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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
1. What recent discussions she has had with the chair of the independent panel on forestry on the future of the public forest estate.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
First, I am sure that the House would like to join me in wishing the Bishop of Liverpool, who chairs the independent panel, a speedy recovery from his recent operation. As the panel is independent, it is important that its members, including the chair, enjoy complete freedom to produce their report, the scope of which extends beyond the public forest estate to include the future of all England’s forests.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
First, may I associate myself with the right hon. Lady’s comments about James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool? She will be aware that at least some members of the independent panel think that more of our woodlands should be in public ownership, not less, so will she give the House a commitment not to sell off any more publicly owned forests and woodland, and instead to seek to work with partners to find ways of adding to it?
Mrs Spelman
As I have said, the panel is independent, and I have had no separate conversations with its members to hear the views that the hon. Lady has expressed. The important thing is to wait for the panel to report to us with its recommendations. In the interim, Ministers have made it absolutely clear that there will be no further sale of the public forest estate.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State recall that in the 1990s John Major, as Prime Minister, launched an initiative in the national forest to develop a parliamentary area, where MPs could sponsor a tree? The aim of that voluntary activity was to encourage biodiversity and help the forest. Could the independent panel consider such initiatives, because I am sure that throughout the country there are groups of individuals who would like to do their bit?
Mrs Spelman
My hon. Friend is right, and I remember that extremely good initiative. We want to encourage not only parliamentarians but all individuals, and schools and places of work, to plant more trees. We aim to plant 1 million new trees within this parliamentary Session. I will certainly look at the parliamentary scheme as an opportunity to remind colleagues how important it is that we do our bit.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I supported John Major’s initiative, which was very good, and sponsored two trees in memory of my parents. If we care about our forests and woods, we must ensure that the next generation visits, enjoys and learns about them. The number of out-of-school visits is collapsing and we must do something about it. Will the Secretary of State join the initiative of the John Clare Trust, which I chair, in launching the “Every child’s right to the countryside” campaign, and give it a bit of support?
Mrs Spelman
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the opportunity for our children to learn in nature is incredibly important, as we highlight in the natural environment White Paper, in which we have given an undertaking to remove the barriers to outdoor learning. The Department for Education wholly supports that.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
2. What recent discussions she has had on the delivery of her Department’s biodiversity strategy.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
4. What recent discussions she has had on the delivery of her Department’s biodiversity strategy.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
My Department has regular discussions with interested parties on the delivery of our biodiversity strategy. The Government’s vision for the natural environment, including biodiversity, is set out in the natural environment White Paper, the first in 20 years. The UK also endorsed the EU biodiversity strategy last week. We will shortly publish a new biodiversity strategy for England, which will build on this.
Christopher Pincher
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to biodiversity, particularly the idea of biodiversity offsetting set out in the White Paper, but will she confirm that the rules on offsetting that she will put in place will keep it local, so that any development affecting biodiversity in Tamworth must be offset in Tamworth, not in some other part of the country?
Mrs Spelman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have given an undertaking in the natural environment White Paper that biodiversity offsetting should be in the local area, because local communities need to feel the benefit if they are to take the development. At present it is section 106 agreements that should deliver on biodiversity offsetting, but what happens is often so far removed from the community that the connection is not made.
Chris Skidmore
What plans does the Secretary of State have to include green belt land in the biodiversity strategy, to ensure that it is protected for generations to come?
Mrs Spelman
My hon. Friend is speaking to a Member of Parliament whose constituency is entirely in the green belt, so I can give him a strong assurance about the protection of the green belt. The Department for Communities and Local Government has given an undertaking on that, which will be repeated in the national planning policy framework. DEFRA’s strategy of course includes the protection of the green belt, but even within the green belt, communities will have the opportunity to designate green areas to provide extra protection and enhance biodiversity.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The wildlife crime unit plays an important part in protecting endangered species and preventing the trade in endangered species. How will the Secretary of State ensure that that continues, given that its budget is guaranteed for only two years?
Mrs Spelman
We have said this on a previous occasion, but it is worth repeating because it is important. We have secured the funding for the wildlife crime unit. It is an important part of combating the threat to endangered species from those who seek to do them damage.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Has the Secretary of State seen the concerns of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, based on a survey of businesses, that although the aims of the biodiversity strategy are laudable, there may be a skills shortage so that we cannot reach the required level by 2020? What steps will she take to assess the skills required and build the skills base to achieve the objectives?
Mrs Spelman
I am happy to share with the House the fact that I co-chair the green economy council, where businesses from all sectors of the economy come together on a regular basis to discuss with us how to green the economy. As part of that, we have a focus on improving green skills, precisely to ensure that we have people with the experience and training to deliver on our important commitments to protect and enhance biodiversity while growing the economy.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
3. Whether she plans to introduce pilot projects to evaluate biodiversity offsets.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
In the natural environment White Paper, we announced that we will establish a voluntary approach to biodiversity offsetting and test it in a number of pilot areas. We want local authorities to express an interest in taking part in the pilot, and to hear from developers, conservation and community groups and others who want to test offsetting.
Kerry McCarthy
In an earlier reply the Secretary of State referred to section 106 agreements. In Bristol there has been a scandalous failure to enforce section 106 agreements, and hundreds of thousands of pounds have not been spent on the projects they should have been spent on. When the Minister evaluates the pilots, will he ensure that new biodiversity schemes are actually realised?
Richard Benyon
I can give the hon. Lady that assurance. That is one of the attractions of this scheme, and is why it works well in other areas. We want to dovetail it into our planning system because it offers clarity. She is right to point out that section 106 negotiations can sometimes be a bit of a horse-trading operation and can result, in certain circumstances, in token biodiversity protection activities. This scheme offers a clear, understandable, auditable, accountable system. We are delighted by the response from a number of local authorities through the consultation process. More are now coming forward since the natural environment White Paper was published, as are developers. I hope that in the coming months we will be able to give her the assurance that she needs.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
There is, of course, an excellent pilot project that will bring enormous biodiversity benefits to Pickering, in the form of the slow-the-flow flood defence scheme. Will the Minister assure me that the guidance regulations under the Reservoirs Act 1975, which are preventing that project from going ahead, will be swept away?
Richard Benyon
I have just won my bet that my hon. Friend would raise that issue, and she is entirely right to do so. I share her concerns about the application of the Reservoirs Act and its implications for Pickering. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has visited the site. We want to do all we can to ensure that the scheme goes ahead, because we think that it is a good example of how biodiversity, slowing up water, and flood protection can fit together in many areas. We want her constituents to know that the Government will look into any means possible to ensure that such schemes go ahead.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
5. What recent discussions she has had with representatives of supermarket retail chains on the effects of pricing on the pig industry.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I discussed the supply chain and the competitiveness of all those involved at the review meeting of the pigmeat supply chain taskforce in February. The taskforce meeting included the major retailers and pigmeat processors and producers. However, for competition reasons, Ministers cannot discuss prices directly with retailers.
Natascha Engel
I thank the Minister for that answer. When will the supermarket ombudsman be in place, and will he have the power to ensure that supermarkets pay a fair price for British pork?
Mr Paice
As the hon. Lady knows, the Government have published the draft Bill on the supermarket code adjudicator, and we hope that the real legislation will come forward very soon. The purpose of the adjudicator, as recommended by the Competition Commission, is to enforce the code, which has been in place since February 2010. He or she will not be able to intervene directly in prices or margins, but will intervene in issues to do with fair competition, and fair terms and conditions for suppliers.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Pig production standards and animal welfare standards in general are far higher in Britain than they are throughout most of the rest of the world, yet the consumer in the British supermarket has no way of knowing whether they are buying British bacon or pork or whether it is from somewhere completely different. How far have the EU discussions on allowing country of origin labelling progressed? We want to see a Union Jack on British pigmeat, so that we can buy it in the supermarket.
Mr Paice
My hon. Friend is right. However, at the moment the Union Jack could appear on a product from a pig that was not reared in Britain, and that needs to be stopped. I can tell him that the whole meat industry has agreed a voluntary code on country of origin labelling, and we carried out a benchmarking exercise survey in April, against which we can judge progress. The EU food information regulations are making fast progress. It will be a little while yet, but we believe that within them there will be mandatory country of origin labelling for fresh meat.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
6. What steps she is taking in response to recent trends in food prices.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer this question with Question 10. [Interruption.] I think that they are grouped.
Mr Speaker
I think not. If I have missed something and the Secretary of State wishes to explain it I will be obliged, but I think not.
Mrs Spelman
Sorry, Mr Speaker. It has been withdrawn, I think.
The Government are committed to promoting better functioning of agricultural markets to help mitigate future price spikes. Last week I attended the G20 Agriculture Ministers meeting—the first time that Agriculture Ministers have been convoked under the G20. We unanimously agreed on measures to increase food production sustainably and provide better transparency and governance in order to regulate supply and demand. I wish to see further liberalisation of markets, which as the Government’s foresight report states, will help dampen price volatility.
Graeme Morrice
The United Nations and the OECD recently predicted that global food prices could rise by as much as 30% in the next decade. What action is the Secretary of State taking to tackle commodity speculation and rising food prices?
Mrs Spelman
There is no conclusive evidence that speculation is the principal cause of price volatility. Farmers would be the first to explain that they speculate—or hedge—in order to even out the highs and lows in their prices. The fundamental problem in world markets is that of tight supply and demand, so the most important thing we can do is increase food production sustainably. That is a priority for my Department.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is important not only to examine food prices but to ensure that people are buying the right product. There are likely to be a lot of low-standard eggs coming into Britain, because we will have met the standards for the new enriched cages by January but a lot of Europe will not. What are the Government doing to prevent such eggs from coming into Britain?
Mrs Spelman
As I have told the House before, I was the first among the EU Agriculture Ministers to spell out how important it is that all egg producers comply with the changes in the law that will apply from 1 January. I am delighted to be able to inform my hon. Friend that it will not be legal to market eggs in this country that have not been produced in enriched cages.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
We are all aware that external factors push up food prices, but another problem is the imbalance between the supermarkets and the producer, which is passed on to the customer. We have just had an unsatisfactory response about the adjudicator. What we want is a proactive ombudsman with real teeth, so that consumers and producers get a fair price.
Mrs Spelman
That is a bit rich coming from a representative of a party that was in government for 13 years and had the opportunity to introduce such an ombudsman, which is something that this Government are now setting about doing.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
7. What estimate she has made of the proportion of livestock slaughtered in England that was reared in the UK in the last year for which figures are available.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
The vast majority of livestock slaughtered in England will have been reared in the United Kingdom. A small number, including some spent hens, are from the Republic of Ireland, and a very small number will be imported from mainland Europe for slaughter rather than for breeding purposes.
Andrew Rosindell
I thank the Minister for his response. The transport of livestock over long distances can cause unnecessary suffering and distress. Does he agree that where possible the slaughter of animals should be done locally, to avoid that distress and long transportation?
Mr Paice
I think that most people entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and certainly I do. We want to encourage the slaughtering of animals locally wherever possible. Not only is it good for welfare reasons, it is good for local employment and fits in with local food, which we all want to encourage.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
8. What steps she is taking to maximise the potential of rivers and inland waterways.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
In April 2012, the Government plan to move British Waterways from the public sector to civil society, through the creation of a new waterways charity. This will give waterways users and the communities that live alongside them greater involvement in how waterways are managed, leading to a range of enhanced public benefits. It will also place the waterways on a more sustainable footing, as the charity will have access to new sources of commercial and charitable income.
Mary Macleod
We have more than 2,000 miles of rivers and inland waterways, including the Grand Union canal in Brentford in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the announcement of the proposed merger between the Waterways Trust and the new waterways charity will provide a good opportunity to boost the value of those national assets?
Richard Benyon
I am delighted to welcome the announcement of the merger that my hon. Friend describes. It will allow the cultural and heritage purposes of the new waterways charity to be fundamentally linked with all the other benefits arising from creating the new entity. The three museums that the waterways charity now owns will become part of the new charity, and will be a fantastic resource for it in future.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
9. What progress she has made in reducing the burden of regulation on farmers; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
In May I welcomed the report of the independent farming regulation taskforce, which has made more than 200 recommendations to reduce the regulatory burden on farmers without lowering our standards. The Government are now carefully considering those recommendations.
Sajid Javid
Farmers in my constituency and nationwide would welcome the efforts that the Government are taking to reduce regulation. Can the Minister give the House an idea of the time scale for implementing those recommendations, and say whether any might be taken forward immediately?
Mr Paice
Perhaps my hon. Friend will accept tomorrow as being close enough to immediately. I can tell him that as of tomorrow, dairy farmers who are covered as members of the assured dairy scheme will find their state inspections going down to once every 10 years, as they are regularly inspected as part of the scheme to which they belong.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
In two weeks’ time this House will debate the Public Bodies Bill, which abolishes the Agricultural Wages Board, which sets pay and conditions for 150,000 farm workers in England and Wales. If the AWB is abolished, every farmer in the country will become responsible for negotiating pay and conditions with their workers. Can the Minister tell the House what estimate he has made of the extra time and money this new regulatory burden will place on farm businesses?
Mr Paice
I have rarely heard such nonsense. The whole purpose of abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board is to reduce regulation, not to increase it. The change has been sought by the industry, which does not see it as regulatory, so what the hon. Lady has to come and tell us that it will increase regulation I really do not know.
Mary Creagh
The Agricultural Wages Board guarantees farm workers other benefits, such as bereavement pay and sick pay. Without it, their sick pay will fall from roughly £180 a week for a grade 1 worker to the statutory minimum of £81.60 a week. The AWB also guarantees children under 16 who work on farms £2.98 an hour. The minimum wage does not cover children under 16, so when the AWB is abolished children on farms will have no wage protection. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman has considered the impact of the change on the under-16s. Can he tell the House what protections he will put in place to protect child workers from exploitation?
Mr Paice
There are many other regulations that deal with young people in employment across the whole of industry. The reality is that the board has been in existence for 60 years and it is now well past its sell-by date. The industry has asked for its abolition and, as the Public Bodies Bill stands, we will have to consult on that. The hon. Lady will be able to make her views known at that point—but I must emphasise that the contracts of employment of everyone currently employed in the industry will remain in existence.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Looking to future regulation, if badger control is going to be part of DEFRA’s bovine TB eradication programme, will the Minister confirm that any regulations attached to licences will be proportionate and practical?
Mr Paice
I think my hon. Friend knows that we have not made any announcement about badger control yet. I hope that the conclusions of our consultation will be announced fairly soon, along with a wider package of measures to combat TB. Whatever steps we take will clearly need to balance the regulations that have to be in place for disease control with minimising their burden and using risk assessment as the basis for applying them.
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
10. What her policy is on future levels of recycling of domestic and commercial waste.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
I commend the right hon. Lady for her long-standing commitment to this issue. Our waste review set out our ambition to move from a throwaway society to a zero-waste economy. This includes maximising the recycling of waste that cannot be prevented or reused from households and businesses. We will work with local authorities and the waste management industry to make it easier for everyone to recycle, whether at home, at work or on the go.
Joan Ruddock
Just a year ago the Secretary of State said of recycling:
“We need to go faster and we need to go further.”
So is it the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who has crushed her ambition and vetoed a target for recycling in this country? Having won the battle over fortnightly bin collections, why does she not now adopt Friends of the Earth’s target of halving black sack waste by 2020, thus reducing costs and creating jobs?
Mrs Spelman
I support the scale of the ambition of Friends of the Earth’s target, and we are of course bound by an EU target to recycle 50% of household refuse, but if targets are too specific they can be distorting, driving councils to meet centrally imposed indicators instead of doing what is best for their local circumstances. A good example of that was the landfill allowance trading scheme, which led to the anomaly of disincentivising the recycling of business waste.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend might be aware of the problem of heavily soiled films used on farms being exported to China as clean waste, rather than being put into the recycling process in this country. What action can she take to stop these illegal exports?
Mrs Spelman
If it is illegal, it is important that we take legal sanctions to prevent it. Whenever possible, we want to see our own waste industry growing. At present it is projected to grow at 4% per annum, and there is no lack of ambition in the industry to deal more effectively with all forms of waste that we can treat in this country.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
The lack of ambition belongs entirely to the Secretary of State. The Sunday Times called the Government’s waste review a “sloppy, flyblown mess” hamstrung by Tory dogma. The Welsh Government have adopted a 70% recycling rate, which will create 50,000 new jobs by 2025, yet in England this Government have abandoned recycling targets. Will the Secretary of State tell the House why she has scrapped recycling targets for England? Will she also publish an assessment of how many English jobs will not now be created, and how much investment in the waste industry will not now be made, as a result of her decision?
Mrs Spelman
That is a gross distortion of our waste review. The hon. Gentleman should not rely on newspapers to give him a guide to what is in it; he should take the trouble to read the real thing. Have I not just said that we expect the waste industry to grow by 4% per annum? We have not scrapped recycling targets; we are committed to EU targets for recycling. In addition, we have more ambition with regard to landfill, which exceeds the ambition of the previous Government and involves proposals not to bury metal and wood in landfill.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
11. What recent discussions she has had with her EU counterparts on reform of the common fisheries policy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
As UK Fisheries Minister, I have had discussions with a range of people about common fisheries policy reform. These include the EU Commission, Members of the European Parliament and other member states. I continue to encourage fellow Ministers to support radical reform, most recently during this week’s Fisheries Council. I will continue to press our case for reform as negotiations develop over the next year.
Tom Greatrex
I am grateful for the Minister’s response. I am aware that the mackerel quota was discussed at the meeting earlier this week. Is the Minister aware of the widespread exasperation at the fact that in her comments afterwards, the Commissioner confirmed that no action would even begin to be taken until at least October—a full 18 months after the arbitrary action that caused the problem in the first place? There is now very real concern that this will have an impact not just on the sustainability of stocks but on the livelihood of fishing fleets. Will the hon. Gentleman urge his European partners to take action more quickly?
Richard Benyon
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this matter; it is our most pressing problem, and our most valuable stock is at risk of crashing—probably within 18 months to two years—if the gross overfishing announced by the Faroes and Iceland goes ahead. I moved the issue forward at this week’s meeting by seeking to raise it to a political level. It has been dealt with by the Commission and by officials, but I believe it will take Ministers from the countries concerned to look each other in the eye and sit round a table, perhaps with an independent chairman, to negotiate. I do not care where we meet, but we have got to move this forward quickly. That is the proposal I made at the meeting, and I have followed it up with a letter. We made a number of other suggestions that highlight the urgency of this problem.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I would be grateful if the Minister were prepared to meet a delegation of fishermen from my constituency who are concerned about the Government’s proposals for the inshore fishery, as the consultation on that closes today. They are particularly concerned about what I suspect will be the unintended consequences that will be detrimental to this low-impact and sustainable sector.
Richard Benyon
I would be delighted to meet representatives of the hon. Gentleman’s local fishing community. The consultation on the under-10-metre sector, which, as he says, closes today, sought to find a solution to the level of perceived unfairness—I acknowledge it—that applies to this sector. I want to find a way forward that gives this sector more fishing opportunities and allows the local communities to invest in their local fleets, because we understand the social implications of the decline of the fishing industry in many places. I am not in the business of making life more difficult for any particular sector, and I want to ensure that this consultation feeds on the many enthusiasms we have encountered, while also setting to rest many of the fears expressed.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The European Commission is due to publish next month the new legislative text on the reform of the common fisheries policy. The best thing, of course, would be to abolish that dreadful policy altogether, but short of that, what specific actions have the Government urged on the Commission on regionalisation of the policy?
Richard Benyon
The right hon. Gentleman is right; we expect the paper to be published on 13 July and we will debate it at the next Council meeting on 19 July. We pushed very hard for regionalisation. He is absolutely right to say that the system is ludicrous. One of the many failures of the common fisheries policy is that factors such as net sizes are decided in Brussels, whereas they should be decided at least on a sea basin basis, if not at member state level. We are still pushing hard for regionalisation. There are counter-arguments about the legality and what other countries want, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are really pushing for this, as we believe it to be an important way forward.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
12. What recent assessment she has made of the spread of bovine tuberculosis in wildlife in the West Worcestershire constituency; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
The most recent information we have is from the randomised badger-culling trial, in which badgers were culled annually in an area west of Malvern between 2002 and 2005. The average TB prevalence in badgers culled in that area was then 28%. We also know that TB in cattle is linked to TB in wildlife. I can tell my hon. Friend that there was an increase in the number of new herds disclosed with TB in Hereford and Worcester in 2010 compared with 2009, and a corresponding increase in herd incidence over the same period.
Harriett Baldwin
Wildlife in my constituency is suffering from tuberculosis, a lingering death. Cattle are being slaughtered, and farmers are lying awake at night worried that their herd might be next. Will the Minister update us on what further steps the Government could take to bring the disease under control?
Mr Paice
My hon. Friend is right to stress the need for further policies to control TB. As I said earlier, we will make announcements fairly soon—before the House rises, we hope—on our proposals regarding badgers, and about wider cattle-to-cattle measures. I assure my hon. Friend and the House that the status quo, do-nothing agenda is not acceptable. Calculations show that if we do nothing and things stay as they are, it will cost the taxpayer £1 billion over the next 10 years.
Mr Speaker
Order. The question is specifically about West Worcestershire, and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire is a little distance from there.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
13. What steps she plans to take to reduce the incidence of antisocial behaviour by dogs and their owners.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
DEFRA is working closely with the Home Office to deal with the issue of antisocial behaviour on the part of dogs and their owners. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, on 7 February the Home Office issued a consultation paper on a new, streamlined framework of measures to tackle antisocial behaviour. Subject to consultation, the new tools will replace 18 of the formal powers that are currently available, including those applicable to dogs. The consultation ended on 17 May, and the responses are being analysed.
Jim Fitzpatrick
It is reassuring to hear that discussions are taking place with the Home Office. Members of the all-party associate parliamentary group for animal welfare met representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers last week, and they presented their evidence to the Department shortly afterwards. Will the Minister meet members of the all-party group to discuss ACPO’s information and the concerns it raised with the Department?
Mr Paice
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am always happy to meet him and, indeed, any other colleagues. As he also knows, the issue of dogs is the responsibility of my noble Friend, Lord Henley. I will pass his request on to my noble Friend, but I assure him that if he cannot deal with it, I will do so.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
14. What her policy is on legislation to prohibit the use of wild animals in circuses.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
The Government will listen to the views of the House of Commons, and are sympathetic to the motion for a ban. We are taking active steps towards finding a way in which to introduce a ban and clearing the obstacles that prevent us from doing so now. In the meantime we have begun, as a matter of urgency, to develop a tough licensing regime which will stop circuses from using wild animals if they do not provide the appropriate welfare standards.
Mr Spellar
As the Minister acknowledges, the House made a clear decision to ban wild animals in circuses. As with so many other issues, would not it be a good idea for his Department to start listening to the electorate rather than the civil servants? Should he not just get on with it?
Mr Paice
I have just made it clear that the Government respect the view of the House and are sympathetic to the motion for a ban. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the specific measure mentioned in the motion constituted secondary legislation. All the advice given to us—and to the last Government—suggests that that is not the right way to proceed, which is why we are trying to overcome the obstacles.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate the Minister’s response, but it appears that confusion still reigns at DEFRA. After last Thursday’s vote, an official in the Department said:
“Given that a ban is not an immediate possibility, we will proceed with a tough licensing regime”.
That prompts an obvious question: why does the Minister continue to frustrate the will of the House? Will he commit himself to introducing a ban during the current parliamentary Session?
Mr Paice
I wish that the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said. The fact is that it is unlawful for a Minister to legislate if he knows that it is unlawful to do so. According to all the advice that we have been given, using section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 would be extremely likely to raise a judicial challenge, which would not benefit the position.
I have made it clear that we are taking the matter forward. We are exploring all avenues, both in the Department and more widely outside Government, in trying to find the best way of satisfying the desire of the House.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
My Department takes responsibility for safeguarding the environment, supporting farmers and strengthening the green economy. In addition, it has responsibility for animal health and welfare. Accordingly, I would like to take this opportunity to draw colleagues’ attention to the written ministerial statement and accompanying “Dear colleague” letter setting out the changes we are making to the pet travel scheme. I believe these changes strike the right balance between making it easier for people who wish to travel with pets and maintaining the protection people have a right to expect. They are consistent with our commitment to science-led, evidence-based policy making.
Dr Whitehead
Tomorrow, the League Against Cruel Sports will hold a national conference on wildlife protection with the support of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other organisations. On the eve of that conference, will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government have dropped their plan to hold a vote to enable the repeal of the Hunting Act 2004 in this Parliament?
Mrs Spelman
We have not dropped our plan to hold a vote. That is part of the coalition agreement and it is in our business plan.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
T3. The Secretary of State is aware of the recent UK National Ecosystem Assessment report, which Friends of the Earth has described as essential summer reading for all MPs. It estimates that the health benefits of living within view of green spaces are worth approximately £300. Given those economic benefits, what will the Secretary of State do to ensure we better value our national environment, in particular the green belt?
Mrs Spelman
The National Ecosystem Assessment report should be compulsory reading for MPs, not least because the Minister for policy at the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), described it as a game changer. The most important aspect of the report is the tool itself: 200 scientists from around the world came together to give us a scientific tool that enables us to estimate the true value of what nature provides for us for free.
Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
T2. Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming Oxfam’s “Grow” campaign on sustainable farming and food? Has she met Oxfam, and what discussions has she had with Department for International Development Ministers on this issue?
Mrs Spelman
As I have said before, what came over very strongly at the G20 from the Agriculture Ministers of the world’s richest nations was the responsibility we have not only to grow more food sustainably but to aid developing countries to grow more food sustainably themselves. We have good relationships with all our stakeholders and key non-governmental organisations—I would count Oxfam as one of them—and with our DFID colleagues in order to make sure we play our part.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
T4. The Minister has already given a response on the inshore fishing consultation, but will he give my under-10-metres fishermen the assurance that all the responses will be carefully considered, including concerns about the suggested structure and the fact that there will still be people with quotas who no longer fish and have not done so for many years?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
Yes, I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will look at every response very carefully. We have had about 20 meetings around the coast, which were very well attended, and many of the areas of consultation were explained to the audience in such a way as to allay their fears. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), we want to make life better for the under-10s and give them a more sustainable future.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Only two weeks ago, a gamekeeper was convicted for illegally killing birds of prey in my constituency. Is it not time to think about introducing a vicarious liability offence to ensure that landowners and estate managers supervise their gamekeepers more closely and more effectively?
Richard Benyon
There are very good laws in place to punish the illegal killing of any animal. If they are not being enforced, they must be and we will take steps to make sure that happens. However, this is also a good opportunity to applaud gamekeepers for the wonderful work they do in providing excellent biodiversity across our countryside.
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
T5. Further to the earlier answer to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) about the groceries adjudicator, the Minister will be aware that the proposal enjoys widespread support in the farming industry, but there are concerns that farmers will be reluctant to volunteer information for fear of reprisals. Does the Minister agree that trade bodies such as the National Farmers Union must do their bit by collating and publishing information from their members, to help guide the supermarket adjudicator to the right target and identify bad practice?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is widespread concern that individuals might be loth to make complaints because of the risk of being penalised by the retailer involved. As he will know, the draft Bill allows for third-party representations, but does not allow for representations from trade bodies. To give a precise answer, there is nothing to prevent the National Farmers Union or any other body from gathering information, publishing it and making things clear. Obviously, the adjudicator would then have discretion over whether to pursue the investigation further.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Given today’s worrying report from the Committee on Climate Change showing that the UK is in danger of missing its carbon reduction targets, will the Minister back plans supported by more than 100 organisations, including the Co-operative Group, WWF and the Aldersgate Group, and commit to introducing the mandatory reporting of corporate greenhouse gas emissions?
Mrs Spelman
We are consulting on that, but I would like the hon. Lady to know that my Department is responsible for climate change adaptation and we are completely committed, together with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, to achieving our carbon emissions targets. We will do all that we can because this is such an important matter, as was outlined in the Foresight report. The challenge that we will face on food security if we do not tackle the combination of an increasing population and demand for food, hungry people and climate change means that we will be held to account.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
T6. Given that the Government are in favour of animals being stunned before slaughter, when might we have some food labelling regulations that will mark kosher and halal products as such, so that those of us who object to ritual slaughter do not buy them inadvertently?
Mr Paice
My hon. Friend rightly says that the Government believe that all animals should be stunned before slaughter, but we respect the rights of religious groups. However, this practice should clearly be restricted, wherever possible, to food for those religious groups. We face serious challenges in labelling and ensuring efficient systems of traceability. The Government are examining the matter and, as I am sure he is aware, it is being discussed in respect of the food information regulations in Brussels, although he will perhaps not wish to take that option further, given his views on that place. I can also tell him that we will shortly consult on the introduction of the new welfare at slaughter regulations and we will be raise this whole matter then.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that it is morally repugnant and an environmental disaster that the bulk of male calves born in this country are immediately killed and incinerated? Is it not about time we did something to change the way people see veal, as it is a wonderful product to eat? Could we not rename it “spring beef”, so that we could get over the prejudices that mean that these poor animals get no life at all?
Mr Paice
Calves are born all year round, so I am not sure that the term that the hon. Gentleman proposes is quite right. That aside, I entirely share his view, although the number of bull calves being slaughtered at birth is now much lower than it was, because there has been a welcome increase in the consumption of veal. We need to make sure that this is UK veal and is what we call “rose veal”, whereby calves are reared in humane circumstances and not in some of the arrangements we see abroad.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
T7. I am delighted that Octink, from my constituency, has been named one of the UK’s greenest businesses for the third year running. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me and with Will Tyler, its chief executive, who says that this approach is not only good for the environment, but helps his bottom line. What more can we do to promote the financial aspects and benefits of green business?
Mrs Spelman
I applaud the green business that my hon. Friend has described, and I hope that she will convey my support for it. The Government have set up a green economy council, which I co-chair, and it is very encouraging to see just how many businesses, in all sectors of the economy, understand the importance of having both a green economy and a growing one.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
Everyone in this House and across the country wants to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. Although the matter is devolved, what discussions does DEFRA have with the devolved Administrations about the science-based evidence, as we need to exchange this information, get best practice and eradicate this disease once and for all?
Mr Paice
I share the hon. Gentleman’s desire to eradicate this disease. I assure him that my officials were in regular contact with Welsh officials prior to the change of Government in Wales and that I had discussions with the relevant Minister at the time. I have not yet discussed this matter, although I have discussed others, with the new Minister. I look forward to doing so, and our officials will continue to be in close contact. The hon. Gentleman rightly says that we need to make sure that, wherever possible, we are working in harmony on this.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
T8. Thames Water’s chief executive said last week that the previous costing of £3.6 billion for the Thames tideway tunnel was “simply an indicative 2008 price”that would “inevitably increase”. The Minister will know that under the existing pricing, Thames Water bill payers throughout the region will each have to pay £65 per annum in perpetuity for the tunnel. Will he assure me and 142 other Members of this House that our constituents will get value for money for this project?
Richard Benyon
I can—and I am one of them. I can assure my hon. Friend that my constituents and his are absolutely in our minds. We meet weekly with officials from Ofwat and Thames Water, the issue will be discussed at the DEFRA supervisory board this afternoon and I shall meet the London boroughs and the Greater London authority next week to discuss the project. I can assure my hon. Friend that its price is foremost in our minds.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
1. What recent reports he has received on the activities of the rural committee of the Church Commissioners.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)
In the past 12 months, the rural affairs group has worked on a variety of issues including bovine tuberculosis, the Localism Bill, common agricultural policy reform, lay ministry in rural churches and vocations and training in rural ministry.
Miss McIntosh
I take this opportunity to congratulate the rural committee on the work that it does. Can my hon. Friend suggest ways in which we in this place can work more closely with the committee as it goes about its business?
Tony Baldry
The Church’s rural committee would certainly welcome a closer working relationship with my hon. Friend and the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which she so ably chairs. I encourage all bishops and suffragan bishops to take the opportunity of the parliamentary recess to get in touch with parliamentary colleagues from all parties to discuss how our colleagues can learn more from and work more closely with the Church, whether that is in rural areas, in urban areas or on any project.
Mr Speaker
I call Mr Ben Bradshaw. He is not here, so I call Sir Peter Bottomley.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
3. Whether the Church Commissioners were consulted on the choice of Ministers to be invited to contribute to the edition of the New Statesman edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Sir Peter Bottomley
May I ask my hon. Friend to thank the archbishop for sending the magazine and his articles to all Members of Parliament? I also recommend, through him, that The Daily Telegraph and the BBC actually read those articles. The archbishop was aware that a reader might say that to give a page to the Work and Pensions Secretary and five pages to an interview with the Foreign Secretary might show too much establishment leaning. The criticism of the archbishop is, as Lucy Winkett put it, new
“like the waves, old like the sea.”
Tony Baldry
I shall certainly convey my hon. Friend’s comments to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I will also say to my hon. Friend, who has been in this House for some considerable time, that sometimes what is heard is as important as what is said.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
4. What recent assessment the Church Commissioners have made of the effect of fuel prices on the financial position of the Church of England.
Tony Baldry
Fuel prices impact on clergy, and dioceses are aware of the Government increase in mileage rates from April 2011.
Robert Halfon
Does my hon. Friend agree that the high cost of fuel is having a huge impact on the community and charitable work done by the Church? Will the Church play its part in asking the Government to delay the 3p inflationary rise in fuel tax that is planned for January?
Tony Baldry
Rising prices impact on us all, including those who undertake charitable and pastoral duties in the community. The Church of England will increase the mileage rate for staff and clergy, but we try to encourage them to travel by public transport wherever possible. I am sure I speak for all Members of the House when I say that we hope that charities and religious groups will endeavour to maintain their charitable and pastoral provision despite the change in fuel tax.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
5. What plans the Church Commissioners have for the future of St. Paul’s church, Truro and its hall.
Tony Baldry
The commissioners are actively working to find a suitable new use for St Paul’s church. Preparations are under way for placing it on the open market. The commissioners are not specifically involved with the hall, which is on a separate site owned by the Truro diocesan board of finance.
Sarah Newton
The church hall is a valuable community resource that is much appreciated by the homeless people of Truro, who receive a warm welcome and freshly cooked meals from the Truro homeless action group. Will my hon. Friend work with me to enable community groups to have the opportunity to secure the hall for the continued benefit of the community of Truro?
Tony Baldry
I entirely agree that Church of England buildings, whether they be churches or church halls, should wherever possible be open to the widest possible use by the greater community. That is part of the Church’s national mission, and I think that before any church or church building is declared redundant or sold every possible effort should be made to see that it is retained for community use. I will most certainly convey my hon. Friend’s comments to the diocese of Truro.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
6. What steps the Church Commissioners are taking to encourage marriages in Church of England buildings.
Tony Baldry
The Church of England values the sacrament of marriage, it is keen to encourage marriage in churches wherever possible and it has recently changed the rules to enable couples to marry more easily when they would like to marry in church.
John Howell
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that this is not just about buildings, but that organists and musicians, of whom I confess to being one, make a valuable contribution, and that the Church should promote those aspects as a package to encourage church weddings?
Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend was a much-respected organist and director of church music, and I think that one of the glories of England is church music, choirs and organ music. One reason many people want to marry in Church of England churches is the contribution of the choir and the organist.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I have married more people than, I think, anybody else in this House, and it was always great fun marrying couples in church, but the archbishop’s special licence system involved a lot of people, frankly, telling fibs about where they lived, so I hope that that will be reformed. Would it not help if the Church of England decided that it would like now to hold civil partnership ceremonies in its churches?
Tony Baldry
As the hon. Gentleman knows, that was a matter of much debate during the passage of the Equalities Bill both in this House and in the other place. It was resolved that there would be no change unless the General Synod agreed, and that is where the position lies today.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
7. What steps the Church Commissioners are taking to promote tourism focused on church buildings and church heritage.
Tony Baldry
The General Synod passed a motion encouraging all dioceses to support church tourism and to link with a wider national church tourism strategy. The cathedral and church buildings division of the Church of England encourages best practice, including opening churches, welcoming visitors and providing interpretation, and it works closely with partners including the Churches Tourism Association, Cathedrals Plus and the Churches Conservation Trust.
Laura Sandys
My hon. Friend and I share a great passion for tourism organisations and our churches working together more effectively. Does he recognise that in east Kent we have a set of 10th, 11th and 12th century churches marking St Augustine’s way, and will he join me in making a representation to the Church of England to ensure that visitors understand and enjoy those churches more?
Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend is fortunate in representing a fantastic constituency, which, among its other attributes, was the place where St Augustine landed. I could cite at least three good examples of church tourism in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but, as I was accused during the last Church Commissioners questions of loquaciousness, I will resist that temptation and simply say that I will encourage the Bishop of Dover and, indeed, other bishops to ensure that hon. Members know of the efforts being made in all our constituencies to promote church tourism, because it is very important to make sure that as many people as possible can enjoy the heritage of our church buildings.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
8. What steps the Church Commissioners are taking to support the teaching of religious education in schools.
Tony Baldry
Every diocese in the Church of England supports RE teaching in its schools, and most diocesan education advisers also support and provide materials for the teaching of RE in non-Church schools.
Fiona Bruce
I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. As I believe he knows, a petition with 140,000 signatures expressing concern at the exclusion of RE from the English baccalaureate was presented to Downing street yesterday. One unintended consequence of that exclusion is that the number of pupils applying to study RE at GCSE has dropped significantly, as have application rates for RE teacher training—by some 25%. What action can the Church Commissioners take to ensure that the study of RE is properly resourced, bearing in mind that it is still a statutory—that is, compulsory—subject for pupils in school up to 16 years old?
Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend raises a serious point about RE in the E-bac. She will know that the Bishop of Oxford, who chairs the National Society—in other words, he is the lead bishop on education in the Church of England—has, on several occasions, made clear the concerns of the Church of England, and indeed other faith groups, to ministerial colleagues in the Department for Education. I heard the Minister with responsibility for schools say in a debate in Westminster Hall that he would reflect on those representations, and we look forward to hearing what decisions Ministers take in respect of RE in the E-bac.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
9. How many diocesan synods have voted (a) for and (b) against the proposed legislation on women bishops.
Tony Baldry
Notification has been received from six diocesan synods, and I am pleased to tell the hon. Lady that so far all the dioceses that have voted have voted to approve the legislation.
Diana Johnson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Given the overwhelming support for women bishops, may I urge him to introduce legislation at the very earliest opportunity so that we can enshrine in law equality between men and women as bishops?
Tony Baldry
The hon. Lady knows that I share her aspiration. Let me explain this process to the House, because I look forward to the support of all Members of the House when the Measure comes before Parliament in due course. Every diocese, of which there are 44, has to vote. Six have voted; colleagues can work out the maths on the rest that still have to do so. Once they have all voted, there will be a meeting of the General Synod, which I hope in due course will approve the measure so that it can come before Parliament to enable the consecration of women as bishops. I certainly hope that in the lifetime of this Parliament, Parliament will approve that measure.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
10. What assessment the Church Commissioners have made of recent trends in the proportion of Church of England congregations that are (a) from black and Asian minority ethnic groups, (b) women, (c) disabled people and (d) from low-income groups.
Tony Baldry
The latest figures collected in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s question were part of a 2007 national parish congregation diversity survey. They show that about 5% of Church of England core congregations are from minority ethnic backgrounds and about 65% are women. Figures for disabled people are kept by dioceses individually and are not held centrally.
John Robertson
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that things have moved on somewhat since 2007 and that, particularly in the more deprived areas, there will be a hardening of the problems of meeting the cuts that are going to hit them. I believe that there is a very strong place for the Church in those areas in particular. Will he ensure that the Church does the work that it should be doing in trying to attract these people through its doors?
Tony Baldry
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, because it gives me the opportunity to make the position clear. The Church Commissioners have £5.5 billion under investment, of which we disburse about £100 million every year to the Church. Much of that goes to poorer dioceses with inner-city and deprived areas so that the Church can fulfil its mission to such areas and to those who need the greatest support. We see that as a very important part of our role and of the Church’s national mission.
Ninetieth Birthday of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh
Mr Speaker
On Wednesday 8 June, the House resolved that a message be sent to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh to offer His Royal Highness the warmest good wishes of the House upon the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. This morning I waited upon His Royal Highness, with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition, to convey the said message. We were graciously received by His Royal Highness, who responded in these terms:
My Lords and Members of the House of Commons. I received your kind message of congratulations on my ninetieth birthday with the greatest pleasure. I have derived much satisfaction from the many years that I have been able to help and support the Queen. Few others, if any, have had the satisfaction of witnessing the affection and respect that so many people around the world have shown for the Queen since the beginning of her reign. I acknowledge that the position that I have held has made it possible for me to support and encourage a great many valuable and worthwhile organisations in this country and further afield. It has been a particular pleasure to be associated with so many organisations that have encouraged the development of the younger generation in this country and in the wider world.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
I have a further statement to make. Members will recall that on 4 May, I informed the House of the Clerk of the House’s intention to retire with effect from Friday 30 September 2011. A trawl for Sir Malcolm’s successor has now been held. There were five applicants, all of whom were interviewed by a panel consisting of myself, the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House, the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, the Chairman of the Finance and Services Committee, and Sheila Drew Smith, an independent assessor.
The unanimous recommendation of the panel was that Mr Robert Rogers, at present Clerk Assistant, should succeed Sir Malcolm Jack. I am glad to be able to tell the House that Her Majesty the Queen has approved the appointment. I am sure that the House will join me in congratulating Robert Rogers on his appointment. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] There will be an opportunity at a later date to pay the traditional tribute to the retiring Clerk.
BSkyB
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport if he will make a statement on the News Corporation acquisition of BSkyB.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Earlier today, I placed a written statement before the House outlining the next steps in my consideration of the potential merger between News Corp and BSkyB. In it, I explained that I have published the results of the consultation on the undertakings in lieu offered by News Corp, together with the subsequent advice I have received from Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading.
As I outlined, the consultation did not produce any information that caused Ofcom or the OFT to change their earlier advice to me. I could have decided to accept the original undertakings. However, a number of constructive changes were suggested and, as a result, I am today publishing a revised, more robust set of undertakings, and will be consulting on them until midday on Friday 8 July.
Significantly, those changes strengthen further the arrangements for editorial independence and business viability of the newly spun-off Sky News. In my view, they provide a further layer of very important safeguards. As amended, I believe that the undertakings will remedy, mitigate or prevent the threats to plurality that were identified at the start of this process. If after this next consultation process nothing arises that changes that view, I propose to accept the undertakings in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission. Before coming to such a view, however, I will of course seek once again the advice of the independent external regulators.
Mr Watson
In the end, it comes down to believing a promise. The Secretary of State has chosen to accept the assurances of News Corp, when it has breached previous assurances on the takeover of The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World.
The Secretary of State could have chosen to disregard those assurances to protect plurality, or asked whether the acquirer has shown evidence of bad practice in its other media companies. Section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002 provides for specified considerations, including
“the need for persons carrying on media enterprises, and for those with control of such enterprises, to have a genuine commitment to the attainment in relation to broadcasting of the standards objectives set out in section 319 of the Communications Act 2003”,
yet the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, openly and brazenly, and without any sense of irony, admitted to a parliamentary Committee that News International paid police officers for evidence.
The Secretary of State has granted the acquisition to an organisation that is currently the subject of three separate police inquiries, and an organisation that a parliamentary Select Committee found guilty of “collective amnesia” of criminality at one of its newspapers. There is emerging evidence that News International conspired with convicted criminals to pervert the course of justice by hacking the phones of serving police officers and detectives, their families and the families of the victims of serious crime. At least one senior executive even collaborated with at least one career criminal while he was serving time in prison. And, most appallingly of all, while the nation grieved, the criminals who were contracted to News International illicitly targeted a parent of the children who were murdered by Ian Huntley in Soham.
Today the Secretary of State has chosen to take these people at their word. No wonder he tried to avoid answering colleagues in the House this morning! Did he or the Prime Minister meet or talk to Rupert Murdoch when he was here last week? Is it true that the Sky News spin-off, NewCo, will have no equity value and no realistic chance of making a profit? How much tax will the newly acquired BSkyB pay in the UK? Does this decision enjoy the support of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills?
Does the Secretary of State think it unusual that BSkyB has organised a party at the Foreign Office tonight? How can people realistically take part in a consultation that is to last only eight days? Has he taken advice from the Cabinet Office on how to conduct proper and effective consultations? The ultimate owner of the newly acquired company will be registered as a shareholder in Delaware, USA, but there is no obligation on the company to publish the shareholder register. Will he undertake to oblige the company to do this in the public interest before he finally signs off the deal? We have to know who will be the new owners of 40% of the country’s media estate.
I am sure that the Secretary of State will get his reward for this decision, but he will pay a very high political price. This seedy deal would shame a banana republic.
Mr Hunt
Let me first address the hon. Gentleman’s final comment, which was beneath what he is capable off. I am perfectly well aware that on such an issue no one will trust the motives of politicians, which is why, at every stage, I have sought independent advice from Ofcom, the independent regulator, and the Office of Fair Trading. I have done it even in areas I did not have to. For example, I did not have to ask Ofcom’s advice on whether these undertakings were robust and I did not have to ask it whether it would address concerns about plurality, but I chose to do so, and I have published its advice. I have tried therefore, at every stage, to strengthen the confidence of the House and the public in the integrity of the process.
I shall move on to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. First, he talked about past assurances given by News Corps in respect of previous media assets that it has purchased. This is not an issue of trust. These undertakings are legally binding and legally enforceable. Moreover, one of the undertakings particularly addresses the concerns that I think are shared in many parts of the House about broadcasting impartiality, which is enshrined in the broadcasting code. Under the undertakings that I published on 3 March and am publishing again today, the code will form part of the company’s articles of association. Under the strengthened undertakings that I am publishing today, News Corps will not be allowed to attempt to get the new company to breach its own articles of association, so the editorial impartiality for which Sky News is valued will be better protected than it is for any other media organisations in this country.
I remind the hon. Gentleman that he has campaigned— I think very honourably and impressively—on the phone-hacking issue. At root, I agree with what he says: no company should be above the law. But just as no company should be above the law, no Minister should be above the law. I have to follow due process, and due process under the Enterprise Act 2002, which was put in place by his Government, says that I have to consider this on the basis of media plurality—a very important issue—to make sure that no one person has too much control over our media. That is why James Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch will have less control of Sky News after this deal goes through than before it because of the undertakings in place.
On the other issues that the hon. Gentleman raised, I cannot speak for the Prime Minister but I have had no contact with the Prime Minister over this deal. I am deciding this deal on a quasi-judicial basis, but I have not met Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch in recent weeks, and all the meetings I have had with them have been minuted and done through official channels. On the tax issue, obviously, like all companies, News Corp will be subject to UK law, but this issue has been decided on media plurality grounds.
On the consultation, I remind the hon. Gentleman that I could have chosen to conclude this issue today, but I have not. I am launching a further consultation. This issue has been in the public domain since last summer, but I want to make sure that this House and the public have every possible opportunity to comment on what is being proposed. Not only that, but I have listened to them. In fact, I think we have made the undertakings more robust and stronger so I am confident that what I am proposing to the House will protect plurality of the media, which I know is highly valued in all parts of the House.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
May I congratulate the Secretary of State on the meticulous care that he has shown in his handling of this matter? Can he confirm that every single concern that has been raised by the regulatory authorities has been addressed? On the wider question of impartiality, does he agree that the value of Sky News is not because it makes money—it does not—but because of the benefit to the overall reputation of BSkyB that comes from the integrity, objectivity and the quality of its news gathering, and that it would therefore be madness for any new owner to seek to change that?
Mr Hunt
I completely agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. The regulatory authorities have both confirmed, both on 3 March and today, that they are satisfied that the undertakings I am putting before the House address the concerns that were raised about media plurality. I have taken that advice very seriously indeed.
My hon. Friend’s second point about Sky News is particularly important today because in the revised undertakings that we have published there are two things that particularly strengthen what the public value about Sky News. First, News Corp undertakes that it will not do anything to cause Sky News to contribute less to media plurality in this country if this deal goes through. Secondly, it agrees that it will continue to cross-promote Sky News on the Sky platform at the same level it currently does. In terms both of financial viability and of that all-important contribution to media plurality I am satisfied that if I proceed with the undertakings as published today, we will continue to have a free and plural media.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State could have made different choices. He could have chosen to appear before the House today and make an oral statement rather than be dragged kicking and screaming to the House. He could have chosen to refer this acquisition to the Competition Commission for an independent inquiry to remove any doubts about the objectivity and transparency of the process. Will he answer the following questions? In view of the fact that this process has now taken six months, why did he not follow Ofcom’s original advice and refer this deal to the Competition Commission? How can he say that he has delivered greater independence for Sky News when it will be almost entirely dependent on News Corp for both distribution and funding? Will he publish in full the independent legal advice he has received on all aspects of this acquisition?
In relation to media issues, the Secretary of State has responsibility for media policy in this country, and it is therefore very disappointing to say the least that he has had so little to say about the phone-hacking scandal. The current police investigation must, this time, lead to full disclosure of all evidence, with those responsible brought to justice. Does the Secretary of State agree that once that investigation has been concluded there should be an independent inquiry into the conduct of the British press? The issues go further than one newspaper group. We have made it clear that we support self-regulation, but self-regulation must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability. It is surely time for lessons to be learned and reforms to be put in place so that such unlawful practices can never happen again.
Mr Speaker
Order. I say to the shadow Secretary of State that we are on the subject specifically of the proposed acquisition, so I feel sure that the references that the hon. Gentleman has made to another issue are now at an end. I think that we are clear about that. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to complete his remarks?
Mr Hunt
I am quite bemused by what the shadow Culture Secretary is saying. He has said that the phone-hacking issue is not linked to the BSkyB merger. Those were his words. Now he is telling the House that there is a link. He says that I could have chosen to refer this to the Competition Commission but have chosen not to. Would he have chosen to refer it to the Competition Commission, because he has not said so? If he is now saying so, that is a big change in the Labour party’s position. Let me tell him that it is the Enterprise Act 2002, introduced by the last Labour Government, that gives the Secretary of State the right to accept undertakings in lieu instead of a referral to the Competition Commission. I am following precisely the process that was set up in law by his Government. I am doing so after expert, independent advice by regulators who understand the market extremely well—Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading—and I am publishing that advice so that people can see the basis on which I have made the decision.
The hon. Gentleman also raised issues of the dependency of the new company on News Corp for its funding. He is right: the financial resilience of Sky News is central to the sustainability of the deal. That is why, as part of the undertakings, we have reached agreement on a carriage agreement, which will give financial security to the new company for a 10-year period, which addresses those concerns. The company is able to develop its business outside Sky during that period, which will make it less financially dependent on Sky, but even if it does not do that, it has the security of a 10-year funding agreement, which is considerably greater than that of the BBC, for example, in the licence fee settlement.
I am publishing more advice than any Secretary of State has ever published on any comparable deal. We are being completely transparent about the processes because we want to ensure that the public have confidence, and it would be good if the shadow Culture Secretary could at least acknowledge that transparency.
Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)
The Secretary of State has rightly said that this is an issue about plurality in news and current affairs. Does he recall that in 2002 the Labour Government opposed a general plurality test, and that it was only because of the efforts of Lord Puttnam and others in another place that one was included in the Enterprise Act? Given that that was a watered-down test, does he believe that the time is now right to set up an independent commission on plurality so that it can inform the future communications Bill?
Mr Hunt
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The process that we have gone through has revealed that both he and I would like to make sure that there are better protections for media plurality, not in situations such as this—we have a process that involves exhaustive public scrutiny—but where someone might develop a dominant position in the media, and the public might not be as protected as they should be. That is why the coalition Government have said that we want to do something that the last Labour Government did not do: look at whether plurality protection can be strengthened, which we will do in the new communications Bill that we will be putting to the House in the second half of this Parliament.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
Is not the Secretary of State in this position because of the acts of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills? The Enterprise Act was very clear that difficult decisions such as this should be taken out of the hands of politicians and given to the Competition Commission.
Mr Hunt
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I have often wondered why the Act specifically gives the duty of deciding an issue such as this to an elected politician when in, for example, competition law, such decisions are taken out of the hands of politicians. That is the way the law operates at the moment under that Act. Hon. Members will want to take a view as to whether that is the right way for the law to operate, and we have said that we will look at all these issues in our communications Bill.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the procedure in the Enterprise Act puts him in the position of judge in these circumstances, and he therefore has a clear duty to be extremely measured in his remarks, to be meticulous in what he does, and to ensure that he has independent advice, including legal advice? Does he agree that that is what he has done in this case, and one of the great lessons of the whole affair is how important it is to follow such an approach?
Mr Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend, who understands these issues very well. There is a legitimate question as to whether it is appropriate to give elected politicians the responsibility for arbitrating on a decision for which many members of the public will inevitably question their motives. That is why I have tried to be completely transparent and have sought, published and, after careful consideration, followed independent advice at every stage. We can debate in the House whether the law is right to insist on the procedures that it does, but I know that hon. Members feel passionately that due process must be followed, and that is why I am doing that in this case.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
How on earth did we—and I mean all of us, not just the Minister—become so spineless as to allow a company whose directors not only failed in their fiduciary duties to prevent criminality at the News of the World, but actually participated in its cover-up, to hold dominion over such a vast swathe of the media in this country? No other country in the world would allow somebody to have so much power.
Mr Hunt
Phone hacking is incredibly serious, and the police must follow their inquiries wherever they lead. The fact that we are having those inquiries at the moment and that they have been as extensive as they are demonstrates that no company is above the law, and no company should be.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State comment on how the new undertakings from BSkyB will strengthen the operation or financial viability of Sky News?
Mr Hunt
I can reassure my hon. Friend on that front. There are two particular revisions to the undertakings that will strengthen the financial viability of Sky News. The first is a requirement that the operational agreements entered into between Sky and Sky News are fair and reasonable, and the second is a requirement that Sky will continue to cross-promote Sky News across the Sky network at the levels that it currently does. That, combined with a 10-year carriage agreement, which gives guaranteed financial income for 10 years—a very long time in the media marketplace—means that this will be a very financially sustainable and resilient model, which of course it needs to be.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Why is the new consultation period that the Secretary of State has announced so short, and how can it be meaningful?
Mr Hunt
This is a fairly short consultation, the primary purpose of which is to give people a chance to look at the amendments to the undertakings that were published on 3 March. The core undertakings have been in the public domain since 3 March, and indeed the wider issue of the merger has been in the public domain since last year. This is the conclusion of a long series of consultations, and I will listen to all the submissions that I receive before making my final decision.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
The Secretary of State previously stated that he was content with the proposals to keep Sky News independent from the rest of Sky. He has today announced further safeguards. Are those safeguards that he had pushed for, or were they proposed by the regulators?
Mr Hunt
I suppose the answer is a combination of both, because I have been absolutely clear that I want the independent regulators to be satisfied that the final package on the table addresses their concerns about plurality, not least because of the concerns raised earlier about the objectivity of politicians making the decision. I did not make the specific proposals; they arose from the public consultation and were what members of the public suggested as sensible changes. We then analysed them in the Department, and with Ofcom and the OFT, and arrived at the strengthened set of proposals that I have published today.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I do not doubt for a moment the Secretary of State’s integrity, but I do believe that he is wrong, morally and politically, on this issue. He is propping up a crumbling empire. Murdoch is the Gaddafi of News Corporation. How will Sky maintain independent news when most of its editorial content will come from News Corporation?
Mr Hunt
It is not the case that most of Sky News’s editorial content will come from News Corporation. Sky News, under today’s proposals, will be hived off as an independent company that will source its news from the multiplicity of sources that all good news organisations use. The big picture is that News Corp, in order to acquire full control of Sky, is relinquishing a degree of control over Sky News. There are things that happen today that will not be possible under the new undertakings. For example, it is possible today for James Murdoch, the non-executive chairman of Sky, to fire the person in charge of Sky News. Under the undertakings published today, if they proceed, that would not be possible. Adherence to the broadcasting code is mandated in the new company’s articles of association. That is not the case at present. Broadcasting impartiality, adherence to the highest editorial standards and independence of the editorial process will be much stronger under the new arrangements than it is at present. I hope that that will reassure at least those Members who are prepared to look at the matter objectively.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
For the sake of clarity, will my right hon. Friend confirm that under the new, strengthened undertakings any future chairman of Sky News, and the current chairman, will be truly independent and impartial?
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has announced a consultation this morning, albeit a very short one. Will he give us a commitment not to make the final decision during the recess and to bring the matter back to the House for a debate when we reconvene in the autumn?
Mr Hunt
I will certainly bring the decision back to the House when it is made. With regard to timing, I am trying to do this as quickly as possible, while ensuring that we have proper consultation processes and a proper amount of time to consider the responses to the consultation. The fact that I have today strengthened the undertakings that were published on 3 March reflects the fact that we are taking the consultation very seriously.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State address the concerns that have been raised on the publication of the shareholder register for the new company? Surely transparency in this respect is central to the confidence we can have that the arrangements meet our concerns about plurality, in substance as well as in form.
Mr Hunt
For the purposes of the decision I am making, I have assumed that Rupert Murdoch is fully in control of News Corp and the dominant controlling shareholder. Because this is a decision about media plurality, it is not necessary for me to consider other shareholders in News Corp in order to come to a decision.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The Secretary of State has correctly indicated that these new, legally binding and strengthened undertakings will be enshrined in the new company’s articles of association. He will of course be aware that a shareholder resolution can change the articles of association of any company, wherever it is registered, so what additional protections will be put in place to stop that happening?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is right; that is the procedure for changing the articles of association. First, under the strengthened undertakings that we are publishing today, the Secretary of State must approve the articles of association before they go ahead. Secondly, under undertaking 3.1(i), News Corp is not allowed to increase its shareholding above its current level, which is well below the level that would be necessary to change the articles of association. Thirdly, under the strengthened undertakings it is not allowed to do anything that would cause the new company to breach its own articles of association. I think that we have as many protections in place as one could imagine to ensure that News Corp honours this deal and the public continue to get the benefit of what they value Sky News for.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
May I note a paternal interest, Mr Speaker? As BSkyB has been de facto controlled by News Corp since it was founded, are not these arrangements making it more independent, and some might say more impartial, than the state broadcaster, and therefore is not this row somewhat synthetic?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is right that, contrary to many people’s concern that this will give the Murdochs more control over Sky News, they are in fact relinquishing a significant degree of control over Sky News in order to purchase shares in the rest of Sky. My concern is not with competition law, which is being considered by the European Commission, but with media plurality and ensuring that no one person has too much control over any aspect of our media. I am confident that these strong undertakings will ensure that that is the case.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Given the disappointing comments of the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity to pay tribute to News Corp for saving The Times, producing The Times Educational Supplement and providing an excellent broadcasting service in the form of Sky TV? Does he not agree that those who are so concerned about the alleged monopoly of BSkyB should also be concerned about the monopoly of the BBC, which controls more than a third of our television and which we are forced to pay for?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend branches out into media policy more generally, but I will resist the temptation to follow, except to say that the Government have always believed that what is good about the media in this country is that we have a strong BBC and strong competition to it. However, this decision is about media plurality and ensuring the diversity of voices in the media, and that is what I am seeking to protect with the undertakings we are publishing today.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Having watched Sky News in some fairly remote parts of the world, I wonder whether my right hon. Friend would agree with me that its broadcasting must not only be impartial, but have a considerable degree of morality and humanity?
