave concern for hon. Members here today and the staff and public who rely on the coastguard and other emergency services. It is at the heart of the difficulty that the Government face during this process.

The way in which Ministers pushed ahead with the proposals is similar to the way in which so many other policies are pushed through by the Government—too fast and too soon. They failed to engage with stakeholders and staff and they failed to involve the other emergency services when they drew up the plans. That led to many of the flaws that have been so graphically illustrated during the consultation. It would have been far better to get the proposals right in the first place and not to have the plans systematically dismantled by staff, volunteers, maritime experts, commercial and leisure users and the general public.

Like many other places in the country, the Merseyside fire and rescue service is set to lose its marine service as a result of Government cuts. I would be interested to hear what discussions have taken place between the MCA and the fire service about the work done jointly between coastguards and river and coastal fire and rescue boats, and what the impact of the cuts will be. Has the Minister spoken to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government about the cuts in the fire service and has he raised concerns about the impact of the cuts on Merseyside and elsewhere in the country?

Did the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government ask the Minister or the Secretary of State for Transport whether the cuts in the fire service would have any effect on the coastguards and what the impact would be on public safety? These questions would have been addressed if the fire service had been asked to help draw up the plans for the coastguard.

Co-ordination between rescue services would have helped to deliver changes without compromising safety. This story appeared in the Liverpool Echo on 5 March:

“Four people had to be rescued from a pilot boat that caught fire on the River Mersey today. The alarm was raised at around 3.10 am that the crew of the Dunlin were drifting in the river after the fire knocked out the engine. The New Brighton RNLI boat was launched to save the people onboard, who were transferred to another pilot boat, the Petrel. Firefighters tackled the blaze on the water before the stricken Dunlin was towed back to the landing stage at the Pierhead. The fire crews finished dampening the smouldering boat down at around 6 am. No-one on the Dunlin was hurt.”

There is praise there for the RNLI and the fire service, but after the cuts, will the RNLI have the contacts to respond? Will the coastguard be able to direct the RNLI or another rescue team to the scene in time?

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Dr McCrea, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this debate. Does he agree that the whole issue around the coastguard stations has opened a real hornets’ nest in a number of regions? In Northern Ireland, the Bangor station is causing something of a controversy. Does he agree with the First Minister in Northern Ireland when he said that reducing the Bangor station—the only coastguard station in Northern Ireland—to a daytime service would have a significant effect on the levels of service and rescue?

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point well. His example ties in with the concerns that I was expressing about the co-ordination of rescue services and about getting them to the scene in a timely fashion.

That point was illustrated by the example I gave concerning the Dunlin which suggested that a combination of organisations work together to effect speedy rescue services; that all of them are affected by Government plans; and that all of them have raised questions for a variety of Government Ministers. I hope that we will start to get some answers from the Minister today.

The suspicion remains that the reorganisation has been rushed and that the cuts to police, fire, ambulance and voluntary agencies that provide an emergency response have also been rushed. The cuts to all the emergency services are possibly the worst example of cuts that are happening too fast and too soon, as they will undermine the ability of the emergency services to protect the public.

The issue of local knowledge applies to all emergency services. When discussing co-ordination of emergency services, it becomes a critical issue. The loss of Crosby coastguard station would mean that the police and fire services, working with search and rescue volunteers, would be ever more crucial in identifying where incidents take place. The cuts to police, fire and voluntary organisations mean that those organisations will not be in a position to provide a replacement service for the coastguard service. That brings me to another question that I want to put to the Minister—how will that replacement service be provided? I would like an answer to that question.

The Government must now come clean on the estimates that they have made about the increased time that it will take to reach maritime incidents as a result of these closures. If the coastguard at Crosby goes, if the local fire service loses its river service and if the funding for the RNLI and other voluntary rescue services is under pressure, what will happen in incidents such as that involving the Dunlin? How will co-ordination of services happen in future? What assessment was carried out before the proposals were published? Was the RNLI asked to help draw up the plans? Did the Minister ask his ministerial colleagues about the impact of cuts to organisations such as the RNLI and whether the funding of such organisations would be affected by the slow-down in economic growth that has resulted from the Chancellor cutting public spending?

[Mike Penning]

Evidence was given to the Transport Committee the other day by the RNLI, but what evidence is there of any cuts in the RNLI services anywhere in the UK and southern Ireland? If there is no evidence, the hon. Gentleman is scaremongering and frightening communities around the country. There is no evidence at all.

[Bill Esterson]

I am glad that the Minister has asked me that question, because it highlights the fact that that was the sort of issue that was not considered when the plans were drawn up. The reason that I raise the issue is—

[Mike Penning]

indicated dissent.

[Bill Esterson]

The Minister can shake his head, scowl and express his dissatisfaction all he wants. However, the reality is that in a downturn—in tough economic times—charitable giving falls. He must know that; I think that everyone in Westminster Hall today must know that. I am interested to know what assessment was made of the impact of the downturn, not only on the RNLI but on all the voluntary organisations that provide emergency services. That is the key question and I had hoped that I had asked it clearly before.

[Mike Penning]

The specific point that the hon. Gentleman is making is that there are likely to be cuts in the service of the RNLI. The RNLI gave evidence to the Transport Committee only the other day and I myself have met local and national representatives of the RNLI on numerous occasions, and there is absolutely no evidence that such cuts will happen. To suggest that they are likely is scaremongering. As I say, I have met the relevant bodies and the Select Committee has taken evidence on this subject, so the hon. Gentleman must not scare the public by saying that there will be cuts to RNLI services.

[Bill Esterson]

I do not need lectures from the Minister about what I must and must not do. He should really think through what he is saying before he makes that sort of comment, because I am asking questions about the kind of assessment and analysis that was carried out about the impact of these plans, and about the process that was gone through when the original proposals were drawn up. This issue is of grave concern to many staff, many members of the public and many people who rely on the coastguard. It is about what analysis was done on a range of issues related to the ability of all the emergency services to protect the public. I am asking about that.

I say again that in a downturn—in tough economic times—charitable giving falls. We have already seen evidence of that. I do not know what the situation is with the RNLI. That is why I am asking the Minister about the RNLI. It is a very important question and I would be very worried if the Minister did not consider it so.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I will declare an interest. I am a member of the council of the RNLI, so I know that there really are concerns about charitable giving. Obviously, that issue is separate from the issue of the Government plans. However, the evidence given to the Transport Committee inquiry—this was said very clearly—was that in the consultation about these cuts only about four or five of the hundreds of RNLI stations across the country gave evidence. Privately, many RNLI members are concerned about the level of cuts and the disappearance of local knowledge. That is a fact. If anyone talks to RNLI members, volunteers and full-time crew members, they will find that they are concerned about the impact that these cuts will have on local knowledge and on their operations.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend has addressed some of the wider issues that the Minister raised with me. I had been looking at the issue of funding, and we have heard evidence that there is concern about that issue. The point that I was making was about the way that the Government proposals were drawn up, but my hon. Friend makes a much wider point about the impact of the loss of local knowledge and the concerns that the RNLI has raised about that issue. I think that we will discuss local knowledge in greater depth shortly.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Regarding the wider point about the RNLI, I have long-held reservations about the way that the RNLI has gone about this process of consultation. Local crews have felt that they have not been able to speak out publicly and have had to go through RNLI channels. I know people who work on lifeboats who have plenty of opinions on this subject, but their opinions have not actually been fed through the RNLI. Actually, because of the process that the RNLI has gone through, I would say that the RNLI evidence is incomplete and it could have been stronger if there had been greater input from certain crews in certain areas. I will put it no more strongly than that.

[Bill Esterson]

I welcome the points that the hon. Gentleman makes and I hope that the Minister will take them on board.

I make the point that this issue is not just about the RNLI; it is about other voluntary rescue services too. I mentioned the Southport coastguard services, members of whom I met at the consultation meeting recently. There are other services in the Crosby area and of course around the UK that carry out these rescue services. They all make similar points about co-ordination and the loss of local knowledge and expertise; they are extremely worried about that loss. In addition, they all make the same point about funding. That is why I am asking about funding—it is an important question. Neither I nor the people I have listened to feel that that has been considered.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I represent the RNLI headquarters; it is in my constituency. I had a meeting a couple of months ago with the chief executive of the RNLI, Paul Boissier. I just want to make it clear that he is an ex-admiral and an ex-commander of a nuclear submarine. The head of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is also an ex-admiral. They talk regularly and there is no holding back of views. The RNLI is in dialogue with the MCA all the time. If there were any general concerns, we would know about them. The RNLI is not holding back. There is a dialogue and a good relationship with the MCA. The RNLI wants the best service possible, so that the people who risk their lives every day can actually get out there and save lives.

[Bill Esterson]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. It is very important that there is communication at the top of the organisations involved. However, I think that everybody would accept that communication happens at many different levels and one of the main concerns about the way that these proposals have been put forward is the lack of involvement of front-line staff in the process of drawing them up. So, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point about top-level communication and I accept that point, but we also need to look at issues right the way through the organisations involved and around the UK, because the RNLI is not just one organisation in one area with one central structure. It is much more of a devolved organisation than that.

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

On the point about funding, on Saturday I met my volunteer lifeboat men in Looe who have just raised an enormous amount of money in a very short space of time for the provision of a new vessel. I must make it clear that there may not have been the impact on RNLI fundraising that the hon. Gentleman has suggested. However, there is a lot of concern among the people working at the sharp end that the proposals will adversely impact on their doing their jobs and on marine safety, and that needs to be put on the record as well. The hierarchy might be putting a particular message forward, but that is not what we are hearing at the coal face.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Lady speaks from tremendous personal experience, and I know that all Members recognise her involvement in the matter and the sadness around the loss of her husband. I pay tribute to her involvement in putting the case for the coastguard. She has made a very good point about the RNLI, and I am pleased to hear the evidence about fundraising—that is very important. The reason for my question is to tease out that sort of information and to look at the wider impact.

I have raised the issue of the impact on the fire service, and my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) has submitted a series of written questions about cuts to the maritime incident response group by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Does the Minister have any further information on that?

Many Members have expressed concerns about how the plans were drawn up. The maritime industry was asked for its views about pleasure craft users and the fishing industry, but was it asked about the impact of the cuts in fire, police and ambulance services and about the loss of the ability to co-ordinate services?

On the police, Merseyside police authority says that it is not recruiting new officers. It expects to lose 480 officers over two years, and its budget for community support officers ends in two years’ time. The Liverpool Echo estimates that up to 800 front-line officers will go over four years, and across England and Wales the figure is 12,000 over two years. Has the Minister discussed with the Home Secretary the impact of such job cuts in the police service? How will police officers replace the relationships they have built up with coastguards, and will police officers be available to cover some of the work done by coastguards and search and rescue volunteers who tell us that they will call it a day because of fears for their own safety without the co-ordination of trusted, local coastguards with years of experience? If the Government perform the U-turn that they should, what will happen to the joint working with police and fire services anyway?

I have asked many questions about co-ordination, about the impact of the MCA plans on police, fire and voluntary emergency services connected to the coastguard, and about the effect of the cuts on the ability of emergency services to support the coastguard, whether or not the Government close most of the coastguard stations. The more I investigate the matter, the clearer it is that this is yet another issue governed by pound signs rather than by efficiency, putting saving money before saving lives. A recent Crosby Herald article stated that the original review had excluded Crosby coastguard station in my constituency. Crosby was hastily reinserted, however, when Ministers were reminded that the work force there were well organised and would almost certainly put up a fight. That is the view of staff and of local people. The suggestion is that the consultation was a sham and that Crosby was going to be closed whatever the outcome. We will clearly see before very much longer whether that is true.

I am sure that the Minister will remind me of his visit to Crosby. He told staff there that the coastguard was like the fire service and that he, as a firefighter, did not need to be told where the fire was. It was pointed out to him that along the coast of north-west England there are many mud and sand banks, but no roads, and creeks and gullies with similar names, and that it could easily take someone who did not know the area many minutes to identify the correct location to which to send search and rescue. A delay of a few minutes could well cost lives.

My questions today suggest that if a coastguard station closes, the lack of local knowledge could become even more critical because of the cuts to other emergency services. The coastguard, the other emergency services and the public all need assurances that the Government’s plans for the coastguard are not one of their many political cuts, and that they will reconsider the proposals. The reality is that the coastguard cuts, along with the cuts to the other emergency services, go too far and too fast. They have not been planned or thought through, and they should be reversed.

09:49

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. I am pleased that we are looking at the co-ordination role of the coastguard co-ordination stations, which has not always been focused on in other debates, and at their role in overseeing incidents at sea. It is the local coastguards who pull together the emergency services during an incident and who, over many years, have built up relationships with those services. We remove that local relationship at our peril.

I firmly believe, as did my late husband, that there should be modernisation of coastguard equipment to allow, for example, the position of vessels transmitting with the voluntary class B automatic indicator system to be identified easily, but that there should be no cull of marine rescue co-ordination centres. Because of my personal position, I have received representations from concerned sea users all over the country, but it is appropriate for me to concentrate on my own area.

The marine rescue co-ordination centre in Brixham covers my constituency of South East Cornwall, and has built up unique experience from so many incidents over many years. The search and rescue area covered by Brixham stretches from Dodman Point halfway along the south coast of Cornwall to Exmouth in Devon, and it is essential to emphasise something I am sure the Minister will recognise and agree with—that local knowledge of topography saves lives. The care that I was afforded on 25 March by Looe RNLI crew and Brixham and Looe coastguards was beyond anything I could have expected, and I thank all those involved in the emergency services, and indeed the south-west fishing industry, for their kindness.

This past Saturday I spent time with my local RNLI personnel and my local volunteer coastguards, who are all concerned about the Minister’s proposals. They feel that he has not had the opportunity to speak to people who operate at the sharp end, and I would like to invite the Minister to visit Looe—if his busy schedule allows it—to hear for himself their concerns.

Some examples of co-ordinated sea rescues undertaken by Brixham are the Santa Anna, the MV Willy, the MV Kodima, the Ice Prince, the Kukawa and the Bothnia Stone.

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

Would I be right in saying that Brixham dealt with 1,300 incidents in 2010, saving 300 lives? Its work is absolutely valuable. When we talked about introducing technology, we said that we would move to a paperless society, but we have not, and although technology undoubtedly has a place—we need modernisation—without local knowledge we will not save the numbers of lives that we have done in the past.

[Sheryll Murray]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I was coming on to the number of incidents. As far as technology goes, it was only last Wednesday that the London ambulance service system failed, and it was recording emergency calls with pen and paper.

The incidents involving MV Willy and MV Kodima both happened off the coast of my own county division, when I sat on Cornwall county council. I witnessed at first hand the superb co-ordination provided by the Brixham marine rescue co-ordination centre, with the marine emergency rescue organisations and the Cornwall fire service and its emergency planning department. I doubt that the Minister has experienced that unique way of working within a coastal fire and rescue service, but I appreciate that he has absolute expertise as far as an inland fire and rescue service is concerned.

I would like to highlight in more detail three incidents in which Brixham MRCC has been involved in co-ordination with other emergency services. The first occurred just before midnight—that is, outside daylight hours—on 13 January 2008 and involved the Torbay and Salcombe RNLI lifeboats, coastguard rescue helicopter India Juliet, HMS Cumberland and several merchant vessels. They proceeded to merchant vessel Ice Prince, with 20 persons on board, 27 miles south-east of Start point after its cargo shifted in heavy weather and it began to list to port. The vessel was abandoned by 12 crewmen, one with a suspected broken leg, and they were airlifted to Portland by helicopter. The remaining eight were rescued by Torbay lifeboat and conveyed to Brixham. A French tug attended the scene, and damage was assessed in daylight.

The second incident occurred on 11 October at 8.38 am and involved a missing person. Brixham took broadcast action and tasked the warship Westminster and coastguard helicopter R106 to assist the French coastguard at Cross Corsen in a mid-channel search for an 80-year-old male reported missing from passenger vessel Balmoral.

Finally, on 10 February this year at 6.43 pm—again, outside daylight hours—Brixham coastguard received a mayday distress call from fishing vessel Amber J reporting that fishing vessel Admiral Blake had collided with MV Boxford approximately 30 miles south of Start point. The Amber J reported that two crewmen from the Admiral Blake had entered the water and only one had been recovered. Salcombe RNLI’s all-weather lifeboat, coastguard rescue helicopter 106 from Portland and Royal Navy helicopter 193 were tasked to search for the missing crewman. After a mayday relay, numerous vessels assisted in the search, along with a rapid rescue craft from the Boxford. After a brief search, the missing crewman was located by the Boxford’s rapid rescue craft, winched aboard the coastguard rescue helicopter and taken to hospital. Rescue helicopter 193 stood by while the Salcombe lifeboat assessed the damage to the Admiral Blake. After the damage was assessed and controlled, the Admiral Blake was towed back to Plymouth, where the Plymouth lifeboat met the vessel and took her into port. That shows essential local partnership working among our local coastguard stations at the moment.

Complicated incidents at Brixham have increased year on year since 1998, when 767 incidents were recorded. In 2002, there were 903 incidents, in 2003 there were 1,025, in 2009 there were 1,324 and last year there were 1,355. Of greater concern is the fact that this year, there have already been 546 incidents, an increase of 90 from the same period last year. I acknowledge that, taken at face value, the number of incidents at Falmouth appears higher, at 971. However, that can be broken down into 233 incidents similar to those that I have just described and another 738 that occurred under the international global maritime distress safety system. Some of those incidents might have been search and rescue, but others would have been passed to the relevant MRC centre to deal with.

I am afraid that I must take issue with the Minister’s comments about Falmouth’s international role during a debate on 2 February this year. He said:

“Falmouth is internationally renowned for its international rescue capabilities. If we have a problem in Falmouth, where does that get picked up? Nowhere.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 320WH.]

He is clearly unaware that Brixham takes over GMDSS when Falmouth suffers an outage, and has taken over the system every Thursday for the past 12 months. Perhaps he will take the opportunity when he speaks to correct the statement that he made in February. It would also be interesting to hear from him whether there have been any incidents in which both stations in a pair have gone down at the same time.

As I am sure the Minister knows, Falmouth was allocated GMDSS due to its proximity to Goonhilly Downs satellite earth station, which has closed. Many incidents are subsequently passed on to other coastal co-ordination stations, and it is unfair of him to include them in the number of incidents dealt with by Falmouth alone.

I am disappointed that the Minister chose to describe Brixham and Falmouth as “ridiculously close” during the Adjournment debate last week. In fact, Brixham and Portland, Milford and Swansea, Thames and Yarmouth, Portland and Solent, and Forth and Aberdeen have fewer road miles between them, and if we measure as the crow flies, we can also include Holyhead and Liverpool on the list. Does he consider those stations to be ridiculously close?

Brixham MRCC is bought and paid for. We now need to cover only the station’s running costs. It contains an operations co-ordination room, an emergency planning room, a coastal safety manager’s office, a sector manager’s office, coastguard rescue equipment for the Berry Head rescue team, a coastguard rescue emergency vehicle, a marine surveyor’s office, a coastguard training office for the region and an aerial site, and it still has space to expand. Brixham has been approached to lease a whole floor to another emergency service for its offices and operation area. If the property is sold, new premises will need to be found and bought for all of the above.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady is making a fantastic speech. It underlines the fact that the more we find out about the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s plans and the more detail emerges, the more concerned I become, as I am sure do other hon. Members, about what the MCA was thinking when it first took its plans to the Minister. I am sure that he would not have started the process if he had known the sort of detail that the hon. Lady has described.

[Sheryll Murray]

I am absolutely certain that my hon. Friend the Minister has the best intentions, and that he does not intend to make savage cuts to the best rescue service in the world.

Brixham is the busiest fishing port in England. It has the third highest number of leisure vessels registered on CG66, the voluntary safety identification scheme, at 2,200, and that number is increasing daily. It has a search and rescue area and is a popular holiday destination. Brixham has unique expertise in UK search and rescue. Due to its position along the busiest shipping lanes in the world, it has gained unique search and rescue expertise from incidents such as those that I have listed.