Mr Hunt
I think it does. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is what the public value in Sky News and what we are seeking to protect. It is worth reminding the House that Sky News was the first 24-hour news broadcaster in this country and that it has contributed massively through the competition and choice that it has added to the news landscape, and we should value it for that.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
May I take the Secretary of State back to financial viability? Is he satisfied that Sky News will be able not only to survive for 10 years, but to invest in high-quality news gathering for that time?
Mr Hunt
I am completely satisfied. My hon. Friend is right that the first time the undertakings were proposed to me, my concern was about financial viability. Sky News has a secure financial platform for a long period, which is the envy of all other broadcasters. That will allow it to do precisely what my hon. Friend says. I am sure that with an independent board led by an independent chairman, it will want to diversify its sources of funding, which would give it even more money to invest in news gathering, which is its core strength.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Did Ofcom or the Office of Fair Trading change their initial advice about whether the undertakings addressed their concerns about plurality?
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that under the Enterprise Act 2002, his decision is quasi-judicial and he can take into account only relevant considerations, not irrelevant considerations such as whether one thinks that Murdoch is brilliant or like Gaddafi, or one’s personal view on the organisation as a whole?
Mr Hunt
I can absolutely confirm that. To strengthen public confidence that that is the way in which I have approached the decision, I have taken independent advice at every stage and I have published it so that people can take their own view on how I have come to this conclusion.
Business of the House
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
The business for next week will be:
Monday 4 July—Continuation of remaining stages of the Finance (No. 3) Bill (day 2).
Tuesday 5 July—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Finance (No. 3) Bill (day 3).
Wednesday 6 July—Estimates day [3rd allotted day]. There will be a debate on the “Prevent” strategy followed by a debate on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Further details will be given in the Official Report.
[The details are as follows: The Prevent strategy: 6th Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee of Session 2009-10, HC 65, “Preventing Violent Extremism”. Afghanistan and Pakistan: 4th Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 514, “The UK’s foreign policy approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan”; and the Government’s response CM 8064.]
At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
Thursday 7 July—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords Amendments to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill, followed by a debate on use of hand-held electronic devices in the Chamber and Committees. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
The provisional business for the week commencing 11 July will include:
Monday 11 July—Consideration of Lords Amendments to the European Union Bill, followed by motion to approve European documents relating to civil law.
Tuesday 12 July—Motion relating to the retirement of the Clerk of the House, followed by Second Reading of the Public Bodies Bill [Lords].
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for Thursday 7 and 14 July 2011 will be:
Thursday 7 July—A debate on intellectual property and the Hargreaves report.
Thursday 14 July—A debate on “The Future of CDC”, the International Development Committee’s fifth report of session 2010-12, HC 607.
Further to your earlier announcement, Mr Speaker, the whole House endorses what you said in congratulating Robert Rogers on his appointment as Clerk of the House and wishes him well in his new responsibilities.
Hilary Benn
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that reply. I associate myself with the congratulations to Robert Rogers on his appointment. We look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role.
We are about to have a statement on police detention following the court ruling. We stand ready to assist with emergency legislation if that is what is needed to deal with the problem. The Leader of the House did not refer to the possibility of such legislation in his statement. Will he tell us the latest position?
Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) raised the problem of questions addressed to the Minister for Women and Equalities being transferred to other Departments. Has the Leader of the House made any progress in looking into that? Can we have topical questions on this important area of the Government’s responsibilities?
Next Monday, Andrew Dilnot’s report on social care is due to be published. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that there will be an oral statement? Will he also undertake to find time subsequently for the House to debate these important matters? Talking of which, in view of today’s industrial action, may we have a debate about the Government’s mishandling of the public sector pensions negotiations?
The Business Secretary said recently that he wanted a resurgent manufacturing sector. Therefore, can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport on why he awarded a £1.5 billion contract for 1,200 new train carriages to a company in Germany, when it will put some 3,000 British railway manufacturing jobs in jeopardy?
Has the Leader of the House seen the e-mail that was released this week from Evan Harris, the former Liberal Democrat Member? In discussing the changes to the Health and Social Care Bill, he wrote:
“There is a view that we should keep quiet, say we had a victory and hope no-one notices this stuff—but I think that is not realistic. The plans remain bad for the NHS”.
May we have a debate so that we can sit back and discover whether those views are shared by the coalition Liberal Democrats who still have their seats or whether they are doing what they do on occasion, which is to face in several different directions at once?
Last week, the newspapers reported the Deputy Prime Minister’s plan to give away shares in the publicly owned banks. No sooner had it hit the front pages than a source was briefing that it was back-of-the-envelope stuff:
“He…should know better. This is not the way you make policy.”
A few days later, the Deputy Prime Minister announced the localisation of business rates, again outside the House of Commons. Here are two major policy announcements. In one case, it seems that the Cabinet has not even had the chance to question him, let alone the House of Commons. In the other, we are still waiting for a statement.
May we have a debate on Camnesia? That is not a previously undiscovered Polynesian island, but a previously undiagnosed condition that affects the Prime Minister’s ability to recall the detail of his own policies. As we saw again at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions, he seems to know nothing about the huge increase in the number of NHS quangos that he is creating.
After all the remarkable U-turns we have seen in the last few weeks, the very special humiliation of last week’s vote on wild animals in circuses took some doing. The issue was extremely clear: it is not right for the entertainment of others to make big beasts do things that do not come naturally to them, which is why we have all felt great sympathy this week for the Justice Secretary. As we have heard, first thing in the morning, there was a hard three-line Whip in a desperate attempt to defeat the motion, but by 4 o’clock in the afternoon it had vanished, along with the Government’s courage, because the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) had made it clear that he would neither be induced nor bullied by the Prime Minister into withdrawing his motion. Can we have a debate to praise the hon. Gentleman—others are trying to bury him—or at the very least to save him from being taken round the back of the bike sheds for a good hiding, as one colleague has apparently suggested? I assume that he did not mean it—perhaps it was just a job application to be a Tory Whip.
Finally, as yet another policy bites the dust, does this not all reveal the fundamental truth about the current occupant of No. 10 Downing street? Unlike his much more resolute predecessor—[Interruption.] Unlike Baroness Thatcher, this Prime Minister is for turning.
Sir George Young
As always, we enjoyed that, but there was a slight absence of questions about the future business of the House, from which I take it that the Opposition are perfectly happy with the way in which this Administration are managing the business of the House.
I am grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman said about police detention and bail. We will have to await the statement that is to follow to discover whether emergency legislation is necessary. I am grateful for his offer of support should that be the outcome.
Turning to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), I will share with my right hon. and hon. Friends the right hon. Gentleman’s request to extend topical questions to the Government Equalities Office, which at the moment does not have them because it has a relatively narrow slot. The procedure for transferring questions has not changed at all under this Administration. A question is transferred to the Department that is best able to answer it.
On Dilnot, this is an important issue. That is why one of the first things we did on taking office was to ask Andrew Dilnot to chair this commission, which I understand will report on Monday. It is an issue that should be debated by the House in due course, but I cannot promise a statement by the Government on Monday, which is the date of the publication. It may be some time before the Government come up with their response.
We would welcome a debate on our approach to industrial action and strikes, and I hope that the Labour party might clarify its own views. I see that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said that the Leader of the Opposition was under some misapprehension as to what was going on. However, I am grateful to the him and many other Members for making it into the building today.
The matter of train carriages was dealt with in Transport questions. The contract was awarded under exactly the same procedure that the previous Government used to order new rolling stock, and there has been no change whatever.
I was in the House when the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) raised the issue of local government finance, and I refreshed my memory about the coalition agreement, which committed us to
“promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a review of local government finance.”
The terms of reference for that review were set out in a statement on 17 March. The review is ongoing, and a consultation document will be published in due course. There has been no dramatic change in Government policy.
The shadow Leader of the House mentioned the events of last Thursday and talked about the vote, but there was no vote at the end of that debate. The Government accepted the motion. He might at some time pay tribute to the coalition Government for setting up the Backbench Business Committee. There would have been no such debate had his party remained in power, because it refused to set up the Committee.
Finally, I admire the right hon. Gentleman’s acting ability in keeping a straight face in his final remarks about the former Prime Minister.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
May I warmly welcome the announcement of the business for next Thursday based on the Procedure Committee’s report on the use of hand-held devices in the Chamber and in Committees? Does he agree that that is a very important matter, on which it is desirable that an early decision is made? Will he therefore bring forward a business motion to ensure that the House can reach a decision next Thursday one way or the other?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and his Committee for producing that report. I think some hon. Members have anticipated the House’s decision by already using hand-held devices, but it is important that we regularise the matter.
The Government are anxious not to create a precedent of routinely timetabling Backbench motions, but I will consider my right hon. Friend’s request. Subject to the agreement of the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, and indeed of the House, I will be prepared to table an appropriate motion to protect the business on Thursday.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
On Monday the House will devote considerable time to debating, and voting on, an amendment to tackle the problems caused by legal loan sharking. Given that, may we have an urgent statement on the Government’s plans to cap the cost of credit? As part of that, will the Leader of the House investigate a meeting that I understand took place on Wednesday, at which it was agreed that the Government would vote against the amendment on Monday, delaying action to relieve the misery caused by high-cost credit, purely so that an announcement can be made at the Liberal Democrat party conference? We need to know that when MPs vote on Monday, they are not putting choreographing coalition dividing lines ahead of the interests of vulnerable consumers.
Sir George Young
May I say by way of preface that I commend the action that the hon. Lady is taking, in conjunction with others, to tackle excessive interest rate charges on credit cards and other means of credit? She asked for a debate, but answered her own question by saying that there would indeed be a debate next Monday. I shall draw her remarks to the attention of my colleague at the Treasury who will be replying to that debate. I am sure that nothing underhand has taken place at all.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
May I draw the House’s attention to the real concerns, particularly in Norman Shaw, about the proposal to transfer the postal delivery from the Attendants to the postmen? That is causing great concern among the Attendants, many of whom have worked for the House for 20 or up to 36 years. Are they going to be made redundant? What is going to happen to them if that change is made?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern, and I share his appreciation of the work that the Attendants have done. As he will know, this is a matter for the House of Commons Commission rather than the Government. You, Mr Speaker, as Chairman of the Commission, will have heard the comments, and I will ensure that the Commission addresses the issue at its next meeting.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will know that the Business Secretary constantly hints that he is going to introduce some sort of legislative curb on the freedoms of the trade unions, despite the fact that we already have some of the most restrictive labour laws in the western world. Is the Business Secretary finally going to come to the House and make an announcement, or is this just going to lurch on for a few more months?
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman must have been listening to different speeches by the Business Secretary from the ones that I have heard, in which he has consistently said that he has no plans to change industrial relations legislation. I am not quite sure where the hon. Gentleman got that idea from.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
May I ask the Leader of the House for an urgent statement from the Secretary of State for Education, following the latest appalling figures released by my local district council? They show that a total of 28,000 children in the district do not speak English as their first language, representing 43.5% of primary school children and one in three secondary school children. For clarification, I believe that more than 90% of those children were born and raised in this country. There is a clear responsibility on parents, who are failing our children. How are we going to hold them to account?
Sir George Young
I understand the challenges that face teachers in educating children who do not have English as their first language, and the consequential issues for other children at their schools. My hon. Friend will know that in April, the ethnic minority achievement grant, which currently stands at just over £200 million, was mainstreamed into the wider dedicated schools grant. He will know also that the coalition Government’s priority for children with English as an additional language is to promote rapid language acquisition and include them in mainstream education as soon as possible. I will draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I make my usual declaration of an indirect interest in the interests of my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford).
Will the Leader of the House consider asking the Minister for Housing and Local Government to make an urgent statement to the House, preferably this afternoon, on the regional growth fund? There is a real contradiction between what he has been saying in the House and the evidence given by Lord Heseltine to the Communities and Local Government Committee yesterday. The Minister says that housing is definitely part of the regional growth fund, but Lord Heseltine says, “Oh no it isn’t”. Will the Leader of the House please encourage the Housing Minister to come and clear this mess up?
Sir George Young
I understand the hon. Lady’s concern that areas that benefited from the housing market renewal grant may not benefit from the regional growth fund. She will be pleased to know that two authorities have already received money under the regional growth fund for projects that include a very large element of housing. They are two areas that were previously getting funds from the housing market renewal programme, so the situation is not quite as dire as she has just implied.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
In a written parliamentary answer, the Lord Chancellor confirmed that his Department had provided information to a journalist from The Daily Telegraph on the Government’s new policy on legal aid prior to his written statement to the House on 21 June. It was published on the front page of The Daily Telegraph prior to the statement. May we have a statement from the Leader of the House next week on the Government’s views on statements, and could they be heard first here, not on the front page of The Daily Telegraph?
Sir George Young
The ministerial code is absolutely explicit that important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance to the House. I would regret any breach of that part of the code. This Government have made roughly one third more oral statements per day than the previous Administration, so we take that responsibility seriously, and the Prime Minister has made more oral statements in his first year than his predecessors.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the way in which we pay our respects to the fallen, particularly in Afghanistan? The practice of Back Benchers reading out the names of the fallen in the House is now forbidden, and on two occasions the announcement by the Prime Minister of their names has been moved, to a Monday and a Tuesday.
There is now great concern that the moving tributes paid by the people of Wootton Bassett cannot be paid under the new arrangements at Brize Norton, because the hearses are taken on a route that does not allow the public to line up and pay their tributes in order that we as a Parliament can be reminded of the consequences of our decisions and the country can be reminded of the true cost of war.
Sir George Young
It is important that this House has an opportunity to pay the sort of tributes that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, although some of the issues that he raised at the beginning of his question fall more appropriately to you, Mr Speaker. I will raise the matter with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who has a constituency interest, and see whether there is any way that what used to happen in Wootton Bassett can take place under the new arrangements for repatriating those who have fallen.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we please have a statement on when the driving test centre in Bury, which has already been closed for over six months, will reopen? Its continued closure is causing enormous inconvenience to both driving school instructors and their pupils in Bury and the surrounding area.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that the Driving Standards Agency is committed to reopening the driving test centre in Bury, which suffered from extensive flooding damage in late 2010. Feasibility studies have now been obtained and the building works will be subject to a competitive tender exercise. The planned reopening is scheduled for late 2011, and I hope that my hon. Friend is invited to do the honours.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May we have a statement about what the Government are going to do about the treatment of the two classes of Members in this House—those who turn up and do their work here in Parliament, and those who refuse to take their seats, but who, scandalously, will still get paid an estimated £3 million to £4 million over the course of this Parliament, not only in constituency money, but in Short money, which they, unlike us, can use for non-parliamentary, political party activities? When will the Government deliver on their promise that it would be inconceivable that MPs would continue to allow that to happen in this Parliament?
Sir George Young
I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s concern. The Government’s view is quite clear: those who are elected to the House should take their seats in the House like everybody else. As he may know, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is discussing this very issue with the political parties, and I will remind him of the continuing need to find an appropriate solution.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
In an answer that the Minister for Immigration gave me yesterday, it was confirmed that we could extend to 2013 the transitional arrangements for migrant workers from new accession countries who have access to our job market. I would like to protect British jobs for British workers where possible, so may we please have a statement from the Minister on why we are not taking advantage of that extension of protection for our labour market?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. There will be an opportunity at Home Office questions to cross-question the appropriate Minister, who I believe was before the House during Home Office questions earlier this week. In the meantime, I will share my hon. Friend’s concern with him and see whether there is any possibility of changing the date that she has mentioned.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House ask the Business Secretary to make a statement on the serious situation facing the Liverpool retailer T J Hughes? Some 4,000 jobs across the country are under threat, with the company going into administration this week. Will the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills use all its efforts to find a buyer, so that the company’s jobs can be protected and the service to local people continued?
Sir George Young
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the prospective loss of jobs in his constituency and elsewhere. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills will want to do all that his Department can, either to protect those jobs in the way that the hon. Gentleman has just outlined, or to assist in every practical way those who may lose their jobs.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Can consideration be given to holding a debate on the way BT treats its elderly and vulnerable customers? I have recently dealt with a case in which a widow in her 70s was without a domestic telephone service for a month, despite many efforts to resolve the problem.
Sir George Young
I am sorry to hear about the inconvenience caused by BT’s failure to restore the service to my hon. Friend’s constituent. I will raise the issue with BT. Speaking as a constituency MP, I can only say that I have found the liaison officer, Clova Fyfe, to have been enormously helpful in addressing such issues when they have arisen in North West Hampshire.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
May we have a debate on standards in the production of wills and possible regulation? I have been approached by a number of constituents who have had difficulties ensuring that their partner’s will is delivered and executed correctly, where it is clearly against their partner’s wishes, as expressed to them before their death. We need regulation in this important area, so may we have a debate?
Sir George Young
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. I do not know whether it would be appropriate to raise the issue either on the Adjournment or, if the Backbench Business Committee so decides, in the series of Adjournment debates that we normally have on the last day before the recess. In the meantime, I will inform the Justice Secretary of his concern and see whether he has any plans to sort out the uncertainty that arises in the situations that the hon. Gentleman has set out.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
I very much hope that we can have a debate on public sector pensions, on whether it is fair that those in the private sector should have to work longer and pay more so that those in the public sector can retire earlier and receive more, and on how we achieve a pensions system that is fair to all.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend is right: we have to get the balance right. We have to be fair to those who are entitled to public sector pensions and to the taxpayers, who fund a large part of that. If he has read the Hutton report, he will see that there is a strong rationale for rebalancing the current arrangements, as the cost to the taxpayer has increased by about a third in the last 10 years, to some £32 billion. We want public sector pensions to remain the best. We do not want a race to the bottom, but we must find a sustainable way of funding them in the long term.
Jon Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will be aware of the Government’s upcoming cuts to provision for ESOL—English for speakers of other languages. He will also be aware that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has promised an equality impact assessment. Can he guarantee that that impact assessment is published before the recess and that there is a debate on its findings on the Floor of the House?
Sir George Young
The first of those two requests may be easier to deliver than the second. I cannot promise a debate on the Floor of the House, but I will see whether publication will be made promptly, as the hon. Gentleman has just said.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
May I return to the thorny issue of IPSA? I recently submitted two duplicate invoices to IPSA by mistake. Despite having the same supplier name, the same date and the same reference, and despite being for the same amount, those receipts were paid by IPSA. The first that IPSA knew about it was when I turned up in its office with a cheque. Not only was I advised by an IPSA member of staff that there was no system in place to pick up such duplication, I was also advised that the system ran by “trusting Members”. Given the urgent importance of reassuring the public about the way our expenses system operates, may we have an urgent debate about what we are spending £6 million of taxpayers’ money on?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend has not used the fifth amendment to protect himself from self-incrimination. I hope that there will be no dire consequences from his double claiming for the same item. He will know that there is a liaison group between the House and IPSA. A number of my hon. Friends sit on it, and he may like to raise the matter with them. The House has just approved the estimates for IPSA for the current year. If he looks at the suggestions that were made alongside that, he will see that SCIPSA, the committee that gives money to IPSA—[Laughter]—I am sorry: the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—has made some suggestions about IPSA continuing to raise its game and improve the quality of its performance.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House will know that there is increasing evidence of economic and financial warfare being waged against companies in this country—indeed, against Governments—involving the manipulation of interest rates and currencies. The Government are aware of this, but there is no joined-up reaction to it. Are we coping with it and doing our best to combat it? May we have an early debate, so that we can enlighten some Members on just how worrying this economic warfare is?
Sir George Young
We are debating the Finance Bill for two days next week, including on Third Reading. It may be appropriate for the hon. Gentleman to raise the subject in those debates. However, in the meantime I will alert my Treasury colleagues to his concern and see whether we can take any additional action to prevent the sort of manipulation to which he refers.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
May we have a debate on the lack of transparency in the annual accounts of many arm’s length bodies? For example, the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust increased its management costs by 23% in its last accounts, but when I asked for an explanation, I was told that I would have to submit a freedom of information request. Can my right hon. Friend look at how we better hold to account senior executives for the spending choices that they make?
Sir George Young
I am sorry that my hon. Friend has had that problem. His request sounds perfectly reasonable, and it is one that someone charged with safeguarding the taxpayer’s interests is entitled to make. I would hope that we can get the information that he has asked for without going down the FOI route, and I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health to see whether he can make some progress on it.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will recall that, last week, I raised the issue of the proposed takeover by B&Q of a Focus store in my constituency. He very kindly offered to speak to the Office of Fair Trading that day about what appeared to be its tardy decision making. He did so, and I am grateful to him. The OFT has now told us that a decision will be reached by 5 August, but that will be too late for the employees who will be made redundant on 18 July in my constituency, and in the constituencies of 30 other Members including the Prime Minister, at a cost of £4.5 million in unnecessary redundancy and welfare payments. I realise that I am being greedy with the Leader of the House’s time, but will he speak again to the OFT and ask if it could possibly move the decision forward, so as to avoid unnecessary heartache for the employees and unnecessary costs to the public purse?
Sir George Young
Of course I understand the concerns of those who might lose their jobs, and the hon. Lady’s anxiety to bring the matter to a swift conclusion. I was pleased to hear that last week’s exchange produced results. Without making any promises, I hope that she is on a roll and I will have another go this week.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House grant us a debate or a statement on the effect of entrepreneurs’ relief, particularly on manufacturing firms in my constituency, in encouraging those who want to expand their businesses and invest in growth?
Sir George Young
That is indeed an important engine for growth, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter. He will know that we have raised the lifetime limit on capital gains qualifying for entrepreneurs’ relief to £10 million, and I hope that that will make the UK a more attractive location for entrepreneurs by encouraging those who want to expand their business and reinvest in growth to do so here.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we have a statement on Ministers’ replies to Members’ correspondence? I have received an e-mail from the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien), in which he says that it is not the policy of the Department for International Development to respond to “similar items” of correspondence that MPs send to it, because
“this places a burden on DFID’s resources which would be better directed towards the poor.”
I do not recall the code of conduct on Ministers replying to Members’ correspondence containing that kind of provision, and I would be grateful if we could have a statement and perhaps some consultation on this matter, to clarify the extent to which Ministers can pick and choose to which MPs’ letters they reply.
Sir George Young
Every Member of Parliament is entitled to a prompt and courteous response from Ministers to the letters that they send, but if a Member sent 1,500 identical cards to a Minister, for example, it would be reasonable for the Minister to send one reply and ask the Member to notify the constituents who had sent all the cards to him. It does not follow that every single identical letter sent to a Minister is entitled to a personal reply, but each individual subject should certainly get an answer from the appropriate Minister.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Earlier this week, I accompanied my constituent, Karen Kannair, to meet officials from the Department for Education, to whom she gave a harrowing description of the treatment that she and her son had received after he had been excluded from school some two and a half years ago. Could we find time for an urgent debate on the performance of local education authorities in dealing with excluded pupils?
Sir George Young
It is important that pupils who are excluded from school should not lose contact with mainstream education, and that they should get back into it as soon as possible. The experimental statistics published today show that pupils in alternative provision perform significantly less well in GCSEs than those who are in mainstream schools. These are vulnerable children, and they need the support to which my hon. Friend refers. We set out in our White Paper last year our plans to increase the autonomy, accountability and diversity of alternative provision in order to help to drive up standards.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
May we please have a debate on the effect of the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday about business rates? It seems to me that the better-off areas of the country will become still better off, and that the poorer areas such as my constituency will suffer even more.
Sir George Young
We have not come to a final decision on business rates, as I said earlier. However, if local authorities decided to keep the business rate, there would still have to be a system of equalisation to ensure that those local authorities with fewer than average businesses did not suffer unduly.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
May we have a debate in the House on bureaucracy in the NHS, and a statement about the reduction in the number of managers since the general election?
Sir George Young
I would welcome such a debate because, since the general election, we have reduced the number of managers in the NHS by 4,000, reversing the record of the previous Administration, under whom the number of managers increased at six times the rate of the number of nurses.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House have a word with the Home Secretary about her failure to answer named-day questions? The shadow Home Secretary has tabled 15 questions over the past couple of weeks, only two of which have been replied to. Is not that a distressing return on the number of questions tabled, given that the convention is that named-day questions should be answered on the named day?
Sir George Young
I will raise that matter with the Home Secretary, who might possibly be in the House quite soon. It is indeed the objective of every Minister to reply to questions on the named day, and if that is not possible, they will send a holding reply, but I will raise the matter with my right hon. Friend to see whether we can get a prompt response to the outstanding questions.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
Small and medium-sized enterprises in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft are working hard to pull together with the local enterprise partnership to put forward a bid for an enterprise zone in our area. Bearing in mind all the work that they are doing, may we have a debate in the House on what small and medium-sized enterprises are doing for the economy and what the Government are doing to assist their development?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s advocacy of an enterprise zone for his constituency, and I commend his zeal in bringing it forward. There might be an opportunity on Monday and Tuesday next week to discuss the incentives that we have produced, including a moratorium on domestic regulations, abolishing the jobs tax, the small business rate relief, the enterprise finance guarantee, the growth capital fund and many similar initiatives.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Following the announcement by Scottish Power of its price increase of up to 20%, consumer organisations have said that, should other utility companies follow suit, 4 million households in the UK could be driven into fuel poverty. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate on electricity market reform, so that we can address the vertical integration of the companies and the lack of transparency, and ensure that that does not happen?
Sir George Young
There will be an opportunity a week today, on 7 July, to address those specific questions to my hon. Friends in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We have retained a number of measures to help to tackle fuel poverty, including cold weather payments and winter fuel payments, and a Bill is going through Parliament that will enable people to insulate their homes without having to dig into their pockets. There will also be a statement in due course on electricity market reform.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
May we have a debate on Tuesday’s higher education White Paper? Yesterday, I welcomed representatives of Drexel university, one of the leading universities in the United States, to my constituency. They are looking to set up an operation in the United Kingdom with a UK institution. Is not the Government’s policy of freeing up institutions to expand and allowing new entrants into the market the best way to ensure that students get value for money in higher education?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Perhaps he was in the House on Tuesday, when the Minister for Universities and Science, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts) made a statement—which was well received, certainly on this side of the House—offering a sustainable future for higher education, giving more power to students to choose their university and rewarding those universities that perform well. Also, looking ahead, we will strike a fairer balance between taxpayers and students.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I recently met Frankie, a Whizz-Kidz ambassador in Liverpool, who told me about the situation that he is facing. He finishes school this year, but he still does not know whether the course that he has applied for at the local college will be made available. He will not find that out until August. His travel to the youth club has been cut, and his opportunities to socialise have been significantly scaled back. Frankie and his family face an uncertain future. May we please have an urgent debate on how the Government’s cuts are specifically affecting disabled older teens?
Sir George Young
In taking the difficult decisions that we had to take to get the deficit under control, we have sought to protect vulnerable members of the community—people who suffer from disabilities, the elderly and the sick; we protected the NHS budget—and in our reforms to welfare, we are also seeking to protect people such as Frankie. Inevitably, some reductions in public expenditure have had to be made and it would help if the hon. Lady’s party would at some point indicate how it would have responded to the fiscal challenge that we inherited.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
From today, victims of the Equitable Life scandal—in Tamworth and around the country—begin to receive justice as the compensation scheme begins to pay out. Following years of vacillation from previous Governments, may we have a statement or a debate to mark that milestone?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend is right. In 13 months we have done more for Equitable Life pensioners than the previous Administration did in 13 years. It is indeed the case that, as we said, the first payments would be made in the first half of this year. Those first payments are now going out, so we have honoured the commitment we made to providing a transparent and fair system of compensating those who lost money in Equitable Life.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Government have now confirmed that £115 million will be made available to schools and colleges to disburse through discretionary learner support awards and bursaries rather than the £180 million that was originally promised. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State to make a statement on why those amounts have changed?
Sir George Young
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education did indeed make a statement when he announced the transfer from education maintenance allowance to the discretionary learner fund, so we have already had that exchange. There might be an opportunity at questions on Monday 11 July to press the Secretary of State even further on the matter.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House make a statement about the training of hon. Members in matters of procedure, which can be confusing and difficult not just for new Members like me? I noticed on Report of the Finance Bill that there were starred amendments and new clauses from more senior Members of the House, so a general refresher might be worth while.
Sir George Young
We are debating the Finance Bill again next week and I hope that there will be no repetition of this week’s inexplicable incident. The official Opposition failed to table an amendment in time on their flagship policy; they then refused to vote on an identical amendment tabled by another party, only to vote for some anodyne alternative. I hope that there will be no repetition of that embarrassment from the Opposition Front-Bench team.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
May we please have a debate on the funding of political parties? At a time of industrial action, it would be useful to tease out the influence that trade unions can have on some parties’ policies.
Sir George Young
As my hon. Friend knows, Sir Christopher Kelly and the Committee on Standards in Public Life are looking at the important issue of party funding. My own view is that it is unhealthy that one political party is dependent for about 87% of its funding on the trade unions.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
May we have a debate on the reform of the laws relating to industrial action? The nation is clearly opposed to the teachers’ unions going out on strike when only one third of their members voted.
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend reminds us that less than 20% of the overall PCS membership voted for strikes, which is less than 10% of the civil service. Only two teaching unions have a mandate for strike action and the turnout in both ballots was low. As I said in response to an earlier question, we have no current plans to legislate, but we are keeping the matter under review.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
My constituency carries the unenviable burden of having one of the highest rates of empty shops. Will the Leader of the House facilitate a debate on what measures could be introduced to encourage local authorities to provide free car parking, which would be a fillip not just to city centres, but to high streets and small independent retailers?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. The coalition Government are very committed to localism and devolving decisions such as whether to extend free local car parking to local councils and local authorities, which are best placed to take such initiatives forward. If he has not already done so, my hon. Friend should get in touch with his local authority to see whether it will take the action that he advocates.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Following my question to the Prime Minister yesterday, may we have an urgent debate on petrol prices and how they are hitting public services? Last year, the police spent £78 million on motoring fuel and it could hit £90 million this year—money that could have been spent on policing. The Royal College of Nursing says that 60,000 nurses now subsidise NHS petrol bills out of their own pockets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that high petrol prices are becoming a real threat to front-line services?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend is right. Our petrol prices have begun to come down over recent weeks, and we all hope that that initiative can be sustained. The coalition Government have taken action to help. As he knows, average pump prices are approximately 6p a litre lower than they would have been if we had continued with the previous Government’s escalator.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the importance of the food and drink manufacturing sector to the UK economy, which would enable Members to explain the importance of the sector locally and allow me personally to trumpet the quality and value for money of Thorntons products?
Sir George Young
If my hon. Friend is ingenious, he might be able to get into the debate on the Finance Bill next Monday or Tuesday to draw attention to the importance of the food and drink sector to the national economy. Alternatively, he could put in for an Adjournment debate on our last day, which, if the Backbench Business Committee so decides, would give him more time to amplify his point.
Mr Speaker
Order. We come now to a statement by the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice.
Mr Speaker
Order. Points of order come after statements.
I really must encourage better timekeeping by those on the Treasury Bench. Ministers should be here in time to make their statements; this is a serious matter, not a laughing matter.
Police Detention
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
I apologise, Mr Speaker.
With permission, I would like to make a statement on the recent High Court ruling on police bail. The Home Secretary is in Madrid at a G6 meeting.
Since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act came into effect in January 1986, the police, the Government and the courts have all agreed that the time suspects spend on bail does not count towards the maximum permitted period of detention without charge. For more than 25 years, this sensible and uncontested way of working has enabled the police to investigate crimes and keep the public safe.
On 5 April, a district judge refused a routine application from Greater Manchester police for a warrant for the further detention of a murder suspect, Paul Hookway. On 19 May, Mr Justice McCombe confirmed the district judge’s decision in a judicial review. Mr Justice McCombe’s written judgment was made available on 17 June. Since then, Home Office officials and lawyers have been working with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and others to evaluate the scale of the problem that the judgment presents.
When the scale of the problem became clear, Ministers were alerted on 24 June. If any suspect is released on bail, the judgment means that they are, in effect, still in police detention. That means that time spent on bail should count towards any maximum period of pre-charge detention. The judgment goes against a quarter of a century of legal understanding and accepted police practice, and as the Home Secretary said yesterday, it causes us grave concern.
The police believe that the judgment will have a serious impact on their ability to investigate crime. In some cases, it will mean that suspects who would normally be released on bail are detained for longer. It is likely that there will not be enough capacity in most forces to detain everybody in police cells. In other cases, it risks impeding the police to such an extent that the investigation will have to be stopped because the detention time has run out. The judgment will also affect the ability of the police to enforce bail conditions.
We cannot, must not and will not ask the police to do their work with one hand tied behind their backs, so they have our full support in appealing the decision to the Supreme Court. With about 80,000 suspects on police bail around the country, however, we cannot afford to wait for a Supreme Court ruling. That is why the Association of Chief Police Officers has today advised the Home Secretary that new legislation is needed.
We agree with that assessment, so we will urgently bring forward emergency legislation to overturn the ruling. That emergency legislation will clarify the position and provide assurance that the police can continue to operate on the basis on which they have operated for many years. We are also seeking urgent further advice on how to mitigate the practical problems caused by the Court’s decision in this interim period. I welcome the support that the Opposition Front-Bench team have already promised for this action.
There must be proper rules governing the detention of suspects before charge, which was what Parliament intended more than 25 years ago. This judgment upsets a careful balance that has stood for a quarter of a century and impedes the police from doing their job. That is why it must be reversed, so I commend this statement to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
That was an astonishing statement from the Minister. I do not even have a copy of more than two pages of it, which I was given as he walked into the Chamber, and I believe that other Members do not have copies at all. I was advised by the Minister’s office that lawyers were still checking it. He was very lucky that an urgent question was asked this morning, because otherwise he would not have had a statement to give on what is a very serious issue, six weeks after the original judgment. What has the Home Office been doing in the meantime?
As the Minister said, this is a deeply serious situation for the police, prosecutions, and, ultimately, justice for victims. Twenty-five years of police practice and legal interpretation have been overturned. We understand that the ruling has immediate effect, and we agree with the Minister that the previous position must be restored at the earliest opportunity. The ruling affects 80,000 suspects who are currently on police bail, but prosecutions and trials could be put at risk if the police have not acted in line with the current law.
I have been advised that Home Office officials were informed of the judgment soon after it was made on 19 May. Can the Minister confirm that? He said that they had the written judgment on 17 June, 13 days ago. What have the Government been doing since then? Why is it still not clear what this means for the police? Some forces believe that it affects custody but not bail conditions, while others fear that it means that bail conditions no longer apply. That could include bail conditions affecting whether or not a suspect can interfere with witnesses. Has definitive guidance been circulated among the police? If not, why not?
During the 13-day period since the written judgment was made available, has the Home Secretary or the Attorney-General even looked at the legal position or sought legal advice, rather than simply leaving it to the police to take a view? The police need to know what to do 43 days after the original judgment was delivered. What has been done to get the judgment suspended in the meantime? I understand that this morning the Supreme Court granted leave to appeal. Has it been able to introduce a stay of judgment? Did anyone apply to it for a stay of judgment? Was it asked to conduct an expedited hearing in order to introduce a stay of judgment? Was an appeal made to Mr Justice McCombe to stay his initial judgment pending further appeal from the Supreme Court? It is not good enough to say that this is a matter for the police, because it has implications for justice throughout the country.
Why did it take so long to conclude that emergency legislation was needed, and why has no work been done to sort that out? The Leader of the House has just stood up and given the House the business for the next two weeks. Will he have to stand up again and tell us what the business for the next few days will be so that the Government can get the emergency legislation through? We have had no discussions with business managers, and I have seen no draft emergency legislation. Why was legislation not drawn up 43 days ago as a contingency measure to deal with these extremely serious circumstances?
Will the emergency legislation be retrospective? How will it deal with the cases that are currently being handled in police custody centres and police stations across the country? What guidance are the police being given on whether they are jeopardising prosecutions through decisions that they are making in custody cells every day and every hour across the country? When will we see the legislation? I have already told the Home Secretary that we will support emergency legislation to restore the previous position, and we will seek to do that as soon as possible.
I know that the Home Secretary is in Spain today, but she was not there yesterday, and she should have made the decision at a time when she could come to the House and announce it. There has been considerable chaos in the Home Office, not just this week but for the past few weeks. The situation is ludicrous: someone whom the Home Office tried to ban from the country has sauntered in, while people whom it is trying to put in custody are sauntering out. There is a worrying level of carelessness, drift and incompetence. Justice for victims and protection of witnesses are too important to be handled in this way, and the Home Secretary should get a grip.
Nick Herbert
My understanding is that there is widespread agreement and concern about the impact of the decision, and that we should proceed on the basis of sensible discussion. We are grateful for the Opposition’s support in that regard.
The right hon. Lady asked about the Home Office’s role since the judgment. Mr Justice McCombe delivered his judgment in the divisional court in Manchester on 19 May, but it was an oral judgment. The Greater Manchester police forwarded a copy of it, but only when we received the written judgment, on 17 June, were we able to begin to ascertain the extent of its effect, and, in particular, only then did it begin to become clear that its implications went beyond the issue of warrants of further detention. Since then the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Office and officials of the Association of Chief Police Officers have been engaged in a constant dialogue in an attempt to understand the detailed implications, which are complex. On 24 June—-last Friday—the leaders of ACPO met senior Home Office officials, and at that point Ministers were informed. ACPO then commissioned advice from a leading QC. The right hon. Lady asked about the guidance issued to police officers; ACPO issued interim guidance to all chief constables at that point.
Last Wednesday ACPO commissioned additional advice from Steven Kovats QC, which it received this morning. I hope to explain some of the circumstances to which the right hon. Lady referred. It was this morning that ACPO presented its case for urgent legislation to Ministers, and it was therefore this morning that it was appropriate for us to come to the House to say what would be the right thing for us to do. We will seek to put the legislation before the House as soon as possible, following discussion through the usual channels. The matter is of concern to the police, but it is appropriate for us to continue to work carefully with them in relation to the guidance that will need to be given to forces following the further advice received from the QC.
There seems to be general agreement that this was an unusual judgment, which overturned 25 years of legal understanding. We cannot wait for a Supreme Court decision, and emergency legislation is therefore sensible and appropriate. I am glad that that is also the view of the official Opposition, and we are grateful for their support in expediting it.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
There is a clear and urgent need for emergency legislation. Does the Minister expect permanent legislation to be included in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill? Pending the implementation of emergency legislation, what emergency measures are being considered, such as the creation of additional temporary cell capacity?
Nick Herbert
We expect the emergency legislation to be the last word on the subject. We do not believe that it will be complicated to return to the status quo ante, which, after all, was the basis of legal understanding for 25 years. We do not think that it would be possible to leave the matter to an amendment to one of the Bills that are already before the House, because we would not secure that legislation soon enough. It is therefore appropriate for us to consider introducing legislation much more swiftly.
As I said in my statement, we are urgently seeking further advice on how to mitigate the impact on the police. We will do everything that is lawfully possible to ensure that they can conduct their business and deal with the interviewing of suspects, and that is the subject of ongoing discussion with the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement. These must be busy times at the Home Office, but I am disappointed that there has not been a statement on the Sheikh Raed Salah case as the implications of that are equally important.
The Minister is absolutely right that there must be emergency legislation, and it would be useful if copies of the draft legislation were sent as soon as possible to the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and the Home Affairs Committee, so that we can all help the Government to get this legislation through. There is one issue, however: what happens in the next eight or so days? Do we accept the ACPO guidance, or are we saying that individual forces might act differently—I understand that the Met and West Yorkshire police are proposing different responses to this situation—so may we have a clear and definitive statement on the steps the police should take? The Home Secretary will appear before the Committee on Tuesday, so perhaps we can explore these matters with her then.
Nick Herbert
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support for introducing emergency legislation, and we will, of course, discuss that as fully as possible with him and with the shadow Secretary of State, as that is the right way to proceed. The Metropolitan police has issued interim guidance on the basis of the judgment, and that is available to other forces. However, we will have further discussions with ACPO about what the appropriate guidance should be for all forces in this interim period, so that it is consistent with our and their obligation to comply with the law as now stated by the High Court. We will do everything possible to mitigate the impact of the judgment, because we want to ensure that the police are not impeded in going about their business and in dealing with criminals.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the relative roles of himself, Home Office officials and ACPO in respect of the advice just given to the House, and will he agree to publish the legal advice that has been provided—through ACPO in this instance, it appears? Will he also reflect on the development in the use of police bail over the past 25 years? Clearly, it has been accepted practice, but is there any evidence of a trend of suspects being put on police bail often for many months, or even years, when the police might instead be taking a more expeditious approach to their cases?
Nick Herbert
I am not aware of any such trend, nor am I aware of any concern in this House, or more widely, that gave rise to the decision. The judge’s decision in this instance was based on the narrow case that was before the court. So far as I am aware, there has not been any wider debate suggesting concern about the way police bail has been operated over the past 25 years. That is why we feel that it is appropriate to introduce emergency legislation. I doubt that it would be proper for ACPO to publish its legal advice, which it has received from two Queen’s counsels, but I can confirm that ACPO has written to the Home Secretary to confirm its view that emergency legislation is required. It has given a summary of counsels’ advice, which was given to it since 23 June, and that summary was sufficient to persuade it and us that it is necessary to move forward in the way I have suggested.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
First, why did it take six weeks for Home Office officials to make the Minister aware of the judgment? Secondly, will the legislation be retrospective? Thirdly, will he advise police authorities, including mine in north Wales, that are currently mothballing police cells—such as in Mold in my constituency—on what action to take in respect of maintaining operational police cells in case he does not provide the legislation or win any appeal?
Nick Herbert
I have answered questions about when it became clear that this case was of concern. There was undoubtedly increasing concern among ACPO representatives and, when they met Crown Prosecution Service and Home Office officials, the full implications of the judgment became clear. The right hon. Gentleman asked why we did not do more, but, as I have explained, Ministers were not alerted to this by officials until 24 June, which was last Friday, and that followed deliberations that officials had been having with ACPO after it, in turn, had received its written advice. I am confident that ACPO has been working properly both in talking with officials in order to understand the implications and also in taking formal legal advice not once, but twice, about what those implications were. I am also confident that it was right for us then to come to the House once we had established a course of action, so that we could inform the House of the right way to proceed.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Minister’s comments have revealed an extraordinary degree of complacency in the Home Office about this very serious situation. Did Home Office officials know about this judgment in May? If so, why did they not alert Ministers, and when Ministers first found out about the judgment, why did they not immediately come to this House and make a statement and talk to the Opposition about how to get emergency legislation through to rectify the situation? Why has the Minister waited for so long?
Nick Herbert
I answered those points in terms in my previous answer, and I have nothing to add. It was important for us to establish what the implications of the judgment were first at official level, working with ACPO, and then on the basis of proper legal advice. It was only when officials received the written judgment of the High Court that it became clear that the original judgment might have an implication beyond that which was initially understood. There have been discussions during the course of the week about the appropriate way to proceed, and I have sought to update the House once we knew the course of action, so as to bring clarity. I repeat that I do not regard this as a matter for partisan difference. We are grateful to the Opposition for adopting a sensible approach to this matter and for supporting emergency legislation. We do not need to disagree on this.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I thank both my right hon. Friend for the statement and the Government for their prompt response in terms of the emergency legislation. Will he ensure that when this legislation is passed it will give a clear signal to judges such as the one who made the decision that we must be on the side of the victim, not the criminal?
Nick Herbert
I will not comment on the specific points in that question, for reasons I am sure my hon. Friend will understand, but, of course, in general it is important both that we have a criminal justice system that properly reflects the interests of victims and that justice is done. The police bail system had been operating for 25 years in a manner with which, as far as I am aware, everybody was content, and this judgment alone has, effectively, sought to undo that. That is why we think it right to bring forward this legislation.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Although the emergency legislation is welcome, police throughout the country are faced with the problem of administering the current law. What advice have the Minister or the Home Office given to police authorities about reviewing the availability of police cells and what estimate has been made of any additional costs? If there are additional costs, will the Home Office give additional grants to the police so that they can cope?
Nick Herbert
We are seeking to bring forward legislation to deal with the problem sufficiently swiftly to avoid any such impact that may be caused in the interim. We will also seek to mitigate the situation to the greatest possible extent, and I will discuss that with ACPO. Clearly there are implications in respect of resources and also for defendants, because as I said in my statement, it is possible that people will be detained in custody for longer, so the judgment’s practical effects will have implications for both civil liberties and the sensible operation of police bail.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that judgments such as this, which fly in the face of common sense, run the risk of bringing our justice system into disrepute? How can someone who is free possibly be judged to be inside? At this rate, all our prisons are going to be empty.
Nick Herbert
I think that the best way that I could respond would be by quoting the legal expert Professor Michael Zander QC, whom my hon. Friend may have heard on the “Today” programme this morning. He said:
“The only justification for the ruling is a literal interpretation of the Act which makes no sense”.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
For the third time, was the Home Office advised of the oral judgment in May, yes or no?
Nick Herbert
For the third time, I say to the hon. Gentleman that I have explained the timeline in detail. When he looks at the record, he will see that I said—I am happy to repeat this—that Greater Manchester police approached the Home Office in May, but we received the written judgment from the court only on 17 June. Therefore, action was taken as soon as possible to understand the effects and seek advice once that written judgment was taken.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
This is an important point, and information from the House of Commons Library suggests that Home Office officials did know in May. Will the Minister give a clear answer to the House on whether that is the case, yes or no?
Nick Herbert
I do not understand why Labour Members are trying to pursue a point that I have already answered on a number of occasions. I am happy to repeat that officials were informed in May about the oral judgment, but it was only in June that we received the written judgment of the High Court judge. Officials then began to appreciate that the implications extended beyond that which was originally understood from the oral judgment. I am happy to go on repeating that timeline to hon. Members for as long as they seek to ask these questions.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I am sure that we all appreciate that these legal judgments can be complicated and that their full implications can take some time to work through, but does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a bit of concern about how long this took to reach Ministers? Is there perhaps scope for reviewing the interaction between his officials and ACPO to see whether a better process can be put in place to deal with the unlikely event that something as horrible as this ever happens again?
Nick Herbert
I note my hon. Friend’s point, but I think that officials wished to ascertain, with ACPO and in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, what the full implications of this judgment were before they came to Ministers with advice, because they needed to be able to advise Ministers properly on the extent of the implications. We will continue to work very closely with ACPO to do everything we can to support the police in doing the job that they have to do.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I think that what hon. Members are trying to get at is this: when the Home Office knew in May why could action not have been taken right away to set something in motion?
Nick Herbert
I say to hon. Members that it would be better if we dealt with the substantive issue, because I have repeated on a number of occasions the timeline and the reasons why. In particular, I have discussed the need to take legal advice to understand the implications of a complex judgment that was simply not expected. That is why ACPO has taken two sets of legal advice, and it was this morning that ACPO formally asked us for emergency legislation. I hope that that explains to the hon. Gentleman the sequence of events and why we have come to the House today to explain what we want to do.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Our criminal justice system costs about 10 times more than similar criminal justice systems in similarly sized countries, yet judgments such as the one yesterday, which are perverse and self-regarding, are causing this sort of reaction by Government. When are we going to consider more structural reform of a system that is barely fit for purpose?
Nick Herbert
Without commenting on the specific judgment, I agree with my hon. Friend to the extent that we do have one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world, and that is why we seek reform of the system across the piece. It also explains the important reforms that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has introduced in his Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and the reforms that we seek on enhancing the accountability of the police. We will have more to say in due course about the efficiency of the criminal justice system and how we seek to drive forward on value for money and a more effective justice system.
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
The House of Commons Library advises that the Supreme Court has not stayed the judgment this morning and that nobody applied for a stay. Can the Minister confirm that that is correct?
Nick Herbert
I understand from the Solicitor-General that that was the case this morning, but I should say to the hon. Gentleman that every effort has been made by Greater Manchester police to appeal against this judgment—the force did this from the original court of first hearing to the High Court—and that the Government are now making every effort to overturn this judgment. That is precisely why we wish to introduce emergency legislation; we do not think that a recourse to further legal process will give sufficient certainty or will deal with the issue in the time that we think is necessary.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
As the Minister has described, some 80,000 people are affected by this judgment. No doubt many of them will be consulting their Member of Parliament this weekend and in the future, so can we have some urgent clarification and guidance from the Home Office about what to say to these people?
Nick Herbert
As I said in my statement, we are urgently seeking advice so that we are able to update the police, through ACPO, on how we intend to mitigate the impact of this judgment. I am happy to ensure that the House is updated as well.
Points of Order
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. My constituency has in the past year enjoyed a number of visits from other Members of the House—that is understandable because Lincoln is a beautiful city with many beautiful people. Visitors have included: the right hon. Members for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham); my right hon. Friends the Members for North Somerset (Dr Fox), for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) and for Witney (Mr Cameron); and my hon. Friends the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson) and for Aldershot (Mr Howarth). Although I was notified of some ministerial visits—on one occasion this occurred at 10.30 pm on a Sunday evening for a visit that was to take place less than 12 hours later, which was timely perhaps but not within the lexicon of due diligence—I, like many colleagues, do not always receive such a courtesy from Members from all parts of this House.
I recognise that, in response to a point of order raised in 2008 by the then right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, the previous Speaker drew a distinction between “ministerial business” and “party activities” in relation to constituency visits—Opposition Members are quick to quote that to me. I am also aware that yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) referred to this matter in a similar point of order, although I note that he was lukewarm in his welcome for 50 Members from our coalition partners visiting Shipley. However, I feel that such a courtesy to any Member of this House should be extended to include all visits from every Member of the House, regardless of nature, unless undertaken in a strictly private capacity. On a number of occasions I have attended constituency events, business visits—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have got the message. Members are supposed to keep points of order short and we are in danger of having an Adjournment debate on this. My ruling from the Chair is that, as the House is well aware, it is convention that right hon. and hon. Members allow Members in those constituencies being visited due notification before the visit takes place. That has always been the case and I hope that convention will be the norm.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, in response to my question on the planned changes to vetting and barring in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, the Prime Minister claimed that
“anyone who has criminal convictions”—[Official Report, 29 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 953.]
will be barred from working with children. However, I have checked clause 66 of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, which clearly removes the current procedure of automatically barring someone who has, for example, raped a child. Given the concern in the country about that loophole, may I seek your guidance on how to correct the record?
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Lady has already put that information on the record and I am sure that she will find other ways to ensure that the necessary correction takes place.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Today, we have had a statement from the Home Office and a business statement. It is clear from the few answers that the Home Office Minister was able to give that the Government were not ready to come to the House and would not have done so had we not asked an urgent question this morning. Is there provision for the Home Office Minister to come back to the House at the end of the day, once he has clarification from the lawyers on the position for the police as regards the situation under which they must operate, and is there provision for the Leader of the House to come back and make another business statement now that we know that emergency legislation will definitely be needed and will need to be timetabled as a result?
Mr Deputy Speaker
It is up to the Government whether they wish to come back, but that would have to be with the permission of Mr Speaker. I am sure that the right hon. Lady’s message has been heard.
Civil List
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
I beg to move,
That—
(1) new provision be made for, or in connection with, the financial support of the Sovereign and of the heir to the throne;
(2) any sums payable in respect of provision so made should be payable out of money provided by Parliament;
(3) provision be made enabling the continuation, in the reigns of Her Majesty’s successors, of the payment of the hereditary revenues of the Crown as directed under section 1 of the Civil List Act 1952;
(4) provision be made about allowances and pensions under the Civil List Acts of 1837 and 1952;
(5) any sums payable in respect of such allowances and pensions by virtue of any provision so made should be charged on the Consolidated Fund;
(6) it is expedient to amend the law relating to the financial support of members of the Royal Household.
The Queen’s Gracious Message yesterday invited Parliament to consider the provision of support to Her Majesty, her successors and other members of the royal household. That reflects a simple fact: the current civil list arrangements are no longer sustainable. They are inflexible, less than transparent and, critically, rely on a reserve of public funds that has steadily been run down and is about to become depleted.
As I explained to Parliament last October, we have been working with the royal household to design a new funding arrangement. It will take the form of a new sovereign grant that balances the public interest in our Queen being properly funded to carry out her official duties with the legitimate interest of the taxpayer in proper accountability and value for money. If we approve the motion, the Bill to establish the sovereign grant will be published later today and the House will have an opportunity for a longer and more detailed debate in two weeks’ time, or thereabouts, on Second Reading.
We must start our discussion today by recognising the Queen’s long service and immense contribution to public life in our country. I was firmly put in my place on taking office when I was reminded that I was the 19th Chancellor of the Exchequer to serve under Her Majesty. In the 59th year since her accession to the throne and the 86th year of her life, Her Majesty still took part in 440 public engagements. Her visit to Northumberland last week reminds us of the work that she and other members of her family carry out week in, week out to celebrate the achievements of communities across Britain. The royal family also conduct official business on behalf of the Government, leading 2,700 engagements and 150 official overseas visits last year. More than 41,000 people were invited to events at one of the palaces.
The monarchy is also a powerful magnet for international tourism, worth, according to one recent estimate, some £500 million to Britain. There is little doubt that our monarchy is a source of great national pride and constitutional strength that is widely admired around the world. As has been recognised for centuries, however, the official duties of the monarch cost money. That is why in the 18th century an historic arrangement was reached between the Government and the monarch. Until then, the monarchy was indistinguishable from the state and both were funded from the income the mediaeval Crown collected from its estates, as well as duties, fines and other charges.
In 1760, George III agreed to surrender for his lifetime the full income of the Crown Estate to the Government in return for a civil list. That arrangement has been in place ever since and a clear demarcation has long been established between the private income of the royal family for their private expenditure and the publicly funded income, derived from the civil list, for the royal family’s public duties.
At the beginning of each reign, Parliament passes a new Civil List Act setting out a fixed annual amount for the whole of that reign. That was done in 1952, when Her Majesty was proclaimed Queen. By 1972, high inflation had so eroded the value of the civil list that the system had to change and this House agreed to set fixed annual amounts for 10 years at a time, but this system, too, had its weaknesses. As inflation was hard to forecast accurately over a 10-year-period, the civil list ended up being too generous at the beginning of the period and too meagre at the end. We are living with those weaknesses still.
In 1990, the annual civil list amount was set at £7.9 million. Additional support was provided to the monarch in the form of two grants in aid, one for travel and one for maintenance of the royal palaces, but inflation in the 1990s was falling faster than forecast and much of the funding was not spent. Instead, it went into a reserve, which by 2001 had grown to more than £37 million. At the beginning of the last decade, it was decided that rather than set a new civil list, the royal household should run down that reserve to fund its official duties.
That means that over the past three years, the royal household has on average spent about £35 million a year. Let me set out how the spending breaks down for 2009-10, the most recent year for which there is out-turn data. There was £7.9 million from the civil list, £6.5 million from the reserve—that was, of course, public money that had been provided earlier—£3.9 million for travel, £400,000 for communications, and £15.4 million for royal palace maintenance. It should be made clear that over recent decades the royal household has done a huge amount to cut costs and improve the effectiveness of its spending. Indeed, total spending has come down from £45.8 million in 1991 to an expected £35 million in 2010-11. That is a real-terms cut of more than 50% in 20 years. No other Government Department can claim to have achieved anything like that.
Those efficiencies have continued in recent years. For example, visitor income to the palaces has almost doubled, commercial lettings at Hampton Court and Kensington palace are up 30% and a two-year pay and recruitment freeze on the royal household has been imposed. I want to take this opportunity to thank the current Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Alan Reid, and his predecessors for doing such a good job.
Despite such impressive efficiencies, however, there are problems with the current system. It is very inflexible. For example, money saved in travel cannot be used to undertake an urgent repair of a property. It is opaque, as the National Audit Office’s access to official spending is limited and, although it has carried out value-for-money studies, it has no audit function. Critically for today’s discussion, it was clear by April 2010 that the royal household’s reserve, which had provided a key component of its annual income, was running out.
The previous Government took the decision, which I completely understand, to leave it to the incoming Government to fix that situation. This is how we propose to do it. We will introduce a new sovereign grant that provides appropriate resources for the Queen to do her job with dignity but balances that with fairness and accountability for the taxpayer. It is designed around three principles. First, it provides the monarchy with sustainable long-term financing free from annual political interference, by which I mean the budget can be set for the long term and automatically uprated without an annual political argument. Secondly, it provides flexibility, so that the royal household can manage its funds efficiently to deliver best value for taxpayers. The third principle is that, alongside more sustainable finances with greater flexibility, we will ensure greater accountability and transparency and establish proper checks and balances to prevent the sums provided from becoming too excessive. Those are the three principles underpinning our approach.
[Official Report, 5 July 2011, Vol. 530, c. 13-14MC.]Let me now turn to some of the detail, recognising that in a fortnight’s time or so people will have had a chance to study the legislation and we will have a longer debate on Second Reading. First, we need a funding mechanism that prevents the sovereign from coming to Parliament each year for resources, and that provides funding broadly in line with the growth of the economy. There is such a mechanism at hand, through the historical connection with the Crown Estate, so I propose that from 2013-14 the royal household receives 15% of the profits made by the Crown Estate in the two years prior. That is an average.
As the House will know, the Crown Estate is a large commercial property portfolio comprising £6.7 billion of assets, and 15% of the profits is estimated to provide a sovereign grant worth about £34 million in 2013-14—in other words, broadly in line with the latest data on grant and reserve spending for 2009-10, which was £34 million.
Each year, as the economy grows, the revenues of the Crown Estate will grow, and the monarch will eventually receive 15% of those revenues using that formula. There will be a cash floor to protect the monarch from cash cuts, but basically the monarch will do as well as the economy is doing. We will see how the Crown Estate performs, but the current estimate is that the 15% formula will mean that by 2014-15, the last full year of this Parliament, the monarch will receive about £35million. In cash terms, that is broadly in line with what it has spent in recent years; in real terms, it is about a 9% cut over the Parliament.
We are also preparing a further important improvement to the current system. Historically, extending funding arrangements to new monarchs required primary legislation within six months of their accession. That arcane process made it difficult for the royal household to plan for the future, and for each new monarch to achieve a smooth transition at the beginning of their reign when so much else needed to be done. So I propose that the new legislation should be a permanent arrangement that outlives the sovereign. It will require only an Order in Council, rather than a whole new piece of legislation, to extend the sovereign grant to a new monarch, and I hope that Members agree that this is a sensible arrangement.
We will also use the Bill to remove an historical anomaly about the Duchy of Cornwall. The revenues of the duchy are used to fund the Prince of Wales in his official duties, but they are available to him only because he is the Duke of Cornwall, and only the eldest son of the monarch can be the Duke of Cornwall. So if the heir to the throne is female or, indeed, a second son or a grandson, they cannot be the Duke of Cornwall, which means that they would not get the revenues of the duchy.
We propose to correct that anomaly by making it clear that in future Duchy of Cornwall revenues will in effect go to the heir, whether or not they are the Duke of Cornwall. There will also be a provision in the Bill to deal with the situation in which the heir is not yet an adult.
We will also bring to an end another anomaly by which certain members of the royal family receive statutory payments from the Exchequer only for the money to be reimbursed to the Exchequer by the Queen. Yesterday, I received a letter from the Keeper of the Privy Purse on this matter, copies of which will be made available in the Library after my speech. The new sovereign grant will replace all statutory payments and annuities to other members of the royal family, with the exception of the Duke of Edinburgh.
The second principle behind our proposals is flexibility. As I have said, under current arrangements, the Queen receives three different blocks of money: a travel grant from the Department for Transport; a royal palaces and communications grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; and the civil list from the Treasury. That is very inflexible. It means that the royal household cannot set its own priorities and flexibly manage its resources in the course of each year, as any modern organisation would want to do.
I propose abolishing the three separate blocks and merging them into a single grant from the Treasury. As has been the case for many decades, any underspent public money will go into a reserve. This is a sensible arrangement that will allow the royal household to provide for contingencies and to invest in one-off capital projects.
Unlike previous years, however, we are going to have a maximum target on that reserve, so that it never rises above about 50% of the annual grant. This means, for example, that if the annual grant is £34 million, the reserve will be limited to £17 million, which is very much lower than the £37 million that was accumulated in the reserve 10 years ago.
The third principle of our approach is an incredibly important one: accountability to Parliament for the spending of public money, and value for money for the taxpayer. I think that we get excellent value for money from our monarchy. It amounts to 51p per year per person in the United Kingdom, but it is right and proper that Parliament should exercise oversight.
For many years, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have been allowed to conduct value-for-money studies in some areas of royal business, such as travel or palace maintenance, but not to conduct full audits as they do with other Departments. The Bill proposes to change that. From now on, the NAO will have full access and become the statutory auditor of all the royal household’s official business and of the sovereign reserve. It will also be able to audit the assets used by the royal household in carrying out its official business. The National Audit Office will not become the financial auditor of the Queen’s private business, including the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which remain private funds.
To ensure accountability to Parliament, the sovereign grant accounts will be laid before the House. The Public Accounts Committee will also be able to conduct hearings on the royal finances, with the royal household itself providing evidence at such hearings. That is a big and historic extension of parliamentary scrutiny, and I should like to thank Her Majesty for opening up the books.
We also propose checks and balances on the size of the sovereign grant and the reserve. As I said, the sovereign grant will be set at 15% of Crown Estate revenues, and that percentage will be reviewed every seven years to determine whether it remains appropriate. The review will be conducted by the three current royal trustees, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and every seven years we will come to Parliament with the proposed review and a recommendation on what it should be.
There cannot be an increase without agreement from Parliament through the affirmative procedure. The royal trustees will also act to make sure that the reserve remains within its 50% cap by reducing the annual grant as required, and of course the Treasury has a responsibility each year for ensuring that the sovereign grant is spent on the official duties that it is supplied to be spent on.
Those arrangements also deal with the potential situation, which some people predict, of an increase in Crown Estate profits from offshore wind activity. Currently, those revenues are running at about £2.5 million per year, but some forecast that they could increase substantially in the 2020s. The 15% formula will be reviewed before that may come about, and we will not allow revenues from offshore wind to lead to a disproportionate rise in revenues to the royal household. We will shortly also set out proposals, unconnected to this legislation, to make sure coastal communities can benefit from the development of the Crown Estate’s marine activities.
Today, we recognise the value of the monarchy and we put its finances on a sustainable long-term footing. I have put forward the principles behind our proposed new sovereign grant, and we will debate those in detail next month. Our aim is to ensure that the sovereign can carry out her official duties effectively and with dignity, while ensuring accountability to Parliament and value for money to the taxpayer. I hope that our proposals receive all-party support, and I commend the motion to the House.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Although I, like other Members, have not yet seen the Bill that we are debating today, I thank the Chancellor of the Exchequer for giving me a briefing a full 48 hours in advance of today’s debate. That allowed me to spend yesterday preparing my response and the Chancellor to spend the afternoon at centre court, Wimbledon. I know that he was in a box; I do not know whether it was the royal box, but there we are.
We are debating a very important reform today. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, it is the most significant reform to the financing of the royal household since the accession of King George III in 1760, when building upon the Civil List Act 1697—see, my day yesterday was well spent—tax revenues and Crown land revenues, which were hitherto under the independent control of the sovereign, were surrendered to Parliament in exchange for a civil list then of £800,000.
This is the first time that Parliament has had the chance to debate those matters from first principles since the Civil List Act 1972, and, as the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, told the Committee of the Whole House:
“I do not believe that the British people want the work of the Royal Family to be cut down. I believe that they want it to be continued and performed by the Royal Family.”—[Official Report, 19 January 1972; Vol. 829, c. 551.]
He had already reminded the House that in debating these matters,
“we are taking decisions about an institution which, just as much as Parliament, is an essential part of our history, our constitution and our way of life.”—[Official Report, 14 December 1971; Vol. 828, c. 292.]
Almost 40 years on, that sentiment will find widespread support across all parts of this House. Replying for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the then shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, was right also to point out:
“The acceptance and the appreciation of the Monarchical function does not preclude proper consideration by this House of how financial provision should be made.”—[Official Report, 14 December 1971; Vol. 828, c. 383.]
Again, that is a sentiment that will command support from all parts of this House.
Reading back over those debates from the early 1970s, it was clear that not everyone in the House supported the changes. Indeed, I noted that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—he is not in his seat today—voted against the changes in 1972. I looked for his contribution to the debates, but the Hansard record does not record a speech by my hon. Friend, just a series of documented comments from a sedentary position; some things do not change. At one point, the Member for Chelmsford, a future Leader of the House of Commons, Norman St John-Stevas, remarked that
“criticism of the Monarchy, just as of this House, should be fair and temperate not unfair and prejudiced.”—[Official Report, 21 December 1971; Vol. 828, c. 1357.]
Hansard shows that the newly elected Member for Bolsover simply shouted out, “Why?” It was a relatively tame intervention. My hon. Friend was just at the foothills of what has turned out to be a very fine parliamentary heckling career.
The world, the monarchy and the House have all changed a great deal since the early 1970s. The global demands of the royal household have grown significantly, with all that that entails in security and admin burdens. The monarchy has changed greatly—it is now much more open and more scrutinised than ever before—and Parliament, as the Chancellor said, now has a greater role in scrutinising the finances of the royal household than in the 1970s. Of course, the one unchanging rock across all those turbulent decades has been Her Majesty the Queen herself, whose grace, wisdom and dedicated service to our country are second to none.
I agree with the Chancellor about this. I know that not everyone in this House will agree with what I am going to say, but it is the view of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, as it is the view of the Government, that the monarchy continues, and must continue, to play a vital role in the affairs of our nation in the new century, but that to play this role and to command public support, the royal household must, as the Chancellor said, be financed in a proper, open and fair way, which means fair to the royal household and, as the Chancellor said, fair to the taxpayer too. There is a balance to be struck, as there has been for over 250 years since the 1760 settlement. It is the job of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Government, with the royal household, to strike a fair and workable balance between the legitimate needs of the household and the interests of the taxpayer. It is the responsibility of Her Majesty’s Opposition to scrutinise the actions of the Government to make sure that it is done in a fair and proper way, and it is the job of this Parliament to oversee these matters.
I thank the Chancellor for giving me advance notice of the details; as I said, I have not yet seen the legislation. I want to assure him that although we have questions to ask, it is our intention to support him in reforming the current arrangements. However, it is very important that he seeks to establish a consensus not only across the Dispatch Box but in the country as a whole in support of these reforms. At a time when many families and businesses are under real financial pressure, the Chancellor will need to provide, today or on Second Reading, some more clarity, detail and reassurance on four particular issues that I will set out today in advance of those debates: the level of the sovereign grant; the costs of royal security, which, while not covered by the sovereign grant itself, are material to these matters; the mechanism for uprating the sovereign grant; and how Parliament scrutinises these new arrangements.
On the first issue, the Chancellor and the Treasury will need to provide some more analysis in advance of Second Reading to explain why, in choosing the figure of 15% of the profits of the Crown Estate, they believe they have set the sovereign grant at the right level. I understand that, adjusting for the issue of the drawing down of the reserves, this new arrangement is expected to maintain the current level of spending broadly over the course of this Parliament.
It is right that we ask whether this is the right level of expenditure given the costs, pressures and demands on the royal household. On the one hand, the Queen has managed to deliver a 50% reduction in the total expenditure of the royal household over the past two decades, but has this process of efficiency savings come to an end, or are there further savings that can and should be made? On the other hand, the wonderfully successful wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who start their visit to Canada today, has thrust the younger members of the royal family into the limelight: they are in demand in this country and all round the world. Meanwhile, Her Majesty the Queen’s historic visit to Ireland and the Duke of Edinburgh’s recent birthday celebrations have seen their popularity reach new heights, and this can only increase as we move towards the diamond jubilee next year. This necessarily raises issues of resourcing and security.
The demands on the newly extended royal family are higher than they have ever been, and it is right that we ask whether the level of the royal grant is commensurate with the high tide mark in the royal family’s responsibilities and public appearances. This necessarily raises security issues too. It has been reported that a number of members of the royal family have had their security support downgraded, or in some cases removed. We should ask whether the Chancellor, as part of this process, has examined the impact of these changes on the royal family and on the public purse, and whether they may have gone too far. Does the current security budget meet the needs of the wider royal family in this more demanding environment? At a time when the Home Office and security budget is very stretched and under pressure, it is important that we ask that question.
That takes me to the third issue: the arrangements for the uprating of the sovereign grant. The Chancellor’s proposals imply that the total expenditure of the royal household will fall in real terms from the beginning to the end of the Parliament, but the proposals also imply that spending will, from next year, be rising in cash and in real terms, alongside a 3.2% real-terms rise in the total sovereign grant between now and the end of the Parliament. I understand, too, that the Chancellor is proposing to put a cash floor on the finances of the royal household into the future, by however much the profits from the Crown estates fall. I have to say that this is a generous proposal which suggests that the Chancellor thinks that the efficiency savings have come to an end. We also know that the profits of the Crown Estate could rise. If they rise markedly in future, the House and the country will need an assurance that proper and responsive arrangements are to be put in place.
It is unclear at this stage whether the Chancellor is saying that any increase in revenues over and above the levels that he is currently predicting will automatically be passed into the reserves or could lead to higher expenditure by the royal household. The arrangements that he set out appear to suggest that if expenditure were to rise alongside income, there would not then be an automatic review of the percentage of income allocated through the sovereign grant. If revenues are higher, then rather than waiting a full seven years for a review and risking upward pressure on spending or a repeat of the accumulation of reserves that we saw in the 1990s, is there not a case for a more automatic and immediate formula to return those excess revenues to the taxpayer?
As the Chancellor said, this issue is particularly relevant because the Crown estates are set to see an increase in their income from the exploitation of wind and tidal energy in the coming years. Crown Estate income from the renewables sector grew by 44% to £2.6m in 2009-10 alone. The annual report of the Crown Estate describes current growth as “exponential” and growth over the next 10 years as “significant”. Given the potentially significant change in income from renewables in the coming years, it is important that we ensure that the proposals are robust as regards a significant rise in Crown revenues.
The final issue is parliamentary oversight.
Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
I certainly support the comments of the right hon. Gentleman and the Chancellor. Is the right hon. Gentleman at all interested in asking for an assurance or some information on whether the proposals are likely to influence the investment strategy of the Crown Estate, and what that might involve? How much income or growth are required are often quite important parts of an estate’s strategy.
Ed Balls
The hon. Gentleman raises an important question. It is good that Parliament has an opportunity to scrutinise the proposals in the coming weeks or months. We are in an unusual situation. This debate is not a statement, so it is inappropriate for me to ask questions of the Chancellor today and expect him to respond. The debate is also on a Bill that we have not yet seen, which is obviously awkward. I am in a stronger position to ask detailed questions than everybody else, because I knew some of the content of the proposals in advance, but I do not know all the detail.
Today we are setting out questions and issues on which the Government might want to provide more detail between now and the debate on Second Reading. We will certainly expect more detail and debate then. I am sure that in reaching that deal over past months, the Chancellor and members of the royal household scrutinised the kind of issue that the hon. Gentleman raises. However, we need to find out the detail of that scrutiny, what analysis was looked at before that agreement was reached, and the impact of the proposals on a number of things. I mentioned security and the uprating formula, and the hon. Gentleman asks the very important question of whether the measures will enhance the Crown Estate or deter it from seeking to make new investments. I do not know the answer to that, but it is a good issue for debate.
Mr George Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman is right: this is not a statement. It is a rather archaic procedure, but if it is any consolation, it is a lot less archaic than it was in the early 1970s—through discussions with the Chair, we managed to reduce some of that procedure. I am unable to respond to the points that he makes, but I shall use this intervention to say that I thank him for the support in principle that he has given to the measure. He has asked some good questions, to which I hope to respond on Second Reading, and other hon. Members will raise other issues. I was not able to publish the Bill until this resolution has been passed by the House. I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s approach. The debate on Second Reading will be an opportunity for hon. Members to go into the detail of the Bill after they have studied it.
Ed Balls
I was in no way criticising the approach that has been taken. I was simply noting the rather odd situation that we are in: I am able to say some things that, potentially, nobody else fully understands because they have not had the briefing from the Chancellor that I had, but I totally understand the Chancellor’s position.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
As this announcement has been described as “important”, a disappointingly small number of Members are in the Chamber. Will my right hon. Friend tell me when he first heard that this announcement would be made today?
Ed Balls
I do not want to say anything inappropriate, but I believe that it is appropriate for me to say that the Prime Minister briefed the Leader of the Opposition on these matters a week ago. The Chancellor requested that I meet him, and we met on Tuesday. The clear view of the House authorities, the Government and the royal household—I do not know exactly who makes such decisions—was that the first public knowledge of the proposals should be the making of the gracious request, which happened yesterday. It was then a matter for the Government to respond the next day, which is where we are. That is the fullest answer I can give, so there we are.
It is welcome that, for the first time, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee will have the same powers to audit and scrutinise the royal household as any other Government Department. I am sure that the Chair of the PAC will speak in this debate about that in greater detail. However, there are important issues of detail in respect of how the proposals will work in practice. Will the reports be frequent and timely? Will all necessary information be disclosed to the PAC and Parliament? Who will give evidence to the Committee on those matters?
In June last year, the Chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), said:
“If there is to be serious assessment of efficiency and economy and effectiveness (of the monarchy), one has to look at the total income and expenditure. It is difficult to look at just a part.”
That has been our situation in recent years. As the Chancellor says, even before today’s Bill, our situation is a substantial advance from where we were 40 years ago. It is true that the original debate was opened by the Prime Minister and that the Chancellor represented the Government in a Committee of the whole House, but it is also true that that was pretty much the only opportunity for scrutiny of such matters in the previous 40 years. We are therefore in a better place, but the Chair of the PAC is right to say that we need to go further and to do so in a proper way. I hope that we hear from her today, but it is vital that Parliament has the proper information so that it can properly and fully scrutinise such significant sums of revenue.
In conclusion, the Opposition will support the Chancellor in making necessary reforms, but my advice to him is that there is more work to do on providing more detail and reassurance in advance of the debate on Second Reading. It is necessary to build a consensus not only in the House but in the country. The case needs to be made that the reforms represent a secure, balanced and fair way forward for the royal household and the taxpayer in the years to come. We look forward to playing our part in those debates and that scrutiny in the coming weeks and months.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
I want to put this debate in the context of Her Majesty’s life of service to this country. As we are all aware, the Queen fulfils a number of duties as Head of State, including her constitutional duties, such as the state opening of Parliament, giving Royal Assent to legislation, carrying out state and royal visits overseas, and receiving state and official visitors. However, the Queen, and indeed the whole royal family, play a much greater role in our society: that of providing a focus for national identity, unity and pride. They recognise success and contribute to our nation through their public service and support for the voluntary sector, which includes many of the unsung heroes in our local communities. The Queen and the royal family also support the vulnerable and highlight the need to help in challenging areas of society.
We need only cast our minds back a couple of months to the royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for an illustration of how much the monarchy means to everyone in this country, and indeed across the world. The royal family is a hard-working institution, and we are rightly proud of it in this country. As we heard earlier, the Queen entertains almost 50,000 people per year, not to mention the many thousands of people she visits around the country and the world.
It is difficult to quantify the full benefit of the royal family, not just to tourism and our country’s status abroad, but to our national identity, history and traditions—the things that make us proud to be British. They also support our values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and equality.
More specifically on the motion, the Queen and the royal household currently receive funding from several sources, as we have heard. However, following the agreement made in 1760 in return for the fixed annual payment, Crown lands are managed on behalf of the Government, and the surplus revenue goes to the Treasury. In the last financial year, that amounted to more than £210 million. Let us be clear about this. In the last financial year, the Queen and the royal household received £38.2 million in total from the Government, and paid back to the Treasury £210.7 million in surplus revenue from the management of the Crown Estate. In other words, they contributed a net sum to the Government of £172.5 million. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Regardless of that net contribution to our economy over the past decade, the Queen and her staff have made significant efforts to make the royal household more efficient, as the Chancellor said. Head of State expenditure has more than halved during that time from the £87.2 million in 1991-92, to £38.2 million in 2009-10, and the projected spend this year of £35 million.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor outlined in the Chamber today, a new sovereign support grant will be introduced to cover funding for the Queen and the royal household. The grant will combine all the sources of funding into one sum covering all the monarchy’s official expenditure, not just the expenditure currently covered by the civil list. This will simplify an overly complex process for allocating funding—one that is haphazard at best. The level of funding will be linked to the Crown Estate’s surplus and will provide levels similar to those currently received. Surpluses and funding will be held in reserve for future years and levels will be protected from falling significantly from previous years. As we heard, full parliamentary scrutiny and audits of all expenditure will continue. The proposals will provide for continuity in the event of the succession of a new monarch so as to ensure certainty and stability for the royal family and household. I believe completely in and support the three principles that the Chancellor outlined.
In summary, the sovereign support grant will give the royal household greater control to manage its funding and continue its efficiency measures. It will also provide clarity, flexibility and longer-term planning, and will make it much easier to communicate the finances of the Queen and the royal household to members of the public. The sovereign grant Bill is consistent with the Government’s quest for greater transparency of funding, which we are trying to get across government, together with increased accountability and focus on achieving value for money for taxpayers. It also, importantly, continues to support the sovereign in the long term in the outstanding contribution that she makes to this country on a daily basis. I therefore support the motion.
Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I join others in welcoming today’s announcement and the motion put forward by the Chancellor with the agreement of the royal household. Like others, I recognise the fantastic contribution that the Queen and members of the royal family make to the United Kingdom, and acknowledge the respect and warmth that the Queen commands among the British people. Most recently, as others have said, the royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge gave us all an uplifting moment of joy, allowing us to celebrate with the royal family on an occasion filled with happiness at a time when so many families are facing difficulties and insecurity in their daily lives.
Clearly, if the Queen and the royal family are to carry out their constitutional duties effectively, they need appropriate funding. Some of this funding comes from the taxpayer, so we need to have in place an open and accountable system. The Chancellor’s announcement today puts the direct support from the taxpayer to the royal family on a transparent footing, which will enable both Parliament and the public to understand how much taxpayer money is being spent annually by the royal family and what it is being spent on. This is undoubtedly an important change for the better, and as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, charged with following the taxpayer’s pound, I warmly welcome it.
I also recognise the historic significance of the changes proposed, and believe it is hugely important for the future stability of the monarchy and its role in our constitutional settlement that we should modernise our structures so that they are fit for purpose in today’s world, and properly meet the legitimate expectations of the taxpayer and the general public. As others have acknowledged, the Queen has acted sensitively and prudently in managing her finances over the past two decades. That is right and proper, and she should be applauded for doing so. She has cut her real-terms expenditure by more than 50% in the past 20 years, and at a time when we are asking every family to tighten their belts, people will be heartened to see that she is playing her part.
The powers proposed in the legislation, as outlined by the Chancellor, are hugely significant for Parliament. The Comptroller and Auditor General will be appointed by statute to audit the sovereign grant accounts and he will be empowered to prepare value for money reports that the PAC can consider. This puts, for the first time, those parts of the royal finances that come directly from the taxpayer each year on a transparent basis, consistent with other public expenditure. The PAC has a long and well-established history of effective public scrutiny, and we will, I am sure, approach these new responsibilities in our traditional way, working objectively and thoroughly on behalf of Parliament and the taxpayer.
We will show no fear or favour. On the one hand, we will not give this new area of our work special treatment, but on the other hand, we will take the issues seriously and ensure that we hold the appropriate accounting officers to proper public account. In our approach, we will examine critically both how the Government allocate funding to the royal family and how the royal family then spend that allocation. As right hon. and hon. Members know, we have a reputation for being straightforward, direct and clear in our recommendations, and I hope that both the Chancellor and the royal household will welcome the new accountabilities and the implications for them. You never know, Mr Deputy Speaker, we might, in years ahead, end up praising the royal household for providing value for money and criticising the Treasury for its meanness. Time will tell.
In this instance, I expect us to take evidence from the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen, Sir Alan Reid. Although the incorporation of the civil list into the new sovereign grant gives us new powers, with new audit and access rights for the Comptroller and Auditor General and new areas for public scrutiny of this expenditure by Parliament, the PAC has in the past examined areas of expenditure by the royal household covered by the grant for royal travel from the Department of Transport and the grant aid for the royal palaces from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
As the Chancellor said, in 2010, £5.4 million was granted for royal travel and £15 million for aid to royal palaces. When the PAC reported on the occupied royal palaces in 2008-09 we found that, although the royal household claimed a £32 million backlog of maintenance work, that figure was not supported by rigorous analysis. We said then that in the absence of a consistent approach to assessing the condition of the Crown Estate and calculating the backlog, and without an assessment of the practical consequences of the backlog, the Department and the household could not be sure how big the problem was or what to do about it. We said that the household should define the criteria for inspecting the condition of the estate, agree with the Department the basis for calculating the maintenance backlog and, before the end of 2009, set out a plan for managing it.
As a result of that recommendation, the household adopted a new system for monitoring the condition of its estate to better manage prioritisation of the maintenance work. In the same report, we noted that the Royal Collection Trust received more than £27 million from visitors to the occupied royal palaces, of which just £1.8 million was passed to the royal household to top up the resources available to maintain the palaces. The report found that the arrangement by which money paid by visitors to the palaces went to fund the trust dated from 1850. Clearly times have changed. More palaces have opened to the public and hundreds of thousands of tourists visit them each year, yet only a fraction of the income generated has, in the past, been used to maintain the palaces. The amount paid to the household is at the discretion of the trust, but some staff of the household are also involved with the trust and have potential conflicts of interest.
We said that the Department should work with the household and the trust to revise the arrangements for the collection and distribution of visitor income to reflect the fact that visitors come to see the palaces as well as the works of art in them. In response, the royal household announced a new arrangement under which, in 2009-10, the trust started paying an amount to the royal household in respect of visitors to Buckingham palace, which again helps offset public funding.
To give another example, following a visit by the then Public Accounts Committee to Kensington palace on the back of a report on maintaining royal palaces, the Queen agreed to pay rent—initially £60,000 a year, rising to £120,000 a year—for the Prince and Princess of Kent’s apartment at Kensington palace from her own income. We understand that from 2010 the Prince and Princess of Kent will remain at their apartment but will pay the rent from their own funds.
Those have been our past successes. In future, we might well want to look at a new range of issues, such as whether the royal estate is being used in the most cost-effective and efficient way, with the royal household maximising the potential for income from commercial lettings, and whether maintenance work is being properly prioritised given the backlog. On travel, we might also look at the cost-effectiveness of the options chosen by the royal household—for example, between road, rail and air—to ensure that best value for taxpayers’ money is secured.
On the former civil list, we might want to examine procurement, staffing costs or expenditure on receptions and entertainment. Having listened to the Chancellor’s welcome statement, I would appreciate it if he dealt with a number of issues that I believe arise. He has said that the sovereign grant will be reviewed every seven years. As I understand his statement, he will be taking new powers to reduce the sovereign grant year on year if the income from the Crown Estate exceeds his expectations. I understand that such a power does not exist at present and I would be grateful if he confirmed that it will be a new power. A similar issue arises on the income that the royal household receives from opening the palaces and the royal art collection to the public. How in those circumstances will any increase in income be treated in determining the sovereign grant?
Finally, today’s proposals deal with the annual income received by the Queen from the taxpayer, but we need to ensure that the public interest in all the assets and estates held by the monarch on behalf of the public is accounted for in a transparent and consistent way. This is particularly important in these stringent times when we are asking so much from hard-working families. I would be grateful if the Chancellor addressed this issue in his reply.
I warmly welcome today’s announcement by the Chancellor. This is a truly historic occasion. For the first time ever, we are placing the royal expenditure financed by the taxpayer on a proper footing—transparent for all to see and consistent with all other public expenditure. This is a sensible act of modernisation that I am sure will be welcomed by Members on both sides of the House and by the general public at large. It will help to ensure continuing admiration and support for the Queen and for the role she plays in our constitutional arrangements.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who is the current Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Under my chairmanship and hers, the Committee has for many years fought a relentless campaign on this issue, but I never thought this day would come. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has risen to such distinction, but I remember his being a member of our Committee when he was a very new, young Member of Parliament, and he may recall a visit we made to Kensington palace together. The trouble with dealing politically with royal family matters—I know this from my many years of chairing the Public Accounts Committee—is that whereas an incredibly worthy report about tens of millions of pounds, or even hundreds of millions of ponds, being wasted in the Department for Work and Pensions will end up only on page 15 of the Financial Times, if we are lucky, something involving the royal family gets much more interest. I think that the visit we made to Kensington palace was on pages 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the Daily Mail. There is enormous public interest where the royal family is concerned.
My right hon. Friend is to be commended for being the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to have the guts to take this issue on and deal with it. As I said, I thought this day would never come. When we started this campaign and really tried to gear it up, we were looking at three areas in which we thought that parliamentary accountability was absolutely vital: the royal family and all aspects of royal finances, the BBC and the Bank of England. Those three great institutions stand without Parliament and we were told for all sorts of reasons why it was quite inappropriate for the National Audit Office to crawl all over their accounts. It has been like pushing water uphill, but I think that after many years and many bloody battles we are going to drag the BBC to full accountability—and not a moment too soon. That is quite right. Again, I commend the Chancellor for what he is doing. The Bank of England is a more difficult issue and we are still struggling on that, but we have a great victory today. For the first time since this modern settlement was made in 1760, Parliament will, through the Public Accounts Committee, be able to scrutinise all aspects of royal finances.
Although there has been great resistance to this proposal, I have to say that in all my many conversations with the royal household I never detected any resistance from it. I think it has been Governments who have worried about certain republicans on the Public Accounts Committee crawling over the royal finances. I should like to pay tribute to a great and wonderful parliamentarian, who has not been mentioned yet and who is a personal friend of mine—Mr Alan Williams, a former Father of the House, who served with great distinction for many years on the Committee. We all know that he gave the royal finances a good going over. Unfortunately, another personal friend of mine, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson), is not here, but I am sure that if he were still on the Committee he, too, would be giving the finances a good going over.
This will be tough for the royal household—there is no doubt about that—and there will be strong questioning in the Committee, as there is on all these subjects, but that is absolutely right because that is what we are about: accountability. I think they have absolutely nothing to fear. As the shadow Chancellor made clear—we do not need to labour this point, because we all know it so well—the Queen has throughout her reign acted with incredible grace and wisdom and with such enormous constitutional propriety. We know all that, but what is not so well appreciated—certainly not by the general public and perhaps not by many Members of Parliament—are the enormous strides that the household has made in delivering efficiency savings and cutting costs. I am pretty confident that when the Committee, working with the National Audit Office, is allowed to crawl over the accounts, it will find a first-rate, modern institution.
It is unfortunate that up to now the Committee has been able to deal only with royal travel and palaces and not with the rest. That seemed a strange state of affairs. We managed to save the royal train, by the way, which is, in terms of modern accountability, a fantastically wasteful but noble instrument of royal travel. [Interruption.] It is necessary. It is so old that it can only travel at night.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend and his colleagues saved the train but unfortunately not the yacht. Is there any chance that for the diamond jubilee we will get the yacht back?
Mr Leigh
Well, some stingy previous Government, whom I will not mention by name, got rid of the royal yacht. What a tragedy. It is not the working part of the constitution but it is an important part. As for the royal train, it is quite right that this wonderful elderly lady should sometimes be allowed to sleep on the royal train so that when she visits Newcastle or Manchester she can wake up and perform her duty refreshed, and not be forced out of bed at 5 am to take a plane. We saved the royal train; that, I think, is something that the PAC achieved.
The PAC, then, will not cause any unnecessary trouble. Although I cannot speak for the new Committee, I have great respect for the right hon. Member for Barking, and I know that she will handle the matter in an effective and completely non-partisan way. I am sure that the Committee will do a wonderful job.
Before I finish, I want to say something about royal palaces. We paid that visit to Kensington palace, and we visited Buckingham palace. We found a lot of peeling wallpaper there—there was a lot of under-investment.
Mr Leigh
Yes. This is the Head of State. She should not be in a palace that is falling down, and we should not be mean and stingy about that. I think that the Government had been a bit stingy. Perhaps these new arrangements will allow her to look after her palaces better.
There is one scandal that I want to raise: Frogmore, the royal mausoleum. It is falling down. As I understand it, under the new arrangements there will be an opportunity for the royal household to have greater control of its own affairs so that it can rehabilitate Frogmore, which is an important national monument and in an appalling state. It is a national scandal that the mausoleum for Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort is in such a derelict state that the public can no longer be admitted. That shows some of the problems with the royal finances. The Queen and her household have been making enormous strides in creating efficiency savings, but they simply have not had the independence or the resources to try to maintain the whole of the estate. It is vital for the nation that they be allowed to do so.
In conclusion, I warmly commend the Chancellor, and say well done for finally getting parliamentary accountability. We now want to continue doing battle with the BBC and the Bank of England, and make sure that this Parliament can audit all aspects of our national finances.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I, too, broadly welcome what has been said today. It is a credit to Her Majesty that she has agreed to what the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) said is a revolutionary change, bringing openness and transparency to the royal accounts. Having tried to get the expenses of BBC executives and certain producers made public, I totally agree with him about the BBC. It resists freedom of information tooth and nail. If it is good enough for the palace, I am sure that it is good enough for the BBC.
I accept that today’s statement is a strange way to proceed and that the debate will come later, but there are questions that need to be asked. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) said that if the royal accounts are to have full transparency, we have to look at them in total, not only at the civil list as it is now or at the new sovereign grant. As the Chancellor said, it is ridiculous that we pay the royal household money and then pay it back to ourselves, which is very inefficient administration.
If we are to get an idea of the full costs, we need to see what Departments pay the royal household in other ways. I give an example from the Ministry of Defence, which rents certain properties from the royal household, including the Chief of the Defence Staff’s current apartments in Kensington palace, which costs the MOD £108,000 a year. There is also military support for the royal household. That, too, comes from the MOD budget, but is vital to the workings of the household and to supporting Her Majesty in her duties. If we are to have full transparency we need to know what that costs. There is an argument to be had about whether some of the costs that fall on the MOD should come out of that budget. If we are to have a look at expenditure overall, it is important that that is taken into account. My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor mentioned security, which should also be included.
The general point of the proposals is to get consensus both in the House and across the country that not only are we getting good value for money from the expenditure, but we are accounting for it all. Certainly, it is very welcome that the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee will be looking at the entire issue.
Something that will come out in the Bill is the way the fund will work in practice. I am not quite clear how the 15% formula will work. In some years the amount will go up, and in others it will go down, and I accept that there has to be a floor; we do not want the royal household suddenly to find that it does not have enough in-year money. I am, however, a little concerned about the idea of allowing it to build up a surplus. It was reported today in The Daily Telegraph that the Treasury is looking at a yearly cap on that figure, which I think would be better than allowing the royal household to build up a surplus over the seven-year period, which many people would criticise. I ask the Chancellor to look at an annual cap on the investment that comes from the Crown Estate, because otherwise the current efficiency drives might not continue.
I accept that giving the royal household more flexibility in how it spends the money is sensible, but there must also be some debate on who benefits from the current civil list and who will benefit from the new sovereign grant. Will it just be left to the royal household to decide which members of the royal family benefit? That will need to be clarified in the Bill, because there is clearly a public perception that some people on the civil list do not deserve the support they receive, and that needs to be looked at. Having said that, I know from my time at the Ministry of Defence that many of the minor royals do a lot of work to support armed forces charities and others. They do not get a great deal of publicity but should be commended, and it is important that that should be allowed to continue.
I broadly welcome the proposals and look forward to the Bill, but if we are to have proper scrutiny of what the royal household costs, it should include everything. I ask the Chancellor to look carefully at the MOD’s budget, which I know he is already doing, and to consider whether it is realistic that we pay it money that is then paid out to the royal household for something that is not a core military task but which is important to the household.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Much of what I wish to say has already been said. I congratulate the Chancellor on what seems to be the beginnings of an elegant solution to a difficult problem. I wish to make three quick points for him. First, on the matter of principle, it is extremely important that the process does not become a formula that is reviewed annually which puts the whole of the household's finances into play on an annual basis. Whatever method is used for the calculations, it must be robust enough, as the previous debates that the shadow Chancellor cited made clear, to allow the dignity of the Crown across a period of time. That is an important principle.
Secondly, as other Members have suggested, we should consider exactly what we mean by the profit, because students of the Crown Estate’s annual finances will know that that is a highly variable figure, depending on the point at which we decide to look. It depends on whether it is the operating profit and whether there are movements in surpluses. There is one number that we might look at, which is not necessarily a profit but relates most closely to what might be regarded as the surplus cash within the Crown Estate: the annual remittance to the Treasury, which last year was £200 million or so. That is the figure that the Crown Estate remits to the Treasury, having considered what it wishes to withhold for future investment and having regard to the various discrepancies that come in the statement of total recognised gains and losses. The Chancellor might wish to look at that percentage, rather than a particular profit figure, and perhaps it could be made clear whether the grant is intended to be supplemental to that £200 million or part of it.
My final point relates to the Chancellor’s comment on the potential income from marine renewable energy, including wind, tidal and wave energy. It is rather curious that that sits within the Crown Estate at all. If we look at the precedent of the Forestry Commission, which was created in 1919, and to which the Crown Estate forests were transferred in 1923, we will see that it might be worth considering whether the marine estate should be transferred in its entirely out of the Crown Estate and possibly given to all the local authorities on the coast that could benefit from what is going on. That might be an interesting way of giving a direct benefit to local authorities on the coast, where marine energy could form the bedrock of a future economy, without having to trouble the Chancellor. I leave that little thought with him and again congratulate him on what looks like the beginnings of a very elegant solution to an old problem.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The sight of the British Head of State bowing her head in respect at Croke park to those who had been murdered by the British Army was a symbol of profound potency. She also paid her respects to the many thousands of soldiers from the Republic who died in the first world war. She visited the English market in Cork, which a number of us have visited recently, and that has had a practical benefit for the area. I believe that that visit will help to heal the deep wounds between the Republic and ourselves. The Queen has a splendid and unblemished record of service as the Head of State, and I do not want to stray into saying that she does not. She has rightly earned the respect of us all. However, some of the hyperbole this afternoon, which we always have on these occasions, goes a little too far.
Last year, Prince Charles increased the amount of taxpayers’ money he spent by 18% and his personal spending went up by 50%. That was at a time when his 159 staff had their wages frozen. We must look carefully at the royal finances. I found it an Alice-in-Wonderland concept for the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) to say that one of the great achievements of the Public Accounts Committee was to save a bit of money on transport that he described as fantastically wasteful. I think that we must apply the same financial discipline to the royal family that we apply to the poorest in society.
There should be a distinction, as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), between the way we treat the monarch, because of her role, and other members of the royal family. Perhaps we could be a bit more critical in the way in which we work out the benefit of visits from minor members of the royal family to charities and set that alongside the security and military costs that are incurred. That does not happen now.
It is not true to say that support for the monarchy as an institution is universal in this country. I come from a constituency where the last insurrection that tried to set up a republic took place in 1839. The 20 people who died in that insurrection are honoured every year. There are people in this country who are happy to describe themselves as republicans, although the figure varies. It was about 45% at the time of the death of Princess Diana and it goes down to about 25%. Those people have a credible view that should be heard.
We had little prior knowledge of this debate. I had no idea that it was happening today. There seems to be an acceptance of this matter without a knowledge of the fine details. I urge that we find a simpler solution, because the one we have seems to be very complex. There is income from various sources, some of which are controlled and some not. Perhaps we could apply a system similar to the one that I urged hon. Members to use for ourselves some years ago in supporting a motion tabled by Chris Mullin, which was that the salaries of hon. Members should be linked to changes in the basic state pension, so that if there was an increase in the basic state pension, our salaries would increase, and if it was frozen, our salaries would be frozen. I believe that a simple mechanism of that type would be acceptable to the country as a whole, and it would be beneficial to the House because it would give us a greater interest in the level of the basic state pension. It would be interesting to put a cap on future payments for the civil list, and if it was linked to a mechanism like that, whether based on the retail prices index or the consumer prices index, it would be possible to understand it. It is essential that the royal family should face the same financial discipline as every other family in the land.
Of course the royal family have done many beneficial things recently, particularly raising money from the royal palaces. However, it is worth remembering that the most profitable royal palace in Europe is Versailles, and they have had rather a different attitude to royalty in France from the one that we have had here. However, that is not essential.
The royal family are in the position that we cannot attack them or say anything critical. That is the rule in the House, which we accepted some seven centuries ago. We know the recent history, with the behaviour of certain members of the royal family having been widely criticised in the press, but it is impossible for us to make any derogatory remarks about them here. I believe that we should remove that gag, not because we wish to criticise the Head of State but so that when minor members of the royal family are extravagant or outrage the public by their standards of behaviour, we in the House have the freedom to be critical of them.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
May I personally commend and congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer not only for taking the initiative in this matter, which has been pressing for many years, but for making excellent and historic improvements to the current arrangements, which have been unsustainable for some time?
The royal family are one of the few departments of Government—just about the only thing that the Government funds, I would suggest—that make a profit for the taxpayer. They brought into the revenues of the Treasury something in the region of £200 million than was paid out last year. That was a profit for the taxpayer in raw figures. It has also been estimated that one weekend, the weekend of the recent royal wedding, brought hundreds of millions of pounds into the Revenue in tourism, merchandise sales and the like. That profit for the taxpayer is well worth sustaining.
Mr Kevan Jones
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about tourism and other matters that provide a net contribution, but surely under the settlement of the 1760s we cannot really consider the Crown Estate as still being owned by the royal family. It was given up so that it could produce the money for the state that it currently does. I would not look at it in the same terms as the hon. Gentleman.
Michael Ellis
The hon. Gentleman may not, but others may choose to do so. In fact, I happen to think that the 1760 arrangements were an historic injustice to King George III and his heirs and successors. There is every reason to say that if the hon. Gentleman is not happy with the arrangements being proposed, perhaps the royal family could sustain having 100% back.
John Thurso
The hon. Gentleman has tempted me. Part of the 1760 settlement was that the Crown no longer had to pay for the Army. Would it be equitable for it to take back the Crown Estate and the entire Ministry of Defence Budget?
Michael Ellis
Now my hon. Friend is tempting me.
It is important to bear in mind, as Professor Vernon Bogdanor has stated in one of his treatises on subject—“The Monarchy and the Constitution”, I think—that it costs about the same to run the royal family as it does to run the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea. I venture to suggest that the royal family attract far greater support from the British public than most institutions.
The issues at stake are important, and they are: fairness, accountability and transparency, and the necessary flexibility, which has not been built into the system to this point. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has pointed out, the previous system, although not that old, was quite frankly archaic, bureaucratic and burdensome. It was also inflexible, so that if money was saved in one department—for example, in travel arrangements—it could not be spent on, say, repairing a leaking roof. The previous arrangements were unnecessarily bureaucratic, and they urgently needed reform to save taxpayers’ money and to save time. They also needed to be more accountable and transparent, which is what these necessary reforms will achieve.
If we take the trouble to look at how the money is spent, we see, for example, that £400,000 is spent on communications. I venture to suggest that much of that money is spent on communication with members of the public who write in to the palaces, and on other necessary duties, such as inviting to garden parties the tens of thousands of people—and it is, in fact, tens of thousands—who enjoy and appreciate visiting the royal households by invitation every year. This money is not spent on trifles; it is spent for the general public’s enjoyment.
The same thing goes for the palaces. Much of the expenditure goes on the maintenance of royal palaces. I venture to suggest that not even the few republican diehards whom we might find in this House would propose that the royal palaces be knocked down after the abolition of the monarchy and car parks built in their stead. Even in the absence of a monarchy—may God forfend—those palaces would have to be maintained. They might be museums or something similar, but they would still need the maintenance that they need now. In fact, they have been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair because of the lack of funds, which only makes it more expensive to repair them.
I also support the modernising arrangements as they relate to the Duchy of Cornwall. That is welcome, because in future the heir to the royal house will be able to secure funds and revenue from the Duchy of Cornwall without necessarily being male—that is, without being the Duke of Cornwall. That is important and follows other reforms, in the tradition of the Demise of the Crown Act 1901. Formerly, offices of the state were cancelled on the demise of the Crown. However, the various Acts that Parliament has seen fit to pass over the past 100 years or so have meant that such positions—ministerial positions, judicial appointments and the like—could continue. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s further reform, making it necessary only for an Order in Council after the completion of one reign and the beginning of another, simply follows in that historic tradition.
I commend these measures, and I support them in full. I congratulate the Chancellor on bringing them forward, and I invite Members of this House to consider supporting Her Majesty in her 60th jubilee gift, which the House is currently considering.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
This has been a most enjoyable debate. With the need to refurbish some of the royal households with up-to-date wallpaper, we have learned that the fortunes of Osborne & Little might now increase. We heard from my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor some historical evidence of our hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) making interventions from a sedentary position when this issue was last discussed in the 1970s. People listening to this debate from outside this place might have felt that some of the speeches by right hon. and hon. Members were delivered not so much from a sedentary position but, as it were, from a kneeling position, if that were possible in the House. I would say gently to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) that some of us think that the land in this country that is not in specific private ownership belongs to the people. For us, the notion that the royal family is signing generous cheques to the taxpayer sits a little oddly.
I want to raise one substantial point today. The Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor said that we needed to look back to 1760, but if my history—learned from Linda Colley and other historians of the period—serves me right, it was actually a cunning manoeuvre by the late King George III that substantially increased royal revenues, rather than the act of generosity that it is sometimes presented as. One part of the motion, which I think the House will support, that worries me conceptually is the notion that the time of transition from one monarch to another is not the time for reflection on the arrangements that we want for our Head of State. The notion that we are going to write down a settlement that cannot be debated for another 200 years might therefore need some reflection on Second Reading.
I respect the Queen and I have travelled with other members of the royal family, although I hate the term “minor royals”—it is offensive to the very hard-working men and women who give a lot of their time to public service. If I can, I always welcome in person any of them who come to my constituency, because they are always well received and well liked. Her Majesty came to the Advance Manufacturing Centre in Catcliffe with Prince Philip last November and stood for an hour asking good questions. I was amazed at her stamina and her presence; the visit really cheered up all the people there. This just goes to show that 85 really is the new 55.
None the less, how does one justify 159 butlers, valets, cooks, dressers, housekeepers and the rest for Prince Charles? [Interruption.] We are all reading the memoirs written by the father of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) in The Times, and there is a lovely entry today about how he and Rupert Murdoch managed to cheer up the Queen at a lunch back in the 1970s; I would not have minded eavesdropping on that. But why on earth, when we keep a royal flight, is Prince Charles taking a jet trip from Mr Joe Allbritton, who is not British at all but some kind of American oligarch and millionaire—
Mr MacShane
The hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary or kneeling position, asks why not—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It seems a little bit mean to object when the royal family employ someone, and then object when they save a bit of money by taking a free flight. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman can have it both ways.
Mr MacShane
I am trying to choose my words carefully, because this is a serious matter. Serious questions would be asked if any Government Minister, acting on behalf of the nation, were to start hopping around in oligarchs’ planes—
Mr MacShane
I do not think that right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) was a Government Minister at the time of that yacht trip—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman is in danger of straying into—
Mr Deputy Speaker
No, I will finish. Individual names are being attached to what is being said, and that is not what we should be doing. This is a general debate on the civil list, and we should not refer to individual members of the royal family or to individual amounts spent.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I will go on to the next speaker if the right hon. Gentleman does not accept it.
Mr MacShane
I said that I accept your ruling fully, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will not say another word, save that—[Laughter.] If it is in order, Mr Deputy Speaker, I should like to say that it is not right for this debate to take place in the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent but not on the Floor of the House. That is all.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. There are clear rules for this House that we have to abide by. The right hon. Gentleman might not like it, but that is the case.
Mr MacShane
I actually believe that a plane should be made available for the use of senior Government Ministers, including the PM. He had to scrounge a lift from Prague to Brussels with the Czech President the other day. He got something out of it, but frankly, every senior Minister in most democracies has that mode of transport available to them. Our planes are continually available to any member of the royal family, while elected Ministers come second.
We then have the problem of explaining why the present monarch and the next one are such giant landowners. Is that an issue that we might be able to debate, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Of course we all enjoyed the royal wedding celebration this year and we will enjoy the diamond jubilee next year. Roman emperors promised their subjects panem et circenses: the current Government are doing their best to reduce the quota of panem with their cuts and cruelties imposed on the poor and handicapped, but they are increasing the availability of circenses through the royal shows.
I do not believe that there is any kind of republican mood in the country. It was interesting to hear the oleaginous loyalty, if I may put it that way, expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who had a tremendous enthusiasm for the monarchy, which has surprised many of us. I remember the silver jubilee in Rotherham in 1978, when I am told that 41,000 Union Jack flags were sold in the socialist republic of South Yorkshire.
If we look at the European Union, we see that the states that are monarchies—Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and even, with all its troubles, Spain—enjoy less partisan and less conflictual politics. When it comes to growth, distribution and a fair social settlement since the second world war, we find that the EU’s monarchies generally have a much better record than the EU’s republics. The royal families, however, are also much cheaper there. In Spain, with its King, Queen and wonderful royal palace where I had the privilege and honour of having dinner with the Crown Prince of the Asturias and the lovely Princess—and Prince Charles—a few weeks ago— [Interruption.] The food was free, but I paid for my own air fare. The total cost of the whole Spanish monarch is €8.4 million, while the Queen of the Netherlands gets by on €828,000.
I ask only that we do some comparative analysis before simply continuing with an arrangement that, even with the Chancellor’s proposed modernisations, remains deeply anachronistic.
Mr Leigh
Surely we should make a comparison with other major countries. In fact, the cost of the Queen bears favourable comparison with the cost of the Italian and the German Presidents—and who has ever heard of them, and what do they do for their country in comparison with our Queen?
Mr MacShane
I do not really want to get into discussions about German lineages. I recall a previous German President who actually walked the length and breadth of Germany in his summer holiday, and he did not receive anything remotely like what we pay our official Head of State.
It is interesting to note that Scotland’s First Minister, Mr Salmond, has ditched his party’s original republicanism and now asserts that an independent Scotland—if that unlikely event were to take place—would keep the monarch as its Head of State. However, I would like to see any future monarch living a lifestyle in tune and in touch with that of the nation. We can see the Duke of Cambridge, who serves with RAF officers, and his wife living a lifestyle much closer to that of the rest of the nation.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to people who have ditched their republicanism. Will he join me in welcoming the decision of the Sinn Fein mayor in the Irish Republic who welcomed Her Majesty and shook her hand—despite Gerry Adams’s advice to do otherwise—showing an increasing acceptance of the monarchy everywhere?
Mr MacShane
A law throughout my entire life has been that if Mr Gerry Adams advises anybody to do anything, they will be on the safest ground if they do the opposite.
I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, or the Chair of any other Select Committee could examine the high levels of expenditure that we have discussed this afternoon. I am sure that the Bill will go through without opposition, but if the monarchy is to continue in future years—after the time of Her Majesty—some things will have to change.
I welcome the Bill and the way in which it is being presented, and I think that the Opposition are handling the matter as they should, but a wider debate is needed. Let me say again—not on my knees—that there is nothing that can be discussed in our newspapers, pubs and meeting rooms that cannot also be discussed, in full detail, in this our House of Commons.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
Unlike the shadow Chancellor, I have not spent the last 48 hours carefully considering what to say in the debate, so I shall keep my remarks short. I have not been enjoying the tennis either; my mind has been occupied with other matters.
I welcome the approach that the Chancellor has outlined, and the prospect of the longer debate that we shall have on Second Reading when the Bill has been published. I want to place on record, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, the affection and esteem in which Her Majesty the Queen is held throughout the country. Every time I visit a primary school in my constituency, two questions are entirely predictable, and have been asked throughout the last decade. They are “Do you know the Prime Minister?” and “Have you met the Queen?”. There is a subtle but profound difference between those questions, which shows that young children can be very perceptive about the relative influence of Members of Parliament and the Queen. The Queen has visited the city of Bristol many times throughout her reign, and has always been warmly received.
Although I welcome the Chancellor’s approach, I think there is an important point to be made about the future finances of the monarchy. I agree with what the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) said about the importance of transparency. The reformed system of financing the Head of State—and this may be the first major reform since the accession of George III —must be transparent and open to scrutiny. Three years ago we discovered in a very painful way that resisting transparency does no institution in our land any good, and I believe that the institution of the monarchy will be enhanced by transparency over its financing.
Both the right hon. Member for Barking and her predecessor as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee referred to the royal palaces. Thanks to the initiative of Mr Speaker, this palace is now open on more occasions during the year so that members of the public can come and see the place with which we are so familiar, but Buckingham palace is still only open for one month a year, except to those who are fortunate enough to be invited there for a formal occasion. I hope that consideration will be given to whether it would be possible for grand places such as, in particular, Buckingham palace to be open to the public on more days during the year. That would both enhance the income of the royal palaces and the royal arts collection and enable more people from all over the country to see what is probably the most famous building in the world.
I look forward to our Second Reading debate and to perhaps making a longer contribution on that occasion.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I speak as—I hope—a radical democrat who really believes that sovereignty resides with the people and should be only cautiously delegated to Crowns and perhaps even Parliaments. Nevertheless, I declare myself a monarchist, not just for sentimental reasons but because I believe that the monarchy performs an important role as an impartial focus for national sentiment at a time when public confidence in other public institutions, with which we are of course familiar, may be seen as being at an all-time low. Moreover, it is clear—certainly from the celebrations of the royal wedding day in my constituency—that royal occasions provide a terrific excuse for a party which will make people feel good, and that must be a good thing at a time when we are increasingly measuring national well-being as well as simple economic indicators.
Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) that I consider those to be rather better justifications for the civil list and the spending of public money on the monarchy than the fact that monarchy offers better value for money than the DVLA, which I think is a dangerous road on which to embark. Obviously affection for, and confidence in, the monarchy has been reinforced by the conduct of the current Queen, who has performed her role over many decades with enormous dignity and professionalism. It is important that the monarchy has also moved with the times, not least by responding appropriately to the recent austere financial situation in which this country finds itself. I am therefore very supportive of the Chancellor’s announcement.
Michael Ellis
As the hon. Gentleman is so eloquently expressing his support for the monarchy, will he be contributing towards Parliament’s gift for the Queen’s diamond jubilee—the window?
Martin Horwood
I think that is a rather inappropriate question actually, but I was strongly inclined to do so, although it might be a rather expensive window, so if we can bring the cost down a bit, that might be appropriate.
I was making the important point that it is entirely right to bring greater audit and transparency to the arrangements for the Head of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) said that too, and he is also absolutely right that public money and public confidence must go together. However, some issues remain to be tackled if we are to maintain that confidence over future generations for the Queen’s heirs and successors.
I am pleased that the Minister for Equalities is sitting on the Front Bench as well as the Chancellor, because I want to discuss the issue of absolute cognatic primogeniture. I am not referring here to the situation of Catholics in the succession, which is simple in terms of equalities but rather complicated in terms of the role of the Church of the England as the state Church; that raises all sorts of issues. The issue of succession to the Crown by women in order of birth is important, however. Without wanting to cause any embarrassment to Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, it is an issue on which we have a window of opportunity that may close in a year or so.
This was an issue in Sweden in the 1980s, when the birth of an infant daughter following the birth of the young Crown Prince Carl Philip meant that it became a question of disinheriting a young heir to the throne. It would be unfortunate if we were to go down that path in this country, so if we want generally to modernise the monarchy, now would be a good moment for this issue to be addressed alongside the financial issues. We could then look forward to future generations of the monarchy enjoying the same affection and confidence as Her Majesty the Queen.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I gave you a bit of latitude there, Mr Horwood. I call Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I know there is a great wish to debate Epping forest, a matter of enormous interest, so I will try not to be unduly long-winded.
So far in the debate, we have missed a crucial point. We have just focused on the cost of the monarchy, but our sovereign represents the greatest institution in our land; it is that bit that makes us British, and we do not want a mean monarchy. We want a proper and well-funded monarchy, not a bicycling monarchy, even if riding the Mayor of London’s bicycles.
The subject of this debate encapsulates the connection the monarchy gives us to our history. What did the Commons spend its time debating in the 16th century? It spent its time debating that the King should live of his own: that the King—Henry VIII for much of that era—should be able to use his own resources to provide for all he needed to spend. This debate returns us to that same principle.
The Crown Estate provides an extraordinary link with our history. We could probably find some acre of the Crown Estate somewhere—probably in Somerset—that was the property of Alfred the Great, but we would certainly find that there was property in the Crown Estate that came with William the Conqueror and from the dissolution of the monasteries. St James’s palace started as a leper colony founded by Queen Margaret in, I think, 1118. It was then part of the endowment of Eton college, which was, very tactfully, given back to the Crown by Eton when Henry VIII said, “If you don’t give it back, I’m going to dissolve you.” [Interruption.] That was a missed opportunity, I think some on the Labour Benches are saying. The Crown Estate is an extraordinary link with our history, which is what makes us the country—the United Kingdom—that we are. Some attack that and say, “We want a good value monarchy.” That makes Her Majesty sound as though she is something to be bought off the top shelf at Tesco, and it really cannot be how we wish to approach our constitution. The Crown is an essential element of that constitution; everything of importance that happens is done in the name of the Crown.
The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said that he wanted the royal family to be treated as any other family but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) pointed out, if they were any other family they would not be paying such a high tax rate. Given the 15% provision, Her Majesty will be expected to pay an 85% tax rate, which is more than the 50% tax rate that many of us hope will go over the course of this Parliament.
Paul Flynn
Over the years we were kept in ignorance of the royal tax rates and it was only as a result of a campaign in this House about 12 years ago that we were given any information at all about this. I would welcome it if the hon. Gentleman is asking for full transparency on the royal taxes, but I am not sure that that is part of the suggestion before us today.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I clearly have not asked for full transparency on the royal tax affairs. Indeed, I would argue for the precise opposite, because I do not think it is particularly sensible to be investigating in close detail how the royal family spend their money. I recall a line about motes and beams; we have had quite a problem with our own expenditure in this House and I am not sure that we have got things entirely right. Before we start criticising the monarchy and looking over every biscuit that the Queen buys, we should make sure that we have our own house in order.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Gentleman would not be suggesting that a way of controlling the royal household would be to have the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority running it, would he?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I would most certainly not be recommending that IPSA comes anywhere near our sovereign.
When the Crown Estate was granted in 1760 by George III, at the same time as he gave up his claim as King of France, the monarchy was in deficit and it needed extra money to fulfil the functions that were being fulfilled. Some of those functions were greater than those now paid for by the civil list. That is all certainly true, although Parliament would vote excess resources to pay for things such as the Army, so my hon. and noble friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) was not entirely fair on the point about paying for the Army.
Now the Crown Estate is in substantial surplus and I think that the Chancellor, in his proposals, which in many ways are very good, may be being somewhat canny, because the next sovereign would be able to cancel this arrangement and say, “I should like £200 million a year, thank you very much.” There is no requirement on a new sovereign to agree to hand the Crown Estate over in return for a civil list. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said that this is taxpayers’ money and not the Crown’s money, but it really is the Crown’s money because, on becoming King, the Prince of Wales or any other sovereign could simply rescind the agreement and claim it back. The Crown Estate is the sovereign’s property, which the sovereign gives to Parliament to help to pay for the costs of the nation; it is not taxpayers’ money that is being handed over. [Interruption.] Does the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) want me to give way?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
No, he is going to let me carry on. As a result of what I have described the Queen is paying a higher rate of tax than anybody else. We should remember that and I hope that the Chancellor will be generous. I would like the 15% provision to be increased because we want to have a glamorous monarchy that befits the status of our nation. We are a great nation, a noble nation and a nation that has had power across the globe in the past. We have one of the finest histories of any country in the world. When I see the coronation coach being pulled through the streets of London, I want to see it being pulled by the finest horses that money can buy and I want to see it gilded with the finest gold that can be bought. I want Her Majesty to have as a jubilee present the finest window that can be funded by Members of Parliament. That is the status of monarchy that we want and I urge the Chancellor to remember that. Even though I know that we are in this time of austerity, that we are all in it together and that the Opposition spent all the money, maxed out the credit card and so on, we should look after Her Majesty.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
How on earth do I follow that, Mr Deputy Speaker?
We have had an interesting debate and, as has been said, this is just the start of the process. It is an unusual process, given that we have not yet had sight of the Bill and that this is a preliminary debate. The debate has ranged from yachts, trains and the prospect of the monarch taking out a Boris bike for the day to other important issues that are perhaps slightly off-topic, such as primogeniture, succession and whether first-born females and Catholics will one day be able to take precedence in succeeding to the throne. We heard from the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that St James’s palace was once a leper colony that was given to Eton. By the time the Bill goes into Committee—I very much hope that he will be a member of that Committee—I might have worked up a gag about that. I am still working on it at the moment.
As we have heard, the demands on the royal household are vastly different today from when the House last discussed the issue. The financing arrangements are largely unchanged since 1760. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has made clear, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the new sovereign support grant, which we feel will be better equipped to meet the royal household’s needs. We will support the Chancellor in reforming the arrangements although, as he would expect, we will ask questions and will want to know in detail how the arrangements will work.
Efforts have already been made to ensure that grant support to the royal household is fair to the taxpayer in the context of wider Government spending and we welcome them, too. Last year, the Chancellor announced in his spending review that support for the royal household would be frozen at £30 million in 2011-12 and 2012-13 before the new arrangements are put in place. That will necessitate a 14% reduction in royal household expenditure in 2012-13.
We have also heard from a number of speakers about the significant efficiency savings made by the royal household in recent years, although the hon. Member for North East Somerset also expressed the view that the monarchy should not go down the Tesco value route, which led my hon. Friends to ask about the Lidl—or Aldi—monarchy. I suspect that that those are not places where the hon. Gentleman often shops.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) asked whether the efficiency savings would be a continuing process or whether the end of the road had already been reached, with all the savings being made that could be made. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) highlighted some points where further savings could be made and I hope that that will be addressed when the Bill goes to Committee.
As hon. Members have said, the Treasury’s choice of a level of 15% of the revenues of the Crown Estate needs proper scrutiny. The Chancellor said that that figure was chosen to maintain the current level of expenditure, or something in that ballpark, to the end of this Parliament. It has been estimated that 15% of the Crown Estate profits would provide some £37.5 million a year, 25% higher than the total grants that are currently provided. As a number of right hon. and hon. Members have said, we need to consider the appropriate level of expenditure for the royal family. There might be a case for increasing that amount and we must consider carefully how demands on the royal household have changed. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor said in his opening speech, the pressures on the royal household from issues such as security have increased greatly.