I end with a message that I hope the Minister will accept in the spirit in which it is given. He says that we will not end up with the proposal outlined in his consultation document, and I welcome those words. However, he must accept that by issuing a five-year-old proposal that takes massive cuts as a starting point, he has effectively moved the starting line as well as the goalposts. Coastguards all around the coast have told me that their response would have been different if they had not been working with a proposal to cut MRCC numbers and hours so drastically. That is why it is essential that we start with a blank sheet of paper.

No one knows better than I how dangerous the sea is and how important it is to co-ordinate all rescue services locally when an incident occurs at sea. The proposals remind me of 1994, when two fishermen lost their lives off the Cornish coast, below a recently closed coastguard post, and local people decided to open and restore the visual watch. That could not happen once we lose our marine rescue co-ordination centres around the coast, because they are professional. I make a plea to the Minister to think again about the closures. He has used examples of other nations operating with fewer stations, but has failed to mention that in those countries the coastguards operate in different ways, with different responsibilities. Yes, modernise, and yes, have better equipment, but please do not destroy the best coastguard service in the world.

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her courage in taking part in this debate. Several Members have indicated that they want to speak and I would like to get as many of them in as possible. However, we have to commence the winding-up speeches at 10.40 at the latest. I am, therefore, in the hands of the Members that I will call.

10:11

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing this debate on such an important topic. My constituency of South Down in Northern Ireland has two fishing ports, so I know just how important the Bangor coastguard station is. I know of the necessity of maintaining a service that has developed a comprehensive knowledge of our seas. It is important that we keep the coastguard station in Bangor to protect those who use the seas around the island of Ireland, and those who use our coastal and inland waterways, including, in the case of Northern Ireland, those who use inland locations and are subject to search and rescue. Many of the people involved and those in other emergency services risk their lives to protect not only those in the fishing industry, but people involved in recreation and tourism.

The Government will announce their decision by 19 July and it is fair to say that the process has been marked by uncertainty for many people throughout Northern Ireland. Such uncertainty must give cause for concern regarding the outcome. The Government now seem to be re-evaluating and rowing back from their initial proposals. It is clear that they underestimated the value of the local knowledge developed over time by our vastly experienced coastguard personnel, and that they were prepared to risk losing this vital asset. I ask the Minister: was that really the purpose of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s proposals, or did it have better thoughts at heart about protecting the service?

It is vital that the Minister and the Government listen to those experts who have spoken up during the consultation and arrive at a decision that safeguards those who use our waters. I and other hon. Members from Northern Ireland believe that there is a duty to protect our coastguard station in Northern Ireland and to ensure that it can operate at full-time capacity. I recently attended a meeting hosted by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) in Bangor, which the Minister, along with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, also kindly attended. It was made clear to the Minister, via a range of robustly made proposals by staff, that it was possible to retain the coastguard station in Northern Ireland on a full-time basis by using other measures and means. I and other hon. Members from Northern Ireland would like to hear the Minister’s response to those proposals in advance of the final outcome, because it is particularly important.

The other key point is that the Bangor coastguard station co-ordinates closely with the Irish coastguard. We would, therefore, lose out on that vital resource for protecting all of Ireland’s waterways. I recently had the opportunity to raise the issue with the Taoiseach—the Irish Prime Minister—and it is clear that closing or downgrading the Bangor station would be a great loss not only to the people of Northern Ireland, but to the people of the Irish Republic. Indeed, it is our coastguard that is nominated by the Irish Government to respond in the case of an emergency off the Donegal coast. It cannot be overlooked or ignored that our service operates on a cross-border, north-south basis on the island of Ireland.

Another difficulty in shutting the service and depending on a coastguard station in Liverpool—I use these words with caution, considering the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central—is that the island of Ireland operates with the Ordnance Survey at the point of origin, which is totally incompatible with the English mapping system. That is another reason why we need a full-time coastguard station in Northern Ireland.

All those concerns have been reflected during the consultation process. Indeed, I am reminded of the words of the chairman of the North West mountain rescue team in Northern Ireland, who expressed concern that the closure of the station would adversely affect the relationship between the Northern Ireland coastguard and the Irish Republic.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

The hon. Lady has referred to the fact that the Northern Ireland coastguard also covers Donegal, but part of the reciprocation for that is access to the Irish Republic’s search and rescue helicopters. Does she share my concern that a breakdown in those closely maintained relationships on the island of Ireland could cause political difficulties and jeopardise some of that close co-operation?

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that important point. I discussed the issue with the Taoiseach last week. He mentioned the need for greater north-south co-operation and made the point that the proposals could jeopardise services and the reciprocal agreement, which is vital for the running of an important maritime rescue service on the island of Ireland.

The chairman of the North West mountain rescue team said:

“The local knowledge and the rapport the NI coastguard have with the Republic’s coastguard means that we get a very effective and efficient service and I would doubt that would happen if that local knowledge disappeared.”

There is no doubt that, if the service disappeared, that would jeopardise that vital north-south arrangement on an inter-governmental basis.

[Mr MacNeil]

I note the hon. Lady’s words on efficiency but, over and above efficiency, this is a maritime insurance policy. Sometimes, we have to be careful that we are not spoiling the ship for a ha’penny worth of tar. We have to make sure that when something is needed it is there and that we do not dismantle it beforehand. In that respect, it is important that we keep Liverpool, Bangor, Clyde, Stornoway and Shetland. Losing Oban a few years ago has had its own knock-on effects and I am sure that that will come through in the inquiries that are going on at the moment. I reiterate the importance of keeping those stations and the fact that this is an insurance policy over and above efficiency.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that vital intervention. He raises the serious point of co-ordination throughout the British isles. That should be taken on board and given due recognition during the whole consultation process. I hope that the Minister will respond to that particular point in an apt and empathetic way.

In conclusion, the courage of those who devote time to rescue efforts on our shores must not be taken for granted by Government. The Bangor centre is the only full-time station in Northern Ireland and its funding must therefore be protected. As we approach the end of the consultation process—it is one month away—we must end the current state of confusion. I strongly urge the Minister to respond in a helpful way to those officials in the Bangor coastguard station who have suggested strong and compelling proposals to safeguard the service for the people of the island.

10:19

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Dr McCrea. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate and on giving us another opportunity to demonstrate the strength of feeling there is about the coastguard service.

The Government are, of course, right to consider ways of modernising the coastguard service—they must constantly look at options for improving all their services—but I want to draw their attention to my concerns about the closure of the Clyde coastguard station in Greenock, which is just outside my constituency. The tragic early death of David Cairns means that Greenock does not have a Member of Parliament at the moment, but it is incumbent on hon. Members such as myself and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark), who secured an Adjournment debate last week, to point out the importance of the Greenock coastguard station to the west of Scotland.

My constituency has many islands and peninsulas, which means its coastline is longer than that of France and that the Clyde coastguard station has a longer coastline than any of the coastguard stations to look after. Islands, peninsulas and sea lochs create a wide variety of currents and sea conditions, which is one reason why local knowledge is very important. The most spectacular area is the giant whirlpool in the Gulf of Corryvreckan. If I may put in a tourist plug, that is well worth going to see. In addition, as my constituency is on the west coast, its coastline is regularly battered by severe storms. All those factors make local knowledge very important.

I also want to stress the importance of local knowledge in differentiating between different places that have the same name. On the islands and the mainland of the west of Scotland, a large number of places are called Tarbert because Tarbert means a narrow neck of land in Gaelic. It would be easy for someone not familiar with that to send the rescue vessel to the wrong place. It is also important to be able to differentiate between, for example, East Loch Tarbert and West Loch Tarbert. They are only a few hundred yards apart as the crow flies, but one is on the Clyde and one is on the Atlantic, so it is very important for someone to know the difference between the two.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned East Loch Tarbert and West Loch Tarbert and said that one is on the Clyde and one is on the Atlantic. I would argue, of course, that one is on the Minch and one is on the Atlantic, but I am talking about the island of Harris.

[Mr Reid]

That is correct. There are plenty of other places called Tarbert, including one called Tarbet without an “r.” It would be very easy to get confused.

Those seas are sailed by a wide variety of different kinds of ships: for example, cargo ships, cruise liners, ferries, fishing boats, naval vessels—both surface and submarine—fish farm support vessels and leisure craft, in which there has been a significant increase. In addition, in the coming years, an increasing number of vessels will support offshore renewable energy installations. Over recent years, there has been a huge increase in the number of leisure craft of all kinds and it is important to remember that most of them are crewed by amateur sailors. If an incident should occur, inexperienced amateur sailors are obviously more of a challenge for coastguard staff to deal with. There are many new marinas around the coast and there will be a vast increase in leisure craft in the years to come.

Clyde station has 41 coastguard rescue teams under its control, and seafarers have received a first-class service from the Clyde coastguard station over many years. Once the Government have had an opportunity to consider the responses to the consultation, I hope that they will recognise the unique challenges posed by the area served by the Clyde coastguard station and that they will keep it open to retain the valuable local knowledge that exists. It is important to point out that, if staff are forced to relocate to Aberdeen, as appears to be the case from the Government’s proposals, that is well over 100 miles away and many staff will not be able to do so, either for family or financial reasons. Valuable local knowledge will therefore be lost.

One positive part of the Government’s proposals is that there will be a significant increase in the number of regular coastguards who will be supporting Coastguard Rescue Service volunteers. It would make sense to spread those regular coastguards across the country to minimise their travel time to where the volunteers are based and to ensure that they have contact with local emergency services. It is important to stress that getting to the remoter parts of Argyll takes a long time even from Greenock. The journey would be even longer if the support staff were travelling from Aberdeen to remote parts of the west coast all the time.

I am aware that the lease for the Clyde station comes to an end in 2012. That appears to be a major consideration in the reasoning behind the Government’s decision to close the station.

[Mr MacNeil]

Was the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I was when I mined into the MCA’s proposals and realised that, as he is saying, the lease of Clyde station is coming to an end? When I first spoke to the MCA, it was apparent from the outset that the prime driver for the decision on the Clyde station was real estate and not maritime safety. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting that.

[Mr Reid]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Real estate considerations should not be paramount. Safety should be the prime consideration and the fact that the lease is up for renewal should not be a major factor. I am sure that there are plenty of buildings that the Government could secure in the Greenock area if they wanted to continue to have a coastguard station in that area. I hope that the Government will secure further premises.

For all those reasons, the most important of which is local knowledge, I hope that the Government will recognise the importance of the Clyde coastguard station and realise that they do not want to lose its staff’s experience and expertise. I hope that they will reflect on the consultation and will agree to keep the Clyde coastguard station open.

10:19

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Thank you, Dr McCrea, for calling hon. Members from all four nations to make a contribution this morning. I join you in paying tribute to the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) for her contribution to the debate and for the courage she has shown not just today but over the year she has been a Member of Parliament. When I have been in the Chair, I have seen her contributions to debates on fishing, coastguard and coastal issues. She brings experience, knowledge and a forthright and honest opinion that we need in such discussions.

This is an important debate. The linking and co-ordination between the coastguard and other emergency services is just as important as the coastguard’s internal co-ordination among the different stations. It is absolutely vital that that happens. I welcome the fact that the Minister has been listening through the long debates we have had since December and that the Government are prepared to pause and to look again at the proposals and the consultations. That is what we were calling for originally, and I think we have achieved that.

If the Minister had taken up my offer of coming to Holyhead station, he would have been very welcome. He could have seen at first hand not just the best practice of that coastguard station, but the co-ordination with other emergency services that takes place. Throughout the process, I have argued that, as a local station, Holyhead is strategically important to the whole of the Welsh coastline and, indeed, the Irish sea. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) talked about the Irish link. That has been very important for Holyhead and RAF Valley. I want to talk about the search and rescue at RAF Valley, which is the headquarters of search and rescue for the whole of the United Kingdom. It moved there from a different part of the country because of the strategic importance of Anglesey to the whole of the United Kingdom—it is equal distance from many places in the north and the south—and also to the west in Ireland. Search and rescue at RAF Valley has been involved in scrambling to some very important rescues and incidents.

It is important and timely that we have this debate in an open and honest manner because although we are all talking about local knowledge and our local stations, we have been mindful—I pay tribute to every Member who has taken part in such debates since December—not to put down other coastguard stations. We have stressed the importance of our own areas and their strategic importance to the whole coastguard family in the United Kingdom.

In the short time available, I just want to give the Minister a few examples—I appreciate that we are rushed for time, otherwise I would have elaborated further—of the strategic importance of Holyhead in terms of search and rescue and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. On the record, I have to say that I speak regularly—on a weekly basis—with members, crews, volunteers and full-time crew members of the RNLI and that, as I indicated, I am a member of the RNLI’s general council. They are concerned that they did not get the opportunity to have their views put openly into the system, but that they were channelled through the RNLI. As I said, and as was pointed out in the evidence session to the Select Committee, only four or five out of 100 RNLI stations took part in the consultation. We have not, therefore, had a true flavour of the opinions of the RNLI.

[Naomi Long]

In Northern Ireland, many of those who work for the coastguard also volunteer for the RNLI, so the loss of personnel would have a direct implication for RNLI services.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Some people volunteer for both, or have members of their family who are in each of the emergency voluntary services. I want to echo the importance of that co-ordination. Time saves lives. Sir Alan Massey, the chief executive of the MCA, has said that there would be some time delay—he has been honest enough to acknowledge that. That could translate into the loss of lives if local knowledge and expertise is gone due to the closure of local stations.

We all want a modernised MCA with improved technology for the 21st century, but that must not be at the expense of closing local stations and losing local knowledge. I have been consistent in making that argument for many years. When my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) was the Minister and was given advice by the MCA, he carefully and rightly ignored it to an extent—not all of it—because this needed to be done properly. We now have an opportunity for a proper and open debate to look at all these issues. The consultation paper and the proposals, which the Government produced jointly with the MCA, did not allow that to happen. We have moved beyond that and we are having a better informed debate. The Government and the Minister can now come to the right decision, which is to retain the best coastguard services we have, retain local knowledge and enhance it with new technology and the best station personnel. They must improve the confidence, morale and abilities of station personnel, but also the co-ordination with the other emergency services, which are facing tough times themselves. As the Minister knows, the future of the search and rescue service has been put on hold and there is uncertainty. That causes great anxiety not just among the search and rescue people within the RAF, the MCA and the Royal Navy, but in the RNLI and other services—the family of search of rescue.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that public expectation and public confidence is critical to the Government’s overall direction of travel?

[Albert Owen]

Absolutely. I echo the point, made by hon. Members in their speeches and interventions, that the coastguard service personnel, volunteers and full-time, and the RNLI are important members of those communities too. They have strong links with other emergency services.

For the benefit of the Minister and the shadow Minister, I would like to highlight the link with the fire service. I recall a ferry adrift in Holyhead which had 1,200 to 1,400 people on board, and which had lost control. The local knowledge of the coastguard got the fire service there immediately. I have taken part in exercises with the fire service. I do not have the time to go into it, but of course the ship’s crew think that they tackle things better and that the firemen just get seasick when they come on board the vessels, and the firemen think that they do things better. The serious point is that there is regular dialogue and liaison between those important services. That could be—I believe would be—lost if we closed local stations and lost local expertise and knowledge. Time saves lives, and I think that the Minister understands that and wants to move forward. I want to work with him, and with other hon. Members, to have those strategic, important coastguard stations enhanced to do the job for the 21st century.

10:34

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), who gave what I know was a difficult, but well-heard speech.

I understand the great concerns that we have heard today. We have had numerous debates and that is why the Government are having a consultation—to hear what people say not only from this House, but local areas. I suspect that at any stage when there has been modernisation or change of the coastguard service, whether 20, 50, 70, or 100 years ago, one might have had similar concerns. The way of the world is that, years ago, we needed a lot more stations than perhaps we need today. With technology, the upskilling of the service and having to move people through a career path, there has to be change. I understand, however, that local knowledge is an issue. Indeed, Sir Alan Massey acknowledged that local knowledge has to be a key concern. I am sure that when the Government look at the consultation, that will be a key point in what they eventually decide to do.

I have really risen to make a plug for the RNLI, which I am glad has already been plugged by a number of hon. Members. It is a phenomenally good organisation with a wonderful ethos. We are very lucky, as a nation, to have an organisation that raises money, as a charity, to provide a vital service that has saved 139,000 lives since 1824. There were concerns about its income. I think that that income is holding up reasonably well, which is partly due to how people feel about the lifeboat service. Even in southern Ireland, the bucket tin collections are holding up well. Given its economic problems, that is a phenomenal tribute.

The lifeboats have had to amend and change, not least because as a nation we had a large merchant navy, fishing fleet and Royal Navy. Many people who now man our lifeboats are landlubbers who have to be trained. Poole has very good training facilities, where people can experience wave machines and go through a simulation of saving at sea. I do not want to say very much more, in order to let the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) speak. The RNLI is a phenomenal organisation. It is very well managed and organised. The fundraising is good, and people’s commitment is tremendous. This is a really dangerous job. There is a memorial outside the headquarters in Poole that lists all the lifeboat men who have died, and I was privileged to be there when that opened. The organisation has a very good outreach to many of the families who have lost loved ones in lifeboat disasters—it keeps in touch. I cannot speak highly enough of RNLI, and I think that all hon. Members appreciate what it does for our nation.

10:37

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I thank the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) for being so generous in allowing me some time to make a few points. I thank the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) for securing the debate. Rescue co-ordination in Northern Ireland raises particular challenges, and I want to touch on them.

I think that everyone supports the idea of modernisation, but there is concern in Northern Ireland that the loss of the Belfast coastguard station would be a blow not just to the North Down constituency in which it is located, but to Northern Ireland as a whole. The coastguard in Northern Ireland is held in universally high regard, and I think that that has been the case throughout its history. While people often focus on rescue at sea, and that is certainly an issue for Northern Ireland, there is also the matter that the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) raised with regard to inland search and rescue, which is also co-ordinated by the Northern Ireland coastguard. It is worth noting that in Northern Ireland, unlike in other parts of the UK, there are only two category 1 responders to emergencies: the Police Service of Northern Ireland and HM coastguard. We are all acutely aware of the significant security pressures faced by the PSNI. It is therefore important that HM coastguard can provide that search and rescue facility at a local level.

The Belfast coastguard station is the only one in the UK with a direct land border with another European state, so it fulfils a unique role in providing liaison and co-ordination with the Irish coastguard. As I said in an earlier intervention, I am concerned that some of the close working relationships, which are not just beneficial to Northern Ireland, would be lost as a result of any changes to and relocation of that co-ordination point.

I do not wish to repeat much of what has been said and I do not have the time to do so. In conclusion, I want to mention the impact on volunteerism in the RNLI. I referred specifically to the fact that people who work for the coastguard also volunteer, as do their families. Given the work of Bregenz house, those local relationships have been hugely important in encouraging people to engage with the RNLI. My concern is that, with dislocation and distance, that link might not be as effective as it has been in the past.

The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) powerfully indicated the importance of local knowledge. I cannot add anything to her comments, so I simply commend her for what she said.

I am aware that the coastguard has produced alternative proposals, and I hope that those address not only the wish for modernisation but the concerns we have raised about the Government proposals. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I trust that he will be able to provide us with additional reassurance that the Government are listening and will respond positively.

10:40

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding over the debate this morning, Dr McCrea.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on providing us with the opportunity to discuss this important matter again.

It is good to see the Minister in his place, back under pressure, which is where Ministers should be—keeps him honest. I know that he is well regarded by most Members in the House and by the shipping community, and we are also confident that he is doing everything he can to protect the service, given the coalition’s deficit plan.

As I have said before, the Opposition are not here to oppose all the coastguard reforms, nor am I a deficit denier. It is important to say straight away that the global financial crisis happened in every country—it was not a recession made in Britain, but was caused by the banks, and Labour accepts that we should have been tougher on them. Like every other country, though, we need to get the deficit down, which means cuts. We recognise the Government’s position.

However, the Tory-led coalition is creating a vicious circle in our economy because it is cutting too far and too fast. That is our fear about the coastguard proposals: they are too deep and too fast. We certainly disagree with the presentation of options, such as either Stornoway or Shetland, and we are uncomfortable with having to choose between Belfast or Liverpool—to name just two of the main locations. We therefore seek and hope to hear assurances about the future from the Minister.

We have heard from several Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central asked the central question about the role of the other emergency services and their relationship with the coastguard service. The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) has more reason to be listened to on this issue than any of us—I am sure that the Minister is listening to her and her constituents. She made the point about local input. There has been huge interest in the consultation exercise, as we have heard from hon. Members. Despite the miles clocked up by the Minister, about which I am sure he will tell us in due course, areas such as Cumbria and the constituency represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), would have been pleased to have the opportunity to meet the Minister as well, to express their real concerns about the possible closure of the Liverpool station. The hon. Member for South East Cornwall made her points on local knowledge and the case for Brixham strongly—as ever.

The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) made a powerful case for the station at Bangor and the international implications given its cross-border arrangements. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) mentioned Greenock and, generously, that our departed and much missed friend, David Cairns, championed this matter when in the House representing his town. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned language issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), who has spoken knowledgeably on the question on several occasions, again raised the issue of Holyhead. His role in the RNLI council gives him greater insight. The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who was generous with his time, and gracious as ever, rightly applauded the RNLI and paid tribute to everyone involved. Given that he is the MP for RNLI headquarters, which I had the pleasure of visiting during my time as shipping Minister, he is the right person to make such comments. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) repeated the concern of her constituents—and more widely—about the future of their station.

I wish to ask about the maritime incident response group, mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Sefton Central and for Ynys Môn, and about the future of the emergency towing vessel contract in association with the reform of the coastguard services. I submitted some questions to the Minister, but can he furnish more information on top of his answers of 26 April? First, he addressed the maritime incident response group, which was set up to help fight fires on board vessels around Britain’s coast, given the gap in our armoury:

“We are finalising a risk assessment on the review of Maritime Incident Response Group which we hope to publish shortly.”

I wondered if that was likely to be soon. He also said a consultation exercise was going on with the fire and rescue services, and:

“Final decisions on future arrangements will be taken once this consultation is complete.”—[Official Report, 26 April 2011; Vol. 527, c. 91W and 92W.]

Has the consultation been completed? Finally on the response group, are discussions with the Department for Communities and Local Government complete, given that it has responsibility for Britain’s fire services? What was the outcome of those discussions?

The question of the emergency towing vessel contract still causes concern, which was expressed most powerfully by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) in the February debate because of the Donaldson inquiry and its recommendation about the contract and the £100 million cost.

[Mr MacNeil]

Last week I happened to be in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, where the West Nordic Council was meeting—Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, with Denmark present as well. Coastguard safety generally was discussed, but emergency towing vessels were taken especially seriously because of the increase in cruise ships in the north Atlantic, and that applies to the north and the west of Scotland. We should be playing our part internationally—international countries with difficulties were mentioned, Iceland in particular is having them, but it is not cutting back on maritime safety. In fact, Iceland is going in the opposite direction of travel. There is a lesson there for us, as well as for international safety—anyone we know could be on a cruise ship.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman speaks knowledgeably on the issue, which I am grateful that he raised, and which the Minister has been considering, so an update on whether the work on the replacement service or arrangements has been finalised would be helpful. Can he say anything further, given the suggestion of some movement in the area?

I am sure that the Minister has seen the Oxford Economics report on “The economic impact of the UK’s Maritime Services Sector”. I was generously supplied with a copy by Mr Doug Barrow of Maritime UK, who is well known and highly regarded in shipping circles. The summary of this authoritative report reminds us that the UK maritime services sector directly creates 227,000 jobs, contributes more than £13 billion to the UK economy and generates £3 billion plus for the UK Exchequer. It also supports considerable activity in other sectors, including direct, indirect and induced impacts supporting more than 500,000 jobs and generating more than £7 billion for the UK Exchequer. Given, in addition, the millions of recreational users of our seas and coasts, we must get the conclusions of the consultation right.

As colleagues have articulated this morning and previously, here in Westminster Hall and in the main Chamber, there is much disquiet about the initial Government proposals. The Minister has given us some encouragement in previous appearances here and at the Dispatch Box that the proposals are not set in stone. The coalition’s policy adjustments in recent months—on forests, NHS reforms, sentencing guidelines, school sport partnerships and housing benefit rules, not to mention something we might be hearing today on bins—give some encouragement that the Government will listen to the various contributions from Members and from those outside the House and not proceed with the original proposals.

I congratulate all Members on their efforts. We know that there will be reforms to the coastguard service—of that, there is no doubt—but we will strive to ensure that they are neither too deep nor too fast. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

10:40

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure, Dr McCrea, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) for securing the debate, although most hon. Members linked it to matters wider than the link between the emergency services and the coastguard service. I pay tribute to their ingenuity in doing so, and I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) for bringing her knowledge to the debate. I know how difficult that must have been, and she did so courageously. We may not agree on everything, but I promise that we will remain friends.

The Government set out the consultation process, we extended it, and we are reopening it so that the report of the Select Committee on Transport can be included in our thoughts. We will almost certainly have another consultation process because, as I have said since day one, as has the Secretary of State, what comes out of the process will not be the same as what we went in with, because we are listening. We have said that from day one, and I have said that as I have gone around the country. How that can be deemed a U-turn is strange. We did not say at the start that we would not come out with something different. Perhaps Her Majesty’s Opposition would prefer me to ignore everything that is said in the debates, be rigid, ignore public opinion, and have sham consultation, which is what happened under the previous Administration.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I am conscious that colleagues have, rightly, used most of the time available, and I am also conscious that I may repeat what has been said again and perhaps again and again, but I will not give way because I have about nine minutes left, and I want to cover the issues, especially those that are slightly different from those that arose around the country.

I praise the hon. Member for Sefton Central, because the debate is important, and its title has helped me. I was not aware that there were problems regarding the roles of the Merseyside fire and rescue service and Her Majesty’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency on the Mersey estuary, especially involving mud rescues. That was interesting, but I understand now, and with some impetus from the debate and perhaps a bit of size 10 from me they will be resolved. Clearly, there is duplication in who co-ordinates the service.

May I tell my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall that although I represent a landlocked constituency, I was a member of the fire and rescue service in Essex, and was based at a coastal station for many years? About the third major incident that I went to was a freighter fire. As the shadow Minister, my friend the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—he is my friend—knows, that is one of the most frightening experiences.

We heard that there is often a difference of opinion between the crew of a ship and the firemen about how best to put out a fire. That is not surprising, because firemen have a habit of chucking a huge amount of water at fires—that is what we are trained to do—and if you do that to a fire on a ship, it tends to sink. Such instances have happened around the world. There is a debate about what should be done about fires at sea. It is right that that debate is taking place, and it is happening around the world. The truth of the matter is that it is enormously dangerous to put fire crews on to ships at sea to fight fires, and we must make a decision between lives, cargo, pollution and other issues.

I met Roy Wilsher, the country’s lead fire officer and Chief Fire Officer of Hertfordshire the other day and we discussed where we are with the agreements in place, and where we should be.

[Albert Owen]

As an ex-merchant seaman, but a humble rating, I understand the dangers, as does the Minister from his perspective. My point referred to a master mariner—they must decide whether to abandon ship, or to protect cargo or the environment—who raised directly with me the importance of coastguard stations’ local knowledge. That is why I raised the matter in this debate.

[Mike Penning]

Such concerns were properly raised in the debate, and the shadow Minister raised the issue of fighting fires at sea, which was also important.

Another issue was the future of emergency towing vessels, and negotiations are continuing. We intend to terminate the contract, which costs £10 million a year, in September, and I am fixed in that position, because if I move one iota, the commercial sector and everyone else will say that I have gone soft, but they do not have to cough up the money. The key is where the risk is.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I apologise, but I cannot give way. I am sure that there will be another debate on the subject fairly soon. During the remaining five minutes I will not be able to answer all the points that have been raised, but I will write to every hon. Member about any specific points that they raised, and particularly those issues that do not come within my portfolio.

We have a legal responsibility to co-ordinate the work with other emergency services, and I know that that happened when I was a humble fireman. My previous history was praised, and I was proud to be a fireman but, as when I was in the Army, I did not rise far through the ranks.

Interestingly, although during these debates colleagues have not been saying, “Save my station and close someone else’s,” that is not quite what we have heard from the coastguards themselves in the larger and more detailed submissions that we have received. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) referred to my visit to Bangor. It was a wonderful visit, and it was like groundhog day, because I had not been in the Province since I had served in another way. She rightly said that the proposals on the service’s future nationally, not just on individual stations, were detailed and indicated clearly that no change is not an option, as the coastguards are saying, and that nine or 10 stations is the optimum number. The shadow Minister said that some stations should not close, and it would have been interesting if he had said which ones should close, because that would have been informative, especially as most if not all the proposals were on the table when he was a Minister.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does the Minister accept that the response from the coastguards about closing one station or another is because he has moved the starting line? I know from my coastguard and others that if he started with a blank sheet of paper, he would not get the same answer. Does he accept that?

[Mike Penning]

I would like to accept that—I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from—but I cannot, because the proposals were on the table before I was the Minister and even before the shadow Minister was the Minister. There has been discussion about the matter and people have buried their heads in the sand for years and years. My hon. Friend asked whether, if we had a blank sheet of paper, the format of coastguard stations around our coastline would be as they are now. No, they would not. We must all accept that.

My hon. Friend asked me to retract what I said about only Falmouth carrying out international rescue. Falmouth is twinned with Brixham, and I fully accept that it picks up when Falmouth goes down, and that regular exercises take place—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend said from a sedentary position that it takes responsibility. Yes, it does, but it also regularly carries out exercises. Falmouth made it clear to me that it is the centre for international rescue. It gave evidence in its submission on the future of the coastguard.

I honestly believe that this is the way that consultation should take place. Political parties may play different games, but we will come out with a national emergency service with the resilience, pay and training infrastructure that it needs and deserves. I hope that everyone understands that the Government and the MCA are acting for the right reasons, and not just to make cuts. The issue was on the table years before cuts were thought about. What we need is a 21st-century service.

Information Technology (NHS)

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

10:59

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I am reminded of Fidel Castro’s old maxim that any speech of less than three or four hours cannot be any good, and when I reviewed the material available for this debate, I felt that it might be difficult to put everything I want to say into a shorter time. I appreciate, however, that this debate lasts only 90 minutes and that the Front-Bench speakers will be called fairly soon. I am not planning to take many interventions during my remarks, so that I can get through everything I wish to say as quickly as possible.

The importance of information technology to good health care cannot be overstated. As leading health informatics expert, Dr Anthony Nowlan, put it:

“Redesigning the ways care is organised and conducted and supporting those new ways with information science is more important to people’s health overall than any new drug we could develop in the next decade.”

He also stated that

“the engagement of clinicians and managers is not just about telling them what is going to happen.”

Sadly, those words accurately summed up a significant part of the problem that we faced.

The national programme for IT in the health service is the largest civilian computer project in the world. It was spawned in late 2001 and early 2002, after the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, met Bill Gates and was bowled over by a vision of what IT could do to transform the economy and health service. The idea was for information to be captured once and used many times, transforming working processes and speeding up communications. A far-reaching vision set out a programme that would supposedly lead to a transformation in people’s experiences of health care. Hospital admissions and appointments would be booked online—the choose and book system—pharmacists would no longer struggle with the indecipherable handwriting of GPs; and drug prescriptions would be handled electronically. There was to be a new broadband network for the NHS, a new e-mail system, better IT support for GPs and digital X-rays. Most important of all, medical records would be computerised, thus transforming the speed and accuracy of patient treatment through what became known as the NHS care records service.

The NHS care records service comprised two elements: first, a detailed care record that contained full details of a patient’s medical history and treatment. That was to be accessible to a patient’s GP and to local community and hospital care settings, so that if treatment were required, all the information would be available. Secondly, there would be a so-called summary care record that contained medical information about things such as allergies and would be more widely available.

It became clear that Tony Blair was in no mood to wait when he asked Sir John Pattison, who attended the Downing street seminar in February 2002 where these matters were discussed, how long the IT programme would take. Sir John Pattison later stated:

“I swallowed hard because I knew I had to get the answer right… and I said three years.”

Tony Blair replied, “How about two years?” and they settled on two years and nine months from April 2003—in other words, until December 2005. Given the extent of the proposals, that was a ludicrous timetable. Nevertheless, the decision had been made, and everything had to be done at breakneck speed.

Sir John Pattison and his team set to work and produced a blueprint entitled “Delivering 21st century IT support for the NHS: national strategic programme”, which was published in June 2002. The aim was to connect the delivery of the NHS plan with the capabilities of modern information technology. There was, however, an odd discrepancy at the outset. At the back of the original document were four appendices, one of which contained the project profile model and stated that the project’s estimated whole-life costs were £5 billion. It provided a total risk score of 53 out of a maximum of 72. In other words, the project was very high risk. When the document was published, however, that project profile model had been removed and there were only three appendices—the likely costs of the project and the true risks were concealed right from the start. After the publication of the document, the Department of Health established a unit that later became the Connecting for Health agency. In September 2002, Richard Granger was appointed as director general of the NHS IT programme on a salary of about £250,000. His job was to turn the national strategic programme—which soon became the national programme for IT in the health service—into reality.

Richard Granger was a former Deloitte consultant who had successfully overseen the introduction of the London congestion charge. Speaking at a conference in Harrogate some months after his appointment, he announced that the cost of the IT programme would be £2.3 billion. That figure contrasted with the unedited version of Sir John Pattison’s “Delivering 21st century IT support for the NHS”, which a few months earlier had come up with the larger estimate of £5 billion.

Mr Granger commissioned a study by McKinsey into the health care IT market in the UK, which was then dominated by medium-sized firms that sold systems to hospitals and GP surgeries. The study concluded that no single player was capable of becoming a prime contractor in a multi-billion pound programme, and Mr Granger soon announced that the procurement process for the programme would be structured to attract global IT players. He had little respect for the skills of most public sector buyers of computing systems—perhaps with good reason if one looks at the track record—and knew that IT contractors routinely run rings around their customers in government.

Mr Granger made it clear that things would be different on his watch. Contractors would not get paid until they delivered, and those not up to the mark would be replaced. He even compared contractors to huskies pulling a sled on a polar expedition:

“When one of the dogs goes lame, and begins to slow the others down, they are shot. They are then chopped up and fed to the other dogs. The survivors work harder, not only because they’ve had a meal, but also because they have seen what will happen should they themselves go lame.”

Mr Granger started as he meant to go on, and potential contractors were left in no doubt that the procurement process was to happen quickly. In May 2003, potential bidders were given a 500-page document called a draft output-based specification, and told to respond within five weeks.

One of the classic failures in many IT projects is the failure to consult adequately with those who will use the systems once they are delivered. The national programme followed that pattern in many respects, but in this case that did not happen by accident. Mr Granger had no patience with what he saw as special pleading by medical staff, whom he believed were unwilling to accept the ruthless standardisation that was necessary to deliver the advantages offered by the IT system. He effectively believed that he knew what the clinicians needed better than they did themselves.

Some clinicians were keen to ensure that they had proper input into what was happening. Sir John Pattison asked Dr Anthony Nowlan, the health informatics expert who at the time was the executive director of the NHS Information Authority, to secure the involvement of health professionals in the programme. The aim was to obtain a professionally agreed consensus about what was the most valuable information to store, and what was achievable in practice.

After several months the group had hammered out a consensus, but although that work was fed in when the contracts began to be specified, it formed only a relatively small part of the overall specification. The large majority of the so-called output-based specifications, and the crucial major hospital systems at the heart of the programme, were developed without involvement and scrutiny by the leadership of the health profession. That happened despite the fact that involvement by users is essential if one wants software that works and that people will use.

The great speed at which contracting was completed meant that all complex issues had to be faced after the contracts had been let. Anthony Nowlan began to realise that his efforts were not welcome, and he told the Public Accounts Committee that

“it became increasingly clear to me that efforts to communicate with health professionals and bring them more into the leadership of the programme were effectively obstructed.”

Worse still, Nowlan was subsequently asked to provide a list of the names of hundreds of people who had been involved in specification work, so as to provide evidence to reviewers that the work was valid. In fact, all that had happened was that an e-mail had been sent out. Quite understandably, Dr Nowlan thought that saying that people had been consulted because they had been sent an e-mail was not consultation in any proper sense, any more than compiling a list of people who had been sent an e-mail was proper validation. He regarded the claims as a sham, and refused to co-operate.

It turned out that serious clinical input into the programme was not really wanted. As Professor Peter Hutton later told the PAC,

“it was like being in a juggernaut lorry going up the M1 and it did not really matter where you went as long as you arrived somewhere on time. Then, when you had arrived somewhere, you would go out and buy a product, but you were not quite sure what you wanted to buy. To be honest, I do not think the people selling it knew what we needed.”

The result was a set of contracts that were signed before the Government had understood what they wanted to buy and the suppliers had understood what they were expected to supply.

When the then Health Secretary John Reid—now Lord Reid—announced the contract winners in December 2003, the value of the contracts had already shot up to £6.2 billion from the original £2.3 billion mentioned by Mr Granger in Harrogate. The time scale had tripled in length, and instead of the two years and nine months from April 2003 originally promised—to which Sir John Pattison had been obliged to commit at the Downing street seminar—the contracts were now to run for 10 years. Later, one of the most senior officials in the national programme, Gordon Hextall, even claimed that it was always envisaged that the programme would run for 10 years.

Four winning bidders were appointed: Accenture; Computer Sciences Corporation, or CSC; Fujitsu and BT. They were known as local service providers, or LSPs. BT and Fujitsu picked a US software firm, IDX, to work with, while Accenture and CSC both picked a British software company called iSoft. iSoft was a stock market darling that had been spun out of the consulting firm KPMG in the late 1990s. The company’s flagship was a software system called Lorenzo, which was portrayed enthusiastically in iSoft’s 2005 annual report and accounts. The chairman, Patrick Cryne, told shareholders that Lorenzo had made “impressive progress”, while chief executive Tim Whiston stated that Lorenzo would be “available from early 2004” and that it had

“achieved significant acclaim from healthcare providers”.

With such promising statements from the company’s directors, the stock market was delighted, and it was no surprise that iSoft’s share price rose sharply. Mr Cryne, Mr Whiston and their fellow directors then sold large tranches of their personal shareholdings in iSoft, making around £90 million in cash. In 2004, Patrick Cryne bought Barnsley football club.

There was a slight problem. The flagship product, Lorenzo, which was described in such encouraging terms by the directors, was not finished. That caused a big headache for Accenture, the biggest LSP, with two contracts worth around £1 billion each. It was in partnership with iSoft and was trying to implement software that was basically not implementable. CSC faced a similar problem in the north-west. Under the Granger rules of engagement, no one was supposed to get paid until something was delivered. As iSoft had not produced a working version of Lorenzo, the brutal reality was that neither Accenture nor CSC had any software to deploy.

There were still big concerns about the programme’s indifference to securing clinical buy-in from users—clinicians in hospitals—even though numerous studies had pointed to such buy-in as the key ingredient for success in any IT project. Professor Peter Hutton wrote to the then chief executive of the NHS, Sir Nigel Crisp, to express his continuing disquiet:

“I remain concerned that the current arrangements within the programme are unsafe from a variety of angles and, in particular, that the constraints of the contracting process, with its absence of clinical input in the last stages, may have resulted in the purchase of a product that will potentially not fulfil our goals.”

Soon after pointing out politely that the emperor had no clothes, Professor Hutton was asked to consider his position, and he tended his resignation. The IT people were simply not interested in what the doctors were telling them. To give it belated credit, however, the Department of Health began to realise that securing the support and buy-in of clinicians who would have to use the systems might be a good idea.

In March 2004, the deputy chief medical officer, Professor Aidan Halligan, was appointed alongside Richard Granger as joint director general of NHS IT, and joint senior responsible owner of the programme, with specific responsibility for benefits realisation. That was welcomed by clinicians. One delegate at the Healthcare Computing conference in Harrogate said that Halligan’s appointment was “really, really good” because

“he has the trust of clinicians and can stand up to Granger”,

although a general practitioner delegate at the same conference said that it “spoke volumes” that nobody like him had been in the post earlier. Halligan acknowledged that not enough had been done to win the support of clinicians, whose buy-in, he said, was critical to the success of the project. Listening to clinicians was now the flavour of the month. However, there was one insuperable difficulty—the contracts had already been signed. As Professor Hutton later explained to the PAC,

“it became clear from discussions with suppliers in early 2004 that what they had been contracted for would not deliver the NHS Care Record”.