There could also be a case for reducing the royal grant if, for example, there were further efficiency savings. I note that the Chancellor is proposing a cash floor to avoid real-terms cuts to the royal grant in future, which is a significant commitment in the context of wider Government spending cuts, but we should, however, also consider whether there is a potential need for a cap on the amount raised. We should consider the proposed mechanism for uprating the royal grant each year, too.
As has been said, profits from the Crown Estate could rise significantly, particularly because of its links with wind farm developments, which could bring in substantial revenues. The rise is described as exponential in the short term and significant in the longer term, so we need to consider whether a cap might be appropriate.
Parliament must also be certain that any new arrangement will be stable and work in the long term. If the royal grant or reserves fluctuate significantly, that could, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) said, lead us into the unwelcome situation of an almost annual review of the finances. We will need to strike a balance when building flexibility into the formula, and some might say that seven years is too long a gap to leave between reviews, but we will need such flexibility if Crown Estate revenues rise significantly.
One fact that has come to light, as Members have already said, is that the Crown Estate owns 55% of the foreshore around the United Kingdom and all the seabed up to 12 nautical miles from the coast. Although I do not think that the House will go down the hon. Gentleman’s suggested path and transfer ownership of the foreshore to coastal communities, despite some in the south-west facing high water bills because of the extra costs associated with being on the coast, I think that we need to look at the issue in the context of the UK being the world’s leader in offshore wind power.
Opposition Members and Members in general very much support further investment in renewables, but is it appropriate that increased Government investment in such technologies should directly support the royal household? Indeed, that goes for private and public investment. The Government have made available some £200 million of public funding for investment in renewables, a proportion of which could end up accruing to the royal household via the sovereign grant, so what flexibility can be built into the new grant to deal with such situations?
There is a need to ensure the appropriate parliamentary oversight of the sovereign grant and of royal household expenditure, and we heard from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), as the former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), as the current Chair. She described the measures as a sensible act of modernisation, and both Members said that they look forward to getting their teeth into scrutinising the process and making it more transparent.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that we must start by looking at everything, the total expenditure, including not only, as I said, support from the military, but, for example, the cost of the lord lieutenancy service? If we do not do so, we will not be informed or really understand what the monarchy costs.
Kerry McCarthy
As I have already said, security is a big element of spending on the royal family, but other elements need to put into the mix, and the Chancellor’s announcement of the merger of the three separate funding pots will help with transparency and with looking at everything in the round.
We very much welcome the agreement that the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee will audit royal household funding, but as the Bill goes through the House, we will seek clarity on when and how often those audits will be carried out, clarity on what disclosure there will be of the information and evidence used in the process and, indeed, clarity on the Committee’s remit to look at issues such as those that my hon. Friend has just raised.
In conclusion, we support the Chancellor’s initiative, but we will seek clarity on the level at which the new grant is set, on the arrangements for uprating it each year and on whether there will be flexibility on that and on the level of parliamentary oversight. We hope that by the time the Bill reaches its final stages there will be cross-party consensus on the new arrangements.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
The last time that the House substantively debated this issue was during proceedings on what became the Civil List Act 1972, and, as the system that the Act implemented comes up for renewal, it is only right that we debate its merits and potential for reform.
I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for, in particular, a lively and informative debate about reforming the sovereign grant. As we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), the royal family contributes a tremendous amount to our country, and they paid fitting tributes to its work on behalf of the nation. We also heard from other Members their thoughts about the royal family and how they should be funded in future.
Of course, the last time we had such a debate was back in 1972. I have not yet had time to read that debate; I am not sure whether it would have been as entertaining as the one we have had today. We heard suggestions about whether we should have a biking monarchy. I am sure that Members will be interested to know that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were given a tandem Boris bike by the Mayor of London; I am sure that they will use it frequently.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said, we believe that the system is in need of change. I greatly appreciate the support of the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) for the measures that we are bringing forward. We want to reform the system so that we can put the grant funding on a sustainable, long-term footing and, as we have said, open it up to full parliamentary scrutiny. I think the colleagues I mentioned appreciate the objectives that we have in mind. In addition, we want to take the opportunity to modernise and simplify some peripheral elements of the current legislation.
As the Chancellor set out, we have been guided by three principles: first, ensuring that we have sustainable, long-term financing for the royal household, free from annual political interference; secondly, ensuring that it has some flexibility so that the royal household can manage its finances efficiently; and thirdly, ensuring accountability by establishing proper checks and balances to prevent sums from becoming excessive. Following those principles, we have arrived at the proposals that we are debating—initially, although we will have a Second Reading debate shortly—for a new sovereign grant.
These are genuinely significant reforms that are designed to last. Linking the sovereign grant to Crown Estate profits means that arrangements will be durable where the old system was not. As we have heard, 15% of Crown Estate profits is the starting point for deriving the grant amount. It will be based on 15% of profit in the year two years prior—so, for example, the grant for 2013-14 will be 15% of the profit for 2011-12. That will provide an amount that should keep royal spending broadly in line with spending in recent years in real terms. The percentage will be reviewed every seven years. In the unlikely event that an increase is proposed, it will require affirmative resolution in Parliament; and, of course, there are powerful control mechanisms that ensure that the grant never becomes unmanageable.
Furthermore, the Bill brings accountability arrangements for the royal household into line with those for other Government Departments. We think it is important that Parliament should have the ability to scrutinise the expenditure when it sees a need to do so—
Mr Kevan Jones
If a large surplus builds up in the seven-year period, what will happen to it? Will it be retained by the royal household for their use, or will it be paid back to the Treasury?
Justine Greening
There will be a cap at 15% of the spend by the royal household in the previous year. If the hon. Gentleman waits for a few more minutes, when I will have a chance to present the Bill to the House, he will have even more information at his disposal to understand exactly how that cap will work, how the review will take place, and who will perform it.
The Bill brings accountability arrangements for the royal household into line with those for other Government Departments. Parliament will have an opportunity to scrutinise that expenditure when it—
Mr MacShane
The hon. Lady keeps saying that the royal household will be brought into line with other Government Departments. Does not that imply that there will be a Government Minister who is accountable to the Commons for what the royal household is spending and will, from time to time, answer questions on it?
Justine Greening
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that issue. Of course, the Treasury will be accountable for the sovereign grant.
As for accountability to Parliament, sovereign grant expenditure will be audited annually by the Comptroller and Auditor General and those reports will be laid before Parliament. Should it wish to do so, the Committee of Public Accounts will also be able to scrutinise grant expenditure and will be able to invite the royal household to give evidence. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Barking, her Committee is already looking at how it may wish to fulfil its role in the accountability of the sovereign grant. In fact, that was one of the main things that Parliament argued for before the Civil List Act 1972. It was not implemented at that time, but it is right to do so now.
I very much welcome the valuable contributions of Members on both sides of the House—those of the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), the hon. Members for North Durham (Mr Jones) and for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and my hon. Friends the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) and for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). They set the context for the debate that we will have on Second Reading of the Bill, which I will shortly present. Once that Bill is before the House, Members on both sides of the House will have a better chance of understanding the proposals and how they will impact on the sovereign grant.
As I have said, this is only the first debate. There will be an opportunity to debate the matter in more detail on Second Reading and in Committee, which will be a Committee of the whole House. I am pleased that we have had a good discussion this afternoon, and that there is agreement on a number of fundamental issues.
Her Majesty the Queen has given exemplary service to the country throughout her 60-year reign. She, and other members of the royal family who support her in her official capacity, will continue to play a vital role in representing and promoting the UK and the Commonwealth. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) would agree wholeheartedly that it is right to provide the royal household with stable and sufficient support in those duties.
As I have pointed out, the royal household has significantly reduced its expenditure. As the Chancellor said, total spending by the royal household has reduced by almost £10 million over the past two decades. That is a real-terms cut of more than 50% in 20 years, which no other Department can claim to have achieved. It is also right that we ensure that that provision is transparent and accountable. In fact, on current assumptions, we expect the sovereign grant to be between £34 million and £36 million for 2013-14 and 2014-15. Such a level of support is lower than it would have been under the old system. As we have heard, in cash terms, that is broadly in line with the current level of spending, but in real terms, there is a cut of 9% over the course of this Parliament. As I said, that is lower in real terms than royal household expenditure in any of the past 20 years. The cost amounts to 51p per person per year in the UK. That is a remarkably low price to pay for the royal family’s profound contribution to public life.
The sovereign grant Bill will put that funding on an efficient, sustainable footing, and provide for it to be fully accountable to Parliament and the public. These are necessary reforms and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That—
(1) new provision be made for, or in connection with, the financial support of the Sovereign and of the heir to the throne;
(2) any sums payable in respect of provision so made should be payable out of money provided by Parliament;
(3) provision be made enabling the continuation, in the reigns of Her Majesty’s successors, of the payment of the hereditary revenues of the Crown as directed under section 1 of the Civil List Act 1952;
(4) provision be made about allowances and pensions under the Civil List Acts of 1837 and 1952;
(5) any sums payable in respect of such allowances and pensions by virtue of any provision so made should be charged on the Consolidated Fund;
(6) it is expedient to amend the law relating to the financial support of members of the Royal Household.
Ordered, That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolution;
That the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Secretary Clarke, Mr Secretary Hammond, Mr Secretary Hunt, Danny Alexander, Mr Mark Hoban, Mr David Gauke and Justine Greening bring in the Bill.
The Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household (Mr John Randall)
The Prince of Wales, having been informed of the subject matter of the Bill so far as it relates to the Duchy of Cornwall, recommends it to the consideration of the House.
Sovereign Grant Bill
Presentation and First Reading
Justine Greening accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for the honour and dignity of the Crown and the Royal Family; make provision about allowances and pensions under the Civil List Acts of 1837 and 1952; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 213).
Legislative Reform Order (Epping Forest)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Lynne Featherstone)
I beg to move,
That the draft Legislative Reform (Epping Forest) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 21 March, be approved.
The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games will be the greatest sporting festival this country has ever seen. Athletes, officials, media representatives and spectators will come from all over the world to enjoy top-class competition, together with all the associated events that come with the Olympics. I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members are as excited as I am about the prospect and number of applications for tickets, even if it has inevitably led to disappointment for a lot of people. It shows that the British people are similarly looking forward to the games.
Such a big event inevitably requires a significant safety and security operation. Indeed, the police are preparing for the largest ever peacetime security operation in this country. I am pleased to be able to say that planning is well under way, as was confirmed by the audit and review that the Government carried out on taking office. In securing major events such as the Notting Hill carnival, the Metropolitan Police Service has developed a well-tested approach to hosting large numbers of officers from outside its usual areas of work through the use of a temporary muster, briefing and deployment centre. That provides a facility where large numbers of officers can be gathered, fed and, most importantly, briefed before being sent off to their duties.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Lady for her opening remarks. We are all looking forward to the Olympic games, and we are very excited in the east end of London, but on this specific proposal, will she tell me what other venues were considered for this important site?
Lynne Featherstone
I will come to the venues. However, I can tell the hon. Lady that 29 were considered, but that only this one—Wanstead Flats in Epping forest—was considered suitable. That was an operational matter for the police; it was not for the Government to intervene or make suggestions on. I will deal with that in more detail later, however.
Three muster centres are planned for the London 2012 Olympics. The main one will be needed to support the main Olympic park area, the transport hub at Stratford and other Olympic facilities. The police and emergency services already have facilities built into the park itself, but the police need to have a base that is a sensible distance from the site, not least so that they can respond sensibly in the event of an incident that puts the park out of action. The Metropolitan police are satisfied that the fairground site at the southern end of Wanstead Flats in Epping forest is the best option for a deployment centre. The fairground site offers the best combination of location and access, minimises disruption to local people and is the most cost-effective solution to the needs of the police.
Lyn Brown
The hon. Lady says that it will create minimal disruption to local people. May I gently suggest to her that local people in the vicinity of Wanstead Flats and the fairground area would not necessarily concur with her observation? Given that she is a Home Office Minister and given that the Home Office—effectively in its broadest family—has considered these proposals, will she tell the House why residents in the area were not told of the other venues considered by the Metropolitan police and on what basis they had been rejected? Surely that should have been part of the consultation process.
Lynne Featherstone
My understanding was that there were three consultations, but indeed the other sites were never open to selection by local people. As I explained to the hon. Lady, however, that was because the police said that, operationally, only this site would facilitate a muster centre of the necessary size and in a suitable location.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
There were three consultations, but at least two were deeply flawed. If anybody speaks to the people who live near the fairground site, which is almost entirely in my constituency, they will struggle to find anybody who supports the construction of the muster centre.
Lynne Featherstone
I will come to the consultation in due course, although I would say now that only 31 representations were made throughout the process.
The City of London corporation, which is responsible for Wanstead Flats, is content with this approach. I should make it clear that the Government accept that there will be some disruption and inconvenience to local people, but are satisfied that this is the best solution to a specific problem, serving the wider public interest. It is also worth pointing out that the Metropolitan police will pay £170,000 in lieu of rent, in addition to the costs of making good the site. That sum will help to create lasting legacy benefits for those who use Epping forest.
Lyn Brown
The Minister rightly says that the police are paying £170,000 a year, effectively for 120 days, which works out at about £1,500 a day. Given the cost of putting the area back to its former use once the muster site has gone, is she really convinced that that is enough money properly to reinstate the flats to a state at which they can benefit the local community?
Lynne Featherstone
I think the hon. Lady has misunderstood what I said. The £170,000 is additional to the duty and obligation on the police to put the site back to its original condition within the 90-day period, and the £170,000 is for the local area to spend to advance the site and make it better than it was before. The cost of putting it back to its current condition is above and beyond the £170,000.
Wanstead Flats are legally part of Epping forest. The Epping Forest Act 1878 prohibits the enclosure of any part of the forest, even on a temporary basis, and that is why we have brought forward a legislative reform order to make a temporary amendment to the Act. Let me make it quite clear that the Government have no wish to see any change to the status of Epping forest, which is a well-loved amenity. Accordingly, the order before us is strictly time-limited and at the conclusion of the games the muster, briefing and deployment centre will be removed, the land will be restored to its former status and the full protections of the 1878 Act will remain intact. No lasting change to the law will be made.
Our proposals have already been subject to consideration by three separate parliamentary Committees—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Hybrid Instruments Committee in another place, and this House’s Select Committee on Regulatory Reform. It is on the latter that I should like briefly to focus. I am grateful to the members of the Regulatory Reform Committee, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), for its very thorough and comprehensive report on the order, which was published on 6 May. I am pleased to note that it stated at paragraph 49:
“The Government…believes there are good reasons to maintain the restrictions in the 1878 Act rather than removing them in their entirety, so has proposed to limit the position, coverage area and duration of the LRO provisions. We support this belief and agree that the proposal is a proportionate measure to achieve the policy objective.”
The Committee went on to say, at paragraphs 50 and 51, that it agreed
“that the proposal strikes a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of any person adversely affected by it…and…does not remove any necessary protection.”
The Committee went on to recommend that the order should be approved.
I would like to address a couple of concerns that the Committee raised, some of which have also been raised by Members. The first relates to consultation. The proposal was subject to three separate consultation processes during the second half of 2010, covering the police proposals to use the site, the specifics of the LRO itself and the planning permission from Redbridge council. The latter was unanimously approved by the council’s regulatory committee on 24 February 2011, subject to conditions to which the Metropolitan Police Service has agreed. Every effort was made to involve and consult local people and to give them an opportunity to express their views. That included leafleting the streets most directly affected and holding public meetings and exhibitions in the area. Respondents and petitioners clearly were not deterred from contesting the principles in the proposal. The previous Security Minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, held two specific meetings on this issue with the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) and I am grateful to him for his support in this matter.
This is complex territory and I accept the Committee’s view that the consultation was imperfect. I apologise for that. Nevertheless, the Committee did conclude, at paragraph 53, that the Home Office
“has respectably arguable grounds for concluding that its consultation was adequate.”
It is also worth pointing out that the Hybrid Instruments Committee in another place invited petitions against the order and, having considered them carefully, decided not to recommend that the order be referred to a special Select Committee, in part because
“Many of the matters complained of in the petitions have been so dealt with, in particular by the normal planning process or in the report to the House by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee (4th Report, 2010-12), that no further inquiry into them is necessary”.
That quote was from paragraph 6 of the House of Lords Hybrid Instruments Committee’s First Report of Session 2010-12, on the Legislative Reform (Epping Forest) Order 2011.
I shall touch on one specific issue—whether the Home Office should have consulted just on the legislative options for Wanstead Flats or whether it should also have introduced possible alternative sites into the equation. As the published documents make clear, the Metropolitan police considered a very large number of possible sites in north-east London for the muster, briefing and deployment centre. Applying objective criteria they concluded that Wanstead Flats was the only suitable site. That was the clear professional, operational advice from the police to the Government, and I think it would have been very difficult, and dangerous, for the Home Office to try to countermand that advice. I do not believe the effectiveness or the clarity of the consultation process would have been enhanced had we included reference to alternative sites that had already been ruled out as unsuitable. Indeed, to have done so might have unnecessarily alarmed residents living near those sites.
Finally, on the question whether this sets a precedent for future development on Wanstead Flats or, indeed, other open spaces, the answer is emphatically no. The Olympics are a unique event in terms of their scale and the policing challenge they present, and I can think of nothing else that would require similar arrangements to be made. More than that, the particular legislative route that we have adopted means that even if a future Government were minded to put buildings on Wanstead Flats, even temporarily, they would have to start all the procedures again from scratch and secure fresh parliamentary approval. Nine months into the process and after three public consultations and three parliamentary committees, I can assure hon. Members that that is something not easily obtained.
I am sorry to have spoken at some length, but I thought it was important to address these issues. In conclusion, I return to where I started. The success of the 2012 safety and security operation depends on the police being able to operate effectively, and the muster, briefing and deployment centre on Wanstead Flats is an integral part of that. The proposal before the House is a proportionate measure. It enables the policing operation to take place while making no lasting change to the protection granted by the Epping Forest Act.
Lyn Brown
Notwithstanding the other points that I have made, does the Minister genuinely believe, and can she categorically assure my constituents, that this is a temporary, one-off measure, that it will not happen again and that it will not be a precedent for future use by anybody else following the Olympic games?
Lynne Featherstone
Yes. If there ever were to be anything on the scale of the Olympics—something that none of us in the House today can imagine—the process would have to be started all over again, and there would be opportunities to comment. The answer to the hon. Lady, in the scope of what one can imagine, is yes.
We are satisfied that the proposed LRO is the best solution to a specific, time-limited problem in the unique circumstances of the 2012 games. I request that the House support the measure.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) on the way in which they have represented their constituents’ views on this matter. Anyone who has had a conversation with them about the issue is left in no doubt about the strength of the opposition locally to the proposals.
I am sure that we all welcome the fact that we have the Olympic games coming to London. We also understand that it is impossible to have the world’s greatest sporting spectacle take place in our great city without we, as hosts, accepting some inconvenience if we are to put on a safe, efficient and enjoyable games. Our aim must be to showcase our city and country and confirm our status as one of the world’s leading nations, a place that people want to visit and do business in. However, we must also remember that foremost in the minds of local people is the legacy. One way that the success of the games will be judged, when the pomp and fanfare has been and gone, is the legacy left for the people of London, particularly those who live in and around the Olympic boroughs. We all understand and accept that in order to deliver a safe and efficient games the Metropolitan police must be free to make judgments and decisions on operational matters, and the Minister has our full support in that, but it is unfortunate that this decision is being made in the face of local opposition. I am sure that the Minister will want to reassure local people that their concerns about the future of the site will be considered.
Wanstead Flats is a highly valued and essential open space in that part of London. In the short time I had to prepare for the debate, and being that sort of anorak, I decided to look up the history of Wanstead Flats and discovered that attempts to enclose it and restrict access for the common people have long been a source of controversy. In 1871, Henry Wellesley, Earl Cowley, attempted to enclose another piece of the flats. An advertisement with the headline “Save The Forest” encouraged working men to “Attend by Thousands” an open air meeting on Wanstead Flats on Saturday 8 July 1871 and protest against the enclosure. We are dealing with a highly sensitive site in east London that has a history of local activism to protect it. As that piece of history demonstrates, it is clearly because local people have campaigned effectively to protect it that it is still there for us to debate in the House today.
According to the briefing paper provided by the Residents of Leytonstone and Forest Gate campaign, to which I am grateful, the site is designated as green belt and green corridor land, as heritage land and as a site of metropolitan importance for nature conservation. To of the north of the site is a part of the flats that is designated as a site of special scientific interest. As a veteran of the campaign to stop the east London river crossing and protect Oxley woods, which is also an SSSI, I sympathise with the people who are sensitive about the use of the site and wish to protect it for the future.
The Epping Forest Act 1878 lays down a legal framework for the preservation and management of Epping forest, requiring its conservators to keep it for local use. I will not list the six requirements set out in the Act because I want other local Members to have enough time to speak. Suffice it to say that the previous Government introduced the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which gives the powers to set aside the 1878 Act, which is what the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice is doing. It is a little churlish of me, but I thought I should point that out as another U-turn.
When we deal with local communities like the one in east London, we must remember that they will still be there when everyone has gone home, waiting to see whether the organisers of the games have proved as good as their word and delivered on their promises. The people opposing these plans feel that insufficient effort has been made to find alternative sites and there is concern locally that it could set a precedent for future events. I welcome the comments that the Minister has just made to give reassurances on that.
Will the Minister clarify the position on the future use of the 2006 Act? Is it the case that to use this site in the same way in the future, the same procedure will have to be used and Members of Parliament will again have the opportunity to bring the matter to the Floor of the House if there is strong opposition? Will she also give an assurance that the corporation of London will consult the local community and involve it in future decisions on this site? From the conversations that I have had, there is a feeling that the local community has been left out of those discussions.
Lyn Brown
Notwithstanding what the Minister said about the site being restored following its use as a muster site, I know from my time in local government how much argument there can be about whether there has been true restoration of green and open spaces. There are inevitably arguments about how much restoration will cost and to what standard it should be done. Given my fear that the £170,000 will be used to restore the site, rather than to enhance it, does my hon. Friend agree that the police are getting the site rather on the cheap and that they should up their cash so that local people really have something to invest in the site at a later date?
Clive Efford
I am not qualified to say what the true value of the site is and what a proper rent would be. However, I do not think that the £170,000 should be used to restore the site. It should be available as a legacy and be spent in consultation with local people. I was just about to make that very point.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
To be clear, we are talking about a large structure, stables for up to 54 horses, an area for dogs and parking for 375 vehicles on a site that has dense vegetation. Many of my constituents very much enjoy going to the Wanstead Flats. I hope the shadow Minister can understand why we are concerned about the restoration of the land, not just in its quality, but in its content. That is vital to the future of the site.
Clive Efford
Absolutely. People will need reassurance about the management of that process and should have some input into it to ensure that the standards are not diminished, that the site is restored to its former state and that the damage is not permanent. The only way to reassure the local community is to involve it in the process. I ask the Minister to clarify who will ultimately be responsible for overseeing this. Does she have any influence over the body that will be responsible so that she can ensure that it involves the local community?
I am grateful for the Minister’s unequivocal statement that the £170,000 is for the restoration of the site and not its repair. Will she guarantee that it will be spent in consultation with local people, who have demonstrated through their campaign a great love of and commitment to the site? From their experience of living near the site and visiting it regularly, they will have essential expertise and ideas on how the money can best be spent.
I hope the Minister agrees that when it comes to the legacy, it is issues such as this that will determine in the long run whether local people and communities in the Olympic boroughs feel that the Olympic games have been in the interests of ordinary people, their local communities and London. I hope that the Minister will do everything in her power to ensure that those communities are involved not just in planning the legacy on this side of the games, but in delivering it post the games.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I rise as Chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee. The draft order and the explanatory document were laid before the House on 21 March under section 14(1) of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. The Government recommended that the draft order be subject to the affirmative procedure, under section 17 of the Act.
The draft order proposes an insertion into the Epping Forest Act 1878 that would allow the Metropolitan Police Authority to erect a muster, briefing and deployment centre on Wanstead Flats for up to 90 days. As we have heard in the debate, it will be quite a busy centre, with perhaps upwards of 3,500 police officers on certain days of the Olympics, providing security at the Stratford centre, the Olympic stadium and various other stadiums in that part of London.
The Home Office has reassured the Committee that the draft order is a temporary provision that constitutes no precedent, as we have heard from the Minister. It believes that it is the most efficient way to ensure the safety and security of the 2012 games, following a site selection process that found Wanstead Flats to be the most suitable location. Clearly, we are all concerned about security.
The Committee considered the draft order on 3 May. It concluded that the affirmative resolution procedure was appropriate and recommended that the draft order be approved. The report was agreed, but following a Division in which the Committee divided five to three. Under the procedures of the House, when there is a Division the matter has to be referred to the Floor of the House.
I think it fair to say that members of the Committee were sympathetic to local Members, particularly the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who wanted to attend the Committee but could not under the Standing Orders of the House. He made representations himself to the Metropolitan Police Service and the consultation, and I hope that he will catch your eye in a moment, Mr Deputy Speaker, to represent the views and concerns of his constituents. The debate provides an opportunity for local Members to make their concerns known.
As we have heard, a number of concerns were expressed in our report, such as the fact that the consultation document contained an avoidable error.
Lyn Brown
The hon. Gentleman is an honourable man. Does he not agree that given the state of the consultation, local people have a right to be concerned? Does he also accept the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) that how and where the £170,000 will eventually be spent is a concern, given the botched consultation?
Mr Syms
There were clearly problems with the consultation, although it is true that, as the Minister said, there were only 31 replies. However, my Committee still found that it wished to approve the order, and I hope that the House will do so today. It seems to me that there would be a very good reason for local Members to write to the Home Office to put pressure on the Metropolitan police, and indeed the City of London corporation, so that there is some local involvement in how the £170,000 is spent. Once the site is repaired, if it is used by many of the hon. Lady’s constituents, they clearly ought to be consulted about what improvements are made. That seems to be a matter for another day, but I am glad that she has put her point on the record.
Although the difficulties with the consultation were unfortunate, the Committee concluded that that should not inhibit the progress of the draft order and did not alter the fact of the site’s utilisation. There was concern about the adequacy of the consultation, because the wording used in the consultation document was potentially deficient. Wanstead Flats was described as
“essential to ensuring the safety and security of the Games”,
which was a bit of an overstatement, even though it was clearly the preferable site.
The consultation was poorly conceived, which raised unnecessary worries among local residents, and took place nearly a year after Wanstead Flats was identified as the preferred site. It was limited in scope to rule out comments on alternative sites, and the document contained a factual error about the criminal sanction. The poor design and preparation of the consultation gave the impression that the process was a done deal, and that the legislative reform order was being used as the easiest way to reach the desired solution. That is one reason why we are having this debate on the Floor of the House today.
The fact that the Metropolitan Police Service is clear that it requires the site for the policing of the Olympics is a persuasive, but not conclusive, reason for the narrow terms of the consultation, as it has no statutory function in relation to the Olympics. Direct responsibility for the centre lies with the Metropolitan Police Service, which formulated the site criteria. Its assessment against those criteria found that Wanstead Flats was the only site to meet all of them. However, it would have been more appropriate if the consultation document had taken that assessment as a starting assumption that the Department expected to adopt unless persuaded otherwise.
As we have heard, the consultation generated 31 responses. The explanatory document dealt with them in a rather perfunctory manner and should have contained a more detailed response and information. Despite the concerns raised, the report concludes that the Department has “respectably arguable” grounds for believing that its consultation was adequate.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords reported on the draft order on 4 May. It, too, considered the Government’s consultation to have been “very poorly handled”, and drew this to the House’s attention, while concluding that the draft order was appropriate to proceed. As we have heard, a Hybrid Instruments Committee of the House of Lords considered the draft order on 23 May, concluding that there ought not to be a further inquiry by a Select Committee into any of the matters complained of by the eight petitioners.
There were genuine concerns, which is why the matter has been referred to the Floor of the House, so that local Members can raise those concerns. I am sure that there are further discussions to be had on another day about the details of the improvements to the site and the £170,000. However, I hope that the House concludes that the site in question is the most appropriate and will support my Committee’s decision by voting for this order today.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
We have certainly had contrasting debates this afternoon. Let me start by saying—I will make my reasons clear—that I am speaking against the order. I do not support it in any way, and I do not want to mislead the Minister by putting her in the position of believing me somehow to be offering my support, because I am not. The order and the proposed creation of the muster centre have caused deep concern among my constituents. Wanstead Flats are a cherished local amenity and have been since 1878. They have actually been a local amenity for longer than that, but they have been recognised in statute for nearly 140 years, since 1878. The decision to build a police muster centre for the 2012 Olympics on a piece of much-cherished and precious piece of common land is simply wrong and should not have gone through in the first place.
Let me go back over some of the history of Epping forest and Wanstead Flats, which are partly in my constituency. Epping forest has been fought over for centuries, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned. In the 18th and early 19th centuries there were fights over enclosure. Repeated attempts were made to enclose the land—as there were across the south-east of England—but the campaigns launched and fought by local people kept it as common land. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were battles over house building. As London rapidly spread eastwards into Essex, there were successful campaigns to maintain Epping forest—and, therefore, Wanstead Flats—as a local amenity. The Epping Forest Act 1878 was the result of those campaigns, and it has kept the area as an amenity for local people ever since.
The City of London corporation has long been seen as the defender of local people—ironic, in view of what has happened recently. It has fought battles against landowners and others to prevent encroachments on common land. That is why the City of London corporation was made the conservator of Epping forest. Over the past 150 years there have been more recent battles, particularly over Wanstead Flats. The 1878 Act states clearly that the land should remain open and undeveloped. On an 1882 visit to High Beach, another part of Epping forest, Queen Victoria declared Epping forest dedicated to the free use and enjoyment by the public “for all time”. However, the City of London, having had quite an honourable record, has now spinelessly lain down and abandoned its traditional defence of local people and the local amenity, and decided to go along with the creation of a police muster centre without even the use of primary legislation to do so. There was some house building there during the war, between 1939 and 1945, but that took place under the wartime emergency powers legislation, which is a crucial point. That was primary legislation, and as soon as hostilities ended, the emergency powers legislation lapsed and the 1878 Act came back into prominence. As a result, the houses were moved—as a matter of fact, I recently met somebody who lived in one of the houses on Wanstead Flats until about 1950-51.
I want to run through what I see as the major points in these proposals. As for the location, which has been raised before, the Home Office explanatory document says:
“It is a large site close to the Olympic Park and new Westfield shopping centre through which a large percentage of visitors to the Park will transit.”
However, the site is actually not particularly near either, so that argument starts to fall down. Many locals—certainly people in my constituency who live near the site—have asked why the muster centre cannot be built on the Olympic site itself. I have yet to hear a compelling argument in favour of the muster centre being established on Wanstead Flats, which are a considerable distance from the Olympic site and from the Westfield shopping centre.
I also have to raise the question of security. A number of local people have said that the police muster centre could be a target for terrorists. That is certainly a possibility, given that the plans for the centre are widely available online, whereas the specific plans for the Olympic site itself are rather more difficult to get to grips with.
As far as traffic is concerned, the route from the muster centre to the Olympics will be a circuitous one involving the use of the A12. The reserve plans, for use in certain situations, involve the use of fairly narrow roads such as Cann Hall road, and an increase in traffic could cause serious problems for police transport accessing the Olympic site. Mixed messages about transport have been given to the public in east London. An Olympic planning document states that there will be a traffic downturn during the games, although I cannot imagine what evidence that is based on. Local businesses, on the other hand, have been clearly told that they should expect a rise in the volume of traffic. Both cases seem to have been put forward as an argument for building the police muster centre, so I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me which is correct. Is there going to be a downturn or an upturn in traffic? How will that answer back up the argument for the creation of the muster centre?
On compensation, I have to say that £170,000 is a paltry amount to pay for the site. The rent on an equivalent brownfield site in the south-east of England for a period of 90 days would be in the region of £1.5 million. Wanstead Flats are obviously not a brownfield site, and an equivalent site would cost nearer to £3 million to rent for that period, yet the City of London corporation is perfectly content to say to the Metropolitan police, “We’ll take 170,000 quid.” That is an absolutely pathetic amount of compensation, especially as far as local people are concerned.
Stella Creasy
It is estimated that the land will be out of use for at least six months while the vegetation recovers, yet we will get no recompense for the lack of use of that common land for all that time.
John Cryer
I thank my hon. Friend for making that very good point. I will touch on that further in a minute.
Three consultations have taken place, as has been mentioned. One was a straightforward planning consultation conducted by Redbridge council, the local planning authority. The Metropolitan police consultation was one of the most bizarre that I have ever come across. It could be accessed only online, so none of my constituents could write a letter to the Metropolitan police. They had to make their submissions to the consultation online and it dealt only with specific questions. I believe that those factors alone should render that consultation null and void, because it was not a proper consultation. It was conducted entirely on the Metropolitan police’s terms, and it excluded an awful lot of people in my constituency who do not have access to the internet.
The Home Office consultation focused on section 34 of the Epping Forest Act 1878, which was a bizarre way to go about it, given that that section ceased to be in force in about 1882. I would have thought that someone might have spotted that. The section of the Act that the consultation should have dealt with is section 7, which I want to quote in full. It states:
“Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Conservators shall at all times keep Epping Forest uninclosed and unbuilt on, as an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the public; and they shall by all lawful means prevent, resist and abate all future inclosures, encroachments, and buildings, and all attempts to inclose, encroach or build on any part thereof, or to appropriate or use the same, or the soil, timber, or road thereof, or any part thereof, for any purpose inconsistent with the objects of this Act.”
It is difficult to argue that that is in any way ambivalent. It is absolutely crystal clear: that building on Wanstead Flats or in Epping forest—the Act covers the whole of Epping forest—was intolerable to Parliament at the time.
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 is being used for the first time to attack the central purpose of legislation from a past era. The 2006 Act has been used in the past to make what can now be seen as relatively minor amendments to legislation, but here it attacks the central thrust of the 1878 Act because it undermines section 7—the whole basis of the legislation. The purpose of the 2006 Act was to remove regulatory burdens, but in this case, it is about removing protection—protection afforded to the people of east London since 1878.
This should never have gone ahead and it has probably happened because of all the mistakes made during the consultations. It is almost certainly vulnerable to judicial review if anyone wanted to take up that case. There are, however, one or two guarantees that we need to secure from the Minister at the end of this debate.
For a start, we need a guarantee that the muster centre will be gone after 90 days. The original plan was for 120 days; it was then cut to 90 days, so we need an absolute guarantee that the police’s muster centre will last for no more than 90 days. Secondly, the Minister has already touched on this matter, but it needs to be made absolutely clear that this will not set any precedent. We are potentially amending primary legislation, which could be used in future court cases to set a precedent that might allow developers to build on Wanstead Flats. That needs to be dismissed absolutely so that in future court cases, today’s proceedings can be cited and developers told clearly that the Government had no intention of creating a precedent.
We also need guarantees that the order will be complied with to the letter and we need to know how the consultation on the disposal of the £170,000 will be conducted. Who will be consulted, who will run the consultation, and who will make the judgment that the land has been returned to its original use and its original state? I can feel an Adjournment debate coming on at some point in the future if we are not satisfied that all the criteria are being met. In the meantime, I leave it to the Minister to answer these questions.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I begin by apologising for not being in the Chamber at the beginning of this debate. I was attempting to enter the House but the events occurring in the immediate area around Parliament right now have undemocratically deprived me of access. Given that we are debating a narrow order, Mr Deputy Speaker, it would be inappropriate for me to discuss the workings of democracy, so I will not do so or take up any more of the House’s time on the subject, but I do make the point that if Members of Parliament are denied access to the House of Commons through action taken by other people in the Westminster area, that is an affront to democracy. That is the best excuse I have ever had for being late!
Although this legislative reform order specifically refers to Epping forest and I represent the Epping Forest constituency, I must explain that the piece of land in question is not in my constituency, but almost entirely in that of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer). It is he who has the duty to speak on behalf of local people, but I have every sympathy with the points he has made. Wanstead Flats are part of Epping forest, and although my Epping Forest constituency does not cover the whole of the forest geographically I am nevertheless always concerned for the protection of our wonderful and ancient forest. It is the duty of us all, and particularly those with an interest in this particular area of London and Essex, to be concerned for the preservation of Epping forest itself. Any threat to our forest is unacceptable.
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead has waxed lyrical—and rightly so—about the dangers of enclosure and about the historical position that has seen the people of east London and Essex fight literally for centuries to ensure the preservation of our forest. As the hon. Gentleman has just explained, that culminated in the Epping Forest Act. All of us who are concerned with the forest and its preservation will never allow anything to happen, in the House or anywhere else, that would undermine its preservation. Enclosure was wicked and took resources away from people who needed them, but nowadays the threat is somewhat different: it is generally a threat of house building and overdevelopment on what ought to be one of the most important lungs of London. I agree with all that the hon. Gentleman said in that regard.
In 1882 Queen Victoria visited High Beach, which is in my constituency, and only a couple of weeks ago I went to see the oak tree that she planted when she was there. Actually, that one died; another was planted two years later, and still stands as a permanent reminder of the importance of preserving the forest for the people. Queen Victoria said that she was dedicating
“this beautiful forest to the… enjoyment of my people”
for ever.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the forest must be preserved for the enjoyment of the people for ever, but I disagree with him slightly on another point. I feel able to support the order because it refers specifically to a 90-day period. If it were a general order allowing the forest to be used in any way in perpetuity, I would join the hon. Gentleman in expressing deep concern. Furthermore, the area in question constitutes only about 2% of Wanstead Flats and is already used for circuses, fireworks and other forms of enjoyment. It is therefore geographically suitable for the purpose for which it is to be used during those 90 days.
I hear what Opposition Members say about the payment being made by the Metropolitan police. As the Minister explained earlier—I was not present, but owing to the wonders of modern technology I was able to listen to her on a mobile phone—
Mrs Laing
Yes, it was. I am glad to be able to make that absolutely clear.
As the Minister explained, the Metropolitan police are making a significant payment to the conservators of Epping forest, in lieu of rent, and in addition to the payment for the restoration of the site. I hear what Opposition Members say about the amount involved, but the important point is that the entire amount paid by the Metropolitan police will be used for the enhancement of Wanstead Flats. Opposition Members argue that the amount should be greater, but I do not agree. Money paid by the Metropolitan police is taxpayers’ money, and if it is used for the enhancement of Wanstead Flats, it obviously cannot be used for the prevention of crime and the maintenance of law and order. There is a wider interest. It is absolutely right for an amount to be paid for the enhancement of Wanstead Flats, but it should not be larger than the amount that has already been negotiated.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady interpret the order as meaning that the restoration must be completed before the end of the 90-day period? My reading of it does not make it clear whether it means that the Metropolitan police must have left by then, or that the restoration must have taken place.
Mrs Laing
I cannot answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question, but I agree that assurances must be given on a time scale within which the work on Wanstead Flats must be undertaken and completed. It is not for me to answer the detail of his question, however.
Although I am very concerned at all times for the preservation of Epping forest, I do trust the Committee that examined the order; I have heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) has said, and I trust him and his Committee to have properly scrutinised this proposed small piece of legislation. On that basis as well, I can support the order.
Like all our other commonly owned property, Epping forest is there for the good of all the people, not just those who live in the immediate area of Wanstead Flats or the forest itself; and for the good of all the people, there is a wider public interest here. The Olympics are also for the good of all the people. My part of London and Essex will benefit enormously from the fact that an historic world event is being held on our doorstep. Therefore, we have to play our part in contributing to the effort for the Olympics for the temporary period that that effort is required. The conservators of the forest are trying to accommodate that wider public interest by making arrangements with the Metropolitan police for Wanstead Flats to be used for this temporary period, and I therefore feel that I can support the order.
Lynne Featherstone
I wish to respond briefly to some of the many concerns raised in this debate. I am grateful to all the Members who participated, and I appreciate that this proposal raises strong local feelings about the protection of what is a valuable open space in north-east London. I can assure the House that I would be adding my voice to that of the opponents of the proposal if I thought that this was an attempt in any way to destroy a much-loved open space or to weaken permanently the protections guaranteed by the Epping Forest Act 1878. It is neither of those things. This measure is constrained in scope and time, and it will leave all the provisions of the Act in place exactly as they were, while Wanstead Flats will be restored to its previous state.
The hon. Members for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made speeches, and they understandably have a strong interest in the subject. They show great care for their constituents and the well-being of this much-loved space. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) asked if £170,000 was sufficient in lieu of rent. That figure was arrived at following discussions between the Metropolitan police and the City of London on what would constitute a reasonable payment for the temporary use of the land. The police are a public service, so they rightly should consider getting best value for money. It would be odd for London taxpayers to expect their local police to spend more money, not less.
The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked whether local people would be consulted on the nature of the structures put on Wanstead Flats. I am sure that the Metropolitan police will want to consult local people. He also asked whether local people will be consulted on the future of Wanstead Flats. That is a matter for the City of London corporation, but I can assure the House that the City has said it will consult local people on the use of that part of the £170,000 that is above and beyond what is required for the use of the land.
Lynne Featherstone
I do not have to hand an official answer per se, but I would be surprised if local people, the hon. Lady and other hon. Members did not raise this issue if the restoration were not done to what local people felt was the right standard and if the area had not been restored to the state in which it was found. The restoration is about that and the £170,000 is about enhancing the land above and beyond the state it was in when the police first came to use it.
Lyn Brown
Should we find difficulty in appealing against the state in which the flats have been left after the police have gone and after the restoration has taken place, to whom would we appeal? Will the hon. Lady write to me or have the appropriate Minister write to me on that point?
Lynne Featherstone
I am happy to do that, but may I suggest to the hon. Lady that photographs would be useful in that regard?
I was asked whether the legislative reform order procedure would be required if ever a proposal were made to put something similar on Wanstead Flats, and the answer is yes. As I explained during my opening remarks, we would have to go through all this all over again—there is no question about that.
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead asked why the facility was not part of the local Olympic park itself. There will be facilities for the police and emergency services, including front-counter services, on the park, but we are talking about different things here, as there are operational reasons why a briefing centre needs to be a reasonable distance from the park. Obviously, if anything happened in the park, people would need to come from outside to deal with it.
Redbridge council considered the traffic problems as part of the planning application and was content that the proposals would not damage the local environment. Transport for London raised no objections, and the location was chosen, in part, to avoid potential traffic nuisance.
Clive Efford
Before the hon. Lady wanders too far from this subject, may I take her back to the issue of the site? It is not good enough just to say that the City of London corporation is responsible for restoring the site for the local community. After all, the previous Government and this Government have been all over this project of delivering the London Olympic games; no doubt, Secretaries of State and other Ministers will be posing for photographs with famous sports personalities and so on as they arrive. So it is not good enough to say that all this about restoring the site is a local skirmish between the local community and the City of London corporation. Does the Minister not think that the Government have a duty to ensure that the corporation is as good as its word and to represent local people who have these concerns when the site is being restored?
Lynne Featherstone
The hon. Gentleman does the corporation a disservice, because its reputation is generally very good and people would often like it to take things over.
Lynne Featherstone
The hon. Lady is shaking her head. I will not tempt her further and will write to hon. Members on this matter.
The traffic issue might be one of the things that worries local people the most. The Olympics will be taking place during the school summer holidays, so traffic levels will be lower than normal. The muster centre will cause some increase in the level of traffic, but all officers will arrive by coach, not in individual vehicles and, as I said, Transport for London is content that this proposal will not give rise to undue problems.
I was asked whether this order would set a precedent, and the answer is no. I am happy to put on the record the fact that should any future Government want to do something similar—I can see no reason why they would; that is outside the scope of imagination because the Olympics is the biggest event this country will be hosting—they would have to repeat this procedure and secure parliamentary approval all over again. I was asked how we can be sure that the police will be off the site after 90 days, and that they will have no legal power to be on the site beyond that point.
Stephen Timms
I want to pick up the point I raised with the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). Does the order mean that the restoration must have happened within 90 days or simply that the police must have left within 90 days?
Lynne Featherstone
The police will have dismantled the muster, briefing and deployment centre, it will be off the site and they will have made the necessary restorations within the 90 days.
We are satisfied that the proposal is sound in principle and practice and all the statutory gatekeepers have broadly agreed with us. As I said, that includes the three parliamentary Committees as well as the local council, as the planning authority. The proposed LRO will ensure that the 2012 games are a safe and secure spectacle that can be enjoyed by all those involved, particularly those who have tickets.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Legislative Reform (Epping Forest) Order 2011, which was laid before this House on 21 March, be approved.
Liverpool Passport Office
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House a matter of great importance: the dismissal of 14 staff at the Liverpool passport office because of a major error made by their employer, the Identity and Passport Service, an executive agency of the Home Office.
I thank the Minister for meeting Liverpool MPs and arranging for us to discuss the situation with him and key staff. I also thank him for forwarding us a copy of the internal review into the issue, although it came complete with many redactions. The key facts are not disputed. On 21 March 2011, 14 permanent staff at Liverpool passport office were called to a hastily convened meeting to be told that what they thought was their permanent employment had abruptly ended. Four were dismissed immediately and 10 were switched to temporary employment, which has now finished for most of them.
The reason given was that the IPS had made a major error in awarding those staff permanent employment status from September 2008 when they were recruited under a friends and family scheme. The rules under which they were recruited meant they should only have been given temporary employment status for a maximum of two years. The employees were unaware of that fact and they had been given permanent status by their employer. The sudden dismissals without warning shocked and angered the staff, some of whom had left their previous employment to take up what they thought was a new career. Others had taken out loans or mortgages on the basis of their permanent employment. Indeed, the whole office remains upset.
I want to raise serious, still unresolved, issues about the conduct of the IPS in this sorry saga and the current status of the dismissed staff. There is considerable confusion about what happened. I have in my possession a very interesting letter dated 4 January 2011, written by Paul Luffman, head of employee relations at IPS, and addressed to Barry Forrester at the office of the Civil Service Commission. According to the letter, the IPS’s error was discovered in its recruitment audit at the end of March 2009. The Minister’s reply to my parliamentary question on 31 March 2011 contradicts that, stating that the error was discovered in March 2010.
Why did it take one or perhaps even two years to inform the staff that there was a question mark against their employment? According to a reply I received from the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 27 April 2011, the IPS told the Civil Service Commission on 27 April 2010 that it was dealing with the situation, replacing the permanent contracts with temporary ones. In reality, they were doing no such thing. Who signed off that incorrect information? Who gave the wrong information to Ministers? When did the Minister discover that the information was wrong?
It also appears that the recruitment audit file was not returned to the Liverpool office as it should have been; it was sent to the Peterborough office and destroyed. Paul Luffman’s letter asks the civil service commissioners if there were any alternatives to terminating the 14 permanent employment contracts, and that indeed is the key question. I understand that the letter was never dispatched. Why?
It is alleged that the letter was never dispatched because of concerns that it would embarrass David Normington, then permanent secretary at the Home Office and now first civil service commissioner and commissioner for public appointments. Is that correct? It is worth noting that David Normington would be in a difficult position to adjudicate the current situation.
Instead of the 14 Liverpool staff being informed of their problem at a time when more alternative jobs were available, they became unemployed two years later, when job opportunities were decreasing and educational and training courses were being curtailed.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituent, Denise Wheatcroft, who is 58 years old and the oldest of the group of 14 people, took the post with the Identity and Passport Service because she thought that it would guarantee her employment until her retirement. She now finds herself without a job aged 58. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if Denise had been informed of the situation when it was discovered, and in advance of the current situation, given the cuts that are impacting on Liverpool in particular, she would have been in a much better situation than she is today?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and certainly agree. Indeed, she provides an example of the human cost of what has happened in Liverpool.
It has been said that the decision to dismiss the 14 employees was taken on the basis of “legal advice”, and it has even been claimed that to maintain their employment would have been “illegal”. I challenge that. I have seen no evidence that any formal legal advice was sought or obtained, and Paul Luffman’s letter seeking such advice was never sent.
Telephone conversations and personal discussions, which I am told took place, do not constitute formal legal advice; nor is there any record of the questions to which any verbal advice responded. The suggestion of “illegality” in allowing those employees to continue with the permanent status that they were awarded is grossly misleading and an attempt to divert attention from what has happened and from the culpability of those who are responsible.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate about a running grievance that affects a number of our constituents. Does she agree that, regardless of the recruitment method and whatever flaws it had, there is no real evidence that it would be illegal to rectify the situation, so the Department and, by extension, Ministers have a real opportunity to redress a terrible example of bad faith on the part of the Department?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution and certainly agree. During the course of my contribution, I will suggest what I think needs to be done to redress the situation.
It is possible that, given the circumstances in which the permanent employment status was awarded, continuing with it was contrary to an interpretation of current departmental rules, but that is a very different proposition from any notion that it was illegal. We are, indeed, discussing a unique situation, and it required an imaginative and flexible approach. In any case, advisers advise, Ministers and their staff are responsible for decisions and the advice itself is influenced by the question posed. Where is the instruction from the Civil Service Commission to dismiss the 14 staff? Does such written instruction exist? If so, will the Minister publish both question and answer?
Correspondence from the then Liverpool regional manager in June 2010 refers to advice that the Civil Service Commission could make an exception to permit these employees to be made permanent staff. Annexe E of the internal review quotes the human resources business partner as stating:
“The Civil Service Commissioners recruitment principles do allow for some exceptions—I believe there could be a small opportunity to attempt these”.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this important issue to the House. I should like to support the points she is making and add that given that this is a unique and extreme situation with many missing parts, perhaps the Minister could look at it again with fresh eyes.
Mrs Ellman
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and agree with everything she says.
I want to return to the question of whether there was another way of dealing with the matter. I have quoted the views expressed by the Liverpool office regional manager in June 2010, and I would now like to refer to Paul Luffman’s letter—the letter that was never sent from the Department to the Civil Service Commission. In referring to what has happened and what should be done about it, it says:
“I would like to discuss this directly and in detail with the Civil Service Commissioners to see whether IPS is able to use one of the exceptions to fair and open recruitment, before resorting to withdrawal of the contracts. I understand that the civil service commissioners recruitment principles do allow for some exceptions to fair and open recruitment, and I believe there could be an opportunity to attempt to use these (albeit retrospectively) to rectify the situation.”
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) regarding the importance of this issue. Given the additional information that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) has provided to the House, and the cross-party unity that seems to have broken out, does she agree that it is not good enough for the Minister simply to bury his head in the sand, and that the first thing that should happen is for him to reinstate the Liverpool 14?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution; I certainly agree with him. Indeed, I will make the same request before I conclude my remarks.
We see from the written information that we have to hand that there was the possibility of an alternative way of dealing with the IPS’s grave error with regard to these employees, yet it appears that it was not properly pursued, and that for some bizarre and unknown reason the letter written by the Department to the civil service commissioners asking that the matter be looked at was not posted. That has to be one of the great mysteries in all this sorry episode.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I join colleagues on both sides of the House in congratulating my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on her tenacity in uncovering the information that she is sharing with the House. My constituent, Christina O’Brien, who is one of those affected, will be encouraged by what she has discovered. Will my hon. Friend press the Minister to reconsider this matter so that we can see these 14 hard-working staff re-employed at the passport office?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, and I will certainly do as he requests. Fourteen people are unemployed as a direct consequence of a major error made by the IPS—an error that it failed to address constructively. They are the victims of an unacceptable catalogue of events.
The internal review document that I have seen contains many redactions at critical points. That is why it is not a proper and satisfactory explanation of what went wrong and why. Perhaps it is time for an external inquiry if matters cannot be put right. To add insult to injury, I understand that a business case has been submitted for the imminent recruitment of staff at the Liverpool passport office on the same or similar grades as those of the dismissed employees. It seems that the jobs are still required, although the 14 people who were doing them satisfactorily were dismissed. In those circumstances, I must press the Minister. Can the dismissed workers have priority consideration for those posts, which I understand are about to be part of a recruitment drive?
A June 2010 memo from the Liverpool regional manager states:
“Surely we have a duty of care to those who are in this position through no fault of their own.”
No duty of care was shown by IPS. The key questions on what has happened and why the matter has not been rectified remain unanswered. In those circumstances, and given all the information I have presented today, and the contributions of my colleagues on both sides of the House, I call for the reinstatement of the 14 dismissed workers as a matter of natural justice.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) naturally takes an extremely keen interest in the future of the passport office and its staff, and I recognise the sentiments that she and hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed.
The hon. Lady may be aware, although she did not mention it in her speech, that an employment tribunal hearing date for six of the people involved has been fixed in Liverpool for 30 September. I hope that she and the House will appreciate that, in view of that pending action, I am unable to comment on matters of legal interpretation, as they will be for the tribunal to determine. She and I, and others, have had discussions about the legal interpretations, and she gave powerful views on them, but as I said, I cannot comment from the Dispatch Box on matters that are for the impending tribunal to determine.
The hon. Lady made a number of points and revealed a number of things. She said that she had got hold of an e-mail from, I believe, 2009. She will understand that I have had no access to that, not least because it was sent under a previous Administration. If she wishes to provide that to me, I will investigate and get fully involved in seeing what it tells us.
The hon. Lady made a powerful point about the question that could be asked to the commissioners. She will remember that at our recent meeting, she made the perfectly reasonable point that she wished to ask questions of the commissioners. I asked her to send me her question on the interpretation of the advice, and said that I would be happy to put it to the First Civil Service Commissioner. I have not received that question, but my offer still stands. If she or any of the hon. Members who were at that meeting wish to send me the question that they would like to ask the Civil Service Commission, I would be more than happy to ask it.
Mrs Ellman
I have written to the Minister recently on the legality of the situation. Those matters should be addressed to the commissioners. However, he previously remarked that he would not have had access to information given under the previous Administration. I would be most surprised if the civil service does not make all information available to Ministers, including information that existed under previous Administrations. This not a party matter, and surely the civil service deals with all information regardless of who is in government.
Damian Green
Of course this is not a party matter, but Governments do not have access to the papers of previous Governments—that is a long-standing rule. Let us not go into the constitutional niceties, though. It is a fact that I have not seen this e-mail that the hon. Lady mentioned. If she wishes to send it to me or hand it to me at the end of the debate, I will happily take it away and look at it. She will be aware that the IPS has offered its sincere regrets to the individuals involved, and I can only add my apologies for the distress that resulted from this operational error, which, as she said, took place under a previous Administration. The IPS has clearly apologised.
Steve Rotheram
I accept that this problem was not of the Minister’s making, but it is a problem for him to act on. It is not good enough to hide behind the legalities and legal niceties. It is a unique set of circumstances, and I do not believe that reinstating these 14 people from the passport office would set an undue precedent. Even before the tribunal sits, he should use his powers to right this wrong.
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman invites me to take a legal decision, but a legal process is in action under the tribunal, and what he calls hiding behind legal niceties I would call obeying the law, which it is a good idea for Ministers to do.
Mr George Howarth
The Minister will know that, while a tribunal is pending, it is open to any employer to review the situation, decide that it is not worth proceeding to a tribunal and try to rectify the situation by their own actions. If he wanted to be bold, he could overrule what his officials are telling him and say, “Look, there is a moral case here.” It has been put effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), and in the light of what she said, I think that we should resolve this situation before the tribunal.
Damian Green
I am conscious of the strong feelings involved, and as I said, I would be delighted to look at the new information that she has revealed to the House this afternoon.
The hon. Lady made a number of other legal points. As she will be aware, the civil service rules do not permit exceptions to enable permanent appointment under this type of system, although they can enable the extension of fixed-term contracts up to a maximum period of two years. She mentioned the letter from Paul Luffman, which was indeed a draft letter that was never sent. It was not sent to the commissioners because the Home Office human resources team were dealing directly with the commissioners, not the IPS.
I want to put on record what happened. The core of the problem sits with an error made by the Liverpool passport office in September 2008 in preparation for the peak demand period starting in March 2009. At that time, the Liverpool office ran a recruitment exercise using friends and families as a candidate-attraction method. The IPS issues more than 5 million passports each year and demand is subject to seasonal peaks. It manages the seasonal variations through the use of flexible employee deployment and through a variety of employee contracts. These contracts include full-time, part-time and part-year appointments and will occasionally include the appointment of staff on fixed-term or casual contracts.
For a number of years, the IPS has, in areas of the country where there are challenges for the permanent recruitment and retention of lower graded staff, used a localised process for the recruitment of fixed-term appointment or casual staff. In this case, short-term opportunities were advertised through the existing network of IPS staff. The recruitment process is closed, which means that the job opportunities are not advertised publicly and therefore other potential candidates are not given access to information about the opportunities available. However, those candidates given the information are selected fairly and are required to demonstrate appropriate levels of competence and behaviours through an application and interview. They are also subject to normal referencing procedures.
Posts advertised under the friends and family scheme should be clearly described as either casual or fixed-term appointments. By definition, friends and family schemes are not fair and open campaigns and, under the civil service Order in Council, cannot result in a permanent appointment to the civil service. Posts advertised and appointed in this way can result only in fixed-term or casual appointments for a maximum of two years. IPS works to defined policies for deploying and recruiting staff. Since 2005, the management and administration of IPS recruitment has been overseen by the IPS central resourcing team in human resources at its headquarters in London. The error made by Liverpool passport office in 2008 and 2009 was that it employed those 14 staff on a permanent basis. The recruitment had not been authorised by IPS’s head of resourcing and the Liverpool office had not described the scheme as falling under the friends and family provisions. This resulted in a list of candidates being subsequently employed on permanent civil service contracts by mistake.
In March 2010, the IPS central resourcing team carried out a routine audit of IPS external recruitment. The audit identified concern about the friends and family recruitment scheme that was adopted at the Liverpool office in 2008 to employ staff in 2009. The concern primarily arose from the fact that staff had been permanently recruited without any open competition or advertisement of the vacancies. IPS considered that the civil service Order in Council had been contravened on the grounds that permanent contracts had been agreed through a process that was not subject to open competition. In view of the contravention, IPS looked to withdraw the permanent contracts and place the individuals involved on fixed-term contracts.
The following month, April 2010, IPS notified the civil service commissioners that a total of 14 permanent contracts were being withdrawn and replaced by fixed-term appointments of under two years. However, that action was not taken immediately. Instead, IPS explored whether alternative approaches existed that could alleviate the potential impact on the staff employed. That process was protracted but IPS was unable to find new evidence to support any other approach. It was not until February 2011 that the final decision was taken to cease the permanent contracts. Having reached that decision, IPS briefed the local senior management team and national trade union representatives from the Public and Commercial Services Union. The PCS local branch was briefed on 16 March 2011 to allow employee representatives time to prepare and consider an appropriate response. On 21 March 2011, the decision to dismiss the affected staff was carried out. The 14 staff affected, still in employment, had their permanent employment contracts terminated immediately and four of those staff, who had already completed two years’ service, by exception were offered a five-week paid notice period. The remaining 10 staff were offered and accepted fixed-term contracts of up to two years, including time already served. Of those 10 fixed-term contracts, three were scheduled to end on 14 June 2011, two on 31 August 2011 and five on 30 September 2011.
Stephen Twigg
The Minister has just described the sequence of events. Does he agree that one of the most disturbing features of this saga is that the problem was identified almost a year before the directly affected employees were informed? Would it not, with the benefit of hindsight, have been a great deal fairer for the employees concerned to have been advised that there might be an issue as soon as it came to light? Frankly, the situation in terms of finding other jobs, especially in the public sector, was a lot rosier in April 2010 than it is now.