Accenture and CSC struggled on with the unusable Lorenzo. Eventually they commissioned a study that produced a confidential report in February 2006, which confirmed their worst fears. The report stated that the Lorenzo had

“no mapping of features to release, nor detailed plans. In other words, there is no well-defined scope and therefore no believable plan for releases.”

That was over five years ago.

In March 2006, Accenture announced to its shareholders that it would use $450 million to cover expected losses on the programme. It made repeated offers to the programme that it would meet its contractual obligations by using other software. However, that might have bankrupted iSoft, and Richard Granger was having none of it. He responded with a threat when Accenture talked about walking away. Referring to tough penalty clauses contained in the contracts, he said that

“if they would like to walk away, it’s starting at 50% of the total contract value”.

Accenture had two of the £1 billion-a-piece prime contracts, so it appeared to be facing a cool £1 billion in penalty payments to the Government if it abandoned the programme. Strangely, it did not work out that way. Accenture engaged in swift negotiations with the health service and in September 2006, after making a penalty payment of just £63 million, it duly exited the programme. Mr Granger’s threat, that if Accenture left the programme it would face gigantic penalty payments, proved to be of little account. There were rumours that if Mr Granger had demanded any more money, he would have faced serious and embarrassing counter-claims from Accenture for failures by the national programme to stick to its own contractual obligations.

CSC, with its own £1-billion contract for the north-west and west midlands regions, was in no better a position than Accenture to implement the unfinished Lorenzo software. It was also struggling to mop up after having caused the largest computer crash in NHS history, when its Maidstone data centre was hit by a power failure, followed by restarting problems. The back-up systems did not work, and data held in the centre could not be accessed. That meant that, for four days, 80 NHS trusts could not use their patient administration systems and had to operate as best they could with paper systems.

Another worry for CSC was its shareholders. Accenture had set aside hundreds of millions of pounds against expected losses and told the stock market accordingly, but CSC had done no such thing. In addition to its problems with losses in the UK, the company had troubles back home in the United States, where it faced allegations of corruption. The US Department of Justice had alleged that CSC was part of an alliance, which included virtually all the major sellers of hardware and software in the United States, that had swapped unlawful kick-backs in Government agency technology contracts. CSC finally agreed to a $1.37 million payment to resolve those allegations. That was reported on the news blog of Cnet.com on 13 May 2008, under the heading:

“CSC settles with feds over kickback allegations”.

In such circumstances, having extra contracts from the NHS might look reassuring to the US stock market. Despite the fact that there was no implementable software—Lorenzo still was not finished—CSC quickly took on both Accenture contracts, tripling its involvement in the programme. However, there were continuing problems at iSoft, which was supposedly writing the Lorenzo software. One of the problems related to the publication of iSoft’s financial results, which had been repeatedly delayed, up to the point where one of iSoft’s own advisers, Morgan Stanley, a brokerage, declined to publish a profit forecast, stating:

“We don’t feel we have enough visibility to offer a recommendation”.

With friends like that in the stock market, who needs enemies? Finally, iSoft was forced to declare a loss of £344 million, which wiped out all the company’s past profits. The Financial Services Authority launched an investigation.

Now, three fifths of the programme was dependent on one troubled local service provider, CSC, which was using a software supplier, iSoft, that was itself under investigation by the FSA. One regional contractor, Accenture, had been replaced by another, CSC, which had less experience. The central problem remained: the software that they had been trying to deploy, iSoft’s Lorenzo system, was still not finished.

In those circumstances, iSoft started to deploy software products that predated the programme, which Connecting for Health duly paid for. Those older products did not meet the specifications for the national programme. It is important to remember that fact, because that is what many acute hospitals have now been given—old and outdated software that was deemed inadequate nine years ago to meet the programme’s specifications.

Meanwhile, the other two providers, BT and Fujitsu, were having their own problems. They were trying to implement American software, which is not such an easy thing to do in a British hospital, because American hospitals rely on billing for each and every activity and do not, conversely, expect to have to handle waiting lists. An American software system cannot be just uploaded to an acute hospital main frame and be switched on—it is not that simple.

In June 2005, IDX was dropped by Fujitsu with Richard Granger’s consent and replaced by another American firm, Cerner, which had a software package for large acute hospitals called Millennium. BT, some 18 months after winning its LSP contract, was still struggling with IDX. By July 2005, BT was facing serious threats from Richard Granger that it could be axed if it did not start to perform. In an interview with Computing magazine, Mr Granger said:

“BT had better get me some substantial IDX functionality by the end of summer or some predictable events will occur.”

However, it was not that simple. As the leading health care IT website, e-Health Insider, pointed out, replacing BT as the local service provider

“would represent a major failure for the programme, and raise questions over the whole IT-enabled NHS modernisation”

and lead to even more delays. The website added:

“Such a move would also potentially raise serious questions about whether the adversarial management style of Connecting for Health is the most likely to deliver new systems that provide clinical benefits to patients in a timely and cost-effective fashion.”

BT was allowed to continue as the local service provider and eventually, with Granger’s consent, it was allowed to follow Fujitsu’s lead and replace IDX with Cerner Millennium.

At a London conference in July 2005, Mr Granger gave a stern warning to suppliers who were lagging behind on delivery:

“We will get very soon to a point where they will either come good with what they’ve got, or they will get a bullet in the head.”

Mr Granger was also showing signs of defensiveness about the programme, stating:

“It might be a policy disaster, but it isn’t an IT disaster. The system was delivered to spec”,

and he gave the example of the electronic staff record. He added:

“If some of my colleagues do not think sufficiently through as to what was wanted then it’s a specification error.”

Such statements by Mr Granger led to howls of rage from some industry observers, including one who, after Granger’s speech, posted a comment on the e-health Insider website, saying:

“Now and then I check myself from hatred of what Richard Granger stands for and has done to NHS IT, and then the sheer arrogance and ignorance of his public statements brings me back. He set the ridiculously short timescales for decision-making, procured before there was a clear idea of the scope, handed all the ‘choice’ from NHS clinicians to private contractors. CfH”—

Connecting for Health—

“hasn’t solved the funding crisis for computerising the NHS, rather landed us with a massively expensive way to do what some of us were achieving already”.

Meanwhile, the National Audit Office had embarked on a study of the national programme, which was due to be published in summer 2005, but there were considerable delays. As Members may know, NAO reports involve a clearance process, during which a report’s factual content is cleared with the Government before publication, and that has benefits for both sides. However, something different happened with the national programme report. It was as if Connecting for Health wanted to use the clearance process to expunge the slightest criticism of its activities. It undertook a war of attrition with the auditors, in a process that the NAO later described as fighting

“street by street, block by block”.

The final report was delayed again and again, and it finally appeared in June 2006. It was much weaker than seasoned health IT observers had expected. The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who was then a member of the PAC, described it as “easily the most gushing” he had read, while a BBC correspondent described it as a “whitewash”. Most of the key criticisms were eventually excised, as Granger and his team ground down their opponents. It later emerged through freedom of information requests that earlier drafts had been much tougher.

Tom Brooks, a management consultant with years of worldwide experience in health care, wrote a devastating submission to the PAC, in which he questioned the whole rationale for central procurement in the programme. He said that

“the poor quality of the negotiation of the NPfIT contracts by Mr Granger”

was a subject of criticism. He described the view that central procurement would produce systems that met local requirements as “a fundamental error”. He told the Committee:

“MPs are mis-informed if they view the central infrastructure as making reasonable progress”.

Dr Anthony Nowlan, whom I mentioned earlier, described the programme as “back to front”, given that the contract stating what would be produced had already been let. He pointed out the sheer absurdity of a consensus document produced by the programme stating:

“Now that the architecture for England has been commissioned, designed and is being built, there is a need for clarity concerning how it will be used”.

A group of health IT experts sent the PAC a detailed paper offering a devastating critique of the entire programme. The group provided evidence that it was likely to deliver neither the most important areas of clinical functionality nor the benefits required to justify the business case. The group simply stated:

“The conclusion here is that the NHS would most likely have been better off without the National Programme in terms of what is likely to be delivered and when. The National Programme has not advanced the NHS IT implementation trajectory at all; in fact, it has set it back from where it was going”.

In view of the frequent misunderstandings about the national programme among so many journalists, broadcasters, politicians and commentators, it is worth quoting the expert group’s document at some length. It starts by saying:

“It is useful to begin with the question: What is the central point of NPfIT—its chief raison d’etre? Is it a shared medical record (otherwise known as the ‘Central Spine’ or ‘Central Summary Care Record Service’) across England?

The answer to this important question is simply: no…the central point of NPfIT is to provide the local Care Record Service...Compared with the local CRS, the Central Spine is a much lower priority because it is totally speculative and even if delivered is likely to result in very little clinical benefit…This is a subtle but critical point. The Local CRS systems…are a proven technology…These local CRS systems have always been costly investments (several million pounds per hospital over several years) but have been proven in the NHS and elsewhere to deliver real clinical benefits…This picture is entirely different for the so-called Central Spine record, or Central Shared Summary record, which NPfIT (and the government ministers) would like the public to believe is the central point of NPfIT. It is not. The Central Spine record is just a concept…The problem is that clinicians have told us medicine does not work like this. Clinicians do not just use a summary record to deliver care. They build and depend upon detailed and specific medical data that are relevant for each patient.

They do not rely on some other clinicians’ definition of what will be most relevant to put in a summary record. What is relevant clinically will inevitably vary from patient to patient.

The concept of a summary Central Spine record has no scientific basis and no significant clinical support to back it up—just an overly simplistic and naïve storyline about a Birmingham patient falling ill in Blackpool. In fact, no one has ever provided any figures on how often this situation is likely to arise to show whether or not the investment in the Central Spine record is worthwhile.

The point here is that the Local Care Record Service”—

I emphasise the word “local”—

“is the essential building block for clinically useful health IT to support clinical care in progressive, modern and proven ways. Yes, it is difficult to implement and can take 2-3 years to roll-out across the whole hospital (or organisation), and yet it is always worthwhile…These Local Care Record Service systems are the building blocks and are the point of NPfIT, and what NHS Trust Chief Executives want, need and expect. They are not waiting for a Central Spine record to run their hospitals.

However, the Local Care Record Service systems (or the Local Service Providers’ newest versions of them) are not likely to be fully deployed now (only the rudimentary patient administration elements of them will be) because NPfIT is putting in old ‘legacy’ products in place of new modern Local Care Record Service products in its panic to show deployment and because the systems have been so late in being delivered by the LSPs”—

the local service providers. The document continues:

“The key point of the National Programme for IT is to provide both depth of clinical systems functionality and breadth of integration in terms of delivering the contracted Local CRS functions across organisations and care-settings (acute, primary, mental health, social services).

This is the true vision of health IT promised by the National Programme which is embodied in the Local Service Provider contracts and it is what their price reflects.”

The trouble is, with all the delays, the LSP schedules are being down-scoped behind the NHS’s back and without any accountability to the local NHS Trust chief executives to whom the original vision was promised.”

In September 2006, with the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), I published a paper called “Information technology in the NHS: What Next?” In it, we identified four fallacies and offered a way forward. The fallacies were that

“Patient data needs to be accessible all over the country…Local trusts can’t procure systems properly so the centre has to do this for them…Large areas of the NHS need to work on a single massive system”

and that the

“National Programme saves money.”

The suggested way forward was to allow hospital chief executives to buy the systems they actually wanted, subject only to common standards, and to fund such purchases partially from the centre, while making local chief executives contractually responsible for delivery.

Shortly after we published that paper, the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson, introduced the NPfIT local ownership plan, but it did not follow our suggestion of giving local chief executives autonomy in what they bought. Under the NLOP, hospital chief executives would still be required to buy the software that the local service provider was contracted to provide—the difficult-to-install American system, Cerner Millennium, or the non-existent Lorenzo.

Furthermore, instead of there being one senior responsible owner for the programme, which is a central tenet of good project management practice, there would be many dozens of senior responsible owners dispersed among the different primary care trusts, strategic health authorities and hospitals across the country. Those bodies were given responsibility for implementing and delivering software that was not available or which did work properly, without a free choice to buy something else that did work. The NLOP looked more like an attempt to decentralise impending blame than a serious attempt at reform. That is why Tony Collins, one of the country’s leading computer journalists, playfully said that NLOP actually stands for “No Longer Our Problem”.

In February 2007, Andrew Rollerson, a senior Fujitsu manager who had assembled and then led the winning Fujitsu team in the original bid process, mentioned more or less en passant at an IT conference that his view of the national programme was that

“it isn’t working and it isn’t going to work”.

To many informed observers, it was just a statement of the obvious. The PAC called him to give evidence, and when asked if he felt that he had been the

“one who let the finger out of the dam”

and allowed

“a whole collective sigh of relief”

to go round the health IT sector, he replied

“I think that is absolutely spot on.”

Fujitsu then wrote to the Committee stating that Rollerson was not a senior executive of the company and had not been involved for a long time, but neglecting to mention that he had led the winning bid team.

By 2007, another accounting probe had been launched into iSoft by an accounting standards body, and in the following month, April, the PAC published its report, which concluded that

“at the present rate of progress, it is unlikely that significant clinical benefits will be delivered by the end of the contract period”.

By June 2007, Richard Granger had announced that he would quit at some point and shortly afterwards stated that he was “ashamed” of some of the systems put in by Connecting for Health suppliers, singling out Cerner for criticism. David Nicholson, the NHS boss, appointed several new senior executives to join Granger at the top table, while continuing to reject calls for a full review. Tony Collins wrote in Computer Weekly that the future of the national programme for IT in the NHS was “hazy” and that it was becoming

“difficult to delineate success from failure”.

Derek Wanless, whose major review for Tony Blair into the future of the health service had first identified investment in IT as an area for improvement, publicly questioned whether the NHS IT programme should continue without a full audit. He said that

“there is as yet no convincing evidence that the benefits will outweigh the costs of this substantial investment”.

In October 2007, the Department of Health rejected rumours that Matthew Swindells had been appointed interim chief executive of Connecting for Health, but in an industry survey he was named the 12th most influential person in the NHS—10 positions above Richard Granger. It appeared that Richard Granger’s influence was on the wane and that he was being eased out. Tony Collins mused on his blog that the programme might be even worse without Richard Granger—

“the thought of this juggernaut being without a driver is even more scary that when it had a driver but no controls”.

Mr Granger’s last day as an employee of the NHS was 31 January 2008, though, curiously, it was a week, on 6 February, before the interim director of NPfIT and systems delivery, Gordon Hextall, sent a letter to Connecting for Health staff to tell them that Granger had gone and that two appointments would replace him: a top-level chief information officer and a director of IT programmes and systems delivery. Meanwhile, the interim chief information officer would be none other than Matthew Swindells, whose involvement the Department had denied earlier.

In February 2008, the Commons Health Committee published a report on the electronic patient record, which stated that it was “dismayed” by the lack of clarity about what information would be included in the summary care record and for what the record would be used. It also said that there was “a stark contrast” between the “specific and detailed” vision set out for the integrated care records service in 2003 and the “vague and shifting” vision set out in 2007. The Committee concluded that there was now a

“perplexing lack of clarity about exactly what NPfIT will now deliver.”

In May 2008, the NAO published a progress update, which was much more robust than its earlier report. It concluded that the programme has

“largely failed to deliver on its central objective of detailed care record systems for acute hospital trusts”.

Not a lot was happening at that point because there was no software to deploy, so many people were employed but they were not necessarily doing very much. In October 2008, Nick Timmins of the Financial Times wrote about the national programme in a front-page story:

“Progress has virtually ground to a halt, raising questions about whether the world’s biggest civil information technology project will ever be finished”.

He quoted Jon Hoeksma from e-Health Insider who said that

“the key part is stuck”

and added that hospital chief executives did not want to take the system

“until they had seen it put in flawlessly elsewhere”.

The second PAC report, published in January 2009, concluded that the programme’s failures raised questions about the feasibility of the whole project and that the central contracts—the enormous local service provider contracts—were an encumbrance. Only nine months into his job, Matthew Bellamy quit as the chief information officer’s right-hand man. Just before Christmas 2009, the then latest Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), gave an interview in which he sang the praises of the national programme and said that

“parts of the NHS cannot operate without it”.

Unfortunately for him, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), took a different view—and said so in a television interview a couple of days later. He said that the national programme was

“not essential for the front line”

and announced that he was imposing a £600 million spending cut that took its budget down from £12.7 billion to a mere £12.1 billion.

Meanwhile, new year 2010 was not a happy one for the iSoft directors. The Financial Services Authority—the chief City regulator—announced that it had laid criminal charges against four former directors of iSoft: Patrick Cryne, the founder and former chairman; Timothy Whiston, the former chief executive; and former directors Stephen Graham and John Whelan. They were accused of conspiracy to make misleading statements. The four denied the charges.

Where are we now? We have yet another NAO report, published on 18 May this year, which states in even more bald terms that

“the aim of creating an electronic record for every NHS patient will not be achieved under the Programme.”

The central aim of the programme will not be achieved under the contract. Several conclusions regrettably emerge about Connecting for Health. The first is about overpaying. It massively overpays: acute trusts are costing £23 million, when they should be about £8 million; the system for mental health and community trusts—RiO—is costing £8.9 million per deployment, when it should be about £1.5 million; and the other systems, such as the picture archiving and communications systems for digital X-rays—PACS—and N3 broadband, which everyone says is not particularly good anyway, are also massively overpriced. I should say in parenthesis that the digital X-rays are very good, but Connecting for Health should not have paid so much for them.

The second conclusion is on de-scoping. Connecting for Health has dealt with the problems it has faced by drastically reducing the scope of what is being delivered, but without corresponding reductions in cost. The third conclusion is the hiding of increased costs. The late deliveries meant there have been no running costs for systems that have not been delivered, and the surplus cash is being used to hide the increasing cost per deployment.

Fourthly, there are serious doubts about the commercial judgment and skill of Connecting for Health. It seems that every contract revision makes things worse. Very little of the originally expected system has been delivered, but despite that, the NHS seems to have little or no commercial cover. The Fujitsu termination, when it was fired from the programme, was farcical and generated massive potential costs and liabilities. The local service providers appear to be running rings around Connecting for Health commercially. As the Financial Times noted on 25 May this year, CSC is offering a one-third reduction in the cost of its contract in return for doing two-thirds less work. As the Cabinet Office observed, that would roughly double the cost compared with the original agreement.

The fifth conclusion is the danger of future high costs. When the contracts finish, there is inadequate provision to manage the systems in future. It takes a special skill to leave trusts stuck with systems that are functionally very poor and out-of-date, which were not deemed adequate nine years ago, and still manage to expose them to enormous future costs over which they will have very little control. That is precisely what Connecting for Health is managing to do. Finally, there is a serious danger that Connecting for Health will put CSC in particular in a monopoly position. The proposed revised agreement may be open to legal challenge from other suppliers who have not had the chance to bid.

What should happen now? It is plain that the NHS IT programme has not worked and there is no evidence that it will work. Rather than squandering another £4 billion to £5 billion, which is still unspent, the NHS should recognise reality. Connecting for Health has failed to achieve its central purpose and should be closed down. I am afraid that it will not help and is now more interested in the preservation of its own position than in protecting the interests of taxpayers. NHS trusts must be set free to choose the systems that meet the needs of patients and medical professionals. They should have the power to source products locally that suit their needs, subject only to common standards.

11:38

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing the debate. In this field, he is very expert, persistent and learned, and I believe that he is writing a book on the subject—I shall give him a plug because he is too modest to do it himself. We have both followed the debate for a fairly long time. We have had Commons debates and there have been PAC sessions on the subject. We have attended meetings with Mr Granger and been to numerous conferences. We have even sat in Richmond house and watched the Lorenzo system work—it proved to be a little more difficult to get it to work in a hospital in real time, but none the less it looked good when we saw it.

I do not want to sketch out the sorry history, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk has done so most lucidly. Everybody in the Chamber realises that it was a procurement disaster, and a project management disaster. It did all the things that are not supposed to be done, such as failing to shift risk to the private sector, failing to be clear about the actual benefits, failing to involve practitioners and stakeholders, and failing to control costs. It was a bright idea, but it was not realistically assessed and ultimately had to be scaled back.