Damian Green
As I have just said, the reason for the delay was precisely because the IPS management were searching desperately for ways to avoid where we have come to. It was done with the best of intentions, but I appreciate the power of the hon. Gentleman’s argument.
So far, four staff have elected to leave before their scheduled end date and four are still in post. Six of the staff who have left have found jobs elsewhere. Discussions with individual staff about potential compensation payments commenced in the week starting 20 June 2011. That is one of the matters that was discussed when I met hon. Members a few weeks ago. Those discussions remain under way and it is hoped that agreement about a suitable level of compensation can be reached. Those discussions will continue ahead of the tribunal hearing of 30 September.
At my meeting on 8 June with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside and others, the question was raised of whether the people affected would be guaranteed an interview if any new recruitment was planned at the Liverpool office. IPS is unable, for legal reasons, to offer a guaranteed interview. However, it is open for the people involved to apply for posts under any future recruitment campaigns, and their experience of the work and the skills and competencies would be taken into account as relevant factors in considering any application.
A detailed review of what has happened and the lessons to be learned was immediately commissioned and reported in April 2011. The review has been shared with the staff, the unions, the hon. Lady and other interested Members. It is of course a matter for the individual staff concerned to take the matter further. As I said, six of them have submitted employment tribunal papers. It may well be that others choose to follow that approach. That is for them to decide, but it is important for me to acknowledge here that the people involved did a good job for IPS. We should make it clear that they were not asked to leave because they were inefficient or were unable to their job. We should also make it clear that IPS is engaging with all the people involved to determine whether we can reach an equitable settlement that will bring the matter to an earlier conclusion and reduce any further impact on those involved.
As I said at the outset, this matter arose due to an unfortunate error in 2008 at the Liverpool passport office. The review, which reported earlier this year, identified that a number of practical improvements have been implemented. A key change is that the recruitment of any staff is subject to central processing, which means that although local interviews and managing of the process take place, it will be a matter for the IPS central resourcing team formally to agree and approve any new appointments and the recruitment methodology to support them. Staff cannot be put on the payroll without that process having been completed. That is a key processing change and, as part of the next generation of human resources expertise in IPS, it will allow access to the right level of expertise, ensure that the right governance arrangements are in place and ensure that decisions are legally compliant. That has now been in place for over a year.
IPS has admitted that it failed to complete the right processes in 2008 and 2009, and it has taken steps to recover the situation. I appreciate that 14 people consider, rightly, that they have been disadvantaged in the whole process, but I can only emphasise again that the cancellation of their contracts is not a reflection of their ability or their contribution. Human resource services across government have to meet exacting standards and while IPS’s actions in this case have clearly had a serious detrimental impact on the individuals involved, I believe that it was an isolated error and that IPS has taken the right steps to avoid the situation being repeated.
IPS is looking to agree an equitable settlement with the people involved, and I would welcome information and support from the hon. Lady and the other hon. Members who are, perfectly rightly, concerned about their constituents and who have engaged on the issue to ensure that we can bring the matter to as speedy a conclusion as possible, not least and most importantly for the benefit of their constituents.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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BACKBENCH BUSINESS
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Co-operatives and Mutuality
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Amess, and I welcome you to the Chair. I think that this is the first time that I have spoken in a debate that you have presided over. I suspect that this debate will not be the most difficult debate that you will ever have to adjudicate on. All the same, I am sure that you will handle whatever comes up in your normal equitable and even-handed manner.
Before I go into the substance of my remarks, I should declare an interest. Like other Members here in Westminster Hall today, I am a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament. Indeed, prior to entering the House, I was employed for 18 years by the co-operative movement. I will not detain Members today with a résumé of those 18 years working in the movement, but there are obviously a number of things from my past experience that I want to draw on.
Before I do that, I should thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this particular debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and I originally asked for it because we are in co-operatives fortnight, which runs from 27 June to 9 July, and therefore it seemed appropriate that we used this particular window of opportunity to have a debate that would highlight the contribution that the co-operative movement makes at this time, not only to the total economy but to thinking in community and Government policy circles. It is also an opportunity to test and if necessary challenge the Government on those areas of their policy that they say are supportive of co-operatives, to get some idea of what progress is being made.
I will start off with a somewhat philosophical question, “What is a co-op?” Perhaps 30 or 40 years ago, there would have been a fairly simple response to that question—“It is a company registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act.” At that time, one’s local Co-op store would immediately come to mind and I suspect that Members of my generation, if not perhaps newer Members, can easily quote their parents’ divvy number. It was something indelibly etched on our memories.
Of late, however, the term “co-operative” has come to embrace a number of corporate structures, including the mutual building society and other structures in the financial mutual sector, friendly societies and in some cases employee share-ownership companies. Not all of those have a traditional co-operative structure but the values that underpin them are very similar in each case to those of the co-operatives and they also have certain basic principles in common with co-operatives. They are, of course, democratic ownership and participation; one member, one vote; and the reinvestment of surpluses. These organisations are intended to make profits, but it is the distribution and allocation of those profits that distinguish them from other forms of proprietary corporate structures. They may also demonstrate a higher commitment to what is measured as “ethical trading”, value for money and a certain level of community involvement, although they do not necessarily demonstrate those things. In general, however, those are the sort of principles and values that underpin the different sorts of corporate models that we loosely term as “co-operative”.
It is probably fair to say that for a long period of time co-operatives were somehow stereotyped as a slightly idealistic and not necessarily appropriate business model to survive in the highly competitive capitalist world that we now have. Crucially, however, if we go back to the roots of both the co-operative and mutual sectors, we realise that these forms of organisations did not arise out of an idealistic or visionary approach. Essentially, they arose out of groups of people trying to get out of a particular problem and realising that it was only through self-help and working together that they could actually do so.
I was particularly struck by two quotes in a pamphlet by Cliff Mills on mutual organisations. The first is:
“The different types of traditional mutual business (co-operative societies, building societies, friendly societies, mutual insurers) operated in different ways, but the underlying reason for existence–self-help–was the common theme.”
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
On that specific point, Members of Parliament will recall the example of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, in which my grandfather was very proud to serve and which Aneurin Bevan said was the forerunner idea for him in establishing the national health service. It was a programme in which all the miners in Tredegar contributed a sum and then elected the doctors who would offer services to all of that mining community in the absence of any sort of state provision of health care.
Mr Bailey
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) for bringing that issue to my attention. I was not familiar with that society but it is a very good example of the values and qualities that I have been describing as the foundation of the co-operative movement and of the subsequent development of our public policy.
In his pamphlet, Cliff Mills goes on to say that mutuality
“was the response of people with often desperate needs”—
as the hon. Gentleman has just demonstrated—
“to find a solution for themselves and others in their community. It was based on self interest (the need to provide for me and my family), not philanthropy or charity; but—”
and now Cliff Mills comes to the crucial point—
“the genius of mutuality was that it captured that self-interest, and by channelling it through collective self-help, was able to produce an economically sustainable business.”
As I say, that is the crucial thing about the co-operative movement and the variety of business models that it incorporates. As Cliff Mills says, the movement is “channelling” self-help, but doing so in a way that enables someone to advance themselves or to deliver the service or product that they want to deliver in a way that can compete with the wider and less idealistic commercial world that they have to exist in.
If we look at the formation of the traditional co-operative movement—via the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, and the different mutual building societies and insurance companies—all the bodies within it were rooted in that idea of self-help and they all had to survive in a very difficult external commercial environment. Indeed, the co-operative movement, which I have more experience of than other movements, was formed in the 1840s because its members needed good-quality foodstuffs, which they could not get through local private traders, and at the sort of prices that they could afford, which again were often not available. In addition, they needed to be able to use any surpluses that came from trading to reinvest in their own communities and their businesses, both to strengthen those businesses and to provide education and other help for the communities that they lived in.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. The setting up of the co-operative movements was perhaps not as utilitarian as he suggests. A key aspect of the miners’ welfare halls in my constituency was libraries and the ambition of self-advancement, and we might have to return to a similar system in the future.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Further to the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), it would be a poor history that did not include the role of Robert Owen in this field. The Robert Owen Society in Herefordshire does an enormous amount of work, representing the wide-ranging approach to human well-being of which, as the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) says, the Rochdale Pioneers were acutely aware.
Mr Bailey
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that matter. Robert Owen was of course the pioneer of these ideas, and although he did not succeed in his own lifetime, many of his ideas were incorporated during the formation of the co-operative movement in the 1840s through the Rochdale Pioneers.
The co-operative movement took a knock in the post-war era. The traditional retail societies lost an enormous amount of their market share to the emerging supermarket chains, and their structure found it difficult to adapt. Equally, in the ’80s and early ’90s, many building societies—the traditional mutual sector—fell prey to the prevailing philosophy of privatisation and the free market economy, and the conventional wisdom was that co-operative principles were somehow anachronistic and inappropriate to survival in what was then a highly capitalistic and business-orientated world.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
As I listen to the hon. Gentleman, it strikes me that co-operatives are almost inherently part of private enterprise and the free market. Can he help me to understand, therefore, why those things are in opposition? I just do not see it that way.
Mr Bailey
The crucial difference is that the co-operative and mutual movement exists for the benefit of the participating consumer-members or worker-members. In the free market, the wider movement is the proprietary sector, with outside investors investing in, taking profits out of, and controlling the businesses. That is the crucial structural distinction, and there is also a huge difference in values and ethos.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that for many years there was confusion about what “the third sector” meant. It was often taken to mean the voluntary sector, but the third sector of the economy was always seen as the co-operative sector, a business sector aiming to be profitable but having, as he has indicated, a wider set of values than merely profit as the driver behind its engagement and success.
Mr Bailey
One thing that attracted me to work in the co-operative movement for so many years was that as a believer both in the market and the need to succeed in it, and in certain values, I felt that it was a model in which successful businesses could reconcile the two. That is clearly demonstrated, and is part and parcel of the reasons for today’s debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
I hope that we are not bracketing co-operatives in the third sector; they work in the private and public sectors as well. They speak to all of our economy, and if we see them in that way we are much more likely to have an ambitious agenda for them.
Mr Bailey
The Minister can rest assured that I was going to come on to demonstrate the range of businesses in the co-operative sector. One problem that the mutual and co-operative sectors had in the ’80s and ’90s was that they failed to highlight sufficiently their difference, and a minority of co-operatives did not appear to be effective business models—being more charitable, for example—with the result that movement as a whole suffered.
Jonathan Evans
It would be unwise to leave the subject of the 1980s without saying that there were well run mutuals in the sector, which focused on customers’ experience and recognised their role. Others, such as Equitable Life, might historically have been mutuals, but did not appear to recognise that and behaved, in a sense, like private companies. That was also a factor in some change being necessary.
Mr Bailey
I agree up to a point. Some mutuals certainly embraced or sustained the principles of mutuality more than others, but in the ’80s and ’90s the great majority of the public would have been unable to distinguish between a building society and a bank—indeed, I have occasionally heard Ministers and shadow Ministers confuse them in the Chamber. That was a reflection of the mutual movement’s failure to highlight sufficiently its difference and market it successfully, but much has changed in that respect in the past few years.
The traditional co-operative retail movement has in many ways gone back to its roots, and has successfully reinvented itself as a community-based consumer co-operative. That is reflected in the huge increase in turnover and profitability, with turnover in the sector increasing by 4.4% in the past year. At a time when the economy has grown by only 1.3%, that is a very creditable performance. In 2008, the increase was 21%, and by anyone’s standards that was an incredibly difficult time in retailing. However, the building society movement emerged, not completely unscathed because it took some hits—we unfortunately saw the demise of the Dunfermline building society—but relatively so, compared with the proprietary banks, and in no way was it a contributory factor to the banking problems. A lot of credit for that goes to the largest national co-operative—the Co-operative Group—but credit also goes to a number of other co-operative societies. One of my two local societies, the Midcounties, increased its profits last year from just less than £20 million to £26 million, and the Midlands—I have to be careful not to mention one and not the other—increased its profits from £22 million to £26 million. Such societies have demonstrated that this form of organisation can compete and thrive in even the most difficult of climates.
It is fair to say that the success and potential of that model is now recognised by all political parties. To return to the point that the Minister raised, the areas where co-operatives and mutual organisations are thriving include traditional consumer co-ops; worker co-ops, whether in service delivery, conventional trading or business co-ops; and employee-owned businesses. The John Lewis Partnership is perhaps the most well known, but many others are successful as well. They include agricultural, fishing and housing co-ops and football supporters’ trusts, and rugby supporters’ trusts are being considered as a model for other sporting clubs. Financial co-ops include credit unions, building societies and mutual insurers. I am sure that I have missed quite a few, but no doubt people will remind me of them during the course of this debate. That list is a clear demonstration of the model’s relevance to a range of public services and business activities.
The Government have embraced the approach. The pathfinder programme is designed to encourage co-operative models in the delivery of public services, and we are waiting on the “Open Public Services” White Paper, which will give us an opportunity to debate where Government policy in that area is going.
Although I generally welcome the Government’s recognition of co-operatives and mutuals, I will issue one or two words of warning. First, the essence of mutuals and co-operatives throughout their history is that the individuals forming them must have a desire to make them a success; we cannot just legislate for them, or point to a group of people and say, “You will work in a co-operative manner.” The desire is absolutely essential. Similarly, we cannot just look at a failing business and say, “Become a co-operative and you will succeed.” That will not happen. If the business model is wrong, just putting it into mutual ownership will not do. Particularly in the context of the debate on Post Office and Royal Mail, those issues have not yet been fully explored. We will certainly seek to do so, and other hon. Members here might wish to comment on them.
There are a range of potential opportunities—some might say potential pitfalls—for co-operative development. The obvious and most public one, of course, is the re-mutualisation of Northern Rock. I know that the movement feels that if it can be done, it will be an almost iconic recognition of the renaissance of mutuality and its relevance, and it intends to probe the Government on what they consider the prospects to be. I am disappointed that the previous Government’s commitment to British Waterways has not been upheld. Again, I would welcome hearing the Government thinking on that. The removal of the funds available for the formation of community pubs is also disappointing. However, I do not mention those things in a churlish way. They are matters that we need to debate. Hon. Members from various parties might feel that it is possible to pursue them and join others intent on promoting the co-operative agenda to achieve them.
Jesse Norman
I have considered closely the possibility of re-mutualising Northern Rock. I could not get over the question of how to handle an enormous vendor note —the vendor financing from the Government to the employees—to be paid out over 10 or 20 years. That has proven an insuperable practical burden, as far as I can see. I welcome other thoughts on the matter. However, I am sure that we all share the hon. Gentleman’s aspiration that the mutual ethos should return to the financial sector.
Mr Bailey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Perhaps I should have recognised earlier the work that he has done as chairman of the all-party group on employee ownership. I held the same position in a previous incarnation. He has done a good job, and I accept that he is intent on resolving some of the problems and issues that arise from the Northern Rock situation.
I will finish, as I know that many people want to raise specific interests during this debate. To return to where I started, co-operatives and mutuals are a form of self-help that is relevant in a range of business activities and public services. It has been clearly demonstrated that their impact on the economy is increasing and that public support for them is improving. Their membership is also rising; I think that nearly 13 million people in this country are now members of one form of co-operative or another. This debate will play a small part in raising awareness, assembling ideas and testing the Government to see how deep their commitment is and how they can take the agenda forward.
Mr David Amess (in the Chair)
We have until 5.30 for this debate. At 5 o’clock I shall call Mr Gareth Thomas, who will speak for 10 minutes, the Minister, who will speak for 15 minutes, and Mr Adrian Bailey, who will sum up for five minutes. There are 13 potential speakers. Obviously, I want to call everyone, so I hope that hon. Members will co-operate and share the time. I will call first those colleagues who wrote to the Speaker.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing this important and timely debate, which coincides with co-operatives fortnight. I will talk about financial mutuals, particularly credit unions. This is a promising time for financial mutuals, in the wake of the banking crisis and against the backdrop of the big society agenda and the emphasis on debt affordability at all levels.
Financial mutuals remain large, in spite of what has happened over the past couple of decades, and still serve one in three of the population through building societies, mutual insurers and friendly societies, co-operative financial services and credit unions. Credit unions, sadly, come at the bottom of that list, because it is ordered by number of members or customers or by assets under management. If the list were ordered by number of individual institutions, credit unions would come at the top. There are 48 building societies in the UK, with more than £300 billion in assets. The number of credit unions is about 10 times higher, at 426, but they hold assets of less than £1 billion.
Nevertheless, despite their relatively small size, credit unions in this country have been growing rapidly. Over the past 20 years, from 1990 to 2010, the number of members has grown from 54,000 to 800,000 and assets from £17 million to £750 million. However, there is an awfully long way to go. Compared with other countries such as the United States, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere, the penetration of credit unions among the UK population is small indeed. I see that as an opportunity rather than a problem.
Credit unions are traditionally mutuals owned by their members, who are savers and shareholders, and managed or overseen by a board of directors elected on the traditional one-member, one-vote basis. Critically, the interest rate at which they can lend is capped. It is about the only part of the financial sector that has such a cap. Historically, it was 12.7%, but it is now 27%. That still means, however, that anybody borrowing from a credit union knows that they are getting their loan at a reasonable rate. It is very important, because the market in which they operate features many other operators that charge a good deal more.
Payday lenders are a part of the financial market that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) might mention later. They represent an area of growth in the market and have received a lot of attention, but there are plenty of others. Home credits, for example, are a much larger part of the sub-prime market, have been around in this country for much longer and serve many more customers. Other parts of the market may not appear to have the same sky-high rates of interest, but they end up being just as bad a deal in terms of their overall charging structure. I am thinking in particular of some rent-to-own operators.
There are some brilliant opportunities for credit unions at the moment, and some strong and encouraging news from the Government, particularly the £73 million that they are making available in the modernisation fund for credit unions. Many areas of modernisation need to be looked at, but I think that what the sector finds most exciting is the development of the back-office platform and the potential to interface with the Post Office. That opens huge opportunities to bring credit union services to a much larger part of the population and for them to be much more visible in the marketplace.
Another critical piece of the jigsaw is the legislative reform order, for which the credit union sector has been waiting for some time. The issue has straddled the change in Government and we hope that it can now progress with great speed. It will enable critical changes in the sector to facilitate its further development. First, it will soften the common bond requirement—which relates to where someone lives or works, who they work for, or which organisation they are a member of—to become a member of a credit union. Secondly, it will enable credit unions to offer services not just to individuals, as is the case at present, but to organisations, particularly charities and voluntary organisations, although it might also apply to firms. Thirdly, it will enable credit unions to offer a fixed rate of interest to savers, if they wish. That will make them more attractive and enable them to provide a better range of financial services.
There are other issues. The sector looks to Government for a proportionate approach to regulation. They are, relatively speaking, only little and have not had the problems that the big banks had during the crisis. They want an appropriate level of regulation that matches their size and role.
There are also new opportunities, such as the big society bank, which is a wholesale bank that needs organisations on the ground to administer its funds. I am sure that community development finance institutions will play a big part in that, as will credit unions, in a post-legislative reform order world. Not all credit unions will find that appropriate, but some of them may. Credit unions could also play a role with the son or daughter of the social fund, in its new, evolved form. Local authorities will be more responsible for elements of that. They do not have a long history of dealing with crisis loans and so on, but their local credit unions could help them in that regard.
Looking to the future, I think there will be some blurring of the exact lines between credit unions, CDFIs, social lenders and microfinance institutions. It would be good to see the development of more microfinance institutions of one sort or another in this country, as well as internationally. Technology may also help us to broaden the boundaries of credit unions and to bring more people in, particularly as savers, which will allow them to expand their business. That is also applicable to microfinance and, eventually, to retail investors in social impact bonds.
Two key developments will enable that. They might involve a role for Government, but they might not—they might come from entirely different parts of the social finance sector. The first is the development of a social ISA, which I wrote about some years ago in a Bow Group pamphlet on credit unions and increasing the capitalisation available for them. Others have written about similar things in relation to all sorts of other projects. It sounds very much like an idea whose time has now come, to enable ordinary retail investors to put their money behind socially worthwhile projects and accept a slightly lower financial return as a result.
Steve Baker
My hon. Friend has mentioned returns, but at the moment the banking system seems to be failing both savers and entrepreneurs simultaneously. I wonder whether such projects might give a better return to savers while benefiting entrepreneurs.
Damian Hinds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that fine point. In fact, it is true now, to some extent, that people will get a better return through a dividend from some credit unions than they would through some high street bank savings accounts. It is also possible to say that interest rates for savings accounts in general are so low that it does not make a whole lot of difference whether one gets a return that is much lower—credit union returns have the benefit of not changing after the first six months and of not having complicated introductory marketing deals. The general principle that I am trying to outline is that there are many people who, for a proportion of their savings, would be happy to accept, on average, a slightly lower cash return, because they know that their cash will be doing something worth while, either in their local area or, as is the case with some people, in supporting microfinance and so on.
I will mention the second development briefly, because I have talked for longer than I had anticipated. It relates to exchanges to bring people together, so that they can find the opportunities. Many people to whom I speak who are relatively well off and who have heard about credit unions, CDFIs or microfinance, say, “I’d love to put a bit of money into that.” The problem is that they do not know where to find these things. How would they? They are not organisations with multi-million dollar marketing budgets, so an exchange could put people in touch with those opportunities.
In conclusion, the future is bright for credit unions. We need the legislative reform order to complement the investment and support that the Government are giving the sector. Of course, credit unions also need to step up to the plate. They need to make sure that they keep their cost base trimmed, that they have a balanced portfolio with a good mix of customers, savers and borrowers, that they continue to develop their financial products, and that they consolidate the sector in the post-LRO world.
It has been a pleasure to take part in this important debate. Again, I congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich West and for Islwyn on securing it, and thank you, Mr Amess, for presiding over it.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for his work as chairman of the all-party group on credit unions, of which I am treasurer. I called for this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), because my whole political life is framed by my experiences of where I grew up in the south Wales valleys. We lived in a close-knit community. This speech might be sloppy and sentimental, if you will allow it, Mr Amess, but that is where I grew up.
When I grew up, the Co-op, as we called it colloquially, was always there. My mother told me, “I’ve brought you and your sister, Cara, up on Co-op milk,” and we went down the Co-op shop for our groceries. If you died, you were laid out in a Co-op funeral home and they probably buried you as well. As my great-grandmother said before she died at 104, “Don’t worry, everything’s sorted—I’ve been paying the Co-op for years.” That is where I came across the co-operative movement.
The most iconic moment of my life growing up in the valleys was seeing the proud workers walking back to Tower colliery in the Cynon valley. They had taken over their business and mines after being written off by the previous Conservative Government. They were walking back to run a workers’ co-operative. I have never felt more proud of my community and my people than when I saw them marching together. Those proud men, who had been beaten down by the Government, said, “No, there is a better way.”
Jonathan Evans
I come from a similar background, and I pay credit to the workers at Tower. However, they were given the opportunity to turn it into a co-operative by Michael Heseltine, who rejected the private sector bid and accepted their bid. It is therefore slightly churlish to be dismissive of the previous Conservative Government’s position on that.
Chris Evans
At the end of the day, I have to get political. As I always say, I am from a mine-working area, and the previous Conservative Government were no friend of the miners. I cannot get away from that; that is what I was born into, that is what I grew up believing and that is what I still believe.
I am extremely proud of those communities, and I am proud to be here as a Labour and Co-operative Member representing them, but there was a dark side. I am perhaps being romantic again, but I remember being out on the street kicking a football against the wall every Monday evening after school. The women would shout at us children and move us on.
At about half-past six, however, we would all rush through our doors and slam them shut. We would see the white XR3i coming down the hill, if anyone remembers those flashy cars. A woman would pull up and get out. I can see her now with her bleached blonde hair. My mother would say, “Caked with make-up, she is. She stinks of Estée Lauder perfume,” not that I knew what Estée Lauder perfume smelled like, but that is exactly what my mother said.
The woman was there with her little book, her little bag and her pen, and everybody would run inside. She would hammer on the doors. She was the woman from Provident, and everybody in our street had Provident. If people did not pay her, she would bang on the door and say, “I know you’re in there, love. You owe me £400.” If people had made the mistake of leaving the door ajar, she would push it open and go, “Where’s my money?”
When I was first elected, I found a chitty from when my mother took out a Provident loan in 1987, and the annual percentage rate was 150%. Years later, I went to work for Lloyds TSB, and I thought there was no way that Provident could still exist, but it does.
When the basic bank account was introduced, I felt the banks often did not want to know about people with a basic account. These people did not have a credit score for loans or credit cards, so when they needed money, they had no access to it. When they were asked how they were getting by, they would say they had Provident or Shopacheck and that someone would come round to their house to pick the payments up.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to intervene in the hon. Gentleman’s flowing speech. As I have said in many debates, the other problem with firms such as Provident is that they build relationships. They turn up at people’s doors and suggest ways in which their customers can spend money. They might say, “Christmas is round the corner. Have you sorted your Christmas presents?” They take advantage of the most vulnerable people.
Chris Evans
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was coming to that. This culture is very much engrained in the valleys. My mother, my grandmother and all my aunties and uncles had Provident. However, this is not just about Provident; it is also about paying off the money for the television through the slot in the back. People put a pound in, and they had 10 hours of television. In that way, they could pay off their television. It was always a nightmare, because the pound was guaranteed to run out just at the conclusion of “EastEnders”, and we would never know what the cliffhanger was. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that once the television had been paid off, the firms would come round and say, “The carpet’s looking a bit bald. Do you fancy a new one? What about a new washing machine.” They would then sign people up.
This problem of high-cost lending still exists. I cannot believe that I am going to admit this in a Westminster Hall debate, but I actually watch Jeremy Kyle; I am ashamed to admit it, but I have watched his show. As I was waiting for the all-important DNA tests and the lie detector, the adverts came up. One was for a company called Wonga.com. It was wonderful; Wonga was revolutionising same-day lending. I thought, “This is marvellous.” The advert said, “You’re in control.” I thought, “This is brilliant.” Then, however, I looked at the APR, which was 4,125%—pure, utter profiteering.
I did not think any more about the company. Then, however, I got on the tube on Monday morning, and there was an advert for Wonga.com, saying, “You’re in control.” The APR was more than 4,000%. I cannot get away from this company. I was watching “Match of the Day” and the press conference after the match. There were adverts for Barclaycard, but the Blackpool players also had the word “Wonga” right across their chests. Such things give the company the legitimacy that it does not deserve.
There is a way of out this. Yes, we can have legislation, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who has done a lot of work on the issue, and I am sure she will speak about it later. However, there is a more intrinsic way forward, so let me move on to credit unions.
The other day, I went to Islwyn Community Credit Union with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas)—I will not talk about our earlier visit. We talked about how the credit union had lent a total of £1 million to the most vulnerable people. To pick up the point made by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, the people at the credit union said it was all very well lending money at competitive rates and allowing people to save, but that people did not know about credit unions. Provident, Safeloans and Shopacheck will knock at the door, and people can go to Wonga, Ocean Finance or someone else, but they do not know about credit unions. People are hearing about them by word of mouth and they are hearing about getting more protection points.
The other day, I was proud to visit Trinant school—I must give it a plug. If anybody wants to see a credit union, they should go there to see the children’s enthusiasm. The pupils have formed their own saving scheme, which is run along the lines of the Islwyn Community Credit Union. Those children have saved £600. The scheme has 56 members. One of the wonderful things about the scheme is not only that the children are saving, but that they are so enthusiastic that they are going home to their parents to tell them about credit unions. They are promoting credit unions in that way. This is an excellent project.
When the Minister sums up and talks about credit unions, I hope he will talk about Wales. Everybody in Wales has access to a credit union, and I really think the coalition Government should have that as an aspiration more widely. We should also take legislative obstacles down. I would ask the Minister to lower the minimum age necessary to join a credit union, which is presently 16—the same as the minimum age people need to be to serve as a company director. If we take such steps, we can promote credit unions, good lending and good saving.
I turn now to the mutualisation of the banks. I have been accused of banging on about the banks, but, like many Members, I am disappointed that Northern Rock will be sold privately. I hope the Government can look at introducing a mutual element, because we need that in society. In the middle of the banking crisis, there was one bank that did not need bailing out and which had run its business ethically: the Co-operative bank. When we look at the banking sector again, I hope the Co-operative bank is one of the examples we look to and learn from.
Jesse Norman
It is also true that the Nationwide, a mutual building society, did not require a bail-out. In fact, it was like the Rock of Gibraltar throughout the crisis.
Chris Evans
As my right hon. Friend says, there was also the Principality. That backs up my point that we need a mutual element. We need something strong in the banking industry; we need a safety net.
I will conclude now, because I have spoken for a long time, including about the valleys. Co-operatives have a huge role to play in the economy. They are central to society, and I hope that, when the Minister sums up, he will give a strong commitment to ensuring that they have an important part to play in our future economy.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.
I should start by disclosing that I do pro bono work with the John Lewis Partnership, which kindly pays into a charitable fund for local independent charities in my constituency. I am also the chair of the all-party group on employee ownership.
I massively welcome the debate and its excellent timing, coming as it does in co-operatives fortnight. I very much congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans), as I know other Members will, for calling this important and timely debate.
I want to celebrate two organisations in my constituency. One is Money Box, which is Herefordshire’s own credit union. The second is Widemarsh Workshop, which I am working to help transform into a co-op. It is a social enterprise that creates excellent furniture and works with disabled local people.
I have been interested and actively involved in co-ops, mutual organisations, employee-owned firms and similar organisations for many years. In that context, I pay tribute to an extraordinary man called Robert Oakeshott, whom many Members will know of and who died about 10 days ago, on 21 June. He was a lifelong friend of the co-operative movement in this country and overseas. He wrote a book, “The Case for Workers’ Co-ops”, many years ago, and helped to set up co-ops. His book “Jobs and Fairness” was, and still is, the seminal contribution to the discussion and debate on employee ownership. Robert was an extraordinarily far-sighted man. I wish that he were here to see the debate and the progress that the Government and their supporters across the third sector and the private and public sectors have made in promoting co-ops. I know that he would be thrilled. He was a great influence on me, and he brought me into Job Ownership Ltd, the predecessor organisation to the Employee Ownership Association.
I am also very pleased to have been able to help so many of my colleagues and to spread the word on the value of co-operative and mutual ideas on the centre right of the political spectrum through what we have called the Conservative Co-operative Movement. I have 37 Conservative colleagues who are members, and the number is growing. So far we have published two publications. One is called “Nuts and Bolts: How to Start a Food Co-op”, and is a detailed guide. It was mentioned earlier that the original form of co-operative organisation was the industrial and provident society, but now, and in many respects thanks to the previous Government, there has been an expansion, and people can use many different routes, including trusts and community interest companies. One thing that this lovely little book does is to set out all the possible different legal and practical approaches to setting up a co-op, and to consider the advantages and disadvantages. Our second publication is a pamphlet that we have recently published, called “Co-ops in the Big Society”, which explores all the different ways in which co-ops can add to the delivery of public and private services, and the role they can play in society.
Co-ops, with the mutual ethos that they derive from and celebrate, their spirit of trust, and their moral embedding in our society and communities, are of profound importance. One is reminded of the Rochdale Pioneers, whose history brings out a truth that some hon. Members may find slightly rebarbative, although I think it is important to remind ourselves of it: co-ops are by their nature rather conservative—with a small “c”— institutions. The first successful co-op, as has been mentioned, was established by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. They were 28 poor weavers and tradesmen looking for a better future as the industrial revolution mechanised the cloth trade. They relied on slowly accumulated subscriptions of £1 each from their members and initially made a modest £13 a week in sales. By 1850, just six years later, the co-op had 600 members, nearly £2,300 in capital and sales of £300 a week. In 1861, 11 years on, it diversified into housing for its members. By the end of the 19th century the Rochdale Pioneers had in turn established the Co-operative building society, which is a major provider of mortgages to this day.
We should look again at the Rochdale Pioneers’ experience. That success was the result of self-help, entrepreneurship and community energy. It was not the result of state patronage or official intervention. Those men and women were able to adapt the co-operative form and the broader idea of shared ownership to a variety of social needs—a local food shop, local housing and local mortgages. They were motivated as much by high ideals as by economic necessity—a point that has already been well made. In their first year of operation they established the Rochdale principles, to which all co-ops broadly adhere today. I think we need something similar today if we are to combat the fragmentation of British society.
There is a huge opportunity—I am delighted that it is being seized and developed by the Government—to initiate a great wave of change across society, whether that is through Cabinet Office pathfinders, the mutualisation of the Post Office or some of the work that is being done to create new forms of delivery of public services. Those are all thoroughly important. No less important are the opportunities to stimulate the growth of co-ops, mutuals, employee-owned organisations and the like in the private sector. That is a point that is widely misunderstood and I am thrilled that the Government take the same positive and proactive attitude towards private sector co-ops as they have to public ones.
Jonathan Evans
I have been looking for an opportunity to return to the issue of Northern Rock, on which my hon. Friend intervened earlier, and his work on assessing the possibility of remutualisation. Is my hon. Friend disappointed by the fact that United Kingdom Financial Investments appears to have made the recommendation on sale but not published the outcome of its assessment of the option of remutualisation? I respect what my hon. Friend has said about it, but it seems a bit odd that we have not seen the detail, even though UKFI obviously must have looked at that subject.
Jesse Norman
It is a disappointment that UKFI has not published its thinking on that even in outline. The calculations are not enormously complex. There is, of course, a further political issue, which has to do with the return of cash to the public Exchequer at a time of extreme economic crisis, but one still hopes that something of the form of the mutual ethos can be retained in the new organisation when it is ultimately sold.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I wonder whether, like me, the hon. Gentleman is disappointed that the Government have not considered the proposal for a payback to the taxpayer. Perhaps he will join me and other co-operatively-minded MPs to challenge the Chancellor to re-examine the issue, because of the benefits that could accrue from the mutualisation of Northern Rock.
Jesse Norman
I am not absolutely sure I understood the thrust of the hon. Lady’s intervention. It seems to me that there is an important issue in relation to the publication of the decision that has been made. It is quite right that there should be a public justification of the decision not to proceed with the mutualisation. One would like further progress to be made on retaining the mutual ethos. I am not sure how much further work there is to be done on it.
Stella Creasy
I am afraid I have a foggy head, but my mind is clear on this. The Co-operative party has submitted a proposal to the Government about paying back and the mutualisation of Northern Rock. I ask the hon. Gentleman again whether he will combine with me and other co-operatively-minded MPs to press the Chancellor to respond to that document, which he has not yet done.
Jesse Norman
I am afraid I have not the foggiest clue what paying back means. To whom will something be paid back, and out of what, under the proposal?
Stella Creasy
Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman agrees that it is worth considering models of remutualisation for Northern Rock, which would examine the payback to the taxpayer through the remutualisation process, he will meet us to look at how to progress that, and not lose the opportunity that mutualising Northern Rock would present.
Jesse Norman
I am of course happy—if this is what the hon. Lady is asking—to meet her and other Co-operative MPs to discuss that, so that I can understand the proposal better. I do not know whether the hon. Lady was present when I intervened earlier, but there is a clear financial problem to do with the capital structure, the taxpayer value and the sustainability of a model that has a large vendor note sitting in it from the Government—that is a form of loan—and substitutes public ownership of equity with public ownership of a loan, which may be no more stable for less return. There is a genuine economic issue, and that is what we need to engage with.
I hope that we can come together as a House and a community of MPs, in a bipartisan way, to promote co-ops, change our public culture, develop and spread the co-operative ethos, and encourage the Government to push ahead with all the work they are doing so successfully, so far, in this area.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the debate, Mr Amess. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) on obtaining it. It marks co-operative fortnight and also comes at the 10th anniversary of the Co-operative Commission report.
I am delighted that the debate is so popular—something perhaps illustrated by the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). I hope that he may be willing afterwards to look at the document that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) referred to. Often, good ideas in the co-operative movement do not reach a wider audience. If the hon. Gentleman has not yet had the opportunity to read those suggestions, I am sure that we can help him with that, especially as he responded so positively to the intervention.
Jonathan Evans
I am grateful to my parliamentary neighbour for allowing me to intervene. What has been put forward by the Co-operative party is not the only way in which Northern Rock might still end up with a mutual future. It is known that some mutual building societies are, in fact, interested in bidding, even through the Government’s proposed route. However, that will depend on the recognition of a capital instrument. Does the right hon. Gentleman hope, as I do, that we might hear something along those lines from the Government later this afternoon?
Alun Michael
I am not wedded to one particular proposal. The Co-operative party has put forward ideas but, as the hon. Gentleman has suggested, there are other options. A genuine will is needed to find a solution to overcome the problems that have been raised.
It is 10 years since the Co-operative Commission published its report on the co-operative movement, and it has come a long way in that time. If we went back further than that—perhaps 20 years—it would feel almost as if we were living in a different world. Then the retail co-operative movement was struggling, but now it is back in the top ranks; then the building societies were under pressure and were not very popular, but now their value is much more appreciated, as has been mentioned.
The creation of the Co-operative Commission was itself a landmark event that demonstrated the co-operative movement was important enough to be the subject of a Government-initiated commission. Virtually everything in that report, which contained some 60 specific recommendations, has been acted upon, mostly by the movement itself. The introduction of legislation during the past decade has assisted the movement’s development and success. As has been made clear in the debate, the name “co-operative” does not guarantee good governance, but good corporate governance has the capacity for business success and stability. Co-operative principles can also contribute significantly to public service.
Today, I want to celebrate the sheer energy and creativity of the movement, as well as its genuinely positive political impact. Politics is not just about narrow party interests; at its best, it is about people working together to change the world. Certainly, that is what drew our 29 Co-operative MPs into the political front line. It is worth noting that that is the largest group of MPs there has ever been in the history of the Co-operative party. In the past year or two, the co-operative movement has seized the opportunity to deliver on the concept of the co-operative school. In the past few days, Ben Reid has launched Co-operative Energy, and Supporters Direct is nurturing the growth of popular engagement with sport. On that point, I hope that the recent glitch can be overcome, so that Supporters Direct can continue and succeed.
The issue is not just about setting up co-operatives. I want to touch on four important initiatives where the experience of co-operative governance is being applied to a much wider aspect of public policy and organisation. The first initiative relates to how British Waterways is organised. I chair the all-party group on the waterways and I am pleased that the Government have picked up on the Co-operative party proposal to move our canals into the third sector under a non-governmental organisation. That idea found its way into the Budget report before the election and has been described as seeking to create a sort of National Trust for the waterways. It has had a positive response from the public. The main aspect of co-operative governance that needs to be built into that new organisation is public engagement and involvement, so that people feel a genuine degree of ownership in the new organisation and are willing to contribute to it both financially and in terms of volunteering. The all-party group will produce a report shortly on the hearings we held in respect of governance and finance.
The second initiative is the idea of a co-operative council. That is not just about having a council that encourages people to consider setting up co-operatives and includes the co-operative model in options for change; it is about transforming the relationship between leadership and management of the council, those who work for the council and the public that the council exists to serve. The idea is powerful and will enable us to refresh how we do business locally.
The third area of initiative is internet governance. The internet offers enormous potential for co-operative solutions. I chair the UK Internet Governance Forum, which is leading the way in the UK in bringing together Government, business, Parliament and civil society to look for better ways of encouraging creative and positive human activity nationally and internationally. It was part of the 2010 Co-operative party manifesto, but we are co-operating across party. Ministers have been very supportive of delivering that approach, and it will be taken a stage further when the UN’s internet governance forum meets in Kenya in September.
The fourth area of initiative is the partnership approach to reducing local crime and disorder. That idea has flourished since I had the privilege of taking the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 through the House and has proved a success in reducing crime. However, the potential of such an approach has not yet been realised because the governance of local partnerships is not as well developed as it should be. In Cardiff, such an initiative reduced violent crime by about 25% more than in comparable cities. That shows the value of taking that approach to enable local partnerships to succeed. Methodology and governance provides the potential for greater success in that respect. Those are examples of areas where the co-operative model can contribute to the public and private sector.
In 2007, I did a piece of work for the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, which was commissioned by the then Minister for the third sector, who is now the Leader of the Opposition. That work was part of the preparation for the 2007 spending review and involved taking a wider, general look at the contribution that could be made by the third sector to social and economic regeneration. My report concentrated specifically on the evidence of what mutuals and co-operatives could contribute to that. It is fair to say that the Treasury officials in particular were genuinely surprised and impressed by what they saw across the country when we were undertaking that work. I personally found it an invigorating experience.
The report showed the contribution that is already being made in areas such as health, housing, child care, financial services and community cohesion. That potential has not yet been realised, partly because I discovered immediately after we published the report that the people on the team who had gathered all the information and worked with me so positively were sent back to their original places of work. I am not sure why, but some Departments have the capacity for getting rid of expertise as soon as it has been developed. I cannot blame the Minister for that, but I hope that he will have a look at the report and consider how its findings might be used by the current Government, because its proposals cross boundaries.
During that period, we saw how co-operative principles can transform an inner-city hospital—Homerton hospital, Hackney was the example we considered—and how co-operative initiatives, from credit unions to play groups and social groups, were transforming the lives of individuals and communities across the country. The co-operative movement and the application of co-operative principles in a whole range of areas—not necessarily just to things that would be described as an industrial and provident society—are probably one of Britain’s best kept secrets. I am glad that we are having this debate to highlight, however briefly, all the areas on which the movement is having an impact.
Co-operation and mutuality are alive and well in the sphere of political action, and the latest initiatives to create co-op councils will open up a new era of delivery to our communities locally. Change of power through an election should not just change the name plates at the Executive table; the relationships between the people who work for the council and the public they serve should also be changed. I hope very much that all the examples given during the debate will lead to a greater flourishing of the co-operative principle and will perhaps pick up the impetus that was given by the Co-operative Commission 10 years ago to refresh our activities into the next decade.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate a few days into co-operatives fortnight. I congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on persuading the Backbench Business Committee to enable them to initiate this debate. I very much enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Islwyn. I loved the delicious irony of a boy from a mining community in the valleys who went to work for a bank that was bailed out by taxpayers crossing the picket line today to talk about co-operatives. I congratulate him enormously on that.
I am sure that many Opposition Members are surprised to see hon. Members on this side of the House taking a real and genuine interest in a debate on the co-operative movement. I hope that I can not only reassure hon. Members that we support co-ops and mutuals, but reclaim a bit of the movement back for the Conservative party. I was amused to read, in the Library debate pack, an opening line from Guardian journalist Tim Smedley, which read:
“Have you heard the one about the Conservative-led government encouraging public servants to form employee-owned mutuals?”
He went on to write that, “this is no joke.” I know that we are supposed to bristle at the Labour party’s missive to the media to call the coalition a Conservative-led Government. However, as a Conservative Back Bencher and member of the Conservative Co-operative Movement, if a left-wing paper wishes to highlight, even in a mocking tone, our support for co-operatives and mutuals, frankly, that is fine with me.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Can the hon. Lady tell us how many members of the Conservative Co-operative Movement there are? The 37 alluded to by the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) does not suggest that it is much of a movement.
Tracey Crouch
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, my hon. Friend said that there are 37 members, but the movement has only just been launched. We are a small but perfectly-formed group. [Interruption.] I may also add, thanks to help from my hon. Friends from a sedentary position, that there are 37 members within Parliament.
Jesse Norman
At the risk of intruding, would my hon. Friend, or perhaps the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), like to comment on the difference between the number of members of the Conservative Co-operative Movement and the number of Labour members of the co-operative movement within this House?
Tracey Crouch
I am sure that the hon. Member for Harrow West will deal with those questions when he sums up at the end of the debate. I am proud to be a member of the Conservative Co-operative Movement in Parliament, which has only just been established.
Mr Davey
Without wanting to intrude on this debate, I will not suggest how many Liberal Democrat hon. Members are members of a similar co-operative movement. I will simply say that there are 12.8 million members of co-operatives in this country, and they are the ones on whom we should focus.
Tracey Crouch
I agree with the Minister. If I may continue with my speech, rather than getting into how many members we have in each political party—
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I just wanted to clarify, for Hansard and for the debate, that there is a distinction between those Labour MPs who are Labour and Co-operative Members of Parliament and those who are members of the Co-operative party, but may not be Labour and Co-operative MPs.
Tracey Crouch
I am grateful for that clarification. The hon. Lady may be interested to learn that members of the Conservative Co-operative Movement have been considering whether, perhaps at the next general election, we may do something radical and stand as Conservative, Unionist and Co-operative candidates. That is under active consideration.
Alun Michael
It is important to emphasise that the Co-operative party is a separate party—it is a registered political party. A Co-operative and Labour MP has to be selected by the Labour party, and by the Co-operative party through a separate selection process. It is not just a question of the name; it has a very deep reality in our history.
Tracey Crouch
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The issue is under consideration by members of the Conservative Co-operative Movement. I think that we have just ruined any kind of cross-party consensus that we were having on the co-operative movement. The Conservative party should be congratulated on the fact that it has now established this movement in its own party, and I hope that Opposition Members will consider that to be an important step forward.
As I was saying before I was sidetracked, there are many reasons why co-operatives and mutuals are good for growth and for society. Hopefully, I shall cover those reasons in what was supposed to be a very short contribution to the debate. Having spent too much time talking about it recently, one area of co-operative success that I will not focus on this afternoon is football. There have been many debates in the Chamber and on the Floor of the House about football club ownership, so I shall surprise colleagues by avoiding my main non-political passion and concentrate on other issues today.
The co-operative movement has a far greater pedigree than perhaps people give it credit for. The first co-operative was established in 1844, and there has been a steady increase in numbers across the country, with some gaining a foothold and becoming cornerstones of local communities. Examples that have already been referenced this afternoon are, of course, the Co-operative Group and the John Lewis Partnership. Together, they have an impressive combined turnover of approximately £18 billion.
It is often the small co-ops, which do not have the big brand names, that make the biggest and best impact in our communities. As a relative newcomer to the Conservative Co-operative Movement—run impressively, if I may say so, by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—I have read with interest about the potential for co-operatives. Undoubtedly, they have intrinsic social benefits, promoting ethical, responsible, democratic and equitable ways of doing business. Inclusion, another positive contribution they make to society, ought not to be underestimated, not least at a time when we are asking individuals to do more for their communities. Co-operatives command cross-party support and that is to be welcomed. However, I believe that it is under this Government, with their desire for people to take up responsibility and seize the initiative, that they can really flourish as social enterprises and local providers.
We often hear co-operatives mentioned favourably in reference to their social, ethical and communal benefits, but many people who are not hugely involved in the movement will be surprised to learn of the enormous contribution that they make to the economy. In the south-east region, where my constituency is located, 328 co-ops now employ more than 13,000 people and generate more than £3 billion per annum. They take many guises, and I have read with interest about the coverage that they offer across a range of sectors, including housing, finance, agriculture and retail.
The Minister knows that I am heavily engaged in the debate about high-cost credit lending and debt management companies. I am therefore particularly interested in what co-operatives can offer the financial sector. My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and others who have already spoken have made the point that credit unions demonstrate particularly valuable and welcome traits. They foster a self-help and community ethos, while encouraging financial inclusion, affordable borrowing and prudent saving on a not-for-profit basis.
By law, each credit union must be founded with a common bond, which all applicants must satisfy before they can become members. In the case of the Medway Credit Union, which has a catchment area covering part of my constituency, the common bond is geographical. It restricts membership to those living and working within the union’s prescribed boundaries. It is seeing a steady increase on its 400 members. I appreciate that bonds are being considered as part of the legislative review, but the point is that each member is part of a community that has grouped together to offer a service that is independent of the state and is self-sustaining.
On top of the ability to promote saving and equity in an area such as Medway, where there is a significant personal debt problem, credit unions offer a very different and innovative approach to debt reconciliation, unique to their mutual nature. The advantage a credit union possesses over a high street bank or a loan company, for example, is its personal and flexible nature. Of course, someone can have a rapport with their bank manager, but he is ultimately concerned with generating profit. As part of a credit union, however, each loan that is taken out is given careful consideration by peers and fellow members who have one’s best interests at heart, and any loan taken out incurs a low rate of interest.
Justin Tomlinson
The point about the loan being in the best interest is absolutely essential to this. We were talking earlier about the Provident doorstep lending, with their nudge, nudge sales techniques. What a stark contrast the credit unions are, and what a real difference they make to the most vulnerable people.
Tracey Crouch
I agree completely. It is for that reason that it is right that credit unions receive so much support from across the House and from Government. They are great advocates of financial inclusion and can offer an alternative to high-cost credit that blights many, and submerges them further into debt. I look forward to visiting the Medway Credit Union in the autumn, and to helping to raise its profile.
That leads me on to an observation that many have no doubt already made. Small, particularly localised co-ops such as the Medway Credit Union, rely heavily on volunteers. Unlike private ventures, which have a large amount of start-up capital, they can call on little in the way of reserves. If we are to encourage the co-operative contribution to the economy, the Government must focus their energies and funding on providing start-up capital. It is encouraging therefore that the Government have recognised that and established a fund to help mutuals to meet such costs. I would also like local enterprise partnerships, which are meant to focus on providing localised services and on developing a devolved enterprise strategy, to explore how co-ops can become involved, attract investment and improve membership. The Government have previously committed to reducing the regulatory and administrative burdens so that it is easier to start and run a co-operative. I hope that we see that commitment become reality soon. We must then, with some cross-party zeal, start championing and promoting the co-operative movement.
I feel particularly strongly about the issue because, in the run-up to the general election, a major high street bank decided that its small branch in my constituency, with its over-the-counter service and ATM, was surplus to its global requirements. HSBC decided that Aylesford village did not fit into its strap line of “The world’s local bank.” Despite serving an elderly and local business population, the branch was closed without any concern about the impact on the local community. The village is now bereft of its post office and its bank. Given the thousands of names we had on a petition from Aylesford and the surrounding villages, I wish I had seen the example of villagers coming together to provide their own local counter services and forming a co-op. We could and should have done that, and the village would have been better off for it.
I promised a short contribution, but now I have wittered on about co-op opportunities that passed by. This debate, however, has allowed me to emphasise that the co-operative and mutual movement has cross-party support. Co-ops bring huge benefits to society and the economy, and they can demonstrate entrepreneurial brilliance and deliver rewards to all those involved. There are legal obstacles, which the Government are looking at, but it is hard not to want to get involved in this debate and to encourage the establishment of more co-operatives, to help to deliver what society and the country needs.
Jesse Norman
On a point of order, Mr Amess, I want to put on record my sense of the great discourtesy done to this Chamber and to the House by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who came in, did not listen to the opening speeches, asked a series of questions and then left. That ought to be in the record.
Mr David Amess (in the Chair)
All I say about hon. Members staying for the debate is that, when I made my announcement about the timing of things, there were 13 possible speakers. I hope I did not scare people off, because we seem to have lost a number of them. I am not referring to our current proceedings but, as far as the specific point made by the hon. Gentleman is concerned, Mr Speaker has said that it is certainly discourteous for a Member to arrive, make an intervention and not return. I cast no aspersions on what is happening at the moment.
Alun Michael
Further to that point of order, Mr Amess, as we are having this discussion about courtesy, has not Mr Speaker also ruled more than once in the past that, if a Member intends to make a critical comment about another Member, he should first have spoken to that Member, to apprise of his intention and to see whether there might have been good reason for any action that had provoked him to intervene?
Mr David Amess (in the Chair)
Order. I am advised that that is generally the case. Rather than prolong the matter, and as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) have made their observations, we will see what happens.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to have the chance to speak in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing it.
I declare an interest: along with many other Labour and Co-operative Members of Parliament, I am proud to be part of a movement motivated not purely by the pursuit of profit but by values of openness, social responsibility and solidarity. As well as being founded on strong principles, in practice co-ops and mutuals can be more efficient and are a positive force in local communities. The co-operative model also makes sense economically. As right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of this Chamber have alluded to, last year the co-operative economy throughout the UK stood at 12.9 million members, who were part of almost 5,000 co-operative businesses, with a turnover of £33.5 billion, contributing 237,800 jobs to the national economy. In the north-west region, where my constituency is located, 416 co-operatives turn over £2.2 billion and employ 20,350 people. As a proud member of the Lodge Lane credit union, I see the many benefits of co-operatives in my own constituency.
As well as highlighting the successes of co-ops nationally, I want to focus my remarks this afternoon on how the co-operative model is thriving in the energy market. Up and down the country, communities have come together to find new ways of generating renewable energy. Co-operatives have pioneered renewable energy in the UK, whether large ones such as the Co-operative Group powering its stores with renewable energy or innovative businesses such as Powys-based Dulas developing green technologies.
The co-operative model is providing communities with the means to invest in, own and benefit from new wind farm developments. Nine community co-operatives currently own wind farms in the UK, providing a great model of community power. Baywind, for example, is a wind co-operative in Cumbria which has successfully carried out two share offers since it was founded in 1996 and has more than 1,300 members. Westmill wind farm in Oxfordshire is entirely owned by about 2,500 members, largely drawn from the local community, who between them have invested £4.4 million. Nationally, wind farm co-operatives alone have 6,700 members and turn over £2.5 million.
Until recently, energy co-ops have benefited from a supportive central Government. Recent Government decisions, however, have resulted in support for community-based energy co-operatives being withdrawn, risking their success. The Government’s decision to cut the feed-in tariff subsidy for projects that generate more than 50 kW will mean that many community co-op solar projects on hospitals, schools and community buildings are now no longer commercially viable. Alongside that, it was announced in the 2011 Budget that renewable energy schemes eligible for the feed-in tariff would no longer qualify for tax relief under the enterprise investment scheme, harming at least 20 communities planning a community share launch soon—the business model is entirely based on securing the feed-in tariff and the enterprise investment scheme. Small schemes with less than £0.5 million of capital costs will struggle to be viable.
Community ownership is a wholly different approach from purely commercial operations and brings additional benefits such as increased community engagement and education on low-carbon issues, but it does not often generate the same level of revenue to pay the interest on investors’ capital during the early years of development. In that situation, the enterprise investment scheme offers a breathing space for community initiatives not to pay interest while the enterprise is established, allowing them to grow. It is regrettable that moves to boost equity investment in small enterprises will damage the smallest of those enterprises and many co-operatives and mutuals.
As well as removing support for existing co-operatives, the Government have rejected Labour plans to encourage the establishment of new energy co-operatives. We recently concluded the Energy Bill’s Committee stage, and many hon. Members are familiar with its provisions. The main Government proposal in the Bill is to establish a pay-as-you-save energy-efficiency scheme called the green deal, a programme first piloted under the previous Labour Government. Under the green deal, homeowners and tenants will be able to borrow money to make energy-efficient improvements to their homes, such as insulation, with no up-front costs. The improvements will be paid for in instalments from the money saved on utility bills.
The new marketplace that the scheme will create offers huge potential for co-operatives and mutuals to become green deal providers, installing energy efficiency measures. Labour’s vision of the green deal marketplace is one in which small businesses, co-operatives, mutuals and social enterprises are able to compete equally alongside the big energy companies and supermarkets that want to take part in the scheme. For that reason, on behalf of the Opposition, I tabled amendments to the Energy Bill in Committee which would have guaranteed fair access to the marketplace for co-ops and reduced the administration costs that they would have had to pay in order to take part in the scheme. I hope there is broad agreement on both sides of the House that co-ops and mutuals that want to benefit our communities and focus resources on vulnerable people and households in fuel poverty should not be excluded from the green deal marketplace.
Reduced admin fees and fair access to the market would not only lessen the financial start-up costs for those organisations, but would act as an indicator to them that they have an important part to play in the green deal. Surely the idea of helping co-operatives and mutual societies to flourish, instead of the market being dominated by a few big companies, is very much in the spirit of the big society? Unfortunately, the Government did not think so, and voted down those amendments. That did not stop the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), using warm words about co-operatives, but what good are words when they are not followed up by actions?
I thought that the Government recognised the value of employee-led models. During a speech in November 2010, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, said:
“The evidence increasingly shows that they reduce absenteeism, improve performance management, encourage innovation, and increase productivity.”
Will the Minister take the concerns that I have raised back to his ministerial colleagues in the responsible Departments, and press them to look again at their decisions, so that instead of punishing co-ops and mutuals, we build on them and drive the energy co-operative sector forward?
The threat of climate change is the greatest threat to our planet, and it is only through co-operation that we will be able to take urgent global action to fight it. Renewable energy co-operation to tackle climate change and to reduce household fuel bills at a time when they are increasing is just one example of how co-operatives can benefit our society. This debate has highlighted how much co-operatives can benefit our society, and it is timely at the start of co-operatives fortnight. From banking and finance to renewable energy and environmental protection, co-operatives are making a difference. I thank my hon. Friends for securing this debate, and I thank you, Mr Amess, for your stewardship.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
I intend to consolidate some potential interventions in a short and efficient speech, partly in recognition of you, Mr Amess, because your role as chairman of the all-party group on small shops reminded me of a few extra elements that have not been touched on. The first is the impact on the high street. The Government have commissioned Mary Portas to review the high street, and having avidly watched her TV programmes for some years, I know that her main mantra is about customer service. All too often in this great nation of shopkeepers, customer service is appalling at best. Through the principle of co-operatives, employees are directly involved and have a direct incentive to offer far better customer service, and to help to rescue our high streets. That is an element that we should consider.
Some hon. Members have talked about credit unions, and I intervened several times. It is essential to the interests of the most vulnerable consumers that they have access to loans on which their interests are put at the heart of decisions, in stark contrast with the doorstep lenders who prey on people, and encourage them to get into a long-term cycle of expensive debt, and end up buying dodgy-smelling perfume. There is so much consolidation of banking services on the high street that there is less competition, and that is another opportunity for the credit unions to step in. Access to services is key, because vulnerable people often do not know how to access more affordable credit, and the help and advice that come with it.
I want to issue a slight warning to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) for picking on Wonga. It does not lend to vulnerable consumers, who must go through rigorous checks. If the headline interest rate is 4,400% APR, and if someone is two days from their pay day and wants to borrow £100 to tide themselves over, they will be charged a product fee of £5.50 plus 4,400% APR of £1 a day, so they will pay £7.50 for the privilege. If they just go overdrawn at their bank, Lloyds TSB, for example, would charge a flat fee of £10 a day plus £2.50 for the debit card charge, which makes a total of £22.50 so they will be £15 worse off. We must be careful not to fall into the traps of some headlines.
The way to get round the problem is to support my financial education campaign so that more people understand the deals that are put before them. However, I was testing some people on Wonga’s APR yesterday, and not one person was able to calculate the interest rate, including a Treasury manager.
Chris Evans
I agree with some of the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments about APR. I have always said that people should be quoted a flat rate of interest, which is simpler and easier to understand than APR. As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, I used to work for Lloyds TSB, and I have regretted it every day since, but I have always said that a flat rate is simple.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In an ideal world, we would have cash-for-cash comparisons if people wanted to borrow money. I echo the comments about doorstep lending. The Minister feels strongly about it, and it really needs to be dealt with. The sales techniques are nothing short of disgraceful.
Damian Hinds
Does my hon. Friend agree that despite the apparent attraction of straightforward interest charges being disclosed, they lack something because they do not cover any of the behavioural charges. There is no perfect way, but it would perhaps be slightly closer to perfect to have disclosure of both the set-up costs for the loan, and the interest rate on top. That twin-rate approach is much more reflective of lenders’ cost structures.
Justin Tomlinson
I absolutely agree. The key message is that the Government are reviewing the matter, and they should do so with time and patience to make sure that it is delivered in the right way that people can understand. We do not want to fall into the trap of obvious headlines, because that would just make the situation a lot worse.
On public services, I spent 10 enjoyable years in local government, four of them as a cabinet member making key decisions. I fully support the principle of allowing staff with front-line experience, and who are fuelled by their direct passion, to make a difference and have a greater say in how services are delivered, instead of remote politicians—this applies to all of us—without that experience.
I pay credit to the Co-operative shops—my local shop is a Co-op and its cheesy tasty bread is very good—for the way they conduct the elections to their board. Every member—I am a proud member of my local Co-op—is sent a clear booklet, and as we consider creating elected police commissioners and having other elections, that may be a model to consider, especially if we manage to ban political parties from being involved in such things.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. As many other hon. Members have done, I declare an interest as a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament. I also join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing this debate as we come to the start of co-operatives fortnight. I want to highlight the contribution of the mutual sector in many areas of life, and then to comment specifically about one sector, leaving the Minister with plenty of opportunity to respond to the issues that hon. Members have raised this afternoon.
As other hon. Members have said, one of the challenges facing the mutual sector has been to explain what a co-operative is, how it works, and why it is relevant in the present and the future. My family’s experience of co-operatives is slightly different from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn. My grandparents were dairy farmers in east Kent, and were part of a co-operative that fed into a retail co-operative, so there is a long and varied history of what co-operatives are. There is huge potential for their future, and I am glad that in recent years we have started to go beyond the common misapprehensions and the occasional suspicion or dubiousness on this side of what co-operatives are about and how they fit into the wider Labour movement. It is gratifying that we have got over that in recent years, and I hope that we are now starting to see not just the value of co-operatives, but the potential for future co-operatives and how we can develop them in future.
I want to speak about one form of mutual ownership that is particularly close to my heart. Unlike the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), I will not apologise for talking about football supporters’ trusts yet again, because it would be remiss of me in this debate not to refer to them in a little more detail than others have been able to do. My personal involvement in the co-operative movement and Co-operative party comes from having helped to establish the Fulham Supporters’ Trust just over 10 years ago. If anyone is at a loose end this evening, Fulham start their European adventure at Craven Cottage, and hon. Members would be more than welcome to join me in attending the game to watch Fulham play the team that finished third in the Faroe Islands Premier League.
It seems an apposite time to raise the issue of supporters’ trusts, because of the problems surrounding Supporters Direct to which I want to refer this afternoon. Supporters Direct is a matter of concern to hon. Members from all parties—early-day motion 1909 on the funding of Supporters Direct has been signed by 66 hon. Members from all parties except the Scottish National party, although that is not necessarily a good way to measure levels of concern.
Many hon. Members will be aware of and familiar with the work of supporters’ trusts in their constituencies, and there will be clubs—rugby league clubs as well as football clubs—in which they have either a constituency interest or a direct supporter interest.
Justin Tomlinson
On that point, I am a proud member of Swindon Town supporters club, which I joined when it first formed. One challenge it faces is that it often meets in moments of crisis—Swindon Town lurched from one crisis to another until the new owners transformed it. We need to encourage supporters’ trusts to set up and work in the long term, especially when the sun is shining on a football club.
Tom Greatrex
The hon. Gentleman anticipates the point I was about to make. My experience—and that of many others involved in supporters’ trusts—has been that at a moment of crisis, when owners walk away from a club because they have lost interest, or are unable to continue because it is more challenging than they thought it would be, they leave clubs in the lurch. One thing that can be said about football clubs is that players, managers and chairmen may come and go, but the fans remain constant. They have a huge amount of concern for and emotional attachment to their clubs, and they will step in. In the past, fans have stepped in very successfully—we could all give examples of trusts that have become involved in running a club, and done it well. The hon. Gentleman’s point is right. I desire to see supporters’ trusts not only getting involved in times of crisis when no one else steps in, but also getting involved in representation and the running of the club, so that there is a direct link to the supporters and communities.
That is why I am concerned about the situation with Supporters Direct. As I know from personal experience, Supporters Direct has provided huge support in getting trusts established, and it has campaigned on some wider issues concerning the ownership of football clubs and other sporting clubs. We need such a body to help co-ordinate that work. I raised that point with the Minister for Sport and the Olympics during questions to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport a couple of weeks ago. He recognised the issue and said that talks would be taking place on Friday. I am not sure which Friday he was referring to, but there have been a couple of Fridays since then and the issue is as yet unresolved. If Supporters Direct, or an organisation of that type, does not take that role, there is the danger that supporters’ trusts that need to be developed will not get the opportunity to learn from others and proceed with development. Instead, the funding will be fragmented and, as hon. Members will be aware, it is a relatively small amount of money given the wealth that swirls around football, particularly at top level.
As I understand, part of the Premier League’s reasoning concerns comments made by the former chief executive of Supporters Direct. I know that the individual concerned regrets those comments; he has apologised fully and since resigned. I hope therefore, that that issue is not still an impediment to the continuation of Supporters Direct. I realise that that is not the Minister’s direct responsibility, but I hope that he will mention the issue to his colleagues in the Government. It is an important aspect of co-operatives and mutuals and there is a great degree of concern about it.
I also wish to raise a couple of specific issues about credit unions. The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn spoke eloquently and passionately about the role of credit unions. I am fortunate in having a number of credit unions in my constituency, and everybody is covered by the bond for credit unions. Blantyre and South Lanarkshire credit union means that the whole of South Lanarkshire is covered, and there are a number of smaller credit unions in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Hamilton.
On Friday I met representatives from the WHEB credit union—Whitehill, Hillhouse, Earnock and Burnbank—which operates in a small part of Hamilton in my constituency. I raised a couple of issues with them that refer back to the comments made by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, particularly in relation to the potential for credit unions in the future. The ambitious and appropriate programme for future development will do a huge amount of good to the credit union movement and to consumers, but we must be aware of the concerns felt by smaller credit unions that they do not get lost in a drive that could end up with larger credit unions effectively taking them over. I say that because WHEB credit union, for example, is tied to a specific, but quite small geographical area and has a relatively small number of members in comparison with other credit unions. WHEB is trusted in that area because it is seen by members of the community as a sound source of credit and a reliable organisation. I am slightly concerned that in the drive to develop credit unions, some of the smaller and community credit unions could be left behind. I do not want that to happen.
I have a further point, which is relevant to the Minister’s responsibilities. WHEB told me last week that one problem that happens more and more frequently is where people join the credit union and save the minimum amount needed to have access to a small loan. They then take out that small loan and almost immediately apply to become bankrupt, which they use as an opportunity to get over the repayments. I appreciate that insolvency is a devolved issue, and that accountancy and bankruptcy are devolved responsibilities in Scotland, but part of the problem I have described is because of radio adverts, for example, that say to people “We can help you get rid of your debts by you becoming bankrupt”, without explaining some of the consequences. We hear about such things more and more frequently, and we heard during earlier contributions about some of the other advertising that goes on. There are examples of people using credit unions to save enough to be able to borrow money, and they then default on their debts.
That issue was raised with me because, as I have already said, WHEB is a small, community credit union—I am sure there are many others—and it is not well placed to absorb the number of insolvencies that are taking place. I was told that there were seven such cases over the past month. That might not sound like a lot, but for a small credit union in that area it is starting to have a significant impact and causing concern. Perhaps when the Minister responds, he will address the issue of advertising for such services, which, given the way the adverts seem to suggest to people that all their problems could be over, borders on irresponsible. The effect on smaller credit unions is an unintended consequence of that.
Damian Hinds
I am conscious that the debate is about co-operatives and mutuals, so I do not want to draw the hon. Gentleman too much further into this area, but does he agree that part of the problem is that, these days, the route that people end up pursuing in an alleged solution to their debt problems seems to be driven far more by which advert they see first, rather than which type of solution is most appropriate to them? In some cases, it will be insolvency, but in many others it is not, regardless of the fact that the specific firm that they go to may have charges that are inappropriately high.
Tom Greatrex
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I am under no illusion that the issue is an easy one for the Government to tackle, but I wanted to reflect the concern and raise it with the Minister. I am sure that he is aware of it, but I hope that he will comment on it.
Finally, I want to reflect on the importance of mutuals and co-ops. This has so far been a very good debate, covering a wide range of issues. That highlights the wide range of co-operatives and mutual organisations that exist. They are not just an interesting historical relic, but a huge opportunity for the present and for the future. In relation to Supporters Direct, I am pleased that the coalition agreement is explicit about the positive role that can be played by supporters having ownership of football clubs on a mutual basis. However, some contributions to this debate have reflected the fact that there are a lot of warm words on this issue and we now, across the parties, want to see those transformed into action on the specific points that we have discussed. I hope that the Minister will be able to reflect on and respond to those points and give Opposition Members some comfort that the rediscovery of mutualism by a wider range of people means that there is a real, lasting and meaningful commitment to helping to develop mutual solutions to some of the issues that the country faces.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the opportunity to have this debate and I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on convincing the Backbench Business Committee to allow it to be held. I also echo the welcome for the opportunity to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.
I am a member of the Co-op party; indeed, I am privileged to chair the Co-op party, and to be a Labour and Co-op MP. I therefore particularly welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate for the official Opposition. As other hon. Members have said, it is taking place during co-operatives fortnight, which runs until 9 July. It is an opportunity to celebrate the considerable contribution that co-ops and mutuals make to British economic and social and cultural life. However, it would be wrong of me, speaking for the official Opposition, not to go further and undertake some scrutiny of the Government’s record to date on providing assistance, or not, to the co-op sector.
First, let me acknowledge the contributions made by hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West, in setting out the scope of the debate, rightly alluded to the stereotypical view of the co-op movement that there certainly was throughout the 1990s and the early part of the current century. It saw co-ops not as dynamic and forward looking, but as things that were associated very much with the past. He rightly drew attention to the considerable change in the fortunes and perceptions of the co-op movement. I am sure that he shares my view that part of the reason for the turnaround in the perception of the co-op ideal in recent years has been the performance of the Co-op Group, notably under Len Wardle as chair and Peter Marks as chief executive.
I also echo my hon. Friend’s tribute to Cliff Mills, a solicitor from Cobbetts and an expert on the law surrounding co-ops. When I had the privilege of taking a private Member’s Bill through the House in 2002-03 that, I hope, began the process of modernising co-op law, Cliff Mills was a huge support and source of expertise. My hon. Friend was right to pay tribute to him.
The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) rightly drew attention to the contribution that credit unions make and to their considerable potential to do more. He drew attention to the opportunity for the current Government to build on the work of the previous Government in encouraging access to credit unions. He gently asked—I paraphrase—why on earth the Government had not got on with the legislative reform order. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us when that order might appear before us.
A number of hon. Members drew attention to the difficulties that many people in the community that we represent have in needing to access money. I remember from my time in government the huge concern that grew and still exists today, which no doubt the Minister will want to comment on, in relation to illegal money lending. I pay tribute to my predecessor as the Minister responsible for consumer affairs, Ian McCartney, for, among other things, creating the concept of illegal money lending teams. That resulted in multidisciplinary teams, whose members included police and people from housing associations. They worked together not only to crack down on loan sharks, many of whom were particularly unpleasant individuals—there has been real success in bringing loan sharks to justice—but to ensure that victims had support to get out of the financial problems that had drawn them into the web of the loan sharks. Credit unions were often a crucial part of helping the victims of loan sharks to move towards a more sustainable future. In that context, I will come in due course to a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn made about access to credit unions across the country.
The hon. Member for East Hampshire raised the issues relating to social ISAs. I would be interested in the Minister’s response to the view expressed by the hon. Member for East Hampshire about their potential. The Minister may be aware of the Big Lottery Fund’s launch of a social impact bond—a particular model that it has backed. Again, I would welcome hearing from the Minister the Government’s view on whether that bond has considerably more potential and in particular whether it has the potential to help co-operatives to expand, perhaps in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) alluded to in the context of renewable energy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn drew attention to the success of Tower colliery following its conversion to a worker-led co-operative. I echo his praise of the leadership of the colliery. I enjoyed my visit to Islwyn with him. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to see the Islwyn community credit union. Some fantastic people are involved in the leadership and running of that organisation and are making a real difference to his community. He referred to the considerable success that Wales has had in ensuring that there is access to a credit union for anyone and everyone in Wales if they want to join one. That is surely an ambition that we should have for England. It would be good to hear from the Minister whether the Government share that ambition and what they intend to do about it.
My hon. Friend made a very interesting proposal when he talked about whether we should consider lowering the age at which someone can join a credit union. That might encourage far earlier recognition of the potential of credit unions and thus draw people away from the very high interest rates charged by some of the legal companies. Some of them offer small amounts of money on what are often very high interest rates, relatively.
Damian Hinds
I am sure that the shadow Minister knows that the junior savers club mentioned earlier is not the only one. Many credit unions operate junior savers clubs, which allow young people to become more familiar with credit unions and encourage them to get into the savings habit.
Mr Thomas
Indeed, but that brings me back to what I said about the difference between Wales and England. Credit unions have a far greater reach in Wales than they do in England. We definitely need to see better access to credit unions in England, and better teaching in our schools about their potential to encourage saving from an early age.
The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) made a number of important points about the contribution that co-ops have made. He adds to the pressure on the Government to prove their commitment to the co-op sector, as opposed to making worthy speeches about them. I echo his tribute to the life of Robert Oakshott. However, I gently suggest that he needs to do a little more to convince us that there really is a Conservative co-op movement, and that it is not just an oxymoron. We shall doubtless hear more from him on that subject in due course.
I turn to the contribution of the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). She made a number of references to the role of co-ops in the south-east, and I am sure that that will have been appreciated by the members and leadership of those co-operatives. She also alluded to the possibility of Conservatives standing under the banner of the co-operative movement. I understand why she would want to tone down the Conservative brand at the next election, but I doubt that that will be enough to help her.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) spoke about the role and contribution of supporters trusts. He and the House may not be aware that the two greatest football teams in Wales and England, Swansea City and Arsenal, both have supporters’ trusts, and both have been helped by Supporters Direct. My hon. Friend will know, as will some of my other hon. Friends—but not Government Members, I suspect—that Supporters Direct was originally proposed by the Co-operative party and taken up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) when he worked for Lord Smith of Finsbury.
I join my hon. Friend in urging the Premier League and the Government to sort out the funding problems for Supporters Direct. It would be a terrible tragedy if the misjudged comments of someone who has now resigned from the leadership of Supporters Direct were to undermine the concept of football supporters’ trusts and the ambition of giving fans ownership and some further involvement in the running of football clubs. Perhaps the Minister can give us an indication of the Government’s thinking on that, and say whether they have been able to sort out future funding for Supporters Direct.
A number of hon. Members referred to the contribution of the Rochdale Pioneers. It is worth restating that, in opening their first shop on 21 December 1844, they were responding to the acceleration of mechanisation implicit in the industrial revolution. They put forward fairly radical ideas, typical of the traditions of the centre-left, in challenging the status quo to make things better for their community. In part, they were driven by the terrible poverty in the community and the need to provide people with affordable food. Some Members praised the contribution made by Robert Owen and the other community examples of co-operation in action that took place before the Rochdale Pioneers set up their first shop; they were right to acknowledge that co-operative spirit.
Today, the global co-operative movement has about 800 million members. It employs 100 million people and secures the livelihoods of some 3 billion people—half the world’s population. Indeed, there are 20% more jobs in co-operatives around the world than in multinational corporations. If only the same attention were given to the needs of co-operatives as is given to multinational corporations, the co-op movement would be in even better shape.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West identified the traditions of collective self-help and the entrepreneurial spirit as driving influences in setting up effective co-operatives. As we heard, the UK has almost 5,000 successful co-ops, with almost 13 million members. The turnover of UK co-ops has risen by some 25% over the past three years. Perhaps the best-known example of co-ops in the UK is the Co-op Group, of which the Co-op bank is an essential part. Its move into renewable energy was mentioned by others. There is also, of course, the excellent John Lewis Partnership. If I may crave your indulgence, Mr Amess, I praise also those who are part of the Rainbow Saver credit union, in which I declare an interest, and those who run the excellent Harrow and Hillingdon credit union.
As I said, I had the privilege of piloting a private Member’s Bill through the House, which enjoyed the support of a huge number of co-operatives, including those running Labour clubs, rugby clubs and even armed forces clubs—and, surprising to me at the time, those running Conservative clubs. They all supported my Bill, which helped me to get it past the then Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, one Eric Forth.
Ministers have made a number of positive speeches over the past 12 months or so about the potential contribution of co-operatives, but the Government’s record over that time suggests that the apparent enthusiasm for co-ops shown by the coalition is not backed up by the reality.
The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), who is no longer in his place, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) have, on many occasions, raised the issue of the possible remutualisation of Northern Rock. Indeed, Co-op Members on the Opposition Benches have been pushing for some time for the Government to give serious consideration to the case for remutualisation.
The Government have clearly rejected that option, but it is important that they publish the work that one hopes has been done on that subject by United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd. That is necessary not least because, when the Government said that they intended to sell Northern Rock to the highest bidder, there was much media speculation, presumably briefed by Treasury sources, that the Government did not expect to receive in full what they had injected into the bank. Will the Minister assure the House that all the paperwork that UKFI has produced on the feasibility of remutualisation will be published urgently, so that the House can assess whether UKFI and Deutsche bank, its advisers, did a thorough piece of work?
The Minister will be aware of the real concern about other aspects of the financial mutual world, particularly about the new European capital requirements to enable financial services businesses better to absorb losses, and how they will impact on building societies following the introduction of the new Basel standards. They do potentially pose a threat to the future of building societies. I recognise that the Government have acknowledged that and have been in discussion with European partners. I would welcome an update on that and further reassurance from the Minister that the Government are on the case to ensure that these new requirements do not prevent successful mutuals such as Nationwide, the Coventry and the Principality from being able to play an important role in the financial services sector in future.
The Minister will also have been briefed about the concerns about the future of friendly societies and the way in which the Financial Services Authority has revisited its own rule book and used a piece of legal advice. A former Minister, who was re-elected to the House in 2010, introduced the legislation on which that legal advice is based, but has said that it should not be applied to mutuals. None the less, that legislation is being used by the FSA as the basis of a piece of legal advice, which it will not publish, that is causing a series of friendly societies to face the prospect of demutualisation in the long term. It cannot be in the interests of the country to have an important part of the financial mutual sector facing such a threat.
I appreciate that both Hector Sants, the head of the FSA, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who has responsibility for financial mutuals, have come to the all-party parliamentary group on building societies and financial mutuals to answer questions on the issue. As yet, though, there appears to be no serious effort by the Treasury and the FSA to find a resolution to the problem. I urge the Minister, who has made positive comments about co-operatives and mutuals in the past, to use the influence of his position to turn that situation around.
Furthermore, will the Minister explain what on earth has gone wrong with the coalition’s support for co-operative schools? Schools that want to become co-operative trusts have traditionally been funded to the tune of some £5,000 to help with the process. Currently, there are more than 100 schools that want to become co-operative schools. Given the success of that programme, why has the Education Secretary decided to end funding for that programme?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentioned that the previous Labour Government had intended to announce the mutualisation of British Waterways. Will the Minister explain how it will become a genuinely mutual organisation that involves people other than just a select group of trustees in its running?
The Minister has done much work on the future of the Post Office and has announced plans for it to become a mutual. One of the concerns that has been expressed both on the Opposition Benches and outside the House is about whether or not there is a viable business plan. I welcome the mutualisation of the Post Office, but there needs to be a viable business plan if it is to be successful. Will the Minister provide further clarity on that matter?
Will the Minister explain why the Government have decided to scrap the funding that supports the development of community pubs? The previous Government worked with the Plunkett Foundation to set up a programme to support such pubs. The scrapping of the funding can only hasten the demise of pubs in many communities across the country, making it far more difficult for people to come together and organise themselves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree talked about the failure of the Government to encourage community energy projects. Given that the Minister is a member of the same political party as the person who is responsible for that dismal record, will he pledge to take back to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change the concern of the Chamber over his lack of commitment to co-operative energy projects?
Lastly, in terms of a critique of the coalition’s record on co-operatives, will the Minister explain to the Chamber why the Secretary of State for International Development is refusing to fund again the International Labour Organisation’s project for helping co-operatives in Africa? That programme has had considerable success in helping to strengthen the co-operative model, particularly in the financial sector in Africa, and such a decision seems somewhat at odds with the coalition’s commitment to both international development and co-operatives.
This has been an interesting debate with some important contributions from all parts of the Chamber. None the less, the only conclusion that one can draw after 12 months of the coalition Government is that there have been a lot of fine words about support for co-operatives, but not much action. I hope the Minister will give us some clarity as to when that situation will change.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
This has been a very well informed and, mostly, consensual debate. There was a break-out of competition between the Conservative and Labour parties, but it obviously falls to a Liberal Democrat Minister to bring everyone back to real co-operative principles. It was good to see all contributors to the debate affirming their commitment to that. I can affirm my personal commitment, my party’s commitment and the coalition Government’s commitment to working for the co-operative movement and to developing the mutual sector more broadly.
If we look at the performance of the sector at the moment, we can see that it is in rude health. The turnover of the co-operative movement is slightly more than £33 billion and the turnover of the mutual movement rose to more than £100 billion last year, with more than 1 million employees. Interestingly, the Co-operative Financial Services won the FT sustainable banking award in 2010. Clearly, this is a sector that is doing well.
Another interesting fact is the Co-Operative Group’s takeover of Somerfield, which increased its overall turnover. If it was listed on the FTSE 100, it would be a FTSE top 30 company.
Despite the rather bizarre remarks by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), there have been many strong developments under both Labour and Conservative Governments. I point, for example, to the Oxford Centre for Mutual and Employee-owned Business, which is developing a lot of the thinking and the research so that we can drive forward this agenda in a consensual way. Although this area requires cross-party support, a lot of good things have been happening to it for quite some time.
Let me try to answer some of the points that have been raised during the debate and then I will make some comments about the direction of Government policy. A number of speeches focused on credit unions. My hon. Friends the Members for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and the hon. Members for Islwyn (Chris Evans), and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) spent a considerable amount of time talking about credit unions. This is an area in which the Government would like to see real progress.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire has been a champion of credit unions. I pay tribute to the work that he has been doing in that area. He mentioned that the Department for Work and Pensions has earmarked £73 million to invest in the sector. However, we are not spraying money around in the way in which we have seen in the past; we have done a feasibility study to see where that money can best be spent.
My hon. Friend referred to a proposal by the Association of British Credit Unions, which is one of the main associations that brings together credit unions, to build an IT platform to enable credit unions to work together potentially through the post office network. Such a move would be significant, and it picks up on remarks that hon. Members have made during the debate. There are two real challenges for credit unions. One is to get better access, so that people can access credit unions. Clearly, a better IT platform, particularly if it was linked to the post office network, would be a massive development in improving our constituents’ ability to access credit unions. The second issue is even more important: awareness. There needs to be awareness that this credit source is available and that it can compete with the high-cost merchants that are around.
I want to reflect on something that the hon. Member for Harrow West said. He was quite right to praise his predecessor, Sir Ian McCartney, on setting up the illegal money lending teams. As a Minister, I have ensured that our funding for those teams continues at the levels that we inherited. Given the cuts that we are having elsewhere, that was a significant decision. The reason that we continued their funding is that those teams are successful and they are curbing the criminals who prey on vulnerable people in our communities.
I urge Members to look at how illegal money lending teams are working. I have been privy to a video of their work, from which one anecdote emerged that shows the importance of increasing awareness of the availability of credit unions. A family had borrowed £200 from a “family friend” on their estate and 10 years later, after intimidation and threats of violence, the family had paid back £90,000. It was only when the illegal money lending teams came and helped them, prosecuted their “family friend” and then gave them support as victims of a crime that they became aware of the existence of credit unions. Now they are borrowing from credit unions and they have put their lives back together, which is a tribute to the work of the illegal money lending teams. However, that story tells us an awful lot about this area and how we should approach it; above all, it shows the need to improve people’s awareness of credit unions.
As my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire also said, we need reform in this area of credit unions. We have been waiting for a legislative reform order—I share colleagues’ impatience about that—but it is coming and I am sure that in the autumn we can get it through the House. I am glad that it will have such support and it will make the difference, as my hon. Friend said.
The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West made an interesting point in relation to potential abuse of credit unions by people who then went bankrupt. If he can write to me about that issue, we will be responding—soon, I hope—to the consumer credit and personal insolvency call for evidence. Often, people have not focused on the personal insolvency side of the credit unions issue, and the hon. Gentleman was quite right to focus on it. The link between personal insolvency and credit unions is an important one to make and if there are problems we need to deal with them.
The hon. Gentleman also rightly raised another important issue; although it is not particularly germane to the title of this debate, it is important and I am glad to have the chance to speak about it. He raised the concerns that many of us have about the advertising of debt advice. Frankly, I think that I have broken a few radios as I have thrown things at them when they spew out these tempting adverts. We know that those adverts are a temptation that people should not go for. We need to address debt advice. In that regard, one of the issues also applies to credit unions: the importance of raising awareness so that people know that there is free, quality debt advice available. We must make sure that that is better known. The money advice service is doing some research on debt advice and considering how we can take it forward as a priority.
I want to go back to some of the other issues that were raised in the debate. The issue of Northern Rock raised its head. First, I want to say to some Opposition Members that the list of building societies that demutualised during the previous Labour Government is rather a long one. I suggest to those Members that they would be wise to press the Government very carefully on the issue, not least because my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills pressed the Labour Government to tie up some of the loopholes in that area, which they failed to do. I urge them to be a little more cautious as they approach the Northern Rock issue.
Mr Davey
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I think that he should listen to my full response before intervening.
I can say something to those Opposition Members who raised the issue of Northern Rock. I think it was the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Sassoon, who made a statement recently that we have launched a sale process for Northern Rock. He had written to the all-party group on building societies and financial mutuals, and he made it very clear that any interested parties can bid, including mutuals. That reaffirms the Government’s commitment to promote the mutual financial sector. Having said that, of course, we cannot rule out any other options at this stage. Members may be interested to know that two building societies have expressed an interest in taking over Northern Rock. Remutualisation is an issue that must be addressed in due course by UKFI, but I am not the Minister with responsibility for UKFI. Nevertheless, those remarks that I have just made should reassure colleagues.
Chris Leslie
I am very grateful to the Minister for his recollection of my constituency. He has talked about the trade sale route that the Government have announced for Northern Rock. Notwithstanding the fact that he has said that other building societies might be interested in a direct purchase of Northern Rock, can he say categorically that the member buy-out option, whereby borrowers and savers of Northern Rock might have the chance to enter into a member buy-out arrangement, is still on the table and is still being considered among the other options that he was talking about? I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) has written to the Treasury with the details of the member buy-out option.
Mr Davey
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am not the Minister responsible for Northern Rock and my Department is not responsible for it either, so I would be ill advised to go into detail about it. I have tried to ensure that the Members attending this debate received some answers about that issue and I believe that I have fulfilled that obligation, but he may need to attend Treasury questions to probe further on the issue.
I will now give way to the hon. Member for Harrow West, although I hope that he will bear in mind the answer that I have just given to his hon. Friend.
Mr Thomas
And I would have expected the Minister to have given a better answer than the one he has just given. At the very least, will he commit to write to those Members who have taken part in this debate with the answer to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie)?
Mr Davey
I am quite surprised by the hon. Member for Harrow West, because he has been a Minister and he will absolutely know that there are areas that a Minister does not go into when they are the responsibility of another Department. As I instructed the hon. Member for Nottingham East, I believe that he needs to attend Treasury questions and ask Treasury Ministers about this matter.
Mr Davey
Let me help the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth and the hon. Member for Harrow West, who has twice interrupted me from a sedentary position, by saying that the decisions have not been made yet. If a lot of decisions had been made, I would be very happy to tell right hon. and hon. Members about them and let them ask questions about them.
Alun Michael
I will not go into point scoring of that sort. We know where the demutualisation exercise started and that piece of history is not a very good one.
I say to the Minister that it is normal in exchanges of this sort that, if a Minister is unable to answer a question, they offer to follow up the debate by providing an answer to that question. The difficulty that we have is that very often there is not a good understanding of mutuality within Whitehall; I am talking about official machinery now, particularly in relation to the Treasury. Therefore, there is a fear that a door has been closed that should be kept open. That is what the question is—is the door still open? It is a straightforward question and suggesting that people should attend Treasury questions is not really answering it.
Mr Davey
If the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to listen, I will bring his remarks and those of other Members to the attention of my Treasury colleagues.
Other general issues about mutuals and co-operatives were raised very pertinently by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and indeed by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. They asked how we can develop mutuals. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West made it very clear that we cannot impose mutuals. Mutuals have to take people with them and there cannot be a top-down approach. I absolutely agree with that. In addition, the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth talked about a sense of ownership. When we approach the issue of mutuals—whether that is developing more mutuals in the private sector or developing them through public sector reform—we have to learn those lessons.
I will give two examples, one from my constituency and one connected to my responsibilities. In my constituency, we have one of the first social enterprise mutuals in the health sector—Your Healthcare, which was spun out of a local primary care trust. It has slightly more than 450 employees, and will soon have local community members as well. It has been going for nearly a year, and is already a huge success. The employees feel a much greater sense of empowerment and feel relieved of bureaucracy. They elect their own managers, and have been driving efficiency and improving care. The enterprise is a key part of the reform agenda, and shows how powerful mutuals can be.
The notion of a health mutual in my constituency was first put forward about five years ago, and I pay tribute to the previous Government for being prepared to countenance such an idea. There was a lot of debate, because the Government could not quite agree on the issue, but at least they left the door open. Unfortunately, the PCT went too quickly and tried to tell the staff that they had to form a social enterprise, and from the start the staff were worried about pensions and terms and conditions. The local unions came to me, and I went to the PCT and said, “I think the idea is brilliant, but you have to take people with you,” for the very reasons that the hon. Member for West Bromwich Albion—[Laughter.]—West Bromwich West gave. The PCT stopped the process and re-consulted. It took a lot longer, but the local unions were then very supportive and the mutual has now gone forward very successfully. That is an example from the health sector of how important it is to involve people and to use a bottom-up approach.
The other example is the Post Office mutual proposal, contained in part 1 of the Postal Services Act 2011. If it is appropriate, we can move Post Office Ltd from being Crown-owned to a mutual model, and the hon. Member for Harrow West is absolutely right that we could do that only if the Post Office became commercially viable. The post office network relies on subsidy at the moment, but we are turning that situation around. I refer the hon. Gentleman to our policy paper published in October last year, which contains a whole set of serious business changes that will ensure that the post office network can go forward, wash its face and approach mutualisation. Those proposals are in stark contrast to how the network was run by the previous Government. For all the hon. Gentleman’s big words about mutuals, when we debated the relevant clauses on the mutualisation of the Post Office, neither Labour Front Benchers nor Labour Back Benchers asked a single question or tabled a single amendment. That is how interested they were when a major proposal on mutualisation was introduced to Parliament. It therefore ill behoves the hon. Gentleman to make such criticism when Labour Front Benchers did not even bother to ask questions in Committee or on Report about such a significant mutualisation. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West and the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth were right to make the points they did about mutuals having to work bottom-up.
I want to talk a little more about the Government’s approach. The hon. Member for Harrow West criticised us for not doing anything. Let me be rather more balanced and pay tribute to the previous Government for some of the things they did. The establishment of the new governance model of the community interest company has been very successful. When I recently went to see the community interest company regulator, who is based in Companies House, I heard about many successful CICs that are setting up. The previous Government’s decision to have the NHS right to request in community health care, again was a good thing, as was the development of co-operative trust schools, and we will support those types of initiative. The hon. Member for Harrow West, from a sedentary position, says “How?” He ought to wait a bit and let me finish the list of positive things. I was being positive about the previous Government and therefore he ought not to intervene at this point.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned legislation. The previous Government, through private Member’s Bills with cross-party support, improved the legislative framework. This Government are modernising that framework and taking it forward. We have heard about the legislative reform order. It is currently before Parliament and we hope to debate it in early autumn. We have also enabled greater electronic communication by mutuals, which is a very good deregulatory measure for them, and we will commence shortly the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010. We are consulting on the future registration and regulation of mutual societies as part of Treasury reforms to the landscape of financial services regulation. The Cabinet Office will give public sector workers new rights to form employee-owned mutuals and co-operatives, going much further than the previous Government and generating a huge amount of interest in many areas of the public sector.
In February 2011 we established the mutuals taskforce to advise the Government and to help drive the process forward, finding a way around some of the technical problems that were completely ignored by the previous Government. The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth said that this is not understood; we have set up the mutuals taskforce to drive the process and to get external advice so that we can deal with some of the problems with pensions and other regulatory or technical problems. The mutuals taskforce has already met five times, and is a key development in driving the process forward.
Alun Michael
I am encouraged by what the Minister has just said. Can he assure us, though, that whoever is dealing with that process in the Treasury and the Cabinet Office will not be dismembered and sent off to do other things as soon as they have developed the expertise that is needed? In my experience, once officials grasp the contribution of mutuality they become great enthusiasts, and we need that in Whitehall.
Mr Davey
I am sure that we will learn the lessons from the previous Government’s mistakes.
We have also launched 20 pathfinder mutuals in areas including health, education and housing, to test some of the issues that went untested under the previous Government. The Localism Bill, which we will soon be considering, will give voluntary and community groups the right to challenge local authorities to take over delivery of local services. This is a rich picture of action, and therefore far from not delivering on rhetoric, as the hon. Member for Harrow West tried to maintain, we are indeed delivering.
There are one or two other questions that it would be remiss of me not to answer before I sit down, but I am conscious that I have been speaking for slightly longer than 20 minutes. There were a few questions about Supporters Direct. The Government are actively engaging in talks with the premiership in the hope of resolving the matter. The new head of Supporters Direct will, I hope, smooth some of the ruffled feathers, and perhaps with his efforts and those of the Government some moneys can be unlocked. I think that Members will understand why I cannot say too much more about that.
The hon. Member for East Hampshire asked about social ISAs, and the hon. Member for Harrow West took up the issue. The hon. Member for Harrow West will no doubt be delighted to know that I was not briefed on that question. I am very much in favour of social finance initiatives, such as social impact bonds, community development finance institutions and the big society bank, and think that the Government have been very creative in this area. My colleagues in the Treasury and the Cabinet Office will get a lot of support from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in taking the issues forward.
I welcomed this debate, and it has been a good one. I wish the hon. Member for Harrow West had not brought so many partisan things into it, such as mentioning Swansea and Arsenal, but apart from that I am sure that collectively, as a Parliament, we will take forward this very important agenda.
Mr Bailey
Perhaps I had better start by saying that I am the Member for West Bromwich West, not West Bromwich Albion. Representing, as I do, a constituency that is evenly divided between West Bromwich Albion supporters and Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters, I am always anxious to demonstrate that my football loyalty resides with Cheltenham Town football club. I am a season ticket holder there and a member of the supporters’ trust.
This has been a good debate. There has been some political partisanship, but that is good, and it is probably good for the co-operative movement that the Government are being put on their political mettle to demonstrate their level of commitment. It struck me that it would have been almost impossible to have this debate 10 years ago, because the movement had not then demonstrated how important it is, not just to the economy but to the development of policies relevant to each of the party’s political platform. I ought to mention that that is demonstrated pictorially, and effectively in the Co-operatives UK report “The UK co-operative economy 2011: Britain’s return to co-operation”. If Members have not read it, I recommend that they do so. It is a succinct and easy-to-read document, just right for Members of Parliament, and it graphically and effectively demonstrates the range of co-operatives, their impact and their potential.
Turning to the issues raised, credit unions were mentioned a lot. We will wait with bated breath for the legislative reform order, but it is good that the Government have at least recognised the issue and are prepared to take action to advance that agenda. It has always been a source of amazement to me that credit unions, so powerful in a number of countries that are not regarded as cradles of co-operation, do not seem to have taken off in this country. There is enormous potential for a Government to provide the right legislative background for them to do so, and I welcome that.
There was a fairly sharp political exchange on Northern Rock. From my perspective, there is definitely a feeling in the financial press and elsewhere that the option of any form of mutual ownership has been closed. The Minister says that the door is open and that mutuals still have the opportunity to bid. However, I get the feeling that the conventional Treasury-backed wisdom is that that is not appropriate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) made a point about Treasury thinking.
The Minister commented on the previous Government’s record on de-mutualisation. I cannot remember exactly which building society de-mutualised when, but I know that when Labour first came to office, co-operators found it difficult to get the Treasury and Whitehall to understand what made mutual organisations and co-operatives different and what potential they had. Numerous battles were fought to obtain that recognition, some of them through the passage of private Members’ Bills; my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) piloted one of them. Over time, we were successful. I do not say that we have won every battle, or that there are not battles still to be fought, but we undoubtedly gained much greater recognition of that difference and the importance of the model within the range of financial services. We need reassurance that that opportunity still exists. If it is rejected, we need the reasons for the rejection to be clearly stated and understandable by the co-op movement.
Several other issues were raised, including that of the Post Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West said that we are happy that the model is being considered for Post Office, but given the interdependence of Royal Mail and Post Office, the right business relationship between them is needed so that a co-operatively or mutually run Post Office is not undermined. It would be disastrous to the movement for an organisation of the sheer scale and public standing of Post Office to be made into a mutual in such a way that the financial model undermined it and it was not successful. That could put back the cause of mutuality and co-operation for many years.
My last point concerns an issue on which there was a lively exchange—Conservative co-operators, whom I welcome. It is a reflection of the success of the movement that so many politicians are now willing to jump on that bandwagon. However, some of us were co-operators through the difficult days of the ’70s and ’80s and have brought our battle scars into Parliament with us. The commitment and capacity of Conservatives to claim co-operative credentials will be judged only when they can demonstrate what they have delivered during this Parliament. Co-operators such as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West can do so, having piloted a co-operative Bill through the Commons. A range of changes were made as a result of pressure applied by Co-operative Members of Parliament. We in the Opposition are looking at Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members to see whether they can do the same with their Government.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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European Court of Justice Judgment (Use of Gender by Insurers)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
On 1 March, the European Court of Justice ruled that the use of gender as a risk factor by insurers should not result in individual differences in premiums and benefits for men and women, with effect from 21 December 2012.
The Government were very disappointed with this result, which it expects to have a negative impact on consumers. The judgment goes against the grain of the common sense approach to equality which the UK Government want to see. The Government believe that nobody should be treated unfairly because of their gender, but that financial services providers should be allowed to make sensible decisions based on sound analysis of relevant risk factors.
However, in the light of our obligation to implement the judgment, this statement sets out the Government’s understanding of the judgment; their intention to amend the Equality Act 2010; and the steps we are taking in Europe to secure legal certainty and to ameliorate the worse effects for consumers.
Legal interpretation and domestic policy approach
The Government’s view is that the judgment only applies to new contracts for insurance and related financial services entered into on or after 21 December 2012. In such contracts, the use of gender as a risk factor should not result in individual differences in premiums and benefits for men and women. However, any contracts with gender-sensitive pricing of premiums or benefits concluded ahead of 21 December 2012 can continue unchanged after that date. We will therefore proceed with amendments to schedule 3 of the Equality Act 2010. These amendments would be effected by Statutory Instrument under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, which we propose to make early next year. Beforehand, the Government propose to issue a consultation on a draft order, including a full impact assessment, in the autumn.
European policy approach
The Government are working with the European Commission and other member states to ensure a unanimous view across the EU of the implications of the judgment, and the factors that need to be considered by member states in their implementation of the judgment.
While other EU member states and the European Commission are still considering the issues raised by the judgment, early indications are that our interpretation is shared across Europe. In view of the need for legal certainty, our preferred outcome would be an amendment of the gender directive to give effect to the judgment. We are therefore disappointed that the Commission has said it has no plans to propose any amendment, leaving the text of the directive inconsistent with the court’s decision. In view of the 21 December 2012 deadline, we will continue to work with other member states to press the Commission to propose such an amendment at the earliest opportunity.
The Commission has said that it proposes to issue guidance on the interpretation of the judgment and its implementation by member states. Although guidance will not offer all the advantages of a legislative amendment, we nevertheless welcome this and will work constructively to ensure it is as helpful and clear as possible. In view of industry’s need for early clarity about how to implement the judgment, we will press the Commission to bring this forward as soon as possible.
Industrial Action
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I am updating the House on the impact of the strike action by the PCS union on the civil service today.
I can confirm that our latest data gathered from all Government Departments show that, as of 12 noon today, just less than 100,000 civil servants were on strike. This is around a fifth of the total civil service work force.
The civil service has rigorous contingency plans in place to ensure that essential public services are maintained during periods of industrial action. For example, I can confirm to the House that:
Nearly all jobcentres are open for business, with only a handful closed to the public.
All UK borders are open and operating with only minor delays to the travelling public.
150 out of 159 HMRC enquiry centres are open for business as usual.
All HMRC contact centres are open and online services to the public are operating as usual.
Very few civil servants wanted this strike at all, and less than 10% of them voted for it. Less than half of PCS’s own members chose to take part today, and far fewer than in previous strikes in 2004 and 2007. The vast majority of hard working public sector employees do not support today’s premature and unjustified strike and have come into work today.
The Government are still in detailed discussions with the trade unions on public sector pension reform. We had a constructive meeting on Monday, which was one of a series of ongoing talks the Government have committed to with the TUC, and further meetings have been scheduled for July.
The Government are committed to working openly and constructively with the trade unions on public sector pensions and we believe both sides have a responsibility to see the talks through. This is a genuine consultation in order to try to agree a way forward with the unions.
The reform of public sector pensions is essential, but we will ensure that public sector pensions will still be among the very best, with a guaranteed pension which very few private sector staff now enjoy. But they will be paid later because people live longer. And public sector staff will pay more, for a fairer balance between what they pay and what other taxpayers pay.
We know that pension reform is an important issue and one that public sector staff care about a great deal. I want to thank the vast majority of hard working public sector employees for coming in to work today, ignoring the pickets and putting the public first.
News Corp/BSkyB Merger
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I am today publishing the results of the consultation on the undertakings in lieu I launched on 3 March alongside the subsequent advice I have received from Ofcom and the OFT. The consultation did not produce any information which has caused Ofcom and the OFT to change their earlier advice to me. I could have decided to accept the original undertakings. However a number of constructive changes have been suggested, and as a result, I am today publishing a revised, more robust set of undertakings and will be consulting on them until midday Friday 8 July.
As previously, I was not required to involve independent regulators in assessing the revised undertakings. However I have again done so, and sought their independent advice. I am today also publishing that advice, which after careful consideration I have decided to accept.
Background
On 3 March I informed the House that based on advice that I had received from OFT and Ofcom, I was minded to accept undertakings from News Corp in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission. As the Enterprise Act 2002 requires, I published these undertakings for a public consultation which ended on 21 March.
I received over 40,000 representations to this consultation, including a very large number of near-identical responses as a result of internet campaigns. I have placed summaries of the main responses on the DCMS website. I met representatives from Trinity Mirror, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph Media Group, Associated News and Media, and Slaughter and May on 24 March and met Avaaz on 15 April. Notes of meetings will be published at the end of the process.
The substantive points have been carefully considered by me, advised by the independent regulators.
The Carriage and Brand Licensing Agreements
The carriage and brand licensing agreements are an important part of this process and I will only accept the undertakings once I have approved these agreements.
These documents have been reviewed in great detail by OFT, Ofcom and external lawyers. I believe that their independent, expert advice provides confidence that the undertakings and key agreements are robust. They have concluded that the drafts of the carriage agreement and the brand licence agreement are now fully consistent with the proposed undertakings. In addition, OFT confirm that the terms of the carriage agreement and brand licensing agreement mean that Sky News will be practically and financially viable for the lifetime of the carriage agreement. I can now therefore confirm that I am satisfied with both agreements and am able to approve them in line with the requirement in the undertakings. I will not be publishing these agreements given the nature and the extent of the commercially confidential material they contain.
Undertakings in Lieu
I received advice from Ofcom and OFT on 22 June, copies of which have been placed on the DCMS website. Both regulators are clear that the points raised in the consultation exercise do not require them to change their previous advice to me. Nevertheless, there have been some constructive suggestions for strengthening the undertakings which I am minded to accept.
Editorial Independence
A number of changes have now been made to the undertakings to strengthen further the arrangements for editorial independence:
Sky News’ articles of association set out the definition of independent directors;
Meetings of the board of Sky News about editorial or journalistic matters will
only be quorate if an independent director with senior editorial and/or journalistic expertise is present. Similar arrangements apply to the corporate governance and editorial committee. This is a response to representations that these arrangements could be undermined if this director was often unavailable for meetings for whatever reason. The change will ensure that Sky News organises its business so as to ensure that there is always appropriate senior editorial and/or journalistic expertise at relevant meetings.
The appointment of a monitoring trustee whose main role is to ensure that News Corp complies with the undertakings and make sure that News Corp does not do anything
“that would prevent Newco [i.e. the spun off Sky News] being placed in an overall position of editorial, governance, commercial and financial independence in which it will contribute to plurality as Sky News did prior to the Transaction”.
Business viability
Some representations were made about Sky News’ continued financial viability. I consider that Sky News’ financial viability is adequately secured through the carriage and brand licensing agreements. However, in the light of representations received in response to the consultation exercise, I am proposing to modify the undertakings to ensure that Sky continues to cross-promote Sky News on its channels to a level and in a manner comparable with such cross-promotion for the period of 12 months prior to the date on which the undertakings are accepted. This is important to ensure that Sky News continues to enjoy the same promotional support as the current business.
Also, the monitoring trustee will provide advice to me in my review of the key operational agreements requiring my approval to ensure that they are fair and reasonable.
Articles of Association
Because so many of the safeguards are contained in the articles of association, including the requirement that Sky News’ services will abide by the principle of editorial independence and integrity in news reporting, the undertakings have been amended so that I have to approve them. Furthermore, News Corp has offered an additional undertaking not to attempt to cause Sky News to act in breach of its articles of association. A copy has been published along with the consultation document and the revised undertakings.
These are the main changes. All the changes are set out in the published revised undertakings, and a more detailed explanation of the reasons for the changes is included in the consultation document and OFT’s report. In my view, they provide a further layer of very important safeguards. As amended, I believe that the undertakings will remedy, mitigate, or prevent the threats to plurality which were identified at the start of this process. I therefore propose to accept the undertakings in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission.
I have today placed on my Department’s website a revised version of the undertakings and an associated consultation document. There will now be a final consultation period starting today and ending at midday on Friday 8 July. During this time all interested parties will be able to express their views on the revised undertakings.
Once again I will seek the advice of Ofcom and the OFT on any responses to this consultation. As expert regulators they are best placed to thoroughly understand the issues and to offer comprehensive and impartial advice. Once I have considered these representations and the independent regulators’ advice, I will reach a decision on whether I still consider that the undertakings should still be accepted in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission. If, after the consultation, I remain of the view that the undertakings properly address the concerns about media plurality, I will accept them and not refer this merger to the Competition Commission.
I am required to publish the revised undertakings in lieu and an explanation as to why I have made the proposed changes, and I have done so. In the interests of transparency I have also published a number of other documents where there is no legal requirement upon me to do so. These are: the advice I have received from OFT and Ofcom; the Articles of Association of Sky News; and a summary of responses to the consultation process. The carriage agreement and the brand licence agreement have not beeen published given the nature and the extent of the commercially confidential material they contain. I hope that this openness will help strengthen public confidence in the process and decision.
Other issues raised in the consultation
During the consultation period, a number of issues were raised that were not material to the issue of media plurality.
A number of respondents raised competition issues. In addition to the fact that this could not be considered as part of the media plurality public interest test, these issues have already been considered by the European Commission which concluded on 21 December last year that the increased shareholding would not significantly impede effective competition.
Some respondents also argued that News Corp could not be relied upon to abide by the requirements set out in the undertakings, citing previous guarantees and assurances given by News in the past, and the current phone-hacking allegations against The News of the World.
I have taken the view that News has offered serious undertakings and discussed them in good faith. In all the circumstances, and given that the implementation of those undertakings will be overseen by the monitoring trustee and thereafter monitored, and if necessary enforced, by the OFT, I believe that there are sufficient safeguards to ensure compliance with the undertakings. Furthermore, the various agreements entered into pursuant to the undertakings will each be enforceable contracts. Therefore while the phone-hacking allegations are very serious they were not material to my consideration.
I would also like to draw attention to a point stressed by Ofcom in its report. Namely, that the undertakings must be assessed against the fact that the plurality concerns arose out of a change in the degree of control News Corporation has over Sky. The undertakings do not and should not seek to establish Sky News in a position where News Corporation has no relationship with it at all, because today News Corporation controls 37.19% of Sky’s voting shares.
I am committed to maintaining the free and independent press for which this country is famous. I have sought and published independent advice throughout this process. I have listened carefully to points made in the consultation and amended the undertakings where appropriate. I have also gone for maximum transparency while taking reasonable account of commercial confidentiality considerations. I continue to believe that, if I allow this deal to proceed, Sky News will be able to continue its high-quality output and in fact will have greater protections for its operational and editorial independence than those that exist today.
Review of Statutory Duties on Local Authorities
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)
In March, I announced our intention to take stock of the statutory duties placed on local authorities by central Government and at that time, I committed to keeping the House informed of progress.
At no point in recent history has there been a comprehensive list of the legal duties placed on councils.
The Government therefore agreed with the Local Government Association that we should compile a list of these duties to give clarity about what these duties are. We recognise that many ensure the provision of vital front line services but there are others which may be creating unnecessary burdens and bureaucracy for local authorities.
We published the draft list in March and invited local authorities and the general public to respond, identifying any existing duties that needed to be added to the list to make it more comprehensive and identify any that were redundant. For the avoidance of doubt, inclusion of a particular duty on the overall list was not an indication that the Government were considering that duty for removal.
The opportunity to comment closed in April. We received much public interest with over 6,000 respondents. Many respondents focused on protecting vital services, such as support for disabled children and children with special educational needs, allotments and libraries, all of which we have committed to maintaining. There was also significant interest in removing process-based requirements placed on local authorities as an important step in moving towards a decentralised system of governance.
This review has not happened in isolation, for example, the Munro review on child protection and the Law Commission’s work on adult social care are currently being considered by Government. This work did not seek to pre-empt the outcomes of such reviews.
From the outset, we have been clear this is an exercise in compiling as comprehensive a list of duties as possible and obtaining feedback on those thought to be redundant. We said unequivocally that the Government would not remove any statutory duties that protect vital front line services.
In closing this review 1 am today publishing a summary of responses and the latest revised list of duties, which has been updated with feedback from the responses received. I have made both available on the Department's website:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/decentralisation/tacklingburdens/reviewstatutoryduties/
Also, I have placed a copy of the summary by my Department and the latest revised list of duties in the Library of the House.
At the point of publication of the consultation, we had identified that there were at least 1,294 duties imposed on each local authority. Between 1997-2009, 647 duties were imposed that are still current today. The table below illustrates the introduction of new duties by Government Administration:
Table: Statutory duties placed on local government by central Government extant in 2011 by Government Administration
By period of Introduction | Proportion |
|---|---|
Pre-1979 | 8% |
1979-1996 | 39% |
1997-2009 | 50% |
2010-2011 | 3% |
100% |
This exercise has successfully enabled a clearer picture of the requirements placed on local authorities, and created a valuable record that had previously never existed.
Any future consideration of whether to remove specific duties or associated guidance will be a separate process, and we will consult further as appropriate.
Individual Electoral Registration
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
I am announcing today the publication of draft legislation on individual electoral registration (IER) for pre-legislative scrutiny. The draft legislation is accompanied by a White Paper which sets out the proposals for how this will be implemented.
An electoral register that is secure and trusted, and as complete and accurate as possible, is a key component for our democracy. It is widely recognised that the current system of electoral registration, which has been in place since the early twentieth century, is outdated and requires change. It is also clear that, although proven electoral fraud is relatively rare, there is widespread concern about electoral fraud in this country.
In the coalition programme for government we said we would
“reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of Individual Electoral Registration”.
I announced on 15 September 2010 our intention to legislate to speed up the move to IER by introducing it into Great Britain fully during this Parliament, in 2014. Individual electoral registration will bring greater protection against electoral fraud and modernise our electoral system. IER will ask each person to register themselves, rather than by household, and provide information which will be cross checked by registration officers before a person is added to the electoral register.
Learning from the experience in Northern Ireland we have put in place arrangements to help people manage the transition to the new system. Any electors who do not respond to the initial invitation to register under IER in 2014 will be carried forward unless the registration officer has concerns the registration is ineligible. An individual registration would be required for new registrations and for any elector who wishes to use an absent vote.
The White Paper also considers how else the system of electoral registration could be modernised, making it easier and more convenient to register to vote. Reforming the system also provides the opportunity to take steps to tackle the problem of under-registration. The UK’s registration rate compares well internationally but evidence suggests that a significant number of people are missing from the register. This year data-matching pilots will allow registration officers to compare their electoral register with other public databases to identify people missing from the register or entries on the register that are inaccurate or fraudulent. If data matching proves effective, we will consider rolling it out more widely across the country.
It should be made absolutely clear that no new national databases will be created and that no additional information will be placed on the electoral register as a result of the changes to the system.
We are committed to ensuring there is sufficient funding for implementation, with £108 million allocated over the course of the spending review period. We have also sought to reduce costs where possible and have already cut £74 million of the costs of the previous Government’s plans by dropping the voluntary phase.
In developing the proposals in the draft legislation and the White Paper we have worked closely with and listened to the views of stakeholders. I thank those who have already provided valuable input into the development of the proposals, and welcome input during the pre-legislative scrutiny period from those and others who have not yet had the opportunity to engage with us.
Copies of the White Paper and draft legislation have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Memorandum of Understanding (UK Government and the Devolved Administrations)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
A meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) of Ministers from the UK Government and the three devolved Administrations took place at 10 Downing Street on 8 June 2011. With respect to the Memorandum of Understanding between their Administrations, the Ministers agreed, first, that amendments should be made to the memorandum; and, secondly, that the secretariat to the JMC should initiate a technical review of the memorandum which should report to the domestic and/or European sub-committees of the JMC in due course.
The amendments to the memorandum focus on the dispute-resolution protocol contained in annex A.3. The purpose of the amendments is to allow for the possibility of an independent third-party providing an analysis of an inter-administration dispute where all four administrations agree that independent analysis would be helpful.
A copy of the memorandum has been placed in the Library of the House and can be found in the Vote Office and on the Cabinet Office website, www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Industrial Action in Schools
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
On Tuesday I gave a statement to the House on this Government’s response to the planned industrial action by two of the classroom unions. In that response I outlined the action I had taken and I also provided data on likely closures based on early estimates from local authorities and academies.
We now have a fuller picture, updated this morning based on data from all 152 local authorities and all 707 academies.
Our data show that 5,679 local authority schools were closed, 4,999 were partially open and 5,860 were fully open, while the situation with a further 4,320 has not been reported to us.
The figures also show that of the 707 academies and city technology colleges, 201 were closed, 235 were partially open and 271 fully open.
This means that 27% of all local authority schools were closed, 24% were partially open and 28% were open. Data were unavailable for the remaining 21%. Of the academies, 28% were closed, 33% were partially open, and 38% open.
I know that many teachers are concerned about the changes that have been proposed to their pensions. But I believe that we must resolve these differences through discussions and that the action today, while discussions are still going on, was disappointing and unnecessary. I am grateful to head teachers and governors who have worked hard to keep schools open. And I am particularly grateful to all those school staff who—while they may also have concerns about pensions—have decided to go into work today to minimise the impact on pupils and their parents. However, I am also disappointed that there has been disruption to the lives of so many parents across the country. The Government remain committed to discussing pension reforms with all the teacher unions openly, honestly and constructively.
Simplifying the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
Last year in the annual energy statement my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State announced that we would consider the future of the climate change agreements and review the CRC energy efficiency scheme. We did this because we wanted to ensure that the policies we had inherited from the previous Administration were fit for the future, and that any regulations we retained were less burdensome for business, and more practicable. Today we will set out our initial conclusions following a helpful dialogue with business, the public sector and regulators. As part of this, we have considered radical options, including the possibility of scrapping either or both of the schemes to simplify the landscape. We have concluded that in order to achieve our objectives, while at the same time minimising burdens on business, we will retain and simplify both the CRC and CCAs, with a particular emphasis on ensuring the overlaps are removed and the schemes are each streamlined.
The first reporting year of the CRC is now over, and many organisations are, for the first time, identifying and recording their entire energy use. Over this period we have seen the importance of the CRC for stimulating the market for new low-carbon goods and service industries—including in energy measurement, in voltage optimisers and in low-energy lighting. I expect this to continue.
Today my Department, together with the devolved Administrations, publishes a vision for the way ahead in simplifying the CRC scheme. This document sets out the main simplifications that we would like to propose for formal consultation early next year. These proposals will provide greater business certainty by continuing the fixed price sales into the second phase (rather than auctions of allowances in a capped system), as recommended by the Committee on Climate Change and requested by stakeholders. Our proposals will provide business with greater flexibility by allowing organisations to participate as natural business units. They will also reduce the administrative burden; for example by reducing the number of the fuels which are subject to the scheme from 29 to four. We will also reduce the complexity of the scheme by removing the 90% rule and CCA exemption rules, while achieving broadly the same outcomes and remove any overlap between schemes at registration. In particular, businesses covered entirely by CCAs will not need to register and we will no longer require EU ETS installations to purchase allowances for electricity supplies.
Some have suggested that we should replace the CRC with a conventional tax. After considering this, and other policy alternatives suggested by stakeholders, we have decided to retain the CRC, in a simplified form. We believe that the tailored combination of reputational, financial and standardised energy measurement and monitoring drivers remain the most effective way to tackle the barriers to the uptake of energy efficiency. We have ample evidence that price alone does not ensure non-energy intensive organisations implement cost-effective energy efficiency measures which are available to them. Therefore, we consider the simplified CRC—alongside the Green Deal—is the best way to achieve greater energy efficiency and contribute to meeting our carbon budgets in the relevant sectors.
These proposed changes provide the basis for a simplified CRC and certainty for the future. We will review CRC and its fit with other policy measures in 2017.
Following the Budget announcement to increase CCA participants’ tax relief and extend the scheme until 2023, and as part of the considerations to streamline and simplify the policy landscape we have also considered options for the future of CCAs. We will shortly publish a consultation on revisions to the scheme to reduce its administrative burden on participants. We are exploring moving the future administration of the scheme to the Environment Agency, to exploit the synergies with the EU Emissions Trading System and the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, already administered by the agency. This will give industry a one stop shop for energy efficiency regulation. Target negotiation will remain a matter for Government and the sectors.
Finally, we have looked at the interplay between the EU Emissions Trading System and UK regulation, in particular how the UK can best implement the provisions in the directive that allow for small emitters to opt out. My officials are continuing to discuss options with the European Commission and are developing proposals on the “equivalent measures” as required by the directive. These discussions have not yet concluded. I am grateful for the assistance my Department has received from the UK Emissions Trading Group in making the case to Brussels for proportionate implementation of the directive.