Much of it, as the hon. Gentleman said, might have happened anyway. The good side of it, if I can so describe it—the PACS, e-prescriptions, improved broadband access, telemedicine and so on—might well have happened, and we ought to recognise the fact. However, the project would not have done well in front of Alan Sugar on “The Apprentice”, let alone the Public Accounts Committee. That is history, however, and to some extent we must now consider the present.

We are in unprecedented times of cash restraint, and we have to find £20 billion within the health service over the next few years. I doubt whether we will succeed, but we cannot abandon that target. Twenty or so hospitals will not achieve foundation trust status, and we cannot magic away their PFI debts or ignore the consequences that flow from dodging difficult reconfiguration issues. However, as we roll out Connecting for Health, the cost certainly matters. I believe that some of the costs, particularly those of the patient administration systems, are still being picked up by the ailing hospitals.

It is not easy to see how current health reforms will ease matters, as they will increase the diversity of providers and complicate somewhat the recording of data, as providers do it in different ways. That will add to the potential problems of data sharing and interoperability. Ultimately, we will require some merging of social care and medical records, and the changed landscape will necessitate appreciable changes in the choose and book system. I do not know whether we will be transferring or binning the existing IT programmes of PCTs, but it could be said that what we originally designed is now inappropriate—that NPfIT, an awful pun, no longer fits.

I believe that the Government have done all the sensible things in response to a difficult situation. They have allowed NHS trusts to adapt and develop existing systems. They have emphasised open standards and interoperability, and continue to do so, in order that we can have variety without undue chaos and do not end up being captive to a major supplier. That is the ultimate nightmare, and it was a big fear throughout the process. Indeed, although Granger tried to prevent it, it seems that he could not. The Government have sought to reduce and shave costs through negotiation or by cutting back on specifications. However, there appear to be a few problems with what is otherwise a sensible strategy.

First, I understand that, in these difficult circumstances, some of the key managers of the programme are to be the chief executives of strategic health authorities, but when they have gone I have no idea who will persist with the task and take up the burden. Secondly, savings within the NHS will lead to many of the much-maligned back-office staff going, and I presume that that will include NHS client-side IT people. The loss of client-side expertise will be a big worry, as it will make us even more dependent on the expensive consultants who got us into this mess. I note that McKinsey was pivotal in advising us to go ahead. I note also that, to this day, McKinsey has its feet well under the table in Richmond house, and is advising the Government on a number of problems.

The big problem, however, appears to be that we do not seem able easily to extricate ourselves or to revise contracts. Everyone agrees that that is necessary at the moment. Rather, I should say that we seem unable to do so without making matters worse. We seem doomed to spend another £4.3 billion, yet we need to save a further £20 billion. The fatal breakfast that Mr Blair had with the IT industry in February 2002 has come back to haunt us. Mr Blair might have been worried about his legacy, but it is now a worry for us.

I understand through the grapevine that this was a matter of heated debate at the last meeting of the PAC, which was a rather rumbustious affair. I saw Mr Nicholson shortly after that meeting, and I have to say that his account of events differed slightly from that of some hon. Members, in terms of how satisfactory an occasion he thought it was and how far they had got in their Socratic examination of the flaws. However, it seems that he and we are trapped between a rock and a hard place, and that there is not an easy way out.

The dilemma is not only ours; it is one also for the IT industry. The industry can help us to meet the Nicholson challenge, or it can compound it. It can work ever more closely in areas such as telemedicine and so on, and on how to produce genuine cost savings, including on the implementation of IT; or it can simply go on as before, selling us more kit that we do not need and software that we cannot use. If that is the industry’s choice—it is the industry’s choice as much as ours; we have to throw down the challenge to suppliers—it will face years of adversarial attrition as we try to cut costs, presumably followed by bad feeling and empty order books, and endless fulmination from the hon. Member for South Norfolk, who becomes increasingly frustrated as the drama continues. However, the industry could accept that it is a collective problem.

It is a very big collective problem, because at some point in time it will throw into stark relief what we do with the summary care record, which has less utility than we ever imagined and more complexity than we ever realised.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

As a member of the PAC who was present at the rumbustious meeting to which my hon. Friend referred, I gained the impression that the suppliers were completely unprepared to consider the correct option of considering things differently and trying to be positive. It seemed that they were prepared to protect their positions to the hilt, which is partly why it was a rumbustious sitting. Does my hon. Friend have any advice on how to change the attitude of the suppliers?

[John Pugh]

Given that, uniquely in the UK, many suppliers are dependent on Government contracts in the long term, they have a stark choice between pleasing their shareholders and pleasing their long-term customers. They must recognise that. However, I am not sure how to achieve that while doing anything useful with the summary care record. I suspect that that may be a matter for another debate—and possibly a longer one.

11:47

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing this debate. I pay tribute to his tenacity in pursuing the subject. I know that he has a long-standing interest in it, and rightly so given the amount of money being spent on the project. I cannot compete with the way in which he articulated his case, or with his forensic and almost anorak-like knowledge of the subject, but I associate myself with the conclusions that he draws.

The project has always been over-ambitious. We would all agree that it has been poorly led and ineffectively delivered. As with many procurement projects in the public sector, the cost has escalated considerably. We have seen it happen too many times, and it is always entirely predictable. Indeed, senior leaders in the NHS were warned about that from the start.

The intention to ensure that health data should be made available at any time and anywhere was laudable, but delivering it has to be offset against the cost and whether it offers good value for money. Clinicians, practitioners and IT specialists throughout the NHS said that it would not work. Ultimately, clinicians will find their own way of doing things, and a top-down system will not work unless it is executed from the bottom up. As my hon. Friend explained, the decision to involve clinicians in the design of the system was not taken until late in the day and probably beyond the point when they could have had a useful input to ensure that the programme was fit for purpose.

Let me underline what my hon. Friend said. If we look at the initial programme of delivery and what we have achieved, we can see that we have not progressed far. Of the 4,500 sites that were contracted to receive the system, some two thirds have yet to receive anything. If we examine the progress made by Computer Sciences Corporation—my hon. Friend has outlined the history of its involvement with this case—we will see that it is contracted to deliver its systems to 97 hospitals, but so far it has delivered only four and none has been able to confirm that the system has been installed satisfactorily. Put simply, CSC has not delivered the goods against its obligations on the contract.

Once the contract is in place, everyone signs up even though it is quite clear that the company is not delivering what it promised. To be fair, in this case, the NHS started to renegotiate the contract in December 2009. None the less, more than 18 months later, no new contract or renegotiated contract is in place. CSC is still working on the same terms that it initially agreed to and we still do not have adequate delivery.

The NHS was quite clear when it said that it would not sign a new contract until it could see that Lorenzo was working. It is clear that we have to take some tough decisions because it simply is not working. As it is taking so long, we have to decide whether we are managing the project efficiently. Just how poorly does a contractor have to perform before a serious charge is made as to whether that contract should be maintained?

The NHS is an extremely powerful client. I know that suppliers have duties and obligations to their shareholders, but surely maintaining a good relationship with a customer that is as big as the national health service or even as the Government is important. We would expect suppliers to be slightly more conscious about what they are obliged to deliver.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I listened very carefully to the initial speeches in this debate. The story that I heard was that there are suppliers and contractors who have fallen by the wayside and who have been shot and had their business fed to the others. That leaves us with the dilemma of what happens if we are left with only one supplier. Where does that leave the bargaining position of the NHS? My hon. Friend will find that there have been contractors who have found that they were not going to get paid because of their inability to deliver on their contracts.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. To be fair, those suppliers have acted extremely honourably with regard to their obligations under the contract. When it became clear that they could not deliver the software under Lorenzo because it was not fit for purpose, they took the honourable action and negotiated their way out. Such behaviour shows a lot about those suppliers. It is increasingly worrying that CSC in particular is finding itself in a monopoly position because it has acquired and strengthened its shareholding in iSOFT. Who we negotiate with in the future is a long-term worry.

I associate myself with the conclusions of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk about when we should take a decision on this project. Is it time for an emperor’s new clothes moment, or are we going to continue throwing good money after bad in a project that is clearly not going to deliver?

[John Pugh]

Is it not enormously hard for parliamentarians to form a judgment on that when we are not party to the actual contractual details? We do not know what cancellation involves for the firm or for the development of the project.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

That is a good point. I was coming on to say to the Minister that he must examine this matter with considerable rigour before deciding on the right course. The message that we got from the Department was that such contracts are complex, although it was rather unclear just how complex this one was. I urge the Minister to achieve maximum value for money because ultimately this is a lot of money that could have been spent on patient care rather than on delivering this programme.

My final point relates to how these big procurement projects should be managed. We have examined a number of them on the Public Accounts Committee. Too often we find examples of poor project management. Poor leadership is assigned to these projects, which then go on to spend incredibly large amounts of taxpayers’ money.

When Sir David Nicholson appeared before the Committee, he was unable to answer a number of questions that my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk put to him even though he has been the senior responsible owner of the project since 2006. Until the machinery of government can put in place good project management disciplines to deliver effective leadership, we will continue to spend a lot of money and to fail to deliver on the intended project. I hope that this is a lesson not just for the Department of Health but for the Government as a whole and especially the Cabinet Office as it looks at how it delivers these projects and puts in place good disciplines, so that this unhappy experience is not repeated.

11:56

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on the important and fascinating debate. The detail he went into about the past 10 to 15 years was striking.

[Annette Brooke in the Chair]

There are some key issues that we need to consider. Procurement on this scale has to be properly thought out. The purposes of the project itself have to be properly defined. The question of value for money is obviously a key one. Let me go back to the introduction of the fax machine to illustrate my point. When the fax machine was first launched, lawyers found it difficult to accept that instant results could happen. They went through court cases to test the validity of a fax result, because it could deteriorate and so on. None the less, the problems had little to do with the technology and rather more to do with the culture of lawyers. There is a thread running through this whole sorry episode. We need not only better information sharing in the NHS, but the right culture and desire for it. Above all, we need a real reason for the system. I have been to one or two meetings about this whole scheme, and I have never yet really heard a proper description of its central purposes, except of course to exchange information. Obviously, one of the purposes is integration. I am talking about integrating the systems and the parts of the NHS that need to talk to each other rather more than they do at the moment.

Yesterday, I went to the Care Week event in the Jubilee Room and I met several carers, all of whom had similar stories to tell. One said, “The person I have been caring for has been going to two departments, but neither of them knew about each other.” That is the sort of cultural issue that we must tackle and think about when we talk about IT. The real danger about IT is that people think it is a good idea so they must use it and apply it, but it is actually the other way round. We must be careful and set out the proper parameters and purposes for this IT project, and ally it to value for money. My hon. Friend’s story shows that that has not been happening. We need to be much more careful about procurement, setting out commissioning requirements, understanding the need for cultural change, and properly looking at these contracts.

11:59

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Mrs Brooke. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to take part in this important debate.

I want to start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) for his tireless work on this issue. His determination and tenacity in highlighting the problems and difficulties of a national programme for IT have been second to none. He frequently made the life of the previous Government difficult and I am sure that he will also be a thorn—perhaps a constructive thorn—in the side of the current Government. In his work, he has demonstrated the importance of effective parliamentary scrutiny and the difference that a Back-Bench MP can make. As a new MP, I hope to learn from his experience and follow, at least in some ways, his example.

The reason for the debate’s importance is that effective IT can and must play a key role in improving both the quality and efficiency of health care. At its best, IT helps clinicians and patients share information about the quality of services that are available, which not only supports patient choice but improves standards of care. Good IT can also help patients to get care in different parts of the system without having to give the same information repeatedly about their conditions and treatments to different doctors and nurses. In addition, it can help clinicians and managers to develop more effective and efficient services, organising treatments and services around the needs of patients rather than vice versa.

As the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) rightly pointed out, one of the key challenges facing the NHS is to ensure that GPs, their primary care teams, social care professionals and specialists work much more closely together, so that care is more effectively co-ordinated. Indeed, the NHS Future Forum said yesterday:

“Better information systems and the development of more integrated electronic care records will be a major enabling factor for this.”

The national programme was meant to help the NHS secure those objectives. However, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk has eloquently outlined and as countless reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have also shown, the programme has fallen far short of achieving them. There were poor specifications about what was required by Government and what suppliers could deliver in return. In addition, as the hon. Members for Thurrock and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) have said, there was over-claiming by both sides about what could be delivered and by what date. Furthermore, there were poor lines of accountability and responsibility for the programme, at least in its initial stages. All of those problems have led to one delay followed by another and, crucially, to a lack of control over costs.

I do not intend to go over those problems in detail. My knowledge of the subject is nowhere near as comprehensive or forensic as that of the hon. Member for South Norfolk. Instead, I want to take a step back and suggest three broad lessons that need to be learned from the problems of the national programme, as part of a constructive contribution to the Minister that he can take forward in his thinking on this subject.

The first lesson is that any IT system, whether it is in the NHS or elsewhere, must be led by its users. In the case of the NHS system, it must be clinically led. That is not only about getting clinical “buy-in” but about ensuring that doctors and nurses directly shape and develop the IT system so that it helps them do their job properly for the sake of patients.

NHS clinicians have said that they want IT to achieve five key objectives: first, allowing information about appointments to move around within hospitals, and between hospitals and the rest of the NHS, so that appointments can be booked; secondly, communicating information about discharges from hospital to hospital, and from hospitals to GPs and community services, so that staff in all parts of the system know what conditions patients have; thirdly, allowing staff to book tests such as MRI scans, ultrasounds and so on, and to get the results back to the patient and their clinician at the right time and in the right place; fourthly, the ability to schedule all the different tests, treatments, operations and so on that a patient has in a way that meets the needs of the patient; and finally, enabling electronic prescribing of drugs and the gathering of necessary pharmaceutical information to ensure that patient care is as safe and effective as possible.

Those five key objectives emerged from a consultation exercise with clinicians in 2008. However, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk has said, that was too late; the consultation exercise should have happened before the contracts were signed and not halfway through the process.

Can the Minister say how the Government will ensure that clinicians continue to be involved in developing the IT strategy for the NHS? Did the NHS Future Forum consider the IT strategy as part of its recommendations to Government? I ask because there was only one small line on the IT strategy in that report. Also, have the Government received any specific responses on this issue and, if so, will the Minister publish them?

On a related point, can the Minister say when he will publish the Government’s information strategy? In October 2010, the Government published “Liberating the NHS: an information revolution”. That document set out the Government’s plans to ensure that patients, the public, clinicians and managers have the information that they need to improve health and health care. I do not agree with some of the tone of that document; it seemed to suggest that the previous Government had done nothing on the matter. When Labour was in government, we acted on he issue. For example, if one considers a programme such as NHS Choices, to which there was quite a lot of opposition at the time, one can see that we moved the agenda forward. Having said that, I absolutely agree that we all need to go further.

My concern is that the consultation on the Government’s information strategy closed six months ago today. In that time, the Government could have provided more information to patients and the public to improve choice and quality. When will that strategy be published?

The second lesson that we can learn from the national programme is that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all IT system in the NHS, or indeed in any health care system. As Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, told the PAC on 23 May, attempting to provide one type of medical record that covers everything for everybody everywhere in the country “has proved unworkable”. The challenge is striking the right balance between what—if anything—is delivered centrally and nationally, and what is delivered locally. That is a perennial challenge in all parts of the NHS and needs to be thought through.

The national programme is currently being reviewed by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. On 18 May, the Minister told Radio 4’s “Today” programme that he wants to allow local hospitals to adapt their existing systems rather than to get rid of them altogether or, indeed, to scrap the national programme for IT. Last month, David Nicholson told the PAC that the Department of Health wants to move towards a situation whereby hospitals have their own direct relationship with software suppliers and where individual organisations take responsibility for their IT. However, he also said that, with all the reorganisation of the NHS that is going on, we need an interim step, a transitional body that will

“look very similar to Connecting for Health”.

He said that it was very important to have that body,

“to enable us safely to transit from where we are at the moment to a place where individual organisations take responsibility.”

I would like the Minister to explain a few things. What is that transitional body? Who will be responsible for running it? How much will it cost? How will it be different from Connecting for Health? At what stage will it disappear and how? Finally, if a national, centrally led programme has been part of the problem in the past, why will this new national, centrally led body somehow deliver the future when individual trusts are in control?

The final lesson that must be learned relates to a point that the hon. Member for Stroud made, which was about a much bigger problem for Government than the other problems that I have mentioned. How do the Government have an effective relationship with the private sector in contracting with it, not only in relation to IT projects but to all sorts of other projects? I am thinking, for example, about the problems that the Ministry of Defence has experienced with its contracting. Successive Governments have found it extremely difficult to negotiate effective contracts with the private sector, and not just IT contracts. It is fair to say that they have not exactly covered themselves in glory in that respect.

[Duncan Hames]

Will the hon. Lady reflect on whether one reason why Governments have such difficulty in controlling contracts with the private sector is that politicians routinely make policy changes that alter the specifications for what is required, and contracts are not able to accommodate that? I wonder what lessons she might learn if we looked, for example, at how the choice agenda was rolled out in the NHS during this period, and at the demands that that placed on changing requirements for private contractors.

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about the nature of the political process, with politicians frequently determined to fill the newspapers with headlines about new policies, while the difficult process of implementation takes far longer on the ground. When I had the privilege of working in the Department of Health, I saw the NHS Choices project and thought, “This doesn’t look like what I thought the politicians meant. It wouldn’t give me, as a patient, the information I needed about which consultant or hospital to choose.” There is, therefore, the problem of how about we go from a political idea to a policy on the ground, and how quickly that changes.

With the greatest respect to the civil servants sitting in this room, we have perhaps not thought through effectively what kinds of skills and experience are necessary in Departments. What steps has the Minister taken since the Government were elected to ensure that the Department of Health has people with the right skills and experience to deal with such high-level negotiations? Have the Government as a whole decided to look at that issue? Has the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, considered how best to ensure that there are people across the whole civil service with the skills and experience that politicians urgently need to support them in their work?

I thank all Members for their contributions today. This is a very difficult subject, and we need to find a way through that does not waste more taxpayers’ money but understands that IT and information are crucial to improving health and health care. The key issue is how we get there.

09:59

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing this debate. His forensic analysis of what has happened over the past decade or so made it clear that he has a justifiable reputation as a leading expert in the House on the subject, and it is due to his tenacity that things are done and things are found out, and that we can be kept on our toes through the legislature holding the Executive to account. In a mood of bonhomie, I also congratulate the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) on her tribute to my hon. Friend. That was particularly magnanimous of her because, for the vast majority of his 40-minute speech, he was criticising her Government’s performance in creating the situation we are in, and for the mistakes and problems that have flowed from the decisions taken at the beginning of the century.

I agree that IT is crucial to a modernised NHS. We need to be able to record, store and exchange information if we are to realise our ambition of having health outcomes that are consistently among the best in the world. The previous Government’s centrally driven, top-down vision of NHS IT began in 2002, and the original title was “Delivering 21st century IT support for the NHS.” Sadly, however, the vision took an approach that was more akin to the early post-war years of the 20th century. It was clear to us, even before we took office, that the approach made little sense, and that to deliver a modern health service we needed a more flexible and locally driven approach—a view shared, ironically, throughout the NHS.

Last September, I announced that we should no longer talk about a “national programme for IT”:

“Improving IT is essential to delivering a patient-centred NHS. But the nationally imposed system is neither necessary nor appropriate to deliver this. We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have”.

So, rather than the old “replace all” strategy of the previous Government, we favour a strategy of “connect all.” It makes no sense to rip out and replace systems that trusts already successfully use, and we have, therefore, put local NHS organisations in control of introducing new systems. Rather than a single national programme, we should view the strategy as a series of related projects, categorised under national infrastructure, national applications and local services.