In order to ensure our CRC proposals maximise the simplification opportunities, and take account of all the lessons learned in the first full reporting cycle, DECC and the devolved Administrations will continue the informal dialogue with participants throughout this autumn. My Department and the devolved Administrations will welcome comments on our proposed way forward published today. We will then formally consult on legislative proposals early next year.
Pet Travel Scheme
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
Today I am announcing changes to the rules on the movement of pet dogs, cats and ferrets into the UK under the pet travel scheme. These changes will make it cheaper and easier for people to travel with their pets while putting in place proportionate controls to prevent rabies incursion and enabling the UK to maintain its rabies-free status.
The pet travel scheme is the system of controls in place to reduce the risk of rabies and certain parasites from entering the UK via the importation of domestic pet animals.
Before pets can enter the UK under the pet travel scheme they must meet certain animal health requirements, such as being vaccinated against rabies, which are laid down in European Union (EU) law (EC Regulation 998/2003). The EU regulation applies to all pet dogs, cats and ferrets moving between member states and from non-EU countries into the EU and sets out standard entry conditions. The regulation currently provides two temporary derogations to the UK to apply more stringent controls on rabies, ticks and tapeworm. These derogations expire on 31 December 2011.
Having considered all the options very carefully, I have decided, in agreement with ministerial colleagues in the devolved Administrations, that from 1 January 2012 the UK will harmonise its controls on rabies with the EU-wide pet movement system. This is in line with the positions of Ireland, Sweden and Malta who will also be harmonising their rabies controls from this date.
The key differences between the current pet travel scheme rules and how they will change from the 1 January 2012 are:
Pets travelling from other EU member states and “listed” third countries (countries which the EU considers do not present a higher risk of rabies incursion compared to movements within the EU, for example USA, Australia and Japan) will no longer need to be blood tested after they have been vaccinated against rabies.
Pets travelling from other EU member states and listed third countries will only have to wait 21 days following their rabies vaccination before they can enter the UK, rather than waiting 6 months as they do now.
Pets travelling from “unlisted” third countries (countries which have not applied or been accepted for listed status because of less robust veterinary or administrative systems or higher rabies incidence, such as China, India and South Africa) will no longer be required to undergo six months’ compulsory quarantine and will be able to enter the UK if they meet certain requirements These include being microchipped and having been vaccinated against rabies and passed a blood test. They will not be allowed to enter the UK for at least four months after the date of the vaccination.
Pet owners who need to travel to the UK at short notice will continue to have the option of voluntarily placing their pet in UK quarantine, where it will be required to undergo the necessary health treatments, such as being vaccinated and blood tested if required, before being released.
The European Commission has given a strong indication that it will shortly come forward with proposals that would enable the UK and other tapeworm-free countries to retain tapeworm controls with a treatment window of one to five days. There will be no mandatory tick treatment before pets enter the UK.
Rabies
The proposed changes to the controls on rabies are proportionate to the disease risks involved and are scientifically justified. Since the UK pet travel scheme was introduced in 2000, the likelihood of a human case of rabies in Europe has substantially reduced as a result of an effective and ongoing programme to reduce the disease in the domestic and wild animal populations of EU member states, together with improvements in the accessibility to rabies vaccination and post-exposure treatment. There has been not one reported case of rabies in the EU associated with the legal movement of pets under the EU pet movement system since it was introduced in 2004, with many hundreds of thousands of pet movements having taken place during that time.
This reduction in the level of rabies across the EU is reflected in the findings of a quantitative risk assessment undertaken for Defra by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency. Their report, which has been peer reviewed, concluded that the risk of a rabies case in the UK will remain very low when we harmonise with the EU pet movement rules, with a chance of, on average, one case in 211 years. The risk of an outbreak leading to a human fatality in the UK would be much lower. This report has been published on the Defra website today.
In addition to the robust scientific case for harmonisation, these revised pet movement rules will deliver substantial benefits to UK pet owners, particularly those people with assistance dogs, making it easier and more affordable for the people who presently travel from the UK and back with their pets (on average 100,000) each year and will open opportunities for many more to travel abroad with their pets. It will also reduce the time dogs need to spend cooped up in kennels. The annual benefits of reduced controls to pet owners resident in the UK are estimated to be £7 million. These changes will also provide UK citizens the same level of free movement with their pet animals which other EU citizens are allowed.
We will continue to ensure that the UK maintains a robust level of protection against rabies, given the seriousness of the disease. We have robust plans in place to deal with rabies should it be detected. As part of our ongoing disease preparedness work we keep the rabies control strategy under constant review, and will be consulting with stakeholder organisations later this year to ensure our plans remain appropriate and proportionate. When the rules change on 1 January 2012 we will be looking to ensure that every pet arriving in the UK will continue to be checked to ensure that it meets the EU requirements, regardless of which country it comes from, and we expect the private quarantine sector to retain a vital role in dealing with non-compliant animals. Stringent penalties remain in place for those that breach the law by smuggling animals into the country or by knowingly using false or misleading information/documentation.
Tapeworm
The UK is currently free of the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis and there is a strong scientific case for keeping controls in place to prevent its incursion into the UK. The European Commission has given a strong indication that it will shortly come forward with proposals that would enable the UK and other tapeworm-free countries to retain tapeworm controls with a treatment window of one to five days.
Ticks
Tick controls will no longer apply when the rules change on 1 January 2012. Although ticks which are capable of transmitting the disease Mediterranean Spotted Fever might enter the UK via pet movements, they could also enter the UK via other routes (for example on people or vehicles). Even then, the likelihood of ticks establishing in the UK is negligible. Our evidence base for maintaining tick controls is less robust than for tapeworm and we would have difficulty putting forward a case to show tick controls are fully effective, scientifically justified and proportionate to the risk of disease incursion. We will continue to work with vets to encourage pet owners travelling abroad to treat their pets against ticks, as they do at present, as part of good pet ownership practice. Pet owners are advised to talk to their vets about the appropriate course of action for their animals when planning a trip abroad.
There are a number of practical issues that still need to be worked through and Defra will be engaging with key stakeholders, including the quarantine and carrier industries, over the coming months. Members of the public who intend to travel abroad with their pet from 1 January 2012 should consult the Defra website for advice on the procedures to follow in the first instance, contact the Pets helpline or speak to their vet.
Libya (Equipment for the National Transitional Council)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I informed the House on 16 May 2011, Official Report, vol 528, column 161, that the Government intended to provide additional practical and material support to the National Transitional Council (NTC), as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. I can now confirm that the following additional equipment has been granted to the NTC for the sole use of the civilian police force.
5,000 sets of body armour;
6,650 police uniforms;
5,000 high visibility vests and t-shirts;
Communications equipment for police stations.
Provision of this equipment is fully in line with UNSCRs 1970 and 1973, including the arms embargo. This equipment will enable the civilian police to carry out their functions more securely and better protect NTC representatives and the significant international and NGO communities in Benghazi, Misrata and other areas of Libya now controlled by the NTC.
Under the HM Treasury guidelines set out in “Managing Public Money” these items are grants and grants-in-aid to the NTC and not gifts. Therefore Crown immunity applies to the supply of body armour and an export licence is not required. The other equipment does not require export licences. However, I am committed to keeping Parliament informed, which is why I am setting this out in a WMS.
Public Records: Colonial Documents
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
In my statement to the House on 5 May 2011, Official Report, column 24WS, I announced my intention to appoint a senior and independent figure to oversee the process of reviewing and transferring migrated archives from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to The National Archives.
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Tony Badger, Paul Mellon Professor of American history and Master of Clare College at the university of Cambridge, to this position.
The independent reviewer will:
Provide independent oversight of the process of selection, review and release into the public domain of papers from the FCO’s “migrated archives”.
Provide assurance to the wider public that the process is being carried out in accordance with my commitment to transparency, notably my intention to release
“every part of every paper of interest, subject only to legal exemptions”.
These exemptions are set out in the Freedom of Information Act,
Offer guidance on prioritisation of the files for selection, review and release to ensure that the papers of greatest interest or highest significance are dealt with first and without undue delay.
Provide independent scrutiny of the steps FCO has taken to locate or confirm destruction of the missing top secret files.
Send a short report to me at the conclusion of the process, for publication.
Forensic Science Research and Development
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
On 27 January I announced a review of research and development in forensic science. The Government are today publishing this review and copies will be placed in the House Library. The review is also available on the Home Office website.
I welcome this review into research and development in forensic science. I would like to encourage all members of the forensic science community to consider it carefully, and consider how they can work together to co-ordinate, deliver and communicate research in this important field.
Research within commercial providers is one element of a much bigger landscape. I note the recommendation that the Home Office forensic transition board, which I chair, should pay specific attention to the research and development requirement in the framework agreement for forensic science providers. The review shows that research and development is already an integral part of the work of any commercial forensic science provider and that there are natural links between casework and research.
I fully accept the recommendation and can underline the Home Office’s view that forensic science providers do need to undertake appropriate research and development to support their role in the criminal justice system. Providers competing to provide innovative services at the lowest cost will preserve police resources and maximise the positive impact forensic sciences can have on tackling crime.
Professor Silverman, the Home Office chief scientific adviser, will continue to work with the forensic science research community and research funders to help co-ordinate and support research in forensic science.
National DNA Database Ethics Group
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
I am pleased to announce the publication of the fourth annual report of the National DNA Database Ethics Group on 27 June 2011. The group was established on 25 July 2007 to provide Ministers with independent ethical advice on the operation and practice of the National DNA Database (NDNAD).
I welcome the consideration given in the report to a number of important issues. The Government share the concerns of the group to ensure both the effectiveness of the database and its ethical operation. The Protection of Freedoms Bill takes account of the advice of, and a number of concerns raised by, the group. For example, as well as requiring the destruction of all DNA samples within six months of being taken, the Bill places the National DNA Database strategy board on a statutory footing and requires the Home Secretary to lay the board’s annual report before Parliament.
The ethics group’s annual report can be viewed on the website of the independent forensic science regulator and a copy will be placed in the House Library.
Matrimonial Property and Registered Partnership Property Regimes
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, Lord McNally, has made the following written ministerial statement:
The Government have today decided not to opt in to the European Commission’s proposals on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions in matters of matrimonial property regimes and the property consequences of registered partnerships.
The Commission’s proposals aim to regulate jurisdiction and applicable law as they apply both to the daily management of the property of spouses and registered partners (which would include civil partnerships registered in the UK) and to how disputes relating to the distribution of assets in cross-border situations are handled following the ending of a couple’s relationship through divorce or dissolution of the partnership, separation or death.
The broad balance of opinion from the Government’s consultation was that it would not be in the UK’s interests to participate in these proposals. A number of difficulties were identified. First, the concept of a matrimonial property regime (or equivalent for civil partners) does not exist in the UK in the sense understood in most other member states. Currently our courts take a wide view of the capital resources available to the parties on divorce or dissolution (including maintenance). Many of these issues are not included in traditional matrimonial property regimes. If the UK was to opt in it would be more difficult for our courts to deal with all aspects of the financial provision of international couples on divorce or dissolution in cases which fall within the scope of these proposals.
Concerns were raised about how the use of foreign law could drive up costs and complicate the resolution of disputes in the family courts and create uncertainty for third-parties who enter into a legal relationship with the couple. There was also considered to be uncertainty about the interaction with succession law.
Both the House of Lords European Union Select Committee and the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee have recommended the UK should not opt-in.
Reports of the Chief Surveillance, Interception of Communications, and Intelligence Services Commissioners
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
I have today laid before both Houses the annual reports of the former Intelligence Services Commissioner, the Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Gibson (HC 1240), the Interception of Communications Commissioner, the Rt. Hon. Sir Paul Kennedy (HC 1239) and the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, the Rt. Hon. Sir Christopher Rose (HC 1111).
The responsibility of the Commissioners is to provide independent oversight of the use of the investigative powers contained in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Intelligence Services Act 1994 and the Police Act 1997. They play a vitally important role in ensuring that public authorities make use of these powers in a way which is necessary, for a legitimate aim and also proportionate to what is sought to be achieved. They are required under the provisions of the legislation to provide an annual report to me with respect to the carrying out of their functions.
All three Commissioners have concluded that these powers are being used properly and appropriately, in accordance with the requirements set out in statute and that respective Secretaries of State and the various members of the intelligence services, police and law enforcement authorities and other public authorities are properly complying with the duties set out in the legislation. They consider that the public authorities concerned are undertaking their work with diligence and in accordance with the law. There have, regrettably, been breaches and errors. However, these have been relatively few in number and in all cases they were caused by procedural or technical problems that have since been addressed.
I am grateful to Sir Peter, Sir Paul and Sir Christopher and to the inspectors and staff which support them, for their work on these reports—which taken together represent a significant increase in the transparency and oversight of these intrusive powers.
Dartford-Thurrock River Crossing (Charges)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
I am publishing today, a consultation paper on proposals to change the charging regime at the Dartford-Thurrock river crossing. The proposals concern new possible charging rates according to type of vehicle using the crossing.
The Dartford-Thurrock river crossing is a key part of the strategic road network. It consists of two two-lane tunnels carrying traffic to the north, and a four-lane cable stayed bridge (the Queen Elizabeth II bridge) carrying traffic to the south. The crossing spans the River Thames between Dartford and Thurrock, forming a trunk road link (the A282 trunk road) in the M25 orbital motorway.
A road user charge has been collected at the crossing since 2003, using the powers in the Transport Act 2000, in order to manage the high demand for use of the crossing. The Department for Transport (DfT) revised the charging regime in 2008 following public consultation. Details of the current charging regime are set out in the A282 Trunk Road (Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Charging Scheme) Order 2008 (Statutory Instrument No. 1951).
In recognition of the strategic importance of the crossing the Government are committed to tackling the current and forecast performance issues affecting the crossing. As part of the spending review, the Department announced that, subject to consultation, prices would increase from £1.50 to £2.00 in 2011 for cars, rising to £2.50 in 2012 and that prices for other vehicles would also increase. The proposal to increase the charges at the crossing is both a measure to manage demand and to help to fund transport investment. For this reason I am today launching a consultation on proposals to change the charges.
The consultation makes reference to, but does not include detailed proposals for, other short, medium and long-term measures to be taken forward in this spending review period in relation to the crossing. In the short term we are announcing an initial six-month trial of a protocol for suspension of the charges during periods when the severity of congestion is such as to constitute an emergency, and charge suspension would help to ease that congestion.
In the medium term our objectives are, the introduction of a free-flow charging scheme and a review of options for additional crossing capacity.
I am pleased to announce that the consultation will run until 23 September 2011. Everybody with an interest is invited to take part. A consultation document and instructions for responding can be found on my Department’s website. An electronic copy has been lodged with the House Library. A public notice marking the publication of these proposals will be posted in the London Gazette and the Dartford Messenger on 30 June and in the Thurrock Gazette on the 1 July and copies of all the documents will be made available for public inspection at the offices of Dartford borough council and Thurrock council.
Social Fund Community Care Grants
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
I am announcing changes to the community care grant scheme to ensure the fund is appropriately used. Discretionary social fund directions will be amended with effect from 4 July 2011.
The Public Accounts Committee hearing on the community care grant scheme was held on 3 November 2010. One of the recommendations was that more could be done to prevent abuse of the scheme. I am therefore amending Social Fund Direction 7 to prevent repeat applications being awarded, unless there has been a relevant change of circumstances. The current direction, which applies to both community care grants and crisis loans, prevents repeat applications being awarded if an application is made within 28 days of a previous application for the same expenses. This period will be extended to 12 months.
The 12-month time limit has been chosen because this is broadly in line with manufacturers guarantee periods. In addition the period is well within the scope of the Sale of Goods Act and is a reasonable period during which customers are able, if goods are faulty, to take the matter up with the retailer.
I am also taking the opportunity to make some minor and technical amendments to the directions.
Copies of the amended Secretary of State directions have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, it is now two o’clock. I understand that on the previous occasion when the Grand Committee on this Bill was in this Room it was extremely crowded. Perhaps the Doorkeeper would be kind enough to ask everybody who comes in later to take an empty seat if it is available.
In the unlikely event of there being a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will stand adjourned as soon as the Division bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Education Bill
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
Baroness Walmsley
I shall speak also to Amendments 21, 22, 23 and 24 in my name which are grouped with Amendment 13. We ended our session on Tuesday by reaching Clause 2. We had a very interesting debate about whether there should be statutory training for any teachers who are considering doing a search of a child. This and the subsequent group of amendments refer to other aspects of the measures which extend the powers to search. This group is about tightening up what can be searched for and for what reasons; the next group is all about whether you can search alone and children of a different gender.
Amendment 13 probes issues concerning the burden of proof and highlights the potential problems that arise for schools as a result of the expansion of the powers. I am sure that head teachers and other members of staff would wish to have that power clearly defined and be without fear of contravening the Human Rights Act or prosecution for an offence against the person. Teachers are not law enforcement officers and they have no reason to risk assault upon them by insisting on searching a pupil who is capable of a violent reaction. Equally, few teachers will wish to use the power if they feel that it will jeopardise their relationship with pupils and generate a climate of suspicion in their school.
A simple Google search of the phrase “primary school rules” illustrates the need for more careful consideration of these provisions. They vary enormously. I wish to insert “reasonably” so that the Bill will say that a search can be made for,
“any other item which the school rules reasonably identify as an item for which a search may be made”.
Some school rules do not allow toys to be brought into school, but it would be quite disproportionate to body-search a child for a little soft toy brought in for comfort. As the Bill is not clear on what exactly is meant by school rules, many schools might feel that they need to revisit their rules, such as: sweets, cans and glass bottles are not allowed in school. When they do so, I would remind them of their duty to consult the pupils. In any case, rules are more likely to be followed if the children have been involved in their drafting and have signed up to the need for them.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has called on the Government to issue guidance which makes it clear that,
“only items capable of being disruptive to teaching or learning, threatening to the safety of pupils and teachers, or which breach criminal law can be identified in school rules as items for which searches of pupils can be made”.
That is the sensible approach, and inserting “reasonably” indicates that schools must not go over the top.
Amendments 21, 22 and 23 were suggested by the JCHR in its report on the Bill. The committee criticise the very wide powers to examine and erase data or files on a mobile phone or other electronic device. We all want to give heads and teachers the powers they need to keep discipline and to prevent bullying, which is why I do not oppose the extension of these powers. It is clearly legitimate for a teacher, if he has reasonable cause for suspicion, to see whether there are any files on a confiscated phone that could be used for bullying or distribution of images that the subject of the images would not want the world to see—even pornography. However, we need checks and balances. The JCHR points out that there is nothing in the Bill to restrict the scope of the powers in relation to the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. That should be linked to the reasons for the search and the justification for the suspicion that an offence has been, or is about to be, committed.
Given the potential for serious interference in the pupil’s rights to respect for a private life, the JCHR proposed Amendments 21, 22 and 23, about which I questioned the Minister at Second Reading. In the absence of an answer, I have tabled them myself. The amendments make it clear that it must be established that the device is likely to be used for something that is either unlawful or contrary to the school rules.
I tabled Amendment 24 because I remained concerned about the power to erase files. There may be all sorts of things on the phone that are very private to the family—things that the family would rather the school did not know. There may also be things on the phone that the pupil may not want the school or his parents to know—for example, that he or she is gay. Let us bear in mind that the pupil and his phone may be entirely innocent. Indeed, pupil A reporting to a teacher that pupil B has some questionable images on his phone may, in itself, be an act of bullying by A on B—trying to embarrass Bill or get him into trouble. Pupil A may want to expose the fact that B is gay. I would call that homophobic bullying, and this Government have made clear their determination to stamp that out. I have tabled Amendment 24 to ensure that guidance includes consideration of the private life of both the pupil and his family, and the circumstances in which it is appropriate to involve parents in the deletion of files.
I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the Government will conduct a review of the existing search powers—as was recommended by Sir Alan Steer to the previous Government, but not carried out, before they extended the powers. We need more post-legislative, as well as more pre-legislative, scrutiny. Will the Government publish draft guidance relevant to the search powers before Report stage? Will such guidance be statutory? Will the Government accept these amendments? I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I shall speak also to our Amendment 25. As has already been identified, under the previous legislation school staff already have the power to search for and seize from pupils prohibited items, including weapons, alcohol, drugs and stolen goods, and we are very conscious of the sensitivities in extending those powers.
Therefore Amendment 25 places on the Secretary of State a requirement to give more explicit guidance as to what should be included in the school rules, and on the items for which searches can be made. This amendment would very much enable some of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to be followed through. I also echo her point that if guidance were to be produced, it would be helpful if it were in the form of draft guidance on which we could all comment.
In addition, there is currently a statutory definition of school rules in maintained schools, but there is no statutory definition of school rules in independent schools, which will, in due course, include academies and free schools. Therefore, this underlines again the case for the Government to consider and advise very carefully on what can and cannot be banned under school rules for all state-provided schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has mentioned, this was picked up in the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which said:
“There is a risk of the new provision falling foul of that requirement”—
to protect pupils—
“unless the new power to search is circumscribed in some way by reference to the purpose for which such a search may be made”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, quoted some useful paragraphs from the report, but that one is also helpful.
When we debated this on the first day in Committee, a case was well made on the issue of mobile phones. For one person a mobile phone is some sort of weapon or something that can be used in a derogatory way; for others it is a teaching aid. We need to be clear about pupils’ reasons for carrying mobile phones in school. In some cases it is a link to important caring responsibilities and so on. Therefore, we must be very careful about proscribing some of these things and the wording that is used.
We have seen the 15th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which was handed out as we came in. It draws the attention of the House to the fact that the department’s own memorandum on its delegated powers,
“does not explain why it is thought appropriate that the list of articles in section 550ZA(3) that may be searched for … should in future be capable of being supplemented by the school in question, apparently to include any kind of article whatever”.
Again, the Delegated Powers Committee questions the extra powers that the Government are trying to give themselves without being explicit about what the articles should be and what it is appropriate to take into a school. Therefore, I hope our Amendment 25, which makes it necessary for guidance to be produced by the Secretary of State on what is and is not to be prohibited by school rules, is a common-sense measure. I hope the Minister will agree and that he and noble Lords will feel able to support the amendment.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 14 in this group, which addresses two angles of concern. The first is about definition. My noble friend Lady Walmsley said that it is not clear what is meant by school rules. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, also said that they needed definition. That is the purpose of my amendment, which requires a definition to be made by the Secretary of State. I say this trailing my coat, since there may well be a definition of school rules buried somewhere in law. The waving of the corn on my left suggests that that is the case. However, it is not only a matter of what is in the school rules, but of whose authority those rules have. School rules can be made by head teachers on their own in solitary majesty, or by the head teacher with the heads of department, and with or without the endorsement of the school governors. Each would have an effect on what is in the rules.
My second concern is that rules, if they are to succeed, should have the broad understanding, sympathy and support of the school’s pupils. Should some guidance be laid down as to how that is to be achieved? Should it be through school councils, for instance? In small primary schools with small children, the rules could be talked through at the beginning of every term and agreed to by the children. The courts will want to know what the school rules are. I regret to say that we are on very litigious ground. It is essential that the courts should have a definition before them or a great deal of money and time will be wasted by the courts in arriving at a definition of their own. That time and money should be spent by us on deciding now, or by giving the Minister the power and responsibility to define what a school rule is.
With it, I would give him the duty to get advice from somewhere on what should be in school rules in general terms, and on how school rules should be introduced in a way that means they will have the support of the school’s pupils. This is not in the amendment, although I think it will emerge on Report. Children will then think that the rules are part of the way they live. Therefore, when some rebel child starts scrawling obscenities on the walls or doing other unsociable things, it will not be just him versus the staff with an interested group of children listening, watching and occasionally egging on the baddy; it will be the school community as a whole saying, “This is not the way this place runs. This is our home. Please look after it”.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I follow on briefly from what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has just said. I have experience of school councils working extremely well. Not only do they discuss the usual problems of boys’ toilets, dining, eating snacks and so on but they discuss discipline issues. I am a governor at a primary school and the youngest children are involved in deciding on the school rules and discipline. As a result, a contract is passed down to each classroom regarding how the children should participate and how they should behave in the school. I am glad that the noble Lord mentioned school councils. I think that school councils should be included somewhere in the Bill in relation to consultation with school pupils. In my experience, that is one of the best ways of consulting pupils in deciding what the school rules should be and how they should be applied.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, before I respond to the points raised in today’s debate, I should like to pick up briefly on the issue that we were discussing when we ended our session on Tuesday, including the points raised by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and other noble Lords about training in relation to searches. In the intervening day and a half, I have reflected on some of those points and I agree that some additional advice to schools would be useful. Therefore, I am happy to commit to recommending to head teachers in guidance that, when they designate a member of staff to undertake searches, they should actively consider whether that member of staff requires any additional training to enable them to carry out their responsibilities. This revised advice will be published in July before the start of the summer holidays.
So far as concerns today’s amendments to and discussion on Clause 2, the main purpose of the clause is to try to give schools as much freedom as possible to respond to their own circumstances and challenges. We know that under the existing legislation head teachers and authorised members of school staff can search for knives and weapons, alcohol, illegal drugs and stolen property. The current situation, as set out by my noble friend Lady Walmsley is that the person conducting the search must be the same sex as the pupil being searched and the search must be witnessed by a member of staff. Where practical, the witness should also be the same sex as the pupil. That is where we are now.
With regard to the provisions in Clause 2, we propose to extend these powers to allow schools to search for any article that they suspect has been or could be used to commit an offence, cause injury or damage property. It will also allow them to search for items banned by the school rules where they have been identified in the rules as an item which may be searched for.
In addition to adding to the range of items which may be searched for, the provisions will make changes to how searches can be conducted, as my noble friend said. They will allow searches to be carried out by a member of staff who is of the opposite sex to the pupil being searched and also searches without a witness. I emphasise that these changes are subject to what we believe to be strict safeguards. Searches can take place only where the searcher reasonably believes that there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if they do not conduct the search immediately. Therefore, these powers could not be used to search for innocuous items banned under the school rules; there must be a risk of serious and imminent harm.
Amendments 25, 13 and 14 relate to searches being conducted under the school rules provisions. Perhaps I may briefly set out our intention behind this provision and the safeguards here that I think will help to guard against it being used inappropriately.
Our intentions in including a specific power which enables teachers to search for, and confiscate, any item identified in the school rules are to enable teachers to deal effectively with items which, although not harmful, can still cause problems in the school.
The current powers to search pupils without consent are already subject to a number of safeguards. Searches can be carried out only by the head teacher or someone authorised by them to search; they can take place on school premises or off the school premises only when the member of staff has lawful control or charge of the pupils; and they can be conducted only if the staff member has a reasonable suspicion that the pupil is in possession of a prohibited item. The pupil cannot be required to remove any clothing, other than outer clothing.
The school rules provisions introduced by this Bill will be subject to additional safeguards. First, an item can be searched for only if it is identified in the school rules as an item that can be searched for; and secondly, the school rules must be determined and publicised by the head teacher in accordance with Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 or, in the case of academies, in accordance with regulations that mirror Section 89. That point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. This means that the head teacher must publicise the school behaviour policy, in writing, to staff, parents and pupils at least once a year. Furthermore, the use of force is explicitly excluded from this provision. These specific requirements will help to ensure that teachers, pupils and parents will know which items are subject to searches. The power is, in the Government’s view and in that of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, compatible with convention rights.
I turn to the test of reasonableness and the points raised by my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lord Elton. I understand the thinking behind the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Walmsley; she is obviously concerned that schools could include frivolous or unreasonable items in the list of items that can be searched for. While I do not believe, and I do not think that she would believe that in practice governing bodies and heads would be likely to behave in a frivolous way, we think that there are existing safeguards in place which govern how schools set their school rules. That relates to the question posed by my noble friend Lord Elton. These are set out in Sections 88 and 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. Section 88 requires that the governing body of a school must make a written statement of general principles from which the head teacher will draw up the school’s behaviour policy, which includes the school rules. The governing body is required under Section 88 to consult parents and pupils as part of this process. I hope that in some way that will reassure my noble friend. The governing body is also required, when making the written statement of general principles, to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State. There is also a legal requirement on head teachers to have regard to this statement in determining the school rules and to bring the school’s behaviour policy to the attention of staff, pupils and parents at least once a year.
The Government intend to use that guidance, among other things, to explain the nature of the obligations of necessity and legitimate aim under Article 8.2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As with public authorities generally, the head teacher in drawing up the school rules would have to act reasonably. So I hope overall that my noble friend may accept that there are safeguards in place and that with those safeguards we should feel more reassured that we can trust schools to judge which items they need to search for in the context of their particular school.
I turn to the content of electronic devices and the examination and deletion of what might be on them. Clause 2 would permit the member of staff who seizes an electronic device to examine any data or files on the device, if they think there is good reason to do so. Following such an examination, the person may erase any data or files from the device if they think there is good reason to do so. I think that this point was accepted earlier in the week. There is agreement that the misuse of mobile phones and other electronic devices is a growing problem in our schools. According to Bullying UK, around one in seven young people have been threatened or harassed by mobile phone.
A study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers published last year in March, suggested that one in seven teachers had been the victim of cyber-bullying by pupils and parents. I was struck that the Association of School and College Leaders welcomed this provision in its evidence to the public evidence session for this Bill in the other place as a way of schools dealing with cyber-bullying without involving the police, which is an important point. We do not want to get to the point where schools have to call the police to deal with matters when they could deal with them with some common sense and in a safe and orderly environment within the school.
I understand the concerns of my noble friend Lady Walmsley that the provisions in the Bill might give members of staff carte blanche to examine or delete the content of a pupil’s mobile phone. But we believe that by requiring the member of staff to have a good reason before doing so, and to have regard to guidance, the clause protects pupils from random searches of their property and provides a robust test which must be passed before a pupil’s personal information on his or her mobile phone can be deleted.
I did, however, listen to what my noble friend said and obviously like her read the comments from the JCHR. In order to address those points, I think we should make more explicit in our guidance that any examination or erasure of data or files must be justified. By this I mean that the guidance should make it clear that the staff member must reasonably suspect that the data or file on the device in question has been, or could be, used to cause harm, to disrupt teaching or break the school rules in some way. I can also commit to the guidance providing advice on the circumstances in which data can be erased and when that can be handed to the police. I hope that that provides my noble friend with some reassurance.
My noble friend also raised the point about the need to respect the private life of the pupil and the pupil’s family, and on the circumstances in which it is appropriate to involve the parents of the pupil. I understand her concern that pupils are protected from any unnecessary intrusion into their private lives. The Secretary of State’s guidance will make it clear that any examination or erasure of data or files must be justified. It will also explain to schools the nature of their obligations under the ECHR and emphasise the importance of respecting a pupil’s personal information and right to privacy.
As my noble friend Lady Walmsley suggested, I would be happy to share with her and other Members of the Committee who would be interested a draft of the Secretary of State’s guidance in advance of Report, so that she can be assured of its helpfulness and we can benefit from their expertise.
I hope that that reassures noble Lords that checks are in place to ensure that these powers could not be used inappropriately. I have committed to include additional safeguards in guidance and to share that guidance as the Bill progresses through this House. On the basis of those reassurances, I hope that my noble friend Lady Walmsley will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I would be very grateful if my noble friend would include me in that correspondence. I do not yet understand why, under any circumstances, a teacher should be able to delete something from a mobile phone. Surely, the point of finding something is that it then becomes evidence that can be used. In fact, it may be important to show it to the child's parents so that the parents become aware of what is going on. I do not understand the need to delete.
I am also concerned that while one might want and need under some circumstances to explore what is happening on a child's mobile phone, any teacher doing so will discover a lot of stuff that is personal and irrelevant. There is a problem over how that is dealt with. Perhaps it should be done by somebody not involved in teaching the child who can therefore keep separate any knowledge gained from looking at the mobile phone. I agree that there has to be this power in the Bill, but it has to be carefully used.
Lord Elton
We need to consider not only the privacy of the child, but the privacy of the person at the other end of the call who may be a parent. The exposure of the inside workings of a family could be quite damaging to the family if it were discovered or discussed. You cannot have a Chinese wall inside a telephone so far as I know, so I agree with my noble friend and I should like to be included on the round-robin list.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I want to pursue an issue that I mentioned in passing in my introduction: that of mobile phones. I refer not to whether a child could be searched but to whether they are carrying a mobile phone in the first place. My noble friend Lord Knight made the point that in the olden days pens could be scurrilous and used inappropriately, so we have to be a bit careful about what we are proscribing here.
I believe I am right in saying that the latest draft guidance on searching states:
“Ministers have already announced their intention to make regulations to add to the list of prohibited items (cigarettes and other tobacco products, pornography, fireworks and specific personal electronic devices (mobile phones and iPods etc))”.
I read that to mean that mobile phones and iPods will be included on the list of prohibited items. I hope that we can have a broader debate on whether that is sensible in the round because, as I said earlier, mobile phones can have a range of functions in a school, not all of which are damaging or unhelpful to the education process.
Lord Storey
I want to re-emphasise the importance of parents being aware of the school’s behaviour management policy and I welcome the fact that that duty exists. In that behaviour management policy, it will be an important responsibility of head teachers in schools to indicate the items that pupils should not be carrying on their person.
I also emphasise the dangers of mobile phones in schools—something that I have experienced on a regular basis. The amount of bullying that goes on, and the passing of offensive messages and images, is a real problem no doubt in secondary schools but certainly in primary schools. The fact that schools, parents and pupils—one hopes through the school council—are involved in putting together the behaviour policy and understanding that will be really important for our school system.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I want to explore a little more whether a school ought to be able to search and erase material, as mentioned by my noble friend and the noble Lord. Should a mobile phone be a proscribed item for every child in the school? If that is what the Government are proposing, I question that approach and hope that the Minister can clarify the issue.
I agree with all noble Lords that bullying is obnoxious and is a form of terrorism towards children and those exposed to it. It is absolutely invidious and needs to be dealt with very strongly indeed. I believe that if a child is using a phone for such a purpose, they will be using it not only in school but more likely outside too. I question an approach that, instead of instilling responsible behaviour towards mobile phones, seems to allow schools to issue a blanket ban on bringing them into school. A more effective approach would be to enable a school to ban the use of a mobile phone by an individual pupil who has shown to be misusing it rather than applying a blanket ban on bringing phones into school. If that is the approach the Government are proposing, I support them. However, I believe that the other approach is dangerous and contrary to the way in which we deal with other kinds of issues. We are allowed to take mobile phones into the Chamber but, I guess, if we started taking pictures of Members opposite we would be banned—and quite rightly so.
I would be grateful if the Minister could, first, say whether the Government’s approach is to allow a school to issue a blanket proscription and, secondly, if that is so, to comment on the points that I have made.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, I support my noble friend. I was not going to speak, but this important point strays into another agenda that is relevant here because we could be doing something that is not great. When I have visited schools, I have seen that mobile phones present a real issue—a huge potential advantage and a current problem. Schools are struggling to know what to do.
Coincidentally, on Tuesday I was in a good secondary school in Cambridge that, to be honest, was not faced with huge behavioural problems. I accept that it was not your average challenged secondary school. Its approach to mobile phones gave a clue as to how important they will be on the information technology agenda. Given that the Government do not have much of an IT agenda, with the abolition of Becta we must look at what schools are doing on that. I hope that in the coming months we might get to the point technologically at which we can as a society support schools in using devices such as mobile phones as an essential part of learning in school and with links to home.
That is not for now and that agenda is not quite here at the moment. I would hate to do anything now that would give a message that would make it difficult for some unconfident schools to move along that road in future years.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I shall try to reply briefly to some of those points. I agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that one must be careful not to legislate in a blanket fashion that stores up problems for later. I listen in particular to my noble friend Lord Storey because he knows what he is talking about. He has day-to-day direct involvement and we should listen carefully to his reminder of the problems faced by schools. However, I also accept that a lot of technology can be used for good or for ill. That is to do with what people make of it rather than with the nature of the technology.
In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, our purpose in a number of these approaches is to give individual schools discretion in what to do, taking their circumstances into account. On the regulations that list the items mentioned by the noble Baroness, we have not laid them before the House because I thought that it was important first to take these issues through the House and Committee and to have this debate. We are not seeking to have a blanket ban on mobile phones, but we want to reach the point at which schools can exercise discretion. More generally, the Government will need to take into account the points that have been raised.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
Although the Government do not want to move towards a blanket ban on mobile phones, is it their current intention, notwithstanding any shift brought about by this debate, that the regulations will allow an individual school to impose a blanket ban on all its pupils?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I believe that that could be done at the moment. That would not therefore be a change, and overall we want to give schools discretion.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, this has been an interesting and illuminating debate. Before dealing with the issues debated today, I thank my noble friend for his comments on our debate on Tuesday. He told us that there will be advice in guidance from the Government to head teachers that they should consider the level of training of the teacher who is designated to be allowed to search. That is all very well, but what happens if they do not do that? What happens if the school designates a teacher who has not had adequate training? What if someone is hurt and the teacher in question is not trained? Would my noble friend like to answer now or would he prefer to come back to me on that?
Baroness Walmsley
I thank my noble friend. A number of points have been made in the debate today, and I absolutely agree with those who have emphasised how important it is that schools consult parents and pupils when setting their school rules. Indeed, I believe my noble friend Lady Sharp and I were slightly influential in getting that duty to consult pupils into the Education and Inspections Act 2006, if my memory serves me correctly.
It is incredibly important that pupils and their parents understand what the school rules say. It is quite right that the Government do not seek to specify exactly what a school bans and what it will search for if that ban is flouted, but the rules should state why the school is going to ban the items that could be used. The school should ban only the things that could interfere with teaching and learning or that could be used to commit an offence, cause disruption in the school or be otherwise unlawful. Schools should not go over the top and be silly about what a pupil might want to bring in.
As for phones, my noble friend Lord Storey, who the Committee will know is still a practising head teacher, has reminded me that schools already deal with these matters in their own way. Most schools have a mobile phones policy—indeed, many local authorities such as my noble friend’s own authority in Moseley have one—and many schools are sensible enough to allow children to bring in a mobile phone if the parents feel that they would like the child to have it for their own safety or on the way home in case they have a problem with their transport and need to contact the parents. However, they insist that the phone is either handed into the school office during the school day or locked up in a locker. That is quite a sensible approach, as the phone cannot be used to distract lessons or to take photographs of other pupils—one head teacher who supports what the Government are going to do told me recently of a boy even taking photographs of one of the girls in the toilets. We do have to bear in mind that children sometimes do horrendous things. Of course this is not just about phones; DS games can send messages, and most schools would not wish pupils to use those during lessons, and the more affluent pupils might even have an iPad.
I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, the other day that these devices can be used for good educational purposes. This is a difficult matter for schools, which is why it is more and more important to specify that these things should be searched for and confiscated and files deleted only if there is reasonable suspicion that they are going to be or have been used to disrupt, to bully or to do something unlawful.
That is why I welcome what my noble friend the Minister has said about sharing draft guidance with us as soon as possible, certainly before Report. I also welcome what he said about the Government wanting to avoid police involvement wherever possible. Of course the criminal justice system must be involved if a very serious offence comes to light, but I certainly believe—and I see many Members around the Committee today who I know agree with me—that we should not get children involved in the criminal justice system unless it is absolutely necessary. Then, of course, we should deal with them properly, but that is another debate altogether.
I have some questions for my noble friend the Minister. If files are erased and the teacher who erases them has reasonable justification for being suspicious, can the child challenge the erasure? If the child loses files of particular sentimental value to them, such as photographs of the family that they do not have on any other electronic device, what is the challenge?
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
Before moving to Amendment 16, I wonder whether I could ask our electronic expert in the corner whether it is possible to raise the volume of the microphones. With the amount of noise going on above us, it is extremely difficult to hear.
Amendment 16
Baroness Walmsley
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 28. We now move to some of the more delicate checks and balances in relation to searching.
The amendments would make it unlawful to search a child of the opposite gender and never, in any circumstances, without another member of staff being present. Amendment 16 refers to schools and Amendment 28 to FE colleges.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said on Tuesday, searches can be very invasive and unpleasant experiences that cause children embarrassment, anxiety and humiliation. In addition, searches might have different and more pronounced implications for children with a history of physical or sexual abuse, children with a disability or special needs, or children from different cultural backgrounds.
That is why I believe the person should always be searched by a teacher of the same gender and always with a witness. I am not so concerned about searches of property or lockers, although doing that alone can also open up a teacher to allegations of theft, but searches of the person open the door to allegations of improper behaviour if he or she is either alone or of the opposite gender or both. At a time when the Government have found it desirable to bring in reporting restrictions on allegations against teachers, which we will discuss when we reach Clause 13, why are they attempting to open up teachers to this sort of allegation by encouraging them to search a child of the opposite gender alone?
Clause 2(3) allows a member of staff to search a child alone if they believe that,
“there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if the search is not carried out as a matter of urgency, and … it is not reasonably practicable for the search to be carried out … in the presence of another member of staff”.
I believe that those are the precise circumstances in which a search should not be carried out alone. Let us imagine the situation in which the child and the teacher are nervous and hyped up. The child might know that he has a knife or a gun in his pocket—in these circumstances, the police should be called anyway, as carrying a knife or gun is a very serious matter. However, nothing is more calculated to stimulate the child to do something silly than the pressure of an immediate and perhaps forceful search in front of their peers. It is much better to calm the matter down and send for a senior member of staff so that the search can be carried out more safely.
I know that most teachers would be entirely sensible and cautious about something like this, but we must not make bad legislation that has the potential for putting them and the children in danger by doing something entirely unnecessary. I can think of no circumstances in which it would be safe for a teacher to search a child for a knife alone and no circumstances in which it would not be possible to send for reinforcements. If the child is wielding a knife, there is no need to search for it—it is on full view. The teacher has a right under common law to defend himself and protect the other children, and so we do not need this legislation for that situation. However, even then, the teacher would be wise to send for some support.
I believe that these amendments are absolutely necessary, and I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our Amendment 17 mirrors much of what is in Amendment 16, but with slightly different wording in that it reinstates the protections that were introduced with very good reasons in the first place. They were to have a witness and for searches to be carried out by members of the same sex. I very much echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said in this regard. We have touched on these issues in previous debates—it has been a bit of a running thread—but it does not diminish the force of the argument or the need to firm up the checks and balances that we need when teachers are operating in day-to-day school life.
Head teachers already have the power to search pupils. The powers already give teachers and head teachers the power to search, to use reasonable force to control or restrain a pupil, to stop a pupil committing a criminal offence, to prevent injury or damage to property, and to maintain good order and discipline.
In the Commons stages, colleagues debated why these new powers were necessary in addition to the existing ones and when they would be used. The answers at that time from the Government were unclear, and the Minister, Nick Gibb, was unable to give a convincing example of when these new powers would be needed. For example, when would a teacher need to search a pupil’s possessions without a witness being present? Moreover, in the evidence-taking sessions in the Commons, Brian Lightman, the head of the ASCL, said:
“I have been a head for 15 years. I cannot imagine a situation where I would sanction any of my staff searching a member of the opposite sex without a witness present. In fact, I wouldn’t allow anyone to search a member of the opposite sex, full stop”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 1/3/11; col. 24.]
Similarly, the representation from the teaching unions made it clear that their members would be very wary of using these new powers.
Perhaps more importantly, children’s rights are paramount in this regard. Many of us will have received the mailing from an alliance of children’s charities raising concerns about the extended search powers. It rightly draws our attention to the protection of children’s privacy in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Act. It agrees with our position that the case for extended powers has not been made. Instead, it urges the Government to conduct a review of how the existing search powers have been implemented before commencing with any new powers. To me, that makes perfectly good sense.
In addition, these powers are so broad that they give teachers greater search powers than a police office would have under the stop and search provisions. For example, in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 the police powers to stop and search require,
“reasonable grounds for suspicion, before they may be exercised, that articles unlawfully obtained or possessed are being carried”.
Under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, stop and search must be based upon a reasonable belief,
“that incidents involving serious violence may take place”,
or that people are,
“carrying dangerous instruments or offensive weapons”.
We do not need to give teachers these additional powers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, if anything this will endanger the pupil/teacher relationship and put teachers at risk. In all these circumstances, we do not believe that the case has been made for opposite sex searches and searches without a witness. Therefore, we commend Amendment 17, as well as Amendment 28, which applies the same principles to FE colleges. I shall not rehearse the arguments, but we believe that the same ones apply.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I should like to know where the parents are in this. If I were the parent of a child who had been searched at school by a same or opposite sex—but particularly opposite sex—teacher, I think I would be mightily cross if I had not been informed. If I were a head teacher, I would hate to be on the receiving end of a parent’s anger at their child being searched. The witness should ideally be a parent. Has that been thought of in the Bill? Are parents excluded from this procedure? It is an issue that should be considered.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, Barnado’s deals with a lot of children who have been groomed for sexual acts. If a child who had gone through that kind of procedure were searched at school, it would have a devastating effect on them. I remember once launching one of our projects for Barnardo’s—I declare an interest as one of the vice-presidents. I put my arm around a young girl because I always like hugging people, but when I did that she flinched like an animal. I wondered why and the counsellor told me that she had been groomed since she was a 10 year-old child. She was now 15 and people showing her any type of affection had a devastating effect on her. Imagine what that girl would go through if she had to be searched at school. I fully support my noble friend Lady Walmsley’s amendment. This is something that should be carefully thought through before we put it into the Bill.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, we are in difficult and delicate territory. We accepted that when we discussed related points on Tuesday. However, there is a need to lean in the other direction and expose the argument. My focus is particularly on the question of having another witness available. I realise and accept that being searched by someone of a different sex is a more complex matter, and maybe we need to differentiate these two.
I make the point about whether another witness is necessary by quoting what my noble friend Lady Perry said on Tuesday. “There are crisis incidents” she said, and:
“At that point, a teacher has to take action”.—[Official Report, 28/6/11; col. GC 230.]
I am concerned about the parent who discovers that their child has been injured at school when perhaps an intervention would have made a difference.
This is a difficult point to make, but the issue in principle that we touched on and now face full on today is whether the legislation should preclude the possibility of a teacher exercising judgment. We all have the respect for teachers that we properly should have and we have insisted on the need for professional training and back-up. That is why the training has to be school-wide, not just for a specialist teacher who does this kind of thing. However, can we not leave room in the legislation for crisis incidents and for the exercise of good professional judgment by a teacher in a situation in which we hope none will be tested?
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I want to argue against the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. One of the benefits of having someone else to act as a witness to a search is that there is a cooling-off period in a crisis when things could calm down; immediate intervention might well escalate the crisis.
My second point, which has not been made so far on this group of amendments, is that there has rightly been much concern about opposite-sex searching. Frankly, there are also issues about same-sex searching because, sadly, there are allegations against staff of homosexual acts, and there might be some incidents, again sadly, of same-sex abuse. I know that is very rare, but that is why we need to have a witness. You can then start to ensure that, first, the situation is de-escalated if it is rising rapidly, and, secondly, with a witness you can balance that with the safeguard of both the child and the member of staff.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, not for the first time I find myself welcoming the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I might have this wrong, but the provision seems to be designed entirely to deal with a crisis. Of course, if we think there will never be a crisis, we do not need this section. I say that because paragraph (a) of new Section 6A in Clause 2(3)(c) states:
“the person carrying out the search reasonably believes that there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if the search is not carried out as a matter of urgency”.
That must mean that the person who thinks they have to search is faced with someone in the room making an absolutely open threat, either to the person who might do the searching or to someone else in the room.
Paragraph (b) of new Section 6A says that the condition is satisfied if,
“in the time available it is not reasonably practicable for the search to be carried out by a person of the same sex as P or in the presence of another member of staff”.
I feel strongly that that is meant entirely as a back-up power to deal with a crisis that could not have been foreseen. In considering whether this provision should be in the Bill, that is how we should look at it. We should in no way confuse it with the wider issue of the powers to search.
The Earl of Listowel
Perhaps I could briefly make two comments on this very difficult issue. First, I hope your Lordships might agree that this highlights the importance of teachers and their development and their need to be highly reflected practitioners—not to get drawn into emotional situations but to have that professional capacity to stand back and be dispassionate. I very much welcome what the Minister is doing to help teachers to reflect on their practice with young people.
I spoke with a head teacher of an EBD school recently. He described a particular situation on a school outing. One of the children picked up a piece of glass on the beach, perhaps, and put it in his pocket, and the teacher was told about it by one of the school children and acted very quickly to search the child and take it away. For schools or institutions that deal with high numbers of children with challenging behaviour issues, it might be helpful for teachers to have this discretion. The head teacher’s point was that it was very important for teachers to be able to exercise their discretion and not feel inhibited by too much regulation in the background. I do not have particular experience in that area, but I share it because I heard it recently from a head teacher.
Lord Storey
I understand noble Lords’ concerns about crises, but I want to paint a different picture. In most situations, there will be teaching assistants in the classroom and learning mentors—a whole plethora of support staff who can support a particular situation. If there is a crisis, the best way to deal with it is not to provoke the situation further but to calm everything down. My concern is that if a teacher carries out this act by themselves and no one else is present, it could put them at risk. I can see all sorts of legal actions being taken whereby pupils, particularly at secondary school level, make allegations about what the teacher did to them. The police and law courts might become involved and it might become an absolute nightmare for schools and schooling, so I understand the concern about the crisis that might occur, but I am equally concerned about the well-being of the individual teacher and pupil. To put that teacher in that situation is potentially quite dangerous.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, when I think of my own childhood, members of the opposite sex were not the ones who caused the problems. Certainly these days when the staff of many schools are entirely female, you have to allow women to search men, and therefore men to search women, if those are the circumstances in which people find themselves. It must always be advisable to have a same-sex search, and it must almost always be advisable to have a witness, but imagine a situation in which a teacher is alone with a group of pupils and believes that one of the pupils has on them something that they could easily dispose of if they had the chance, whether it was drugs or a weapon. If they were out in the country, something could be dropped easily before they came back.
Searching consists of having the power to search, not actually saying, “Palmer, turn out your pockets”. The pupil would know that the member of staff had the power to search if they did not comply, and would therefore do as requested. This is a necessary part of the structure, but I am sure that no head teacher is going to advise any of their teachers to search when they do not have a witness, except in circumstances when nothing else is possible. I think that we can trust teachers and head teachers to use the clauses as they are in the Bill wisely.
Baroness Howells of St Davids
My Lords, having spent practically my entire life in this country fighting against stop and search, and marching on the streets about it, I can tell you the effect that being stopped and searched has on any human being. Why try to impose this on a child? Teachers have adequate powers with which to take the child away or do all sorts of things, but one should not take away the dignity of the child. In any number of cases when the police could not find anything, they made something up and criminalised the child. Some policemen have been known to say, “I am not changing my mind”. At that time, people in uniform were respected and believed. We had to confront those cases. I urge noble Lords to think very carefully about providing that power in the classroom. Children are there to be nurtured, loved and taught what is right and wrong.
It is a difficult situation because we have taken away from parents powers to discipline their children. I was told that I was a Victorian when I said, “My child does not do this or will not be allowed to do the other”. That was the attitude of most Caribbean parents. Children were children. We are turning them into fodder for the criminal courts. I ask the Minister to look very hard at this measure and take it away if he can. I have seen no empirical data that suggests that searching a child in the classroom will in some way prevent damage to other children—although it may prevent criminal damage to the building. I ask you to think about the child.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I had not intended to intervene, but I am inclined to think that this is yet another area that will require a longer time to work out the right solution. All of us are aware of the reactions of children—not necessarily young children but those who have been abused at some stage in their lives. We know, sadly, that that has happened in a number of homes, quite apart from outside when children have been abused. There are new methods of abuse, including cyber access and so on. Such activity is, alas, spreading.
However, I am worried about totally removing the passages from the Bill. What the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said needs a little more thought. I also want to listen to what the Minister will say in reply before I come to any full conclusion on this. The very best way in which schools operate is when everyone co-operates and trusts one another. We have a head teacher opposite. However, there are situations where that co-operation does not happen, and there can be situations in which children are in danger through lack of action. I am going to wait.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Before the Minister responds, I wanted to make a quick comment in response to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who raised the crisis issue. That underlines our argument, which echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, that surely what we need to do is to review how the existing legislation has been working so far. It has been in existence for 15 years. If there were going to be crises, they would have happened by now and we should know about them. We should therefore know what extra legislation, if anything, is needed to deal with it. I can genuinely say that there does not appear to be a chorus of demand from the teaching professions saying, “We were in this awful crisis and we were constrained from what we could do by your really unhelpful legislation”. There does not appear to be that demand, but maybe it is out there. Maybe we should do what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is saying and find out what is happening on the ground, but without rushing into the new proposed legislation, which opens us up to other problems and repercussions, which we have not yet fully identified.
I wanted to make the quick point that we should review first and see whether there are those crises out there.
Baroness Walmsley
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has stimulated me to emphasise the questions that I would like my noble friend the Minister to answer. I was saving them for my withdrawal speech, but it might be helpful to my noble friend if I emphasised them now. I really would like to know what sort of crisis we are talking about, because nobody has yet described to me the sort of crisis that would make it impossible for a teacher to send a child to fetch a senior member of staff or a member of staff of the correct gender.
Furthermore, what evidence is there that it is necessary to allow searches of a pupil alone, by a teacher of any gender? Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I have not heard an outcry from the teaching profession telling us that the checks and balances in the current legislation need to be withdrawn to allow them the freedom to deal with the situations that they are being faced with. I am hearing it from some head teachers, though not all, but I am certainly not hearing it from teachers themselves. As I said at Second Reading, there is this disparity of opinion within the profession itself, which makes it very difficult for us as legislators and non-teachers—most of us are non-teachers—to legislate on what is right. Perhaps my noble friend can give us some evidence of the need to remove these checks and balances and a clear description of the sort of crises that we are talking about. Are we talking about a child with a grenade in his pocket and his finger on the pin? That I would describe as a crisis—but I have never heard of it occurring. But a child with a knife or a gun in his pocket and not with his hand on it and not wielding it is a situation that would allow you to send for somebody else. If a child has it in his hand, it is on view and you do not need to search for it. You have a common law right to remove it. But if you have to search for it, you have time.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the question of evidence is close to my heart, having chaired the Science and Technology Select Committee. I absolutely agree that we should achieve an evidence-based policy. Seldom do we do so, but we ought to.
My question is simply this. If there is no evidence that this is needed, is there evidence that training is needed, in the many other provisions of the Bill? We are all very strong on the importance of training. I am just concerned about having blanket legislation that could rule out the unforeseeable—and I think we have accepted that just occasionally some teachers have experienced that.
The Earl of Listowel
In response to the noble Baroness’s remarks, I gave the example of a head teacher of an EBD school, who described a school trip to the seaside when the boy picked up a piece of glass. The teacher thought, “This boy is rather dangerous and it is dangerous for him to have that glass in his pocket—the best thing to do is to quickly check his pocket and get rid of it”. That may be an exceptional circumstance, but I can imagine that in working with those particular groups that might be when those exceptional circumstances came into play.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I thought that this would be a good and interesting debate and so it has proved. The key issue was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood; namely, whether legislation should in every respect preclude the possibility of some situation that none of us sitting here can necessarily envisage, although the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, raised one such possibility, or whether we should take the view in approaching legislation that, if we are going to be serious in what we say about trusting professionals, we should provide them with a bit of space to exercise their professional judgment and give them support in doing so. That seems to me to be the argument of principle that lies behind, and has already emerged in, our discussion. The decision that we ultimately reach on these provisions will hinge on it. Are we prepared to allow that small bit of space in emergency situations, or do we take the view that we would prefer to close down that possibility by legislating?
I accept the points made from the outset by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and by a number of other noble Lords. Opposite-sex searches are extremely sensitive—more so at secondary school than at primary school. We have discussed previously the practical issue arising in primary schools from the fact that there are no male teachers in 25 per cent of them. That may have been the relevant age in the instance to which the noble Earl referred. I recognise the sensitivity of searching without a witness. Given that I do so not being a teacher or being in these difficult circumstances, I believe that every teacher or head will understand the sensitivity of the matter even more sharply, because they will know that the consequences to them, professionally and personally, of making the wrong judgment would be disastrous. As a head teacher put it to me the other day, “Any teacher will be very careful about putting themselves in harm’s way”. That is an extremely important point for us to remember. It links to the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, quite rightly raised about putting teachers in danger by giving them such powers.
As we have already discussed previously, these are permissive powers. Under provisions relating to searching powers, head teachers may not require anyone other than school security staff to undertake the search—that will not change—so teachers can draw on this should they feel it necessary for them to do so. There would be very few instances where this situation would ever arise, and, even if it did, an individual teacher may say, “No, thank you. That’s not for me”, and exercise their professional judgment.
I know that I shall have a hard job persuading some noble Lords, but I will attempt to set out why the discretion granted to school and college staff in Clauses 2 and 3 to use their professional judgment, combined with the safeguards which we have included in both, is a sensible way forward.
A number of safeguards already apply to all aspects of the powers to search in Section 550ZA of the Education Act 1996 and Section 85AA of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. I shall not go through them again, but they are in place. There are additional safeguards, which my noble friend Lady Walmsley referred to, for the new powers. Searches would be permissible only where there was a risk that serious harm might be caused to the person if the search was not conducted as a matter of urgency and if, in the time available, it was not practicable for the search to be carried out by a person of the same sex or in the presence of another member of staff.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, raised the point about a parent. The response given by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is the one that I, too, would give: that is, if it is an emergency situation, trying to get a parent there—although, all other things being equal, it would be rather nice—would not be relevant here. However, I understand the thought that lies behind it.
Given that this is an emergency provision and, by their nature, emergencies can arise at any point, and while I hope that schools and colleges will have little cause to use this power, it is important that they should have the flexibility to act in the interests of students and staff where their safety is threatened in the kind of case that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned. We expect that the vast majority of searches in future will still be conducted by a member of the same sex and will still be witnessed by another member of staff, as my noble friend Lord Lucas argued. The extension of the provisions is simply intended to give staff the power to act in the interests of the safety of all in emergencies.
In terms of who supports this extension, I take my noble friend’s point that it is clear that some teachers and heads do not want it, but it does have the support of the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges’ Forum and the Independent Schools Council. Our broad approach on search has support from the Association of School and College Leaders.
I recognise that there are concerns and that this is not a simple and straightforward case, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, reminded us. We have listened to what the JCHR said. In wanting to help buttress the position of teachers who find themselves in difficult situations and to help protect other children, I recognise that a balance needs to be struck. I think that the Government should take those concerns on board and include in their guidance the specific points raised by the JCHR; namely the expectation that powers to search pupils of the opposite sex or carry out a search without a witness are likely to be used only on rare occasions. Also, the expectation of privacy should increase with the age of the pupil. That point was made by the JCHR and is a matter of sheer common sense. That is the right thing to do and I am happy to give that commitment today.
I know that we will want to discuss these issues further, but as I suggested on Tuesday, the department's expert adviser on behaviour is organising a meeting for noble Lords when I hope we will have a chance to go through some of these issues. I think that the invitation is on its way today and that the date is fixed for next week. I hope that he will be able to share his experiences and that noble Lords will be able to raise their concerns with him.
I hope that the safeguards in the legislation and the fact that we will address in the guidance points raised by the JCHR will, to some extent, reassure noble Lords and that my noble friend may, for now, feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the Minister for his reply and all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I will pick up a few points. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, suggested that if I had my way there would be no need for training, but I point out to him gently that the current situation requires training. There are currently pretty wide powers for teachers to search pupils for quite a wide range of objects.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, raised the scenario of the young child with a piece of glass in his pocket on a school trip. My noble friend Lord Storey may be able to correct me, but on the vast majority of school trips, there is more than one member of staff because the dreaded health and safety rules and the risk assessments that schools have to do these days would ensure that there are at least two members of staff. I do not think that the situation of having to act alone would arise in that scenario.