It is clear that, over the years, the scope of the national programme expanded, but it is now vital that we focus our investment and energies on the things that will make a difference to the quality of care. We asked clinicians what they wanted from NHS IT systems and they came up with five things that they believed were critical to them and their ability to carry out their duties. They were: a patient administration system that integrates with other systems and provides sophisticated reports; order communications and diagnostic reporting; letters with coding for patient discharge, clinics, and accident and emergency; scheduling for beds, tests and theatres, and e-prescribing. In addition, we are focusing suppliers on key departmental systems, such as those needed to support maternity, child health and accident and emergency, which, taken together, will make a significant difference to the experience of patients and the working practices of clinicians and managers.

At the same time as changing the approach and scope of the programme, we have closely examined its costs. There is little we can now do about the money that has already been spent, but we have been able to reduce the cost forecast from 31 March 2010 by £1.3 billion— about 18%. The savings will come from the companies supplying services, from reduced local costs and from our internal overheads in managing the programme. Suppliers will reduce their costs by £670 million, local costs will reduce by £200 million and we expect to save £400 million on our internal central costs. That is a 25% saving of the total internal budget, and 40% of the amount that the previous Government expected to be spent from the end of March 2010 to the end of the programme.

We have asked local service providers—the companies delivering the contracts—to change their scope and their delivery model and to reduce their costs. We have reached agreement with BT but still have some way to go before we come to an agreement with CSC. We will absolutely maintain the principle that suppliers will get paid only when they deliver working systems. We are pushing harder for faster results, and have made it clear to suppliers that we will not tolerate further delays. It is important to state that every single penny saved will be reinvested in improving patient care.

When it comes to NHS IT, there are, I am afraid, no easy choices. Several Members have mentioned that we have just carried out another major projects review, the outcome of which we expect to know in two to three weeks’ time. Until we have had the opportunity to consider the review’s conclusions, we will not be making any decisions on future investment.

It should not be said, however, that nothing has been achieved over the past decade, as many essential elements have already been delivered. Regarding national infrastructure, there is the spine, which is the core service that connects all other systems at both national and local level and handles, among other things, more than 11 million daily queries made on the personal demographics service.

N3, the secure network that links all NHS organisations to each other, to outside data centres and to the internet, has almost 50,000 connections. The NHS internal e-mail service handles 2 million e-mails every day.

As for national applications, every day, choose and book processes about 30,000 appointments, the electronic prescription service sends about 660,000 prescription messages and about 2,000 records are transferred electronically using the GP2GP system. On the summary care record, as a result of the two reviews that I commissioned last summer, we now have agreement on the core data to be held and the approach to roll-out. More than 30 million patients have been contacted about the summary care record.

Systems implemented by the programme are making a difference to patients’ experiences and to clinical efficiency, safety and effectiveness. For example, at Morecambe Bay, infection prevention is now fully electronic, using the Lorenzo system. In St Barts, clinicians are alerted to all patients carrying MRSA through the Millennium system. The Royal Free hospital has also used Millennium to create safety procedure information, including for endoscopy data and bleeding guidelines.

Although progress in delivering local systems has been slower than anticipated, BT has delivered community and mental health systems to all trusts in London and the south that requested them, and the Cerner Millennium system to just over half the London trusts that require it. CSC has delivered to 83 acute trusts in the north, midlands and east of England using upgraded interim systems. It has also delivered iSoft’s Lorenzo e-patient record system to 10 trusts and completed delivery of 137 prison health IT systems across the country.

The NHS needs local systems to be fully integrated with the core components supplied by the programme. The interoperability toolkit will help. It is a core part of the “connect all” strategy, enabling trusts to exploit their existing systems fully. There is a great deal of interest in the approach; 78 suppliers and 71 health organisations attended the last forum on the toolkit. It is already being used to good effect at Newham hospital to deliver a patient check-in kiosk, and at Liverpool Broadgreen hospital to provide a consolidated view of patient information across multiple care settings.

All but 14 of the more than 8,000 GP practices in England have a system supplied by either the national programme or the GP systems of choice scheme, which has allowed us to maintain several small and medium suppliers in the market. In the south, we have used the additional supply capability and capacity framework for community and mental health to bring together 10 trusts to leverage their combined buying power while increasing their choice.

Security must always be at the front of our minds when we consider NHS IT systems. Great care is taken to ensure that systems are secure, and we carry out regular tests to ensure that they cannot be penetrated inappropriately. My hon. Friend will have heard late last week about the hacking of the SHINE sexual health website run by the East London NHS Foundation Trust. The website was an information-only site that carried no patient data and a local service that was not connected to any data held nationally. The issue was dealt with promptly, and the trust urgently reviewed its local security arrangements and is satisfied that no further breaches are possible. We also operate a rigorous process of role-based access controls to ensure that only the clinicians treating a patient have access to sensitive clinical data.

Because NHS systems are so critical, they need to be far more robust and stable than those outside the programme. We invest a great deal of money in ensuring that if systems go down, each and every component can be automatically recovered. Should a whole system fail, it can be recovered and made available for clinicians to use within two hours. Of course, such a level of disaster recovery does not come cheaply, which helps explain differences in price between some systems in the programme and similar systems procured by some trusts outside the programme. Systems bought locally will need to meet the technical and data standards laid down by the national commissioning board in order to participate in the networked environment.

I turn to the points raised by the hon. Member for Leicester West and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). The hon. Member for Leicester West asked about the role of the NHS Future Forum. There were no specific responses about NHS technology systems, but it is clear that information flows are essential to link interventions and outcomes. However, as she said, we concentrated on the information revolution through the document that flowed from the White Paper last summer. As she also said, a consultation was held. We have been considering the responses, and we will publish them in due course. At the moment, I cannot give her a definite time.

The reason for the delay—I hope that she will appreciate this—is that during the eight to nine weeks of the listening pause on NHS modernisation, a decision was taken not to publish the responses to the information revolution consultation, if only to help the hon. Lady, so that she could not accuse us of not pausing sufficiently to listen to people and of carrying on regardless of what was going on in the listening exercise. I hope that she will give us credit for holding a genuine listening exercise and appreciate why we did not publish during that period. It was not least to forestall her criticism of us for doing so.

The hon. Lady also asked about the transitional vehicle. As she will appreciate, it is required to manage the existing arrangements and support local systems. It will not determine what needs to be done; the shape, scale and timeline have still to be determined exactly. We are working on it as part of the response to the pause, and we will determine in due course how it will operate to provide that support and move forward under the auspices of the national commissioning board.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock asked about ensuring value for money and checking everything. I can give her assurances on that, because it is crucial. There is little point continuing to talk about the past, partly because we were not responsible and would not have done things as the last Government did them. We are where we are. We must learn from our mistakes and move forward. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept from my comments that we have grasped the nettle, accepted that the approach was wrong and learned from our mistakes, and that we will continue to learn and to seek to ensure that we have the information system critical to a modernised NHS and improved and enhanced patient care and patient experience, while minimising the problems that have haunted this episode ever since its introduction a decade ago.

I hope that my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Leicester West will accept that we are moving forward, learning lessons from the past and seeking to ensure that we have a system that meets the requirements of a modernised NHS and, above all, is fit for purpose and does what the NHS needs it to do.

Property Regulation (Holiday Lettings)

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

12:29

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I am grateful for the opportunity to initiate this debate on the effect of property regulation on holiday lettings. This debate will be of interest to colleagues representing constituencies with beautiful countryside, coastline or other features that lend themselves to tourism. I am glad to say that Pendle is one such constituency, with rolling countryside and picturesque villages. Only last week, plans for a new 76-berth marina were approved.

Properties that are made available to let for holidaymakers are a vital part of tourism in the UK. Typically, these are attractive, domestic properties, owned by a couple or a family, and some are managed by an agency. They are the smallest of small businesses and in great need of protection from fruitless and costly regulation.

I have called this debate because I am concerned that holiday lettings are not getting the protection that they need. I wish to start with a quote from a “Dear colleague” letter that I received only last week from the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk). The letter mentions the “one in, one out” system of regulatory control introduced by the Government. Apparently, planned regulations have been cut from 157 to just 46, with only 11 of those adding to the regulatory cost on businesses. I welcome that, and emphasise that it is my intention to help the Government by identifying where they can clearly go further. I believe that we all want small companies to be relieved of pointless, costly and dubious regulations, and I applaud the Government’s record on that so far.

The letter finishes by saying:

“We are continuing to work hard to cap the cost of new regulations. In addition, we are tackling the stock of existing regulations, ending the ‘gold plating’ of EU regulations and have scrapped measures that would have cost SMEs £350 million each.”

However, holiday lettings face two costly challenges in upcoming regulations, one of which is being defended as a European Union requirement when it is not being adopted by any other European country. I refer to the change due to happen at the end of this month, whereby holiday lettings will be required to provide an energy performance certificate, and to the review of the controlled waste regulations that are due to be introduced later this year. Both will force an unnecessary, costly, pointless and, I believe, legally questionable burden on holiday lettings, doing damage to British tourism in my constituency and many others. I hope to present a case that the Government can and should reconsider both regulations.

Let me start by addressing the controlled waste regulations. On 14 January, the consultation closed on proposals to replace or amend the Controlled Waste Regulations 1992. It was a joint consultation carried out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Welsh Assembly Government. Will the Government look again at these proposals, which would place an unfair cost on the shoulders of small business owners?

Hoseasons, an agency representing those wanting to let their properties for self-catering holidays, which employs about 500 people in my constituency, produced a submission highlighting its concerns about the proposed changes, stating that they could damage the viability of letting self-catering holiday cottages. Having first been scheduled to come into effect on 6 April, the document has been postponed by DEFRA and will come into force sometime in the near future.

The publication tells us that waste from domestic properties used in the course of a business for the provision of self-catering accommodation will now be classed as commercial waste. This causes a discrepancy between properties that are let for long-term domestic residence and properties that are let for self-catering holidays. The person letting their property for the full calendar year has their tenants’ waste classed as domestic waste, whereas the person letting their property as a holiday cottage for more than 140 days of the year will be charged commercial rates, even though the property may be empty for the majority of the year.

That seems wrong, because the use of both properties is fundamentally the same: both are used for living in as a place of residence, and the owner of the property makes a profit in both cases. The injustice is that the owner of a holiday cottage incurs extra expense without necessarily receiving more income. That may lead owners to decide to let their property full time, to lessen their outgoings and increase their income. This in turn could impact the strength of the rural tourism industry, because the properties may no longer be viable as holiday lets. More than 67 million domestic holiday trips were made in 2009. I am sure that everyone will agree that the regulations are impacting the future not only of agencies such as Hoseasons in my constituency, but of every individual who lets their property to holidaymakers for more than 140 days of the year.

If we look at the proposals of the controlled waste regulations, we will see that the amount and type of waste in question is the same. Do we really need to charge different rates for the same collection, based on whether a property is being rented for a week or a year? Section 75 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 defines household waste as from a domestic property that is solely for the purposes of living accommodation. Defining this waste as commercial would presumably require a separate collection service. Would this mean heavy-duty refuse trucks pounding down rural roads just to get to what are often small cottages, or are holiday lettings being asked to pay more for the same service, in which case, why increase the cost of waste collection?

My final point in relation to the regulations is on recycling, an issue important to us all. Most local authorities offer a free collection service of recyclable materials from all domestic properties. Classing waste from holiday properties as commercial would make them ineligible for this free service, thus providing a disincentive to recycle. The last time I stayed in a holiday let was a few years ago, when I decided to spend the new year with a group of friends. Needless to say, while, naturally, we are all very responsible drinkers, our stay resulted in several empty wine and beer bottles, which were dutifully placed in a recycling box for disposal when we left. I fail to see how making such properties ineligible for domestic recycling services—meaning that I would have had to put those bottles in a commercial waste bin—will do anything to help the environment. Will the Government look at the regulations, so that owners and guests alike are encouraged to recycle and can assist local authorities in meeting recycling targets?

I now turn to energy performance certificates, which were first introduced in England and Wales on 1 August 2007. They are required only for newly purchased or rented accommodation. The question is whether a holiday letting should fall into that category. I would like to run through a few of the reasons given for why they should, and why those reasons are not persuasive.

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

I commend my hon. Friend for calling this debate, because holiday lettings are key to our local tourism industries. I am glad that he has raised that point. Does he agree that the EPC certificate will, effectively, become a tax on tourism? It will also be extremely hard to enforce, because a lot of the lettings are not done through agencies. That, combined with the Finance Bill changes, which change the categorisation for relief, will give holiday lettings, which are small businesses, a real problem.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I know that this is an issue close to her heart. The certificate will be hard to enforce, because it applies only to holiday cottages that are being let for more than 140 days a year. How an owner of a holiday let will decide whether it will be let for more than 140 days over the coming year is up in the air. How can anyone predict how good, bad or indifferent the coming season will be? My hon. Friend has made a good point about how the provision will be enforced. I was not going to address that issue, but it is critical.

EPCs would not serve holidaymakers, because those who stay in a holiday letting do not pay the energy bills. They have no need to see an EPC, unlike a prospective buyer or tenant, who needs to see one when looking at the energy performance of a property. When someone rents a property long term, they become liable for the energy bills, which is something that a holidaymaker in a holiday let never becomes.

The argument could be made that a holidaymaker would prefer to stay in an energy-efficient property, purely for environmental reasons. If so, we already have ways for customers to identify not just environmentally friendly holiday lettings, but those that have gone the extra mile through schemes such as the green tourism awards. Malkin Tower farm in Blacko in my constituency is an example of an excellent holiday letting that has been awarded a green tourism award and was the 2008 winner of the Pendle environmental business award.

One could argue that all properties ought to have an EPC, since all properties consume energy and we need to tackle climate change. Therefore, according to that argument, holiday lettings should have an EPC. I think that the fact that that is not Government policy—as I found out when I asked my hon. Friend the Minister, in a written question, what the policy was—means that it cannot be the reason why the Government want to push ahead with introducing EPCs for holiday lettings. The only reason that can be given for this additional cost and red tape on small business is the idea that this change will bring us in line with Europe, specifically the energy performance of buildings directive. That is the justification the Minister gave me on 7 June in response to a written question on the subject asking how the new rules could be brought in, given the moratorium on new regulations from April 2011 for businesses with fewer than 10 people.

It will therefore surprise hon. Members to learn that England and Wales are the only EU countries currently choosing to force EPCs on holiday lets. We should remember that that change is due to come into force on 30 June this year, which is a matter of days’ time. To be fair, France previously required EPCs for holiday lets but, after consideration and consultation, it revoked the law requiring them. I believe that, since 12 July 2010, no other EU country has forced EPCs on to holiday lettings and that England and Wales will be the only countries doing so.

I know that because I have, again, consulted Hoseasons, which has sister companies operating in the holiday letting market in more than 20 countries around Europe. It tells me that none of those companies reports any requirement for EPCs for holiday lets and it is therefore confused that the Government believe we are being brought into line with Europe. This is a classic case of the UK gold-plating an EU regulation—something that Ministers had promised to stop.

For the avoidance of any confusion, I understand that the EPBD states that all buildings are subject to the regulations unless specifically excluded. As holiday lets are not specifically excluded, it has been construed that the regulations must apply to them. However, the regulations also state that EPCs should apply only where a building is to be sold or rented. The question comes back to whether, when a customer makes a booking for a holiday let, that creates a tenancy, with the legal ramifications that go with it. I have received a copy of a document from Local Government Regulation that clearly suggests that it does not. I know that it has been in contact with the Department for Communities and Local Government to express its views on the matter and to make similar points to those I am raising today; for example, the fact that the holidaymaker simply has no benefit from having access to an EPC for the property where they are staying. It is fair to say that I agree with Local Government Regulation in its considered and sensible opinion:

“To apply ‘rent’ in the usual sense to holiday accommodation is absurd and inconsistent with the generally accepted understanding of the term ‘to rent’”.

Given that no country in Europe takes such a view, why does the DCLG, even when it has received advice to the contrary from Local Government Regulation? I hope that the DCLG will reconsider its position as a result of today’s debate.

I come back to what I said at the beginning: it is my intention today to help the Government here. There is a real need to cut regulation, to free up small business and to kick-start growth. Overall, the Government have done exceptionally well so far on that score. The Government’s red tape challenge aims to reduce the amount of unnecessary regulation on business, but introducing unnecessary EPCs and waste regulations on holiday lettings is surely going in the wrong direction.

With an estimated 62,500 holiday lettings in Britain, the introduction of EPCs will create a bill of around £10.4 million. That is a serious burden to impose on genuinely small businesses. By abandoning these proposals, the Government would be acting in support of domestic tourism and helping to keep the cost of a holiday in the UK within the reach of those on lower incomes. The Government would be acting in support of small businesses and in support of reducing red tape and pointless regulations. The Government have done a lot right, but they are in danger of getting it wrong on holiday lettings. By introducing EPCs and treating the waste from a holiday let as commercial, the Government would be upping the costs on an important but vulnerable sector of the British tourism industry.

I would like to leave hon. Members thinking about a holiday let in my constituency—Bobbin cottage in Earby. Bobbin cottage is a small, beautiful cottage with only two bedrooms which is ideally situated for the nearby walking trails. What will the impact of these changes be on Bobbin cottage? What benefit will there be from additional refuse trucks pounding their way through the rural roads of Earby to dispose of the latest holidaymakers’ week’s worth of banana skins and used teabags? Will the holidaymakers read the EPC for Bobbin cottage and think, “Well, it would be a nice place to stay, but will the landlord be paying too much for the steamy hot bath that I’ll need to take after walking across Kelbrook moor?”

The reality is that these changes will not have a positive impact. They will make Bobbin cottage more expensive to run, which will be reflected in the cost of staying there and will make it harder for Britons to experience one of the most scenic parts of my constituency. For Bobbin cottage, domestic tourism and the tens of thousands of small business owners out there affected by these new regulations, I urge the Minister to reconsider.

12:44

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) for bringing this issue to the House and the measured way in which he has made his case. As he rightly says, the matter covers two completely separate issues. Indeed, just to complicate my response, it covers two completely different Departments. I am speaking as a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government, so I will certainly ensure that his words about the controlled waste consultation reach the ears of DEFRA Ministers. However, I am sure he will understand that I am not in a position to give him too much of a glimmer of light in respect of that, although I would be very happy to ensure that he gets a response from my colleagues in DEFRA on the matter.

What I can do—and hope I will do—is set out the position on energy performance certificates. I am not at all surprised that my hon. Friend has reported confusion and concern. I have to tell him that that has been followed up by a lot of correspondence. So I have confusion, concern and correspondence to sort out in my role as Minister. The first thing to say is that the matter is not a pretty picture as far as the Department’s previous performance is concerned. As he said, the EU directive came into force in 2007 and it clearly applies to all buildings. Just for reference, about 6.4 million energy performance certificates have been issued to homes in this country, so we are not dealing with a trivial number of homes.

When the directive was first published and approved at a European level by the United Kingdom among others, it provided that countries could if they chose to do so put in place a derogation for holiday lets of less than 4 months. The first mistake is that that opportunity to take a derogation was not pursued by the United Kingdom. If it had been taken, the derogation would be there now and today’s debate would not be needed. However, as I say, that derogation was not taken.

To compound matters, unfortunately I have to tell my hon. Friend that, a year after that—in 2008—the Department issued guidance that, contrary to the position outlined in legal parlance, claimed all holiday lets were exempt. That was the exact opposite of the legal position then in force. During 2009, it came to light in reviewing the application of the regulations that that double mistake had been made. That led to a consultation last year and, in February 2011, the Government announced their intention to apply the EU directive—if I may put it this way—in an underogated state, starting in June this year. There has been a very unsatisfactory record of missed opportunities and mistaken advice on the matter and, understandably, a large number of hon. Members have been approached by constituents who are confused but, more to the point, concerned by what has happened.

Let me first set out some of the facts of the situation and the reason why the Government are now saying what they are saying. EPCs are required on the sale, rent or construction of a building, including any property that is rented out as a holiday let for a combined period of more than four months in any 12-month period. My hon. Friend challenged the interpretation that a holiday let was a tenancy. It is important to make clear to the Chamber that there is a definition that covers this in the Housing Act 1988. Perhaps that is unfortunate, from the point of view of my hon. Friend. It states:

“A tenancy the purpose of which is to confer on the tenant the right to occupy the dwelling-house for a holiday.”

In terms of interpretation, that is a crucial point. There is no doubt at all that, from the UK legal point of view, such a holiday let is a tenancy and is therefore caught by the EU directive.