The Minister mentioned that he did not want us to close down possibilities. But possibilities are closed down by sensible checks and balances under current legislation. He said that these are permissive powers. But I am afraid that when you give people permission to do something, at some time some idiot will go and do it in ridiculous circumstances. Yes of course I accept that 99.999 per cent of teachers would be sensible, but I do not want to open up the possibility by repealing some of our current sensible checks and balances for that 0.001 per cent of teachers to do something silly. The Minister talked about the safeguards that appear in Section 550ZA of some Act of Parliament or other. I ask him whether teachers know about that; I certainly do not. It is important that teachers are very clear about what they can and cannot do, which they will not be if we leave it to those obscure little bits of legislation.
I finish by asking the Minister: have any injuries occurred to any child because a teacher had to send for a witness or a member of staff of another gender? If that situation has not arisen, we should not make these changes to the current legislation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Laming
“( ) The measures relating to the exclusion of pupils in England in this section are to be exercised in accordance with the duty in section (Co-operation with local authorities to promote well-being) of the Education Act 2011.”
Lord Laming
My Lords, in moving Amendment 33 I shall speak also to Amendment 100. Looking around the Room and seeing the vast experience that is seated here, I realise that the link between Amendments 33 and 100 may be slightly unusual. Therefore, I begin by offering the Committee an apology and the feeble excuse that I have been waiting for some time for a minor operation on a troublesome tooth. Those who are more experienced than me calculated that the day when Amendment 100 would come before the Committee would be the very day that the surgeon was wielding the knife. Therefore, I am extremely grateful to those who have helped me and been so understanding, particularly the House authorities, who have been very helpful. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Whitaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, who is unfortunately out of the country today.
I also thank the Minister, who wrote to me on this topic. The Committee will not be surprised to hear that his letter was characteristically thoughtful. I appreciated it greatly. However, I regret to say that I did not find it altogether persuasive. That is because Clauses 4, 30 and 31 strike at the very heart of the proper development of children and the responsibilities that we all have, particularly the education services. The Committee will have noticed that the Bill removes the duties placed on the education services by the Children Act 2004 to co-operate with local authorities in promoting the well-being of children and young people in their area. These clauses could not be more comprehensive in their intention. They specify that they extend to schools, governing bodies, proprietors and FE institutions; they are indeed comprehensive. They make clear that, in future, these bodies will no longer even have to have regard or contribute to local plans for the well-being of children and young people.
In every inquiry that has followed a tragedy to a child with which I am familiar, two key messages have permeated every report like the lettering through a stick of rock. The first is that in future each service, including education, must greatly fulfil its particular responsibilities to promote the safety and well-being of each child. The second is that each service must develop the skills to work successfully across organisational boundaries and share information at an early stage. If any noble Lord, but particularly the Minister, can recall a report that does not repeat those lessons, I would be extremely glad to hear of it.
However, this is not just about reports. In every serious case review with which I am familiar—and there are getting on for 100 a year—these same messages are repeated to the point of tedium. Indeed, I recall a seminar in which a senior police officer said with some feeling, “Every time I have sat down to review what has happened to a child, the pattern has always been the same; as each service begins to put what it knew about the child and the family on the table, the meeting became quieter and quieter until someone said, ‘Well, if only we’d known that we would have acted much earlier’”—but of course in those situations it is generally too late for the child.
This is more than about keeping a child safe. We need to place child safety in the wider context of our and the education services’ responsibility to have the wider vision of promoting the proper development of every child. I hope the Minister will take the time to read again some recently published national reports on matters such as childhood obesity, children acting as carers, sibling care, teenage pregnancy, online grooming, drug and alcohol abuse, children with disabilities and those with special needs—to mention just a few. The unbroken thread through each of these reports is this: all these children are of the age to be in the education services, which have a responsibility for each and every child.
Only last week Mr Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, went out of his way to make it absolutely clear that in the new arrangements that are being proposed for the National Health Service, the specific responsibilities placed on the health services—not just to safeguard children but, as he put it, to promote their welfare—will continue. In fact, if Amendment100 is acted on, the education services will be the only key services to be excluded from these activities. What is more, it just so happens that the education services are the only services that are universal to every child.
Earlier this week Mr Maude talked about teachers’ strikes, and he went out of his way to say that schools not only teach but carry out important wider childcare functions. The Minister in our House did a brilliant job, if I may say so, answering a Question on Monday. Perhaps I may read out his answer rather than my own text. Only yesterday in our consideration in this House of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, the Government introduced amendments to promote the police’s responsibilities with regard to the well-being of children.
The development of children’s plans and children’s trusts under the Children Act 2004 were designed specifically to place the well-being and the promotion of care of children in this wider context. In the letter which the Minister sent to me, he said that the Bill simply reverts to the earlier position. I urge the Government not to do that and to accept that exhortation and hope have proved to be inadequate ways of ensuring that all the key agencies, but particularly the education services, fulfil their unique responsibilities.
If we remove the duties placed upon the education services, as the Bill promotes, it will give not only a huge message to the education services but a negative message to all the other services that have to play a key role in all this. I know, because of my experience with Members of this House, that this House has a great concern for the well-being of children in general. I very much hope that if the Minister cannot agree to the amendments, he will at least be willing to meet some of us to discuss this so that we can consider the matter more roundly. I beg to move.
Baroness Whitaker
By adding my name to the amendment in this group, which was moved and spoken to with such authority and experience by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, I want to draw attention to a particular group of children where the role of local authorities and others in areas conducive to education—family issues, justice, mobile families—knowledge of the social services is crucial. If there are problems here, children may be disrupted and may drop out of school. Gypsy and Traveller children are particularly vulnerable to the combinations of circumstances that lead them to drop out. Their drop-out rate is far higher than any other group—very, very much higher. School alone cannot easily know all the factors behind this.
So if you want to give these children a better chance, a fair chance, and a chance that is comparable with that of other children, schools need to co-operate with local authorities over well-being. It must be done without exception and it must be a statutory obligation. Of course, it applies particularly in the harshest measure—exclusion.
The Minister referred in his closing speech at Second Reading to local authority children’s services. He said that they had,
“a critical role in the early years”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 773.]
Why stop at the early years? The need is just as great in later years. The Government’s White Paper on teaching says that local authorities have a role as “champions” of vulnerable pupils. Local authorities cannot exercise this role if schools choose not to co-operate with them. I support the amendments.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I am happy to find myself in my more natural position of supporting amendments rather than throwing four anchors astern. I pay tribute to the eloquence and passion of my noble friend Lord Laming and the experience on which that has been built. At Second Reading, I asked a specific question, which was that if there was a possibility of permanent exclusion—and it is included twice in the relevant clause in this legislation—there had to be a plan B. If any pupil is permanently excluded, there is a major problem that we cannot afford to put out into the wilderness without knowing the direction of travel that society ought to, and will want to, take.
The noble Lord, Lord Laming, has given us one possible solution to this—and I should like to think further about the details of Amendment 100—but there must be a solution, a plan B, and we need to know. If someone is permanently excluded, not simply from school but, as mentioned in Clause 2, from a pupil referral unit, we have a problem. What is plan B?
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, you will see from the Marshalled List that I added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his intention to oppose the Questions that Clauses 30 and 31 stand part of the Bill. Amendment 100 replaces Clause 30. It may be appropriate if I comment now.
It was, I think, the Children Act 2004 that imposed a duty on the local authority and a number of relevant partners to work together to improve,
“the well-being of children in the authority’s area”
and reduce inequalities. Initially, schools were not included in the list of relevant partners, and I seem to recall my noble friend Lady Sharp and I protesting loudly about that. Perhaps we were influential in getting schools added to the list at a later date. Therefore, it will come as no surprise to your Lordships to hear that I am very unhappy about the proposal to take them out again. Schools are the only service that all children access at some time or another and therefore they are in a better position than most to affect children’s well-being and equality.
I am not one who believes that the job of legislation is to send out a message but I do believe that, if you repeal a piece of legislation, that sends out a message whether you like it or not. We should remember the outcry when the department ditched the phrase “every child matters”. Everyone suddenly believed that every child did not matter to the coalition Government, which I know for a fact to be quite untrue. Therefore, what will be the message that goes out if we repeal the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities? Some will believe that they do not have to do it any more and that would be a disaster, particularly for children who need joined-up services. Joined-up services are exactly what the recent Green Paper on SEN is trying to achieve. It is what all vulnerable children and their families want. Children’s trusts, being unaccountable, may not be the best organisations in whose hands to put the children’s plan, but it is essential that there is one and that schools are involved.
There are many special groups with needs that must wrap around the child and not stand alone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has just spoken about a very important one. Another group is young carers and I shall use it as my example. The Princess Royal Trust for Carers has concerns that, by withdrawing the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities and the duty to have regard to children and young people’s plans, the Bill makes it increasingly difficult for local authorities to deliver against their responsibilities towards vulnerable groups of children such as carers. Services work best for young carers where local authorities retain a strategic role, where they have an overview of all services, including education, and where services and professionals join together around the needs of the young carer and his family. The Carers Strategy 2010 highlights the coalition Government’s commitment to improving support for carers. It advocates a whole-family approach, with services in health, education and social care working together to address the needs when it comes to providing the most effective support. It is also committed to embedding Working Together to Support Young Carers, a model memorandum of understanding between directors for children’s and adult services and health, social care and education. Removing the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities—that is, with all services that matter working together—therefore runs opposite to the Government’s policy on supporting young carers.
We are not just talking about a few children. The 2001 census data show that there are 175,000 young carers aged from five to 18 in the UK, and I do not know how many more there are according to the most recent census. One-fifth are caring for more than 20 hours a week, and 13,000 young carers are caring for more than 50 hours a week. Twenty-seven per cent of young carers of secondary school age are experiencing educational difficulties. Where children are caring for a relative with drug or alcohol problems, the incidence of missed school and educational difficulties rises to 40 per cent. As young carers get older, so their caring roles often increase, and it gets more difficult for them to participate fully in education, as well as to take part in leisure and social opportunities. For them, time off is a thing unknown in many cases.
Therefore, young carers are a good example but there are others, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. Most schools will carry out this duty anyway but it is those that will not do it unless they have a duty to do so that worry me. I think that we need this duty and it should stay on the statute book.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I shall speak briefly, having not yet spoken at all on the Bill for a number of reasons. I support my noble friend in this matter. I particularly want to make the point that education does not exist in a vacuum and that education without an understanding of welfare—I have said this on a number of occasions—does not address the issues concerning children who will not learn unless those welfare considerations are addressed. I have asked on a number of occasions why this clause on co-operation is going to be taken out of the Bill. The answer that I have heard is that it is bureaucratic. Well, if it is bureaucratic, it is the kind of bureaucracy that I like. I have always felt that bureaucracy is not always a bad thing; some of it is really quite useful in terms of enhancing services.
Baroness Warnock
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment. I have in mind, unsurprisingly, children with special needs who, as we know, are very much more likely to be excluded permanently from school than any other group of children. Ever since the 1970s, people have tried to encourage co-operation between education and social services in particular, but the medical profession as well. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, it sends out a bad message to remove the duty. I do not usually like to think of laws being made to send out messages, but this carries the message that it is unnecessary to have a plan B which is understood by all the people who are deeply involved with the child. The amendments are therefore necessary for the well-being of the child. I met the other day the headmistress of a school—she was obviously the very good headmistress of an academy—who said that she never intended to use the local authority supplies because she did not trust them and it was bureaucratic. I was absolutely appalled by this because it simply deprives the local authority of the ability to keep an overview of all the needs of the child, which is of the greatest importance. I therefore hope that the Government will be able to think again.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and my noble friend Lady Whitaker. Several noble Lords touched on this question at Second Reading. I was particularly concerned to hear that there are 88,000 autistic school-age children in England. We should ask ourselves: who among us, if we had a child with special educational needs, would not want the co-operation of every agency and organisation to deliver the best we can for that child?
On Monday I was at the launch of a document, We’ve Got Great Expectations, produced by the National Autistic Society. Maria Miller, the DWP Minister, spoke at that event. She said that joined-up support from health, education and social services was needed. If it is needed, why are the Government removing this essential element—the requirement to co-operate? The cartoons on the front of the document have captions such as, “Support my child to succeed”, “Let’s work together”, “Help me, don’t doubt me”, and, as some of the parents I met said, “I can’t fight any more”. We all know of cases where parents have struggled to get the system to respond. Before I was elected to the other place, I was a councillor for 20 years. Time and again I went into council offices with a problem, only to be told, “Sorry, councillor, he falls through the net”. Who created the net? We did. Let us not make a bad net by damaging a very sensible policy and the duty to co-operate.
At Second Reading, I asked the Minister what evidence the Government have that the duty to co-operate does not work effectively. I appreciate, as will anyone who has been a Minister, that it is not always possible to answer every point. However, I did not get an answer on that occasion, so I tabled a Question the following day, which the Minister has kindly answered today. I asked what assessment the Government,
“have made of the effectiveness of the duty to co-operate in so far as education is concerned”.
The Minister’s reply, drafted by his officials, was:
“The findings of the Audit Commission’s report Are We There Yet? showed that before the duty to co-operate was extended, schools and colleges in most areas were engaging voluntarily as partners in local co-operation arrangements”.—[Official Report, 29/6/11; cols. WA 430-31.]
That report was published in 2008. I might be the son of a miner but I had to mine that report just to find any reference to co-operation. The only relevant sentence that I found—perhaps the Minister’s officials have found others—says:
“In most areas collaborative working has improved, but the new arrangements have yet to settle down”.
Is that the basis on which the Government will make this decision? In his Written Answer, the Minister went on to say:
“We are not convinced that the addition of schools and colleges to the list of statutory relevant partners, under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, was … effective or appropriate”.—[Official Report, 29/6/11; col. WA 431.]
If it was not effective or appropriate, what do the Government think ought to be in its place to make it effective and appropriate? I asked a further Question about,
“what impact the removal of the ‘duty to co-operate’ will have on children with complex needs, such as autism, and their families”.— [Official Report, 27/6/11; col. WA 358.]
I have received a two-paragraph reply. I am a great admirer of the Minister and do not wish to be ungenerous to him, but that reply could have been two words: “no idea”.
The duty to co-operate under the Children Act has existed for only a year. It ought to be properly evaluated to see whether there are failures or good points. What key government policy is this duty to co-operate thwarting? What great thing over the horizon can the Government not do because the duty to co-operate exists? How many complaints have the Government received from organisations involved in the duty to co-operate, saying that it is so burdensome that they cannot fulfil it? This is a case on which the Government ought to think again. The strength of this House is that we can try to persuade Governments to think again if we feel that there is a failure.
I conclusion, I share with noble Lords some advice that my late mother gave me many years ago: “My son, in life you will find that sense is not common”. Common sense tells us that this duty to co-operate should remain. I hope the Government will be persuaded of that.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I should like briefly to say how much I endorse the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. My noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned that we have spent some time congratulating the Government on introducing this provision and on making sure that schools were included in it. We are very sorry to see that the coalition is now going back on this particular duty.
I speak with a particular interest, as I am currently chairing a commission on colleges in their community. Further education colleges are mentioned here. One thing is becoming apparent from this; the commission is to develop the role that colleges can and do play within their communities. It is clear that the best of our colleges have enormous breadth of partnerships with all kinds of community organisations, which are currently promoting the well-being and development of those communities. They have in some senses a regeneration function, but they also have a function of promoting the well-being of the local community.
The Explanatory Notes say that these duties are being dropped so that these bodies will be able to decide for themselves how to engage in arrangements to improve well-being. I very much echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in that we are not worried about those that link up naturally. The ones we are really worried about are those that do not bother to do it. Forming these partnerships and links is so important. Having it in statute here provides that extra push or reinforcement for what we want to see. It will be very sad indeed if we drop this duty.
Baroness Ritchie of Brompton
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to make comments on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I declare an interest as the chair of the Children and Young People Board of the Local Government Association. The Local Government Group very much supports the Government’s attempts to reduce bureaucracy that schools face. Our report, Local Freedom or Central Control, was launched last year. For that report we commissioned research that showed that in the past 10 years more than 1,000 pieces of legislation have been passed affecting schools. That means that there is a new piece of primary or secondary legislation every school day over that period. However, we do not necessarily see as excessive the burden on schools of co-operating with the local authority through children’s trusts. We do not believe that you can necessarily legislate for good partnership working, but many councils have found that the requirement on schools to co-operate with the children’s trusts is a helpful way in which to encourage them to participate.
In many cases, the removal of a statutory duty will not immediately lead schools to refuse to work in partnership with local councils. Good schools will want to continue with good partnerships with councils. However, we worry, when all the messages coming out of the department seem to encourage schools to become academies free from local authority control and become more autonomous, that the removal of this duty will provide the wrong signal about the importance of local partnership working to achieve the very best outcomes for local children, young people and their families.
I believe that safeguarding is a particular issue here. We think it is important that schools should continue to be given a very strong message that they must co-operate in local safeguarding arrangements, including the local safeguarding children boards.
Lord Elton
Two subjects have been raised in this debate that tempt me to my feet. The first is children excluded from school when the provider of education is not the local authority and the child does not actually receive education because the provision is not there or is not working or the child has escaped from the system. The child is not merely at risk but is predisposed to suffer, because the child who is likely to get into trouble is the child who is likely to get excluded.
When I was working to try and keep children out of crime, rather more effectively than I am now, it was clear that one way of intervening at an earlier stage than normal was to go round to schools and say, “Tell us confidentially who do you expect next to be on the list, on skid row, and into permanent exclusion? Let us provide an adult mentor”. Usually one found that the child had no male role models, as would be normal. The difficulty was actually finding them. That was effective intervention, but that also bears out my feeling that a lot of children are at risk, without anyone realising it, who need not be.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, perhaps I may ask a rather boring lawyer’s question about the amendment. I think I am right in saying that in Committee it is possible for the mover of an amendment to say something a second time. I am totally persuaded of the desirability of co-operation, and one has a wonderful example in the amendment of the wealth and depth of experience of Members of your Lordships’ House. If they combine together, as they have done, it is like a mighty rolling wave, and I do not envy the Minister having to answer it. However, I have a hoary question on which perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Laming, might help me. His Amendment 100 places on all providers of education,
“a duty to co-operate with local authorities”,
and goes on to say,
“to promote the well-being of children and young people”.
In the case of a school, is that duty confined to the children and young people in that school, or is it more general? On the face of it, it looks to be more general.
My second boring old question that the Minister might like to answer is: have there been any cases under the existing law—I see that he is proposing to change the 2004 Act—where a school has been sued or taken to task judicially for a failure to co-operate? If there is no such case and the duty is not justiciable, some of us in this Room might be disappointed.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, again, I shall be brief. I have absolutely no hesitation in supporting both amendments and congratulating my noble friend Lord Laming and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on the way they have presented the case. One is particularly thinking above everyone else of those with special needs, not least of the age of 19 or 21—whatever the ages are—up to which care is quite rightly to be continued and provision made. It takes me back to my 20-odd years as a chairman of a juvenile court in London. At that time, there was a darn sight more co-operation. All of us—the social workers, probation officers, midwives and magistrates—were trying to find the right solution for the problems that ended up in the courts, and many of them were to do with a lack of schooling. Children were not going to school but the reason for that was not followed up. All that ended with the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. It was a case of, “Magistrates, you make the decision and we the professionals will deal with it”. That would have been okay if it had really proved to be the answer but—this is why I come back to the point—we need co-operation. Returning to the phrase used by my noble friend Lord Laming, “If only we’d known that at the time”, so much more could have been done.
This issue also takes us straight back to the principles underlying this coalition Government. I refer to the form of localism in which everyone co-operates to do their best, particularly for the least able within our community. I therefore congratulate noble Lords and ask that this duty be reinstated.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, I am not sure that I shall be able to add too much that is new to the debate, but this is an important issue and I am hoping that weight of numbers will affect the way that the Government respond to it. There will be a bit of repetition on my part but perhaps also one or two new points.
I genuinely think that this is one of the most important debates that we have had so far on the Bill. I have a feeling that, if this measure goes ahead, the tide will be turned back and it will be very difficult to reclaim the progress that has been made. The subject was excellently introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and no one is more experienced than him in understanding co-operation. In some ways, the education service has been on a long journey in getting to this point, having put into law a duty of co-operation. I wonder how far the Minister and his department have reflected on that journey. If he had done so, I do not think that he would have come to the conclusion that he has. First, there is a litany of children’s cases where, if only we had known the background, we could have made a difference.
Going back in time, it was clear that the education system did not need to co-operate with everything else. Children were born into and brought up in communities where there was natural communication. There were no social workers, health workers or even classroom assistants and so on; the people in the community looked after the needs of the children. Back then, children very often flourished because their lives were not separated into the needs of many professionals. However, we do not live like that any more. The education and school service is a specialised service in many ways, and long may that be the case because it performs at a far higher level. To be honest, I think that we have spent the past 30 years trying to remake connections that used to be there naturally, and that has been a real problem for schools. They are being asked to focus on education. I look back to the early days of the previous Government, when schools were under a lot of pressure not to act as social workers or counsellors and not to make excuses but to focus on education, and that was right as well.
Over the past 15 years, we have been on a long journey in which schools have focused on educational standards for everybody. I think that teachers have always known it but government came to realise that you cannot deliver on standards unless you look at the development of the rest of the child. When I started teaching in the 1970s, those of us in the education system were too much like social workers and standards came off the agenda. Then, at the end of the 1990s, we focused only on standards, and children fell through the cracks because their wider well-being was not catered for. This proposed new clause has again found the right connection.
I am not saying that it worked brilliantly in the past but it is a very clear statement in law that our society understands that, for children to achieve and flourish, adults have to talk to each other, because children’s lives are not compartmentalised. It is as simple as that. Sometimes we cannot structure services for children in a way that reflects the people whom they are. It might sound bureaucratic, but I genuinely think that this amendment is an honest chance and an honest wish to reconnect bureaucracies—in the best sense of the word—to meet the lives of children.
Would the Minister ever tolerate or approve of schools not co-operating with local authorities or other organisations? Can it ever be right that a school says, “I am exercising my right not to co-operate with someone else who affects the life of a child whom I teach”? I cannot see that it is. It is obvious that everyone will do things without being told to, but we are not there yet. A Minister in 50 years’ time might be able to say that such co-operation happened naturally and was so much embedded in the way schools worked that we no longer needed to have this in the Bill, but honestly we are not there yet.
The sad thing is that some schools that have the most difficult of times, because they have really challenging children with so many barriers to learning, given half the chance will not comply because they have other things to do. It will not be because they are lazy or do not care or think that is it is unimportant but because, in the words of the Government, it is a burden lifted from their backs. In a way, it is those people who have the most need to co-operate.
There are simple reasons why this is the right thing to do. It is good practice. Secondly, it is not yet embedded good practice. Thirdly, I sense in much that has been said over the past year that teachers need to focus on education and standards. Even if that is the reason, they need to talk to other people and help remove the barriers to children's learning. I very much hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to explain the thinking but then to take time to see whether this problem that he is creating can be avoided.
Baroness Brinton
I also support the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I confess that in the mid to late 1990s, I was chair of education in an authority where we had such an incident before the Act came in and there was a duty to co-operate. I remember at the time the deep shock as a fairly new councillor and certainly as a new Cabinet member at understanding that we had completely failed. The system had failed. I welcomed the Act when it came in.
I also echo the points that the noble Lord and others made—the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in particular—about a number of cases that have been reviewed since. I would say to my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury that I do not think you need to take a school to court. All you need to do is look at the serious case reviews where recommendations have been made to schools that have failed to ensure that follow-up happens.
I am sure that the many schools that want to co-operate will continue to do so. The problem is with the small number that do not believe it is in their interests. I am sorry to go back in time, but I remember some grant-maintained schools in the 1990s feeling that it was an absolute liberation to be free of the local authority and doing everything that they could not to co-operate with it. I fear that we might end up with that sort of encouragement again among academies and free schools were we to lose the duty to co-operate now. It is vital that we retain it.
I have one further point that is not about safeguarding in the sense that much of this debate has focused on. In many other areas local authorities, not just upper-tier authorities with responsibility for education and social services but district and borough councils, should have a duty to co-operate for services that children receive across the board. That has to include library resources, playgrounds and provision of school places at a strategic level. Where more schools can do their own thing and there is no longer a need for an admissions forum, a duty to co-operate at the highest strategic level to ensure that there is the right provision for children in an area is absolutely vital.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I want to make a small contribution to this excellent debate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for his introduction. I am a great admirer of the noble Lord. The Climbié report that he so admirably produced led to a great deal of rethinking on vulnerable children.
Some of the issues that he and others raised are about not being able to educate without looking at the whole child—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and a few other noble Lords. I also thank my noble friend Lady Morris for her potted history of education, which was very useful.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, childhood lasts a lifetime. Whatever children go through at an early age will stay with them for ever. Children’s well-being should be at the heart of everything we do in society. It should begin at home, but that is not always the case. However, it definitely needs to happen at school. Today, many children face difficulties in their lives. For some, life is like a marathon; it is relentless and the challenges that they face are unbearable. Some even die because of those challenges. The children who are victims and who are vulnerable need schools to support them. Schools have a duty to help them through the traumas that they might be going through by having strategies in place to cement the solid foundation needed to address children and young people’s well-being.
Many schools have such strategies in place and take this responsibility seriously. I visit schools up and down the country to give inspirational talks to children and young people. I often identify children and young people who need support, and discover what they might be going through mentally, physically and emotionally. It is so rewarding to know that you can make a difference to a young person’s life by giving them support and making sure that their well-being is addressed. It is the responsibility of us all to make sure that this happens time and again. We should have joined-up policies to make sure that it does. I fully support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. If we can do this, we will do a just service to our children and our young people across the country.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Laming for tabling these amendments. I have just one quick question for the Minister, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who talked about the impact on children with special educational needs. What does he think the impact might be on children in the care of local authorities? In principle, I can see that outcomes might be improved if there is at least a strategy that involves schools working with local authorities and thinking about how children’s homes and foster carers could be better meshed into the system.
Schools already have various duties with regard to looked-after children, but this might be another means of promoting outcomes for them. I should be grateful to the Minister if he circulated some copies of the plans for children and young people. I suppose it would be fairly easy for me to find those plans in the Library, but I should be interested to see how they work. I recognise the Minister’s drive to reduce bureaucracy, and I wonder whether the legislation is perhaps going a bit too far in trying to right that wrong.
Finally, I share the noble Baroness’s concern about the academies process. There are many positive sides to it, but there is the danger of schools becoming atomised, and the process would seem to add to that risk. I look to the Minister for reassurance in his reply.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I was a little concerned, after listening to our previous debate on searches, when we all became energised and passionately concerned about some of the dramatic situations we were envisaging, that when we came to debate something that sounds as sterile as a duty to co-operate we would not capture what this was about. I am sorry—I need to apologise to noble Lords, because I completely underestimated the ability of colleagues to see the importance of what we are talking about and to get behind the rather dry phrase, “duty to co-operate”.
I care enormously about this issue. It is one of the most significant aspects to the Bill, as my noble friend Lady Morris and others have pointed out. While I am on this subject, I have to say that I had no idea that the intervention of the noble Baronesses, Lady Sharp and Lady Walmsley, in the genesis of this legislation was partly why schools are included. That was before my time as Children’s Minister. I am full of admiration because I know the weight of opinion among civil servants in the Department for Education—with respect to those here—and that they would have resisted this like mad. Therefore, it is a tremendous achievement that the noble Baronesses managed to get it included.
One of the themes in this legislation, which I am sure the Minister will rehearse, is that the Government want to reduce what they regard as burdens and unnecessary duties on schools. We all have some sympathy for the potential for innovation and creativity if we can give professions who are capable of exercising it wisely their head. However, my problem is that the Secretary of State’s view—and I absolve the Minister here from responsibility, because it is the view of the Secretary of State—that it is a good thing if he can take away every single duty and burden as he sees them, and he is not necessarily thinking judiciously about the effect of each and every one. The more he can tear up the better. To be honest with noble Lords, that genuinely causes me great disquiet because reducing requirements and duties and thinking about the impact of what you are doing is one thing. Simply to tear them up without thinking about or understanding the impact properly is quite another. The best interpretation of the Secretary of State’s proposal here is that he does not know what he is doing and does not understand the issues. I am absolutely convinced that if he understood them properly, he would not be proposing to repeal these duties on local authorities. It is incomprehensible to me—if not indefensible—that anyone should propose this if they really understand what they are doing.
The amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, are a way of getting to a stand part debate. I know we will not have that later on, which is why I and others are speaking now. The noble Lord, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, gave us a history of all the inquiries, from Maria Colwell through Victoria Climbié and recently up to Peter Connelly, and their identifying the need for agencies working with children to speak together and to work together. That is a process that we still cannot say is perfect, as other Members have pointed out. It is why the legislation placed an equal duty on all those agencies—it was no greater on one than it was on another. They were the local authority and all the relevant partners, including the health, schools and employment services and the police. There is a mutual lock on all those agencies to talk and work together. To take one of those partners out of the equation, particularly the only partner that has contact with every single child over the age of five, is incomprehensible.
The duty was brought in not only to address some of the failures of the past but, in recognition of the limitations of legislation, to start to change culture and practice. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that simply to remove the duty from schools would send a very bad message and cause problems. It would also start to reverse the improvements in culture and practice that we have undoubtedly seen. I know that legislation cannot determine the behaviour of single school or every single authority, but it can create a direction of travel. To repeal the provisions would be to go backwards. There is still a lot further to go.
When I was Children’s Minister leading up to the implementation of the legislation, I saw that it was a matter not just of schools not co-operating. I heard many complaints from schools that had tried to engage children’s social care—they had rung up about a child. They told me, “Do you know what? They said they can come in three weeks’ time. Well, that’s no good to me”. Reciprocity has to be developed between the key agencies. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Storey, smiling, but I can tell him that I got a lot of stick when speaking at local government conferences and directors of children’s services’ conferences, and I became well known for it, for saying, “Come on, now. It’s not just schools; it’s you as well”. To unpick and start to weaken that apparatus by taking out schools would be very dangerous.
Many noble Lords have touched on why that co-operation is still necessary. Children with special educational needs are a very important group requiring multi-agency assessment and intervention. The recently published special educational needs Green Paper, when referring to special educational needs and exclusions—a topic that we will come to shortly—states that a whole-family approach to the assessment of needs and delivery of services is necessary and that,
“we will recommend in … guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment”.
Here we have a Secretary of State in the Education Bill proposing to repeal the duty on schools to co-operate but envisaging, in addressing the needs of SEN children who might be excluded, that schools trigger the assessment. There seems to be a contradiction in the Government’s thinking.
The assessment is essential not just for children with special educational needs, as noble Lords have mentioned, but for children at risk, for children in care, for those with mental health problems, and for children with parents who are in prison or who are abusing drugs and alcohol. There is a whole range of factors. Indeed, to promote the earlier intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who is very experienced, schools—that universal service—are necessary to identify the problems early, to get those services in to intervene early and perhaps to prevent escalation and further problems down the line.
One response that the Minister might make—his colleague Tim Loughton has referred to this as an alternative—is that schools should be formally represented on the local safeguarding children boards. That may well be a very good thing, but it is not the same as requiring each school to co-operate in the case of individual children. That raises concerns about how far Ministers understand what we are talking about with this proposal. We certainly give our intention to vote against the repeal of these two clauses when we come to Report, but I would be interested in the Minister’s response today.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I think that a pattern is beginning to emerge in this last group. For that reason, I shall keep my remarks fairly short.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for the way in which he raised and introduced his amendments. I wish him well with the dentist and hope that the exploration that he is about to undergo will not be as painful as the one that I have just been subjected to—and I hope that they will remember to supply him with some anaesthetic. Maybe I will speak to his dentist.
Before responding to the suggestion with which the noble Lord, Lord Laming, concluded his remarks, I wanted to pick up one point that had been raised about whether removing the duty to co-operate may inadvertently send a signal to schools that the Government do not take children’s well-being seriously. I want to put on record the fact that clearly we do, and we have duties on schools to safeguard and promote the welfare of pupils under Sections 157 and 175 of the Education Act 2002. We have retained the important duties on maintained schools to promote the well-being of pupils, which is in Section 21 of the Education Act 2002. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, said, there is a duty on the local authority to take reasonable steps to ensure a diverse range of schools are represented on local safeguarding children boards. Obviously, we have no plan to change any of those duties.
There is a debate one can have about statutory duties as opposed to a voluntary approach and whether statutory duties automatically work better than a voluntary approach. I think what everyone who has spoken this afternoon would agree with is that it is the importance of people working together in partnership working across a range of different fronts that is the key here. There is no disagreement between us that that is something that we want to encourage.
I shall not reply at length, but I clearly recognise—as do all noble Lords—the experience that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, brings to this area, as do many other noble Lords who have spoken. It clearly behoves the Government—me—to listen to what he says with great care. I know from having spoken to him before that he understands our concerns about a one-size-fits-all approach and not trying to treat all schools in all situations in exactly the same way. I know that he understands that, but equally I understand the point that he has made. In essence, I clearly need to consider the points that he has made this afternoon. He kindly offered to come in and speak further; I would very much welcome that. As soon as he is able to speak again, perhaps we can do that, certainly before Report stage. I would invite him to do that if he would.
Lord Laming
My Lords, I am—I was going to say “most grateful” but that is an understatement—slightly overwhelmed. I am so proud of your Lordships’ House. I read the debate on this that took place in what we call “the other place”. Being at my most judicious in choosing my expression, I shall say that it was a touch disappointing compared with what noble Lords have said here today. The debate here has stood out. I am not surprised but hugely impressed, as ever, with the calibre of the people who have contributed to this debate, with the experience that they bring and with the quality of compassion that they share.
We would all like to impress upon the Minister, who responded in a characteristically thoughtful and generous way, that none of us wants to defend duties that are there purely to serve bureaucratic ends. Frankly, too many such duties simply serve bureaucratic ends. I would support the Government if they said that with every duty you had to demonstrate the value that it brought to, in this case, children and young people. We should ask what impact it has. Does it enrich their lives and their life opportunities? If it does not, it is simply serving the machine. Therefore, if the Government wish to remove bureaucratic duties, I assure the Minister that he will have my complete support. There is a huge difference between that and trying to remove these duties, which, as all noble Lords have said, are about co-operation. They are not just about safeguarding but about promoting the welfare and proper development of every child. Today, we have heard many examples of children in different circumstances. However, time is going on, so I shall not mention them.
I am immensely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. I absolutely understand the Minister’s position. I know that by working together—an example that we should set to everyone else—we can do something that will achieve the end that we all wish to see. I shall not delay the Committee further, as I know that noble Lords have a long agenda. I shall follow the good example set by the Minister and just say that, on the basis of the assurances given by the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen)
My Lords, it has been suggested that we take a comfort break at this stage. Therefore, the Committee stands adjourned until 4.47 pm.
Baroness Walmsley
“( ) Where a child’s SEN has association to behavioural needs, a school cannot exclude that child without demonstrating the attempts made to support the child’s needs.”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rix, has been called away as a result of a family medical situation and has therefore asked me to deliver his speech for him. I shall speak also to Amendment 42 in the noble Lord’s name.
He would first like to thank the Minister for the offer he recently made to meet him with some of his officials to discuss these matters in more detail. The noble Lord says that he is most appreciative of the Minister’s time and for his constructive and helpful approach to the various matters raised.
I intend to focus my comments on the educational attainment of pupils with special educational needs, notably those who are disabled, and particularly those who have a learning disability. For the record, it is appropriate that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, declares an interest to your Lordships through his role as president of the learning disability charity, Mencap.
As your Lordships may be aware, the exclusion of pupils with a learning disability remains disproportionately high compared to non-disabled children. Pupils with SEN—both with and without statements—are more than eight times more likely to be permanently excluded than pupils with no SEN. It is for this reason that he has tabled the amendment and Amendment 42, which aim to ensure that children with SEN are not unfairly excluded as a consequence of either their need for additional support to achieve their full potential, or the failure of a school to recognise and provide for those needs.
The amendment would ensure that where a child’s SEN has an association with behavioural needs, a school cannot exclude a pupil without demonstrating the attempts made to support those needs.
Inadequate identification of a pupil’s needs denies that pupil access to support and the consequence is a poor education. This in turn leads to children becoming frustrated with the lack of appropriate provision, and a misunderstanding by teaching professionals of the subsequent conduct and behaviour of the pupils concerned. However, all this may have been caused by the initial and ongoing failure of the school to identify that pupil’s support needs. In such a climate, what hope is there for the children affected? The tragedy is that once mistakes are made in the early years of a child’s education, they can sometimes lead to a repetition of these failings as they grow older and older. Amendment 34 would go some way to tackling some of the issues to which I have just referred.
This leads to my second amendment in this group, Amendment 42, which provides a trigger for an assessment of a child’s support needs if they are excluded more than once in a 12-month period. I understand that when this issue was raised during the Commons Committee stage of the Bill, Ministers claimed that it would be “too rigid in practice” to implement. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I do not share this view. Indeed, I take a contrary opinion: the prospect of the trigger would lead to more schools taking the right steps early on in an attempt to avoid exclusions occurring in the first place.
I fear Ministers may also overestimate the enthusiasm of some schools and educational professionals for identifying where extra support is required for children who exhibit failing conduct. I also advise a rethink of this position to fall in line with the SEN Green Paper, which states that the Government,
“will recommend in exclusion guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment in instances in which a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite effective behaviour management by the school”.
Why can the Education Bill not take note of the Green Paper, rather than wait a further year before accepting this sound advice? I beg to move.
Lord Lingfield
My Lords, I have enormous sympathy with the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, would no doubt have moved and spoken to if he had been able to stay. His record on behalf of the vulnerable and the disabled is superb. He has spent all his life doing these things.
The assessments for which he calls in his second amendment raise a question of some difficulty. Most schools in most of the 6,000 cases of permanent exclusion call for some reassessment at that stage. Not all schools do and that record should be improved. However, it is a stage that triggers—at least in the mind, if not in legality—a reassessment under those circumstances. There is a huge problem over that. Most SENCOs, most teachers and many professionals working in this area will tell you that when the assessment is triggered—which does not always happen, as we know—it is not independent. Some local authorities have a fine record in this area but there are some whose record is, frankly, poor. Too many of the professionals I have mentioned believe that because the assessment is made by local-authority-employed educational psychologists, it reflects rather more the funding and provision available in the local authority area than the needs of the child.
The Green Paper, which has already been mentioned, gives us a glimpse of hope on this. We all rather hope that when it becomes a White Paper it will become more definite. It promises that in some trial areas we shall find some real independent assessment of the kind that is necessary here. I hope that that will happen, that we will see many of those trials and that at the end we shall see a new system that will able to assist excluded children in this way.
I suspect that when the noble Lord, Lord Rix, reads Hansard he will find that the Minister has not been able to grant him immediate gratification. Nevertheless, he should be able to give some guarantee that those assessments must become more independent and be conducted by more objective criteria than they are at present.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I support Amendment 35 and Amendments 48 to 52 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Low. Children who have been permanently excluded are less likely to achieve five good GCSE results or to be in employment in later life. There is a long-established link between being excluded from school and being involved in crime. Research from the prisons inspector in 2004 found that 83 per cent of young men in custody had previously been excluded from school. There is a clear consensus that exclusion from school results in dramatically poorer outcomes for the child concerned and has significant long-term costs to society.
Exclusion disproportionately affects disabled children and children with special educational needs, further compounding the disadvantages that they face. The Bill’s equality impact assessment itself recognises that pupils with SEN account for 72 per cent of all exclusions. Disabled children and children with SEN continue to be over eight times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the school population, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, when she gave us his speech.
Children placed in School Action Plus who have significant needs but who are without the statutory support of a statement for special educational needs are over 20 times more likely to be excluded. The Special Educational Consortium, which provided a brief for today, recognises that the Government are seeking to ensure that children with SEN are not disadvantaged by the new system. However, I share its concern that the Government have not gone far enough to mitigate the potentially negative impact that the proposals would have on children with SEN. The consortium tells me that it is often unmet learning needs, including unmet special educational needs, that are at the root of the persistent behavioural difficulties that these young people become involved in. In Committee in the other place, the Minister for Schools said,
“Incidents which prompt multiple exclusions will often be an indication that a pupil has underlying difficulties that may not have been correctly identified”.
This recognition is most welcome; I think that we would all welcome it. The Minister went on to say that the Government,
“will recommend in exclusion guidance that children are assessed through an effective multi-agency assessment for any underlying causal factors. We will suggest that schools trigger this assessment in instances in which a pupil displays poor behaviour that does not improve despite effective behaviour management by the school”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/11; col. 378.]
On Report in the other place, the Minister said that it was the Government’s intention to ensure that those assessments actually take place.
The Special Educational Consortium rightly has serious concerns that those assessments will not happen if there is only a recommendation and they are not included in the statutory guidance. All my experience, both in the other place as a Back-Bencher and a Minister and, as I said in the earlier debate, as a councillor for 20 years, shows me that that would be the case. Exclusion guidance is already clear about the need to look at underlying causes of behavioural difficulties, yet this has not reduced the number of children with special educational needs who are routinely and regularly excluded from school.
Lord Quirk
My Lords, I support Amendments 34 and 35. I do so having in mind particularly children who are speech defective and suffer from various communication needs where the continual and continuous support by speech therapists and others is vital. There is only a small window of opportunity, to coin a phrase, in which you can address speech pathological problems. All exclusions are a tragedy, but they are an especial tragedy for someone for whom a continuous supply of special education is required as, for example, in speech pathology.
The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, which was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talks about behavioural needs. I hope that it is understood that this goes very much further to the conditions underlying the behavioural needs in question.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I entirely endorse what my noble friend Lord Quirk just said about those with communication difficulties. Like a number of other failings in health and education, I have been alerted to a particular problem by the numbers suffering from it in custody, such as those with the communication difficulties that we have just been hearing about. Some 48 per cent of young offenders suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD.
I have spoken already about the concentration in this Bill on who should be assessed and the lack of detail on what should be assessed. In the opening amendment, my noble friend Lord Northbourne talked about a child's healthy, social, emotional and cognitive readiness to enter school. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, questioned the responsibility for preparation being passed to local government. I agreed with that in one particular respect—the word “consistency”. If you delegate responsibilities, they will inevitably be given different priorities, which leads to what are known as postcode lotteries. There must be no postcode lottery in ensuring that our children—all our children—are as ready as possible to enter school, which means that possible preventable problems have been identified and amelioration plans made.
I spoke to Amendment 1 to suggest that every child’s communication skills should be assessed, not just to identify learning disabilities and special educational needs, but also difficulties that do not qualify for either definition. The problem with ADHD is that it is another one that does not qualify for definition either as a learning disability, a disability or a special educational need. It is not mentioned in any of the other amendments in this group although it is hinted at in Amendment 42 about which the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has just spoken.
ADHD is a common behavioural disorder affecting school-age children. But it is also a clinically distinct neurobiological condition that is caused by an imbalance of chemicals affecting specific parts of the brain responsible for behaviour. If you look at the figures, 3.62 per cent of all boys and 0.85 per cent of all girls aged between five and 15 suffer from ADHD, 90 per cent of whom will underachieve academically at school. Children with ADHD are more than 100 times at greater risk of being excluded than other children and up to two thirds of those who are diagnosed with ADHD will continue to experience symptoms into adulthood.
It is not always generally understood what these symptoms might be, and in looking for them the clearest I could find was in A Parent’s Guide to ADHD in Children published in 1997, which said that:
“Children with ADHD often act without thinking, can be hyperactive, and may have trouble focusing. ADHD can affect all aspects of a person's life, extending far beyond poor behaviour or problems at school. The symptoms can have a significant impact on family life, relationships with friends, school discipline and society as a whole.
In other words, it is not something to be taken lightly or wantonly.
Although the youth crime action plan in 2008 identified ADHD as one of the main risk factors in criminal offending during childhood, ADHD struggles for recognition within the current educational system. The term is not listed in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. It is not listed in the Disability Discrimination Act, the SEN Code of Practice, or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 Code of Practice. It is not mentioned in the 2005 report on improving behaviour by the Practitioners’ Group on School Behaviour and Discipline led by Sir Alan Steer. It is mentioned only in the section entitled removal of pupils on medical grounds in the 2008 government guidance on exclusion, Improving Behaviour and Attendance: Guidance on Exclusion from Schools and Pupil Referral Units. The only mention under that is pretty bare. It does not include any direction regarding the next steps for school staff to adhere to in order to make correct, informed decisions on exclusion.
ADHD is not mentioned in Support and Aspiration: A New Approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability published in March this year, so does not qualify for education and health and care plans from birth to 25.
A specialist consultant using standard criteria and rating scales can diagnose ADHD in school-age children, but the majority of adolescent psychiatrists and paediatricians believe that it is currently underdiagnosed in the United Kingdom. Sadly, once it is diagnosed there is no quick fix. The condition is manageable with a combination of regimes that include behaviour management, cognitive therapies and medication.
According to NICE, ADHD is associated with significant financial and emotional cost to the healthcare system, education services, families, carers and society as a whole, quite apart from the basic financial cost of £4,000 a year to teach a child in mainstream and £15,000 a year in a pupil referral unit. Carrying on with this problem, two thirds of parents of children with ADHD who had been in contact with teachers found that the perceived competence by teachers in the management of ADHD was at best variable. A very large number of specialists feel that teachers are not aware of ADHD and do not therefore realise what the symptoms are or that people showing those symptoms should be referred to someone as quickly as possible. We come down to the fact that, at present, ADHD is usually identified only after the second exclusion for bad behaviour. The youngest excludee whom I came across in prison was a boy who had been excluded from his playgroup at the age of four and never allowed to attend any form of education thereafter. It was small wonder that I found him Young Offender Institution Dover—and that was down to ADHD.
What should we do? We have already brought out the fact that a large number of ministries are involved in taking action to ensure that every child is ready for school. I have already quoted a number of Ministers who are involved in different aspects of ADHD. I ask the Minister to agree to undertake not only to consider my amendment, which has a specific recommendation about action following a second exclusion and is what is happening now and should be enshrined—but to start thinking seriously about those who are at risk of exclusion as a result of ADHD by raising its profile on the political and healthcare agendas to ensure better futures for children with this condition.
If we were to go on to debate the subject, I would talk about the effects of nutrition, because it has such a huge effect on the brain and is such a powerful contributor to the condition and its treatment. However, this is not the time or the place for that. However, confident in the hope that the Minister will accept my plea and its logic, I am sure that all that can come out in the consideration that will, I hope, follow.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, that any exclusion is a tragedy for that pupil and for the school itself. That is not to say that there are not occasions when pupils have to be excluded. Children have a right to learn and teachers have a right to teach. We must always remember that. However, in my experience—and the noble Lord’s point is important here—children with learning difficulties, and with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, are more likely to be excluded than any other group of children. If we can sort out those issues at school, and more importantly if we have the resources to do that, the likelihood of exclusion is considerably reduced.
I do not think that any pupil wants to be excluded from school. I repeat again that it is a tragedy for that pupil and that family. If we can identify issues early on and sort them out at school, and if we have the resources to do that, the problem of school exclusions becomes considerably reduced. However, when there are exclusions—I am looking at Amendment 43—it is important that the mechanisms of exclusion are properly conducted, that the families can make representations on the proposal to exclude, and that there is an opportunity for them to appeal against that exclusion. There are often certain circumstances, and my experience is that schools and head teachers do not want to exclude. It is the final avenue that they have to go down, and if any reasons come out on appeal, it is not an admission of failure by the school or its leadership. They are more than happy to understand those reasons and to reconsider the situation. Finally, we must make that process transparent. We must make the language we use and the way we carry out the process as simple, clear and concise as possible.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has just told noble Lords about Amendment 43 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to which I added my name. Apart from saying that it is one that I support very firmly, I think that one can give only full-hearted support to almost all these amendments.
Listening to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham made me think back all those years to 1979. Before then, I became quite involved with autism. When my noble kinsman became Chancellor of the Exchequer, we gave Christmas parties for autistic children. They were very informative, if I may say so. They were enchanting children, but quite clearly with problems and needing a great deal of help.
Where are we now? We now have a spectrum that is much bigger and more complicated. We have heard about ADHD, which, from what my noble friend said, has clearly not been as recognised as it needs to be to reduce the cost to everyone concerned—to put it on a level as basic as that. Not just in this area but in others, there have been many more such children over time. I do not know what that has to do with; maybe it is because parents have children earlier. One could say a lot about equal opportunities to make things happen rather more than they are at the moment. This is a major problem. Apart from doing the very best for every child, as with Every Child Matters, it is in all our interests to see that we provide the fullest possible life for these children as they grow up to enable them to make the fullest possible contribution to society and each of our communities.
I hope that the Minister, who has had an awful lot to think about today, can take all this on board on top of everything else and, above all, will draw it to the attention of the other place, which, as has been said on several occasions, has not given the matter that much attention. It may be that there is not the knowledge or experience there—I shall not say expertise—that so many of your Lordships have had that enables them to shed a more penetrating light on the issues that are being looked at.
Baroness Jolly
I also support the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on Amendment 43, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, has added her name. Almost by their nature, children who are excluded can be stroppy and awkward, but what is hidden—and what they probably fight very hard to hide—is that they are really very scared and apprehensive of the whole process. There is no provision in this Bill to show that children also figure. There is no provision to ensure that they are aware of the process, to allow them to make representation themselves to the panel or to appeal against their exclusion.
This amendment calls upon those who are involved in the process to ensure that the pupil is clear about these issues—about the reasons and the evidence. The language that is used should be in the appropriate tongue or at the appropriate level to allow the pupil to be completely clear about what is happening. They should know who is going into the process. There should be no doubt for the child what is there before them.
One thing that I would like the Minister to consider, should he be minded to do so, although it is not written as part of the amendment, is that the child could have an advocate with whom they could work as they go through the process. That could be useful.
The amendment would align England with the devolved nations. It would also put England in line with Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and would meet the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. There is an element of natural justice to it and, whatever the reasons for the exclusion, the child deserves that.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I hope that the Committee will forgive me for intervening briefly but the last point is very important. What has triggered the behavioural deterioration that has resulted in exclusion? These children may already have special educational needs. The behaviour may be down to bullying but sometimes it is due to abuse. Sexual abuse is particularly difficult to uncover in these children. It may also be a grief reaction to loss or bereavement, which can sometimes be delayed. One problem is that in the majority of our schools staff do not have adequate training to deal with children who are bereaved and have bereavement and loss reactions. The reactions to grief and loss in this group of children can appear to be disruptive and bad behaviour, and it can exacerbate other behaviours in the children around them. Therefore, the triggers that have set this cascade towards exclusion going are absolutely critical, and if we do not focus on them we will continue to fail children over time.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
My Lords, I rise briefly to address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in Amendment 39A. His comments, which I strongly support, take us back to 1979 and the Warnock report. They take us back to why that report and the 1981 Act moved away from the categorisation of special needs and conditions associated with special needs and towards two things. The first was to look at the severest cases and to make sure that they were properly assessed with a statement of special needs, which then had to be statutorily supported in our schools. I very much supported that at the time.
The Warnock report also recognised that in 1979—not in 2011—some 20 per cent of our children had some form of special needs which should, if recognised, be supported within the school community. From that time through to when I entered Parliament, I spent most of my professional career working first in the north-east, opening the first school to look at the inclusion of children with physical impairments; and then latterly in Leeds, working to ensure that children with severe learning difficulties—mostly Down’s syndrome, hearing impairment and sight impairment—became part of the mainstream setting.
In all those cases, both in the north-east, where we did some pioneering work with NFER and then HMI, and in Leeds, the crucial factor—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is not here at the moment—was training your staff. You can identify until you are blue in the face but, following that identification, you have to ensure that you translate the needs of the child into an appropriate action point, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, with the appropriate resources. This is not a massive resource issue but it is a training issue. It is a question of ensuring that people have the skills to support these children. I am sorry that the noble Baroness whose name I should remember—
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
I apologise. She is so famous that I get star struck. Not only was the noble Lord, Lord Finlay—I am sorry; I have given the noble Baroness a lesser status. I shall shut up before I dig any more holes. The reality is that unless you look at the child in the round you will start to get these narrow categorisations. That is my worry about the noble Lord’s amendment; if we go back to looking for a categorisation, we will start looking in silos rather than at the whole child within the whole school and indeed in the broader community. I ask the Minister, when he considers these issues, to do so in the round. The danger of an education programme that looks at giving autonomy to every single school in the country, both secondary and primary, is that it becomes more and more difficult to find opportunities to do the training and create the systems.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
As noble Lords know, the clause changes the appeals process for pupils if they are permanently excluded. It removes the ability to appeal to an independent panel with the power to reinstate a pupil. It does not make any provision for, and does not seem to recognise, the fact that the vast majority of children who are excluded have a special educational need or a disability. As noble Lords have already alluded to, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, this group of amendments focuses on trying to mitigate the even greater impact of these proposals on SEN and disabled children by proposing assessments and reports at various stages in the process that the Government are now putting forward. I support all the amendments in principle. I am speaking to those from my noble friends and me in this group—Amendments 36, 39 and 54—the last of which is slightly different.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, was right to alert us to two things. First, there are the traumatic and possibly long-term consequences for a child of a permanent exclusion; it can stay with them for many years and affect their job prospects as well as their academic record. Secondly, there are the difficult decisions that schools have to make, particularly those working with difficult children and in challenging communities.
I accept that, but I would also say that in taking these decisions it is important that the process demonstrates to parents, to all the pupils and to staff that there is a process of natural justice—the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, referred to this. Whatever the difficulties that schools are facing, is it right that there should be a process in which there is no opportunity for a decision of an independent tribunal that says, “Actually, we think that this decision was the wrong one” and reinstates the child? I pose that question because it seems to be an important one. What are we saying to children and parents if, after a permanent exclusion, we push them through that process but they do not have the redress that we would all have in any other situation about a decision of such seriousness that affected our future? We talked before about messages, and this seems to be really the wrong message to give to everyone, not just to the children concerned.
We heard a great deal about the evidence that children with special educational needs are grossly disproportionately represented in the figures for permanent exclusions. With respect to the Minister, the issues that he has to address with regard to this group of amendments are as follows. The evidence now is that, even with the power of reinstatement, and even though it is rarely used—it is used in only 10 per cent of the cases that go to appeal; there are only 60 cases a year out of more than 600 that appeal—schools are still disproportionately excluding children with special educational needs and disabilities. Therefore, what will be the effect of removing even that small check and balance, which will be in the back of a governing body’s mind when it is making this decision? One can conclude from the evidence before us of what happens next only that the removal of the power to reinstate will, if it does anything, compound the position of children with special educational needs and disabilities, making it more likely that they will be excluded permanently. That is why noble Lords have tabled this group of amendments, including those in my name and that of my noble friend—to mitigate that effect.
Baroness Warnock
Is it in order for me to ask a question? I agree with much of what the noble Baroness says, but does she not recognise that sometimes sending a pupil back to the same school might not be appropriate and might be very difficult both for the school and for the child? The school’s duty is to find proper resources at another school, or indeed at another unit in the same school, so that the education can continue. This is relevant to Amendment 54, because the school could keep the child on the roll and make sure that they had a proper education. Does she agree?
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I agree in principle. The wording in the amendment,
“to retain an excluded pupil on the roll”,
means that the child is still recognised as having a connection with the school and that their education elsewhere needs to be funded and their outcomes included. That is one of the problems with the approach that we are discussing, because it does not allow for that subtlety. A panel might decide that the decision to exclude was wrong and that in principle the child should be reinstated, but there then needs to be a discussion with the child, the parents and the teachers as to the best course of action. For the child to go to another school with their head held high because a positive decision had been taken would be very different from their going to another school because they had been permanently excluded. It would wipe the slate clean, and they might well be better off having another opportunity elsewhere. I wish I had been clever enough to table an amendment that could allow that degree of subtlety, but I agree with the noble Baroness that that is ideally what should happen.
Baroness Howells of St Davids
My Lords, a child is disadvantaged in the system not only because he might have SEN or a disability; he is disadvantaged because of the colour of his skin—something he cannot change. I have heard and seen nothing that would make that case better. I have spent many years going into schools. This is a multiracial society, but racism is still alive and well, and children are hit most when they are young and at school. I just feel that this Bill gives us an opportunity to do something about this. People must unlearn their racism when they teach. I am very happy to talk about this outside, but I waited patiently to hear one person say they realise why young black men and women are in the prison system. If you trace it back, you will find that they were excluded from schools. Second-chance education often helps them. Many people may disagree with me. I have heard people tell me that they are not racist. I have some amazingly subtle ways of asking them questions. They then discover that their conditioning has made them racist. The colour of skin is an important thing for a multiracial society, and I ask noble Lords to give some thought to that.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I apologise for being absent for much of this debate. I have an amendment in this grouping, Amendment 52A, and I would like to speak to it briefly if I may. It states:
“A review panel may, following a review under this section, direct the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills to undertake an inspection of the school concerned”.
I hope that the amendment has not been degrouped from this grouping of amendments.
The Minister was kind enough to write to me with some information about the review of Ofsted. I understand that it is looking for new triggers for inspections and I tabled the amendment in order to probe the Minister on whether this might be one way of doing so. It may not be to direct but to encourage Ofsted to inspect a school that has excluded a child. Having spoken recently with a head teacher who sat on a panel dealing with young people who had been excluded, it seems to me that a small number of children are put back into the system and that it is a necessary check. The Minister knows how much sympathy I have for his push to give more autonomy to schools and the professionals working in them.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, exclusion should be the last resort, a statement with which everyone here wholeheartedly agrees. There was agreement on that when we discussed it on Tuesday and it was a message that I received clearly from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children, which I was lucky enough to meet last week, and it has been reiterated again today.
Therefore, in responding to this group of amendments, I want to start backwards with Amendment 54 spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the case for trialling a new approach to exclusions. In our White Paper, published last year, we set out our plans for such a trial. It is worth rehearsing our objectives because this goes so much to the heart of what we have discussed today on exclusions. They are to encourage early intervention; to address behavioural problems and their causes; to keep pupils in their schools wherever possible; and, if it is not possible, to ensure that they receive high-quality education elsewhere. It is worth restating that because it comes down to a point that we debated previously—that the way in which legislation is drafted means that one often starts the discussion back to front. I want to emphasise clearly that our objective, which I know is shared by everyone here, is that exclusions should be absolutely the last resort and the drive of government policy going forward will be to try to find ways of avoiding it.
We know that some areas have already made a lot of progress in this area of the kind referred to by the noble Baroness. Cambridgeshire has devolved responsibility for all its alternative provision to clusters of schools, and they are given a share of the local authority’s budget to spend and are allowed to keep the savings. It has seen a reduction of about two-thirds in the number of pupils referred to PRUs by secondary schools. At the all-party group meeting last week, we heard also about Devon. There is clearly good practice out there from which we are keen to learn.
In the trial areas, a school that excludes a pupil will then have to find and fund an alternative full-time placement. That relates to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. Knowledge of the pupil