My hon. Friend asked how landlords and owners would know whether their property was to be let for four months, or six weeks if it was a bad season. The directive is clear. The point is whether the owner intends to rent out for more than four months—the intention is the question that has to be decided. I bring that to the Chamber simply to report the facts of the case. I do not seek to rebut every point made by my hon. Friend.

[Andrew Stephenson]

On the difficulty of enforcing the regulations, will the Minister clarify how intention can be proved? If every owner in the country decided that it was their intention to let their properties for only 130 days a year and they happened to let for longer, would they fall foul of the regulations? Their intention would have been to let the property for less than 140 days.

[Andrew Stunell]

My hon. Friend asks a worthwhile question. I imagine that it would be quite difficult to achieve a burden of proof to prosecute somebody for underestimating their intentions. I understand that the Department is not aware of any prosecutions under the regulations. Compliance is self-driven, rather than driven by prosecutions.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of cost. Undeniably, there is a cost to having an EPC—probably in the range of £50 to £80, depending on the provider. My hon. Friend quoted the figure of £10 million. That figure is for the total cost over a 30-year period, so we need to keep the scale of the problem in perspective. If the EPCs led to owners improving the energy performance of the cottages and homes that they let, they would receive a payback of £15 million in that 30-year period. There is, therefore, a net benefit in the provision of EPCs and the implementation of the energy-saving results that they will reveal—as there is for EPCs for the 6 million-plus that have been issued to ordinary homes. I want to ensure that we have it clearly on the record that there is a first cost, but that there is a potential for saving, too. As my hon. Friend recognised, that also makes a contribution to reducing the United Kingdom’s carbon output.

I would like to correct one of my hon. Friend’s facts, and to explore one of the propositions that he brought forward. He said that England and Wales would be the only countries enforcing this. They are already required in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so, depending on what we define as a nation, other places in the UK require EPCs. I asked my officials whether there was evidence of non-conformity by other European countries. I have been told that, having made inquiries to the European Commission, they are not aware of any country that is not implementing the EU directive in the manner that we now propose should be the case in England.

My hon. Friend produced some information about what France had done, and referred to the fact that a provider of holiday lets in his constituency had evidence from a much wider field around Europe. I hope that he will accept, as a glimmer of light, that the very first thing I shall do after the debate is seek whatever validation we can for those two pieces of evidence. We do not want providers in England to be at a disadvantage to other European countries simply because we have taken too robust a view of how the directive should be interpreted.

My hon. Friend referred to the Local Government Regulation document. I think that he has slightly over-egged his case. It has produced advice that says that an EPC is not required. The Department has attempted to get in touch with Local Government Regulation, which is a subset of the Local Government Association, to challenge or examine how it came to that view. Unfortunately, the member of its staff who prepared that advice is no longer with the organisation and we are having difficulty establishing how its view was arrived at. It may, quite reasonably, have been based on the advice, issued by the Department in 2008, to the effect that all holiday homes were exempt, but that was clearly not correct and clearly contradicted by the reality that no derogation was entered into by the UK in 2007.

My hon. Friend has raised these matters at the highest levels in government, and has made it clear that he believes that there are unnecessary burdens that could be lifted by the Government. As he acknowledged, the Government have a very good record on this. Indeed, an important part of what my Department attempts to do is to bust barriers. Barrier busting is something on which we wax eloquent. If my hon. Friend has, as he believes, found two barriers that we can bust, I give him an assurance that we will see what we can do to achieve that. However, the UK Government must correctly interpret and comply with EU legislation. It is also extremely important to reduce the carbon output of the UK. Half the carbon output in the UK comes from buildings, and a quarter comes from homes. Tackling this sector is important. EPCs are an important part of what we need to do to set the climate, atmosphere and culture that will lead owners and occupiers to use their buildings in an energy-efficient way. I hope that he will accept my assurance that we are listening to the points that he has made. However, we have a duty to ensure that we not only comply with European legislation, but live up to our target to be the greenest Government ever and ensure that all kinds of householders play a full and active part in helping us to do so.

Motoring Fuel Costs

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

12:59

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I am grateful to Mr Speaker for allowing this debate, and I want to congratulate FairFuelUK on its campaign for British motorists and for all the British businesses that have to buy petrol or diesel.

Let us get one thing straight: cars, vans and lorries are the lifeblood of British industry. More than 34 million vehicles are licensed in this country, which is one for every two people. That is why the current cost of petrol and diesel is one of the biggest brakes on economic growth and is crucifying many families who are struggling to keep their heads above water. That is especially true in my constituency of Harlow, where high costs are hurting many small businesses. I want to look at the current situation, the record profits of energy companies and what is to be done. As The Sun newspaper said in its editorial last Saturday:

“It’s welcome news that Parliament is to investigate why petrol prices remain sky-high even as the cost of oil plummets.

While they’re at it, they can look at why gas customers face 19 per cent rises from a firm with annual profits of more than £1 billion.

Consumers are being fleeced from all sides when buying essentials.

It's time our MPs stood up for us.”

I am here, with my colleagues, to stand up for motorists.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is huge frustration throughout the country about how, when the price of oil falls, the prices at the pumps seem to reduce very slowly and perhaps not to the same level, but when the price of oil increases, the petrol and diesel prices at the fuel filling stations seem to go up within minutes?

[Robert Halfon]

As ever, my hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. I will set out in my remarks what is happening and what we should do about it.

Let us look at the numbers. In my constituency of Harlow, there are 33,000 households and 37,000 cars and vans. According to the Royal Automobile Club, which has done excellent work on the fair fuel campaign, we drive 9,000 miles a year. At 32 miles per gallon, an ordinary Harlow motorist is using 281 gallons or 1,277 litres every year. The cheapest unleaded petrol in Harlow that someone can buy is £1.33 a litre but in most cases Harlow motorists are spending £1,700 a year just to fill their tank. For most people, £2,200 of income before tax goes on that. That is a tenth of the average Harlow salary.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He has quoted some interesting statistics, such as the average driver in Harlow travelling 9,000 miles a year, but in rural constituencies such as Romsey and Southampton North the statistics are more frightening, because the average motorist is travelling 10,000 miles a year simply to access essential services. Does he agree that the problem is particularly distinct and severe in rural areas?

[Robert Halfon]

I very much agree that rural people are also being crushed by the price of fuel. I am glad that my hon. Friend is here today to represent her constituency and the many rural residents who are suffering so much.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Coming from an area where fuel is more than £1.50 a litre at all our fuel stations in the Hebrides, and regularly so, I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has secured this debate. Does he agree that the Office of Fair Trading has to show more teeth in looking at the distribution of fuel? As noted, when the oil price goes up, the price at the pump increases quickly, but when falling, it does not happen at the pump at all. The OFT must start investigating the trade for fairness.

[Robert Halfon]

I agree that that should happen. I also have another proposal, which I will set out later. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his work on fuel prices in a debate in the main Chamber some months ago.

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

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way.

Although the focus has very much been on the individual motorist, we have spoken a little about small business. If we combine the issues of rural businesses and micro-businesses, they are the ones that are badly hit. That is where we need the economy to grow. As for the range of prices, my hon. Friend talked about an average of £1.36 a litre, but in fact it is between £1.30 and £1.51, mostly in rural areas.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is right. I will set out in a minute what the Federation of Small Businesses says about how the fuel price is crushing business and economic growth.

In total, my town is spending at least £63 million a year on petrol, of which about £40 million is tax. That does not even include gas and electricity bills, which are spiralling out of control. The budget of my local council is only £13.5 million a year. Imagine if people could keep even a fraction of that money in their pockets, to spend on the local economy, rather than giving it away to big oil companies, foreign countries and, dare I say it, the Treasury. However, I welcome what the Chancellor has done so far. When he refused to implement Labour’s petrol tax of 4p in April, and cut duty by 1p, he saved Harlow motorists at least £2.5 million every year, putting fuel into the tank of the British economy when we need it most.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for securing this debate.

On the subject of the Chancellor’s initiatives, does my hon. Friend also support the decision to have rural fuel pilots, and acknowledge that constituencies such as my own of Penrith and The Border, where we have nearly twice the distance to travel to GPs, post offices and job centres, need to be recognised in a different way? The Chancellor is to be congratulated on the steps he has already taken on rural fuel, and he should extend them.

[Robert Halfon]

I very much welcome that initiative. I will say later that I believe a commission ought to be set up to look at all kinds of ways of reducing the price of petrol for motorists—that is one of them.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

rose—

[Robert Halfon]

I give way again, but then I must make progress.

[David Simpson]

The position in Northern Ireland is somewhat different from that in Harlow, because we have a land border. Currently, the Government are losing £280 million to £300 million a year on fuel smuggling and laundering of fuel. We are currently looking at the whole issue of corporation tax in Northern Ireland but, if duty on fuel were reduced or even if the suggested pilot scheme were in Northern Ireland, it would save the Government an absolute fortune, and would help the motorist and commercial enterprises in the long term.

[Robert Halfon]

As so often in Westminster Hall, as I said last week, I find myself agreeing with the hon. Gentleman. That might form part of the commission’s inquiry. At the end of July, I plan to go in a truck to Europe, to see how truckers there manage to get all their fuel cheaply, while English truckers are paying far more. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

Returning to my constituency, we are a town held to ransom by petrol prices. Motorists are robbed of a tenth of their salary just to fill their petrol tank. Fuel poverty is defined as spending more than a tenth of income to stay warm. That is all about domestic homes, but what about spending a tenth of income just to drive to work, which is what motorists are doing? The issue is also one for welfare reform. I welcome the Government making great strides with universal credit, lower taxes for lower earners and the Work programme. Yet all those benefits could be wiped out by the rising cost of fuel. Every 1p increase in the pump price will cost the average Harlow motorist £13 a year. For someone on a low income, perhaps commuting from Harlow to Basildon, the actual cost would be much higher. Inflation soon adds up, and we must not let petrol prices become part of the poverty trap and deter people from getting off benefits and into work.

Nor should we forget rural constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who cannot be here because of his recent operation, has campaigned for many years against the fuel poverty suffered by his constituents. He wrote to me yesterday:

“fuel is a necessity in a constituency of 1,000 square miles, not a luxury.”

Throughout the country we see the same tragedy.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He mentioned specifically job creation and its importance in welfare reform. In a survey earlier this year, one of the issues the FSB picked up was that companies faced with rising fuel bills would stop creating jobs and might also look at laying people off. That has huge implications, in particular in Northern Ireland, where we have a higher proportion of small to medium-sized enterprises, as well as heavier reliance on fuel because all our freight, for example, is road-based.

[Robert Halfon]

I welcome the remarks of the hon. Lady. I am about to come on to the FSB, but she is so right in what she says. I am glad that there is so much consensus in the Chamber among all parties.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He is being very generous. The hon. Lady’s point about the Federation of Small Businesses is important, but we must not underestimate—my hon. Friend is not doing so—the impact of fuel prices on workers. My constituency has a low-wage economy in a large rural area, and an announcement was made today that the Humber bridge tolls will rise to £3 for each crossing. That will conspire to put people off looking for work, because they cannot afford to get to work.

[Robert Halfon]

That is my whole point. High fuel prices have become part of the poverty trap, and are a disincentive for people to get back into work, despite the Government’s excellent programmes, including the Work programme. I thank my hon. Friend for raising the matter.

Long-term stats from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that in 1970 we used 25 million tonnes of petroleum in the transport sector. That has risen year on year, and doubled to 50 million tonnes today. But despite the UK being a net exporter of petroleum products, and despite the fall in the international oil price, our petrol prices are still sky high. In January this year, members of the Federation of Small Businesses said that if petrol prices continue to rise, 62% will be forced to increase their prices, risking inflation; one in 10 may have to lay off staff; 26% will be forced to freeze wages; 36% will have to reduce investment in new products and services; and 78% will see

“their overall profitability in jeopardy”.

Taxation is only part of the problem, and another major concern is transparency. As the AA, RAC, and FairFuelUK have said, if the 2p drop in the market cost of petrol had been passed on to motorists earlier this year by energy companies, it would have wiped out most of the impact of the 2.5p VAT rise. In May, I wrote to the chief executives of Shell, BP, Total, and ExxonMobil asking for price transparency so that we can see why prices are not falling. So far, only Total and BP have replied, but their replies essentially said, “Nothing to see here.”

In 2009, before the disaster in the gulf of Mexico, BP boasted profits of £8.7 billion. This year, Shell has reported first quarter profits up 40%, making its global profits nearly £2 million every hour.

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

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again, and for securing this debate. I particularly support the points made about rural constituencies. Does he favour statutory obligations on those companies to be transparent and to pass on their profits to consumers?

[Robert Halfon]

I do not want to unveil all my secrets at once, and if the hon. Lady waits a bit, I will give her my proposal.

Total’s profit rose 34% year on year, and ExxonMobil saw a 69% profit jump to $10.5 billion. We must acknowledge that some companies make a good return for pension funds, but a balance must be struck. I remember the fuel protests in 2000, when we were seriously concerned about the threat of petrol at 80p a litre. According to PetrolPrices.com, the excellent price comparison website, the most expensive unleaded fuel in the UK is now £1.51 a litre.

I accept that 64% of the petrol price is taxation, and I welcome the Chancellor’s steps to slash some of the planned taxes, but the big oil companies must play their part. Why are prices so different at petrol stations, and why are they raking in such astronomical profits when small businesses are being forced into bankruptcy by fuel costs?

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the oil companies. Did he witness the same thing as I did in my constituency eight or 10 weeks ago when some of the major supermarkets embarked on a price reduction of 5p a litre if customers spent a specific amount on goods, and at the same time raised the price of fuel by 4p or 5p a litre, which in turn forced the independents to put up their prices? The situation was contrived by some supermarkets.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and that is why I am arguing for transparency. If supermarkets reduce prices, they must do so properly. We cannot have situations such as the one he describes. We often bash bankers, but oil barons are far worse, because they enjoy a semi-monopoly in the UK market, and most motorists have no alternative but to buy their products. We need transparency above all. Oil prices are falling, and we must ensure that the big companies cut their prices at the pump.

The green movement makes a case for expensive petrol, but modern vehicles have lower carbon emissions. Cars account for only 13% of our man-made carbon emissions. My argument—some hon. Members may say that it is controversial—is that environmentalism sometimes becomes a luxury for the rich, with no substantive answers, other than regressive taxes on energy. It is all too easy, in the cause of saving the planet, for the wealthy to insist that the poorest families should pay more in petrol taxes, and gas and electricity bills.

The impact of high fuel prices is particularly severe on road freight companies, and they are a major employer in Harlow. Road freight carries nearly 97% of everything we eat, wear or build with. High and rising fuel costs force the road freight companies to try to pass on the extra cost, and that stokes inflation. If they fail to pass on the increased costs, they go bust.

The road freight companies face a further cruel impact that the UK green lobby must consider. Fuel duty levels on the continent are about 24p a litre lower than in the UK, so hundreds of thousands of foreign lorries pour into the south-east of the UK and undercut UK hauliers. Foreign trucks pay no road tax here, and I welcome the Government’s plans to introduce a £9 a day charge, although I believe that it should be a lot higher. Those trucks pay no fuel tax in the UK as their tanks are big enough to last all week and all their fuel is bought abroad. They pay no employment taxes. They simply come into the UK, drive our UK freight companies out of business, and pay nothing to the Exchequer.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Halfon]

I must make progress, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) as he has not spoken.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He is making some important points about green taxation. I agree with such taxation, but does he agree that it should be linked to clear environmental criteria, and that if it is not it will lose public confidence, which would be a crisis for the Exchequer and for environmental policy?

[Robert Halfon]

Of course there should be environmental criteria, but people too often have their heads in the clouds and do not realise that low petrol prices would make a huge difference to ordinary people who must use their vans to drive to work, drive their trucks to do their job, drive their minicabs, or drive their kids to school.

What is to be done? I believe in competition and choice. First, when a market is cornered by vested interests and semi-cartels, such as big oil companies, it is right for the Government to establish conditions for a fairer market. We need a fuel rebate so that when the oil price falls, big companies face a choice: either they cut prices, or the Government will impose a windfall tax on profits, and use the money to cut petrol prices anyway. That would be the solution to the great British petrol rip-off. Instead of the oil companies having us over an oil barrel, it would make them honest, and stop them profiteering at the expense of small businesses and families on the breadline.

Secondly, we must commit to no more petrol tax rises in this Parliament. The Government are pro-business and pro-growth, and have already given a commitment to scrap the fuel duty escalator, which was pushing up prices above inflation. The Chancellor has delayed inflationary rises by a year for the next two years, but will the Government go further, and consider abolishing even the inflationary rises?

Thirdly, we must establish a commission to look at radical ideas, and other ways for the Government to raise revenue, and to address the unfairness of UK fuel duty being so out of line with the rest of Europe. We must consider more toll roads in exchange for significant cuts in fuel duty, and how a fuel price stabiliser could work.

In conclusion, we need fair fuel reform with a fair fuel rebate to push prices down, no new taxes during this Parliament, and a commission to look at radical ideas to get petrol taxes down to the European average in the longer term. The 37,000 motorists in Harlow and the 34 million vehicle owners in the UK are being fleeced. For the sake of future growth and jobs in our economy, we urgently need reform.

13:19

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this important debate—Harlow is a place I know well as I used to work there many years ago. He is one of a number of MPs who represent their constituents well by talking to the Government and Ministers about the concerning cost of fuel, and about how that is impacting on the ability of businesses across Britain to employ people, and on families and household finances.

In the short amount of time available, I would like to say why the Government agree that the cost of fuel is a concern, and mention some of the actions that we have taken to try to address that. I will then say a little about some of the things that we think need to happen during the rest of this Parliament.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the Minister, or her Department, have any suspicion that high oil prices are the revenge of oil companies for the £2 billion that the Chancellor raised in the Budget through the North sea tax, which also threatens perhaps 15,000 jobs? Oil companies are losing money to the Government in one way, and are penalising consumers and people up and down the country.

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point, but the price of oil is a spot price driven by commodity markets. We are talking about a part of the industry that is different from the area in which we chose to raise tax. We are working with industry to ensure that we mitigate any risk of a lessening of investment in the North sea as a result of that tax. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow pointed out, we needed to strike a balance to take into account the overall effect of high oil prices as they fed through into the broader economy in petrol prices and energy prices more generally.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility. It showed clearly that, although the Exchequer has some growing tax receipts, the dampening effect of the rest of the economy is also significant. We felt that although there was an overall impact on the economy, one sector—the oil companies—was doing much better from a high oil price. It seemed fair and sensible to look at how we could balance some of the value that was being generated by the high oil price, and to create a fairer split between oil companies and those motorists and businesses that bear the brunt of the prices at the pump. We are working hard with industry to mitigate the impact of our policy on investment—the impact was analysed as being small by industry observers such as Wood Mackenzie. This is an important debate, and the Government recognise that motoring is an essential part of life for households and businesses. Fuel costs affect us all, and as the price of petrol continues to rise, those costs have become an evermore significant part of everyday life for people and companies. We were keen to look at what could be done.

The previous Government left us facing the introduction of a fuel escalator from the 2009 Budget that would have involved seven fuel duty increases. I realise that in this half-hour debate, only a Government Minister gets the chance to respond to the Member who secured it, but I am disappointed that a shadow Minister is not present to listen to some of the concerns raised. One of our biggest challenges concerned how to deal with the proposed above-inflation increase in fuel duty. That increase could have resulted in average prices at the pump being 6p per litre higher than they are currently. We would have seen above-inflation rises in 2012, 2013 and 2014. When we took office, no plan was in place to support motorists, and within the huge financial constraints in which we found ourselves, and with little room for manoeuvre, we had to see what we could do to address such an important issue.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I am sure that my colleagues will read Hansard tomorrow to see exactly what has been said. The Government inherited potential increases in fuel duty and the Chancellor has done the right thing by removing the fuel duty escalator, just as the previous Labour Government did. We also froze proposed increases in fuel duty on 11 occasions because of the increase in the price of crude oil.

[Justine Greening]

What was missing, however, was any kind of long-term plan for how to deal with changes in the price of oil feeding through to the pump. We wanted to look at how a stabiliser mechanism would work, which we felt would be in the interests of households, companies and the overall economy.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to the Minister and, like other hon. Members, I am grateful for the actions that the Government have already taken. One issue that has been raised by Back Benchers from all parties concerns differential pricing around the country. There are sharp differentials—a difference of about 5p between petrol prices in Worcester and those 20 miles away in Cheltenham. Will the Minister comment on how the Government could address that issue and increase transparency, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has urged?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. In a sense, the most extreme examples of that problem are the reason why we are bringing in a pilot scheme for the rural fuel rebate. We are making progress on that.

[Mr MacNeil]

When might we see that welcome rural fuel rebate and rural fuel derogation? We have been calling for such a measure for years, and although we welcome the progress made, we would like to have a date fairly soon.

[Justine Greening]

I say, “Me too” to that. We are working with the European Commission, and once we have clearance, we will get on with the pilots as soon as possible. We are keen to make progress on the issue, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are working and making our case in Europe. We must get agreement from the Commission, and unanimous agreement from European Finance Ministers. Once we have that agreement, we will be pushing on with the pilot schemes.

[Andrew Percy]

If we left the European Union, we would not need that permission—that is a debate for another day. I have some concerns about the rural fuel derogation applying in some areas but not in others. Rural areas such as my constituency have a low-wage economy. We have poor bus services and high toll-bridge costs—I know the Minister is committed to doing something about that, which is pleasing. A rebate should not apply to one rural area but not to others; we should be careful about doing that.

[Justine Greening]

We need to help families across the board. That is one reason why raising the personal tax allowance was critical—in any other Budget that measure would have got a huge amount of attention, but perhaps because of the other things we did, it got less consideration. The provision will benefit the lowest paid workers, and this year’s rise in allowance, together with that of next year as announced in the Budget, will take 1.1 million people out of paying income tax altogether. We are right to have a targeted package to help motorists, and we know how important that is. We are also right to make progress on our commitment to increase the personal allowance. Such a measure will help many of those who feel the pinch most when the cost of living goes up.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I am meeting hauliers next week and I speak on behalf of many people. Does the Minister have a message of hope for all motorists and hauliers in particular?

[Justine Greening]

We scrapped the fuel tax escalator and we understand how motoring impacts on the broader economy. Prior to the Budget, I was keen to meet groups such as FairFuelUK and motoring stakeholders. I assure my hon. Friend that I will continue to do what I can to stay close to the industry, and I will work with my hon. Friends in the Department for Transport to look at an overall approach that will support our economy as well as supporting hauliers, motorists and businesses.

Queen Victoria School, Dunblane (Military Covenant)

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have the debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I am delighted that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) is present to take part in it, not least because he grew up in the town in which Queen Victoria school is situated. I am also delighted to have been offered the opportunity to introduce this short debate on Queen Victoria school, Dunblane, and its contribution to the military covenant.

As far as I have been able to trace, this is the first time that there has been a specific debate on Queen Victoria school, even though it has been in existence since it opened in 1908. It is therefore worth highlighting for the record the reasons for its foundation, the original aims of the school, why it was an early manifestation of what we now call the military covenant and why it deserves to continue making its unique contribution.

Built through subscriptions from serving personnel and other interested parties, Queen Victoria school was created in memory of those who had died in the South African wars of the late 19th century. At that time, it was for boys only. It was opened on 28 September 1908 by King Edward VII. At that time, he also laid the foundation stone for the school chapel, which was completed in 1910 and is Scotland’s memorial to Queen Victoria. Various buildings have been added over the years, including the Macmillan sports hall to mark 50 years of the school’s existence. Other changes included the admission of girls in 1996 and the move to a staff comprised almost entirely of civilians.

The school has always been under the control of the Ministry of Defence in its various manifestations; in fact, the school was administered originally under the auspices of the Department of War. The school was established under royal warrant. The situation was unique. The warrant was initiated by Queen Victoria but enacted by her son, King Edward VII, who signed it in 1908.

The warrant is interestingly worded. It says that the Department of War shall take over the said buildings—those that had been built by subscription—

“to uphold the same in proper condition and repair, and to efficiently maintain therein a School as aforesaid…under the name and title of the Queen Victoria School for the Sons of Scottish Sailors and Soldiers; As also out of funds to be voted in Parliament to meet and defray the whole cost of such maintenance, and all rates, taxes, feu-duties…and other annual and other outgoings in respect thereof”.

The warrant also states that the then Secretary of State—in continuum, I suppose, through to the current one—

“further undertakes for himself… that the Said School and Chapel shall be maintained in perpetuity as a Scottish School in Scotland for the Sons of Scottish Sailors and Soldiers, that it shall be so maintained, managed, and administered on the lines indicated in a Royal Warrant which His Majesty is to be asked graciously to grant”.

I am sure that the Minister has looked over the royal warrant. It is an impressive piece of drafting, which is designed to make the warrant watertight against the exigencies of future pressures, whether financial or otherwise. I can imagine that at more than one point in the school’s history, the warrant has been pored over with great precision by MOD lawyers to try to discover whether there is a get-out clause.

The school was established to educate children of “other ranks”—in other words, not the children of officers. For most of its history, that has essentially been the pool of children from which pupils have been drawn. There are pupils whose parents are or may be officers, but for the most part, those parents have come through the ranks. From the outside, with its large campus, playing fields and, dare I say it, the somewhat Victorian if not slightly gothic look of some of the older buildings—I am sure that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire recognises that description—it looks like any other private boarding school, yet it is unique.

When the school was established, and through the greater part of its history, it would have offered pupils a very different experience from what is gained there now. From my observations of that history, there is no doubt that there was an emphasis on training the boys—only boys at that time—of soldiers and sailors to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. For reasons that were prevalent at the time, and perhaps things that we do not quite understand now, it was not considered particularly important to open out options, particularly academic options, for those boys. The education would undoubtedly have been based on the model of the day: a strong emphasis on discipline—probably a harsh discipline—and on training and drill; and strong encouragement to follow dad into the Army or Navy.

The governance of the school is undertaken by Her Majesty’s commissioners, with the current and long-standing patron being the Duke of Edinburgh. A comparison between the list of commissioners of only 30-odd years ago and those of today is informative. It gives an immediate impression of how the school has developed and now takes more account of modern educational and pastoral practice. A glance at the list of commissioners in 1974, for example, would, I think, cause us some concern in today’s world. There is General Sir Philip, Admiral Sir Angus, General Sir Gordon, Air Marshal Sir Brian, Air Vice-Marshal A.—whoever A. is—a Major-General, a Lieutenant-General and a Vice-Admiral Sir. There is not a woman in sight until we get to the name of the residential school nurse. The ultimate authority at that time was not a head teacher, but a commandant, who was a retired brigadier. I am sure that they were all good men—I certainly do not wish to impugn the character of any of those who were commissioners at the time—but I suspect that they were drawn from a very elite pool and had very little if any educational experience apart from that of their own school days.

That contrasts with today’s commissioners. The chairman, Bart McGettrick, is an eminent educationist with a national and international reputation. The commissioners, although still with their quota of military personnel as dictated by the original warrant, are drawn from a wider pool, including a Scottish woman sheriff who has extensive expertise in child care matters, and a local chartered accountant who lives in Dunblane, Mr Alan Plumtree.

The school also has links to the Stirling state network and the wider Scottish independent school network. Those links have been developed during the past 14 years or so and bring to the school a wider ambit of educational experience. Although no Stirling head teacher is currently serving as a commissioner, there was one until recently. I trust that that important connection with both the mainstream state sector and the local educational sector will not be lost in future commissioner appointments.

However, I wish to highlight the contribution of Queen Victoria school to the modern military covenant. I want to test the Minister on one or two points to ensure not only that he currently values its contribution, but that the MOD takes seriously the commitment made in 1908 of support “in perpetuity”.

Although QVS has changed over its 103 years, it still provides stability and continuity of education within the Scottish system for the children of armed forces personnel who are Scottish, have served in Scotland or are part of a Scottish regiment. That means that the pupils’ parents can be in the Scottish regiments. Indeed, I know from my own experience that there are young Fijian children at the school, as well as children whose parents have volunteered for the Scottish regiments.

Sadly, the school is still needed in the same way it ever was. Although there are fewer orphans at the school nowadays, about 50% of the children were orphans at one point, because they had priority in the admissions process. Improved medical techniques mean that there are far more survivors of military conflicts, but some parents who return will be seriously disabled, and children of such battlefield survivors are coming before the QVS admissions board. In August, there will be at least one new pupil whose father is an amputee from a current conflict.

Unquestionably, many QVS families—probably the majority—could not afford boarding education for their children, even if they were in receipt of the continuity of education allowance. The MOD is tightening the CEA eligibility criteria, but even those who are still eligible will have to pay about 10% of their fees, as well as the extras levied by fee-paying schools. Such things would be beyond the means of most families with children at QVS. Even under the rumoured plans for more static Army, Air Force and Royal Navy units, there will still be some need for mobility, and that will not be limited to those—mainly officers—who can afford boarding with the help of the CEA.

There is also a sound educational justification for the MOD to maintain its commitment to QVS. A recent Ofsted report on the education of children of military families clearly identified the fact that there were significant issues with the quality of the educational experience of children whose parents were mobile or on active deployment. It noted:

“A key feature of life in the Armed Forces is that families are likely to move home, to different parts of the UK and abroad, on a regular basis. The number of moves will be dependent on the length of service of the serving parent and their role within the Armed Forces… However…parents invariably identified the disruption, caused by their geographical mobility, as beingj the biggest challenge faced by themselves and their children. Disruption is further exacerbated for children in these families as they had to change schools generally outside of normal school term dates”,

which adds to their difficulties.

Those are the very children QVS caters for, and the constantly improving educational achievement at the school is testimony to what it does. The exam results at QVS are above the Scottish average at O-grade and higher levels. The increasing ambitions of the children and their parents are being realised. On visits to the school over the past few years, I have seen that the young people leaving the school are going to university and college in greater numbers than ever before—something that I did not see when I became the MP for the area some years ago.

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

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on the excellence of the debate. I lived in Dunblane all my formative years and saw the superb education provided at Queen Victoria school. I entirely take her point about children of military families moving around. Does she agree that it is extremely disappointing that we have a Queen Victoria school in Scotland but no equivalent in England? Is it not time that we had one down here, too?

[Mrs McGuire]

The Minister might be venturing a step too far if he answers that at this point, but the MOD should perhaps take the QVS model slightly more seriously, particularly in some of the discussions it is having about the continuity of education allowance, because there are perhaps some options there.

I have some brief questions for the Minister. Given the importance of the military covenant, will he make it clear that his Department recognises the contribution of QVS and does not see it as some anachronism from a bygone age? I use the word “anachronism” because it was used in a report by the Select Committee on Defence four or five years ago, although the Committee also recognised the importance of maintaining the school.

Does the Minister recognise that mobile service personnel who cannot afford to access the continuity of education allowance should have their children’s needs supported and that QVS offers a valuable resource to meet those needs? I am sure the Minister has heard the comments of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire on the issue.

Will the Minister encourage his officials to work with the commissioners to look at options to expand the facilities at QVS and to use them and the school’s expertise to the benefit of a greater number of the children of mobile service personnel, giving them the opportunity to benefit from the stability and pastoral care offered by the school?

Next week, we will have armed forces day. On 24 June, QVS will have its grand day—a mixture of school prize-giving and end-of-term celebration. I hope that the Minister, before he perhaps moves on to higher offices in another Department—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Or gets sacked.

[Mrs McGuire]

I would never use that word to a Minister. However, I hope that the Minister will have the opportunity to come to the school to see its grand day. It is a fantastic celebration of the school, and I have been privileged to be present at it for the past 14 years. In front of their parents and families, the students parade in their Victorian scarlet uniforms and kilts to the beat of their own superb, internationally recognised pipe band. It is a day of high celebration and some emotion, as the sixth-year pupils leave the school for the last time. Grand day is a public statement of this country’s support for these children, who allow us—the civilian population—to borrow their parents to protect our freedoms. Thankfully, most of the families will be reunited in safety. Sadly, some parents will not return, while others will be disabled for life.

I do not wish to see the school preserved in aspic. There are still ways in which it can develop its educational and pastoral potential, and I am obviously happy to discuss my views with the Minister on a future occasion. However, I want to leave him with some words from one of the pupils, which perhaps sum up why a facility such as QVS is so important to the children who attend it:

“Here are some numbers. The first is nine. Nine is the number of times my life has been loaded onto a lorry and taken miles away, sometimes across one border, sometimes across several. The next number is seven. Seven is the number of times I’ve had said to me, ‘So how was your first day?’”

That is why there is a continuing role for QVS and an opportunity to see it expand as part of the Government’s valuable commitment to the military covenant.

13:48

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) on securing this short debate to highlight the work of Queen Victoria school in Dunblane. She takes a close interest in the school and has presented prizes there—perhaps she will do so on grand day on 24 June. I congratulate her on her obvious passion and support for the school.

The school has a long and proud history, which the right hon. Lady detailed. Its work chimes well with the Government’s commitment to our armed forces and their families, which is part of the armed forces covenant. The right hon. Lady’s first question was whether the Government recognise the value of QVS and, anachronistic or not—the school is rather unusual—we certainly value its work. I will discuss that further later in my speech.

The history of QVS is unique, although there are similar, but different schools in England. As the right hon. Lady said, the school was founded in 1905 by royal warrant. I was not going to mention the “in perpetuity” bit, but, unfortunately, she has already mentioned it. The school was originally founded by public subscription, but the Secretary of State for War undertook to maintain it for the sons of Scottish sailors and soldiers. Those responsibilities are now vested in my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Defence. Responsibility for its day-to-day governance rests with the board of commissioners, and the right hon. Lady has told us who they are. I was glad that she did not want to attack the senior and distinguished commissioners from 1974. The commissioners report to the Adjutant-General on behalf of the Secretary of State.

Since 1908, the opportunity has been taken to widen and modernise the remit of the school, while staying in the spirit of its founding constitution. In 1919, just after the Royal Air Force was formed, the school was opened to children of RAF personnel. It became co-educational in 1996, when entry was extended to daughters of service personnel, and, as the right hon. Lady said, it accepted the children of officers in 1999. Its basic purpose remains consistent with the aims of those who contributed so generously to its establishment: to provide secondary boarding education for the children of Scottish personnel and personnel who have served in Scotland or are part of a Scottish regiment. Although parents are not charged fees, they make a modest contribution to ancillary costs, which is slightly more than £1,000 a year.

The two elements of the school—the fact that it is Scottish and for the services—have combined to give it the very special ethos and nature that makes it unique in the UK. As well as providing a sound academic education, the school offers its pupils the opportunity to participate in various Scottish activities, including Scottish dance and performing in a pipe band. I was in an English regiment in the Army, but the one thing that would have persuaded me to join a Scottish regiment was not so much the kilts—my legs notwithstanding—but the fact that I love marching to a pipe band. I am glad to know that that activity continues in Dunblane.

It is in understanding and meeting the specific needs of service children that QVS is most special. The recent Ofsted report on children in service families, which covered England and Wales but contains lessons equally applicable to all our service families, found that some service children’s learning slowed or receded with the frequent moves that service life requires. It should be pointed out though that that does not feed through to attainment and there is no evidence of underachievement. Indeed, in the paper, “The Armed Forces Covenant, Today and Tomorrow”, the Department for Education states that in England attainment in exams for service children is not below average. It also demonstrates that at some stages of their education, service children have better attainment than their non-service counterparts.

QVS offers full continuity of secondary education for the children who attend and most importantly it offers it in a secure and safe environment that recognises and understands the special pressures on children that their parents’ life in the services can bring. The disruption caused by service life can be worsened when parents are deployed on active service, and the operational tempo has remained high for over a decade. The Ofsted report to which I referred found that some service children were susceptible to social and emotional disturbance when a parent or family member was on active deployment. Those pressures are especially well understood and catered for in a school where the staff are alert for their signs and where pupils can understand and share one another’s concerns.

Over the years, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of education and the Care Commission, which inspect Scottish schools, have commented favourably on the supportive environment that QVS offers to service children. The school plays a valuable part in supporting elements of the armed forces covenant in Scotland, which provides an answer to another of the right hon. Lady’s questions. Against that background, the Ministry of Defence has continued to provide for the needs of the school. As well as financing its running directly, much support is provided by the local military. Headquarters 2 division, based in Edinburgh, offers practical help in a number of ways, such as security and transport.

The school has concerns about the state of its buildings, and it is not unique in that. The pressure on the estate, which has to support the wide range of activities for which the MOD is responsible, is unrelenting, and when distributing limited resources, the needs of the school, however worthy, must be balanced against other operational and welfare priorities for our people and the wider needs of defence. The fact that some of its rather beautiful buildings are listed adds to the attractiveness of the school, but also to the costs of maintaining it. Within that difficult environment, I am pleased to say that QVS has seen some £2 million-worth of refurbishment, improvement and maintenance works over the past couple of years, including the replacement of a significant number of windows within the grade II listed main school building.

I am aware however that not all the perceived needs and aspirations of the school have necessarily been addressed. Therefore MOD officials, some of whom serve as commissioners, are working closely with the school and the whole board of commissioners to develop a strategic plan, not just to preserve the achievements of the school, but to improve on them. That will include identifying the investment required in the infrastructure, but it is by no means confined to that. For example, with Her Majesty’s commissioners we are exploring closer integration with Service Children’s Education, which provides education for service children overseas. I am not suggesting that Scotland is overseas, because I know that doing so would get the right hon. Lady going, but there is a certain synergy in the provision of education. The school is unique, and it might be better dealt with by the SCE because it deals specifically with the education of service children.

[Mrs McGuire]

Does that mean that some of the criteria I highlighted would be lost? I appreciate that the Minister is looking at administrative ease, but the mobile service personnel element and the particular and unique support that QVS gives could be lost if it is absorbed into something that does not quite fit. He has just revealed this idea, and I am interested in the option.

[Mr Robathan]

The right hon. Lady asks a very good question. We are examining the possibility, but it is not the intention to slot the school into a neat package. It is about where it would be best administrated and this is an administrative matter. I can already see that if we were to undermine the school, she would be back like a shot to ensure that did not happen.

Closer integration with the SCE could help to provide greater specialist support to QVS and greater integration with other service schools overseas, which some of the children will have been to already. Against the severe financial constraints we inherited, within which the MOD and the rest of Government are working, it is extremely challenging to increase the resources devoted to the school, notwithstanding the benefits it brings—and it does bring benefits—and the underpinning it provides in Scotland to our commitments under the armed forces covenant. Like everything else in our budget, it must compete with other extremely high priorities, but we are committed to working with the school and its commissioners to identify the most beneficial and cost-effective way forward through the development of a medium-term strategic plan.

The right hon. Lady particularly asked whether it was possible to expand the school, which is one of the things at which we will certainly look. It is not cost-free and we are strapped for cash, but if children go there rather than to other independent schools, where the continuity of education allowance has to be paid, it could be cheaper. I understand the value of QVS to those who are not in receipt of CEA, because it provides a different way forward for schooling.

Finally, we have delivered a scheme to provide scholarships to bereaved service children and a new fund announced by the Secretary of State on 20 May provides £3 million a year for state schools with service children. The new fund will assist schools and academies that have children with parents in the services or the reserves, to help mitigate the impact of mobility and deployment within the armed forces.

Before I close, I want to say that I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this topic. I was interested in what the right hon. Lady had to say. I have not been to Dunblane, but QVS is obviously very good. I will correct one thing that she said: approximately 50% of CEA is paid to officers’ families and 50% is paid to others—I think that is right. If I am wrong, I shall write to her to apologise. I think that 50% is within 5% of the right figure, but of course it changes each year.

It is always nice to hear a Labour politician praising an independent school. It cheers me up no end, because we do not always hear it. I assure the House that the education of service children, wherever they learn—in state schools in this country, in service schools abroad, in independent schools supported by CEA and certainly at QVS—is one of our highest priorities. I went to Welbeck defence sixth-form college only two weeks ago and have been to the Duke of York’s royal military school in Dover, which are of course different from QVS, but I take an interest in this subject. I have been delighted to respond to the right hon. Lady today.

Question put and agreed to.

13:59

Sitting adjourned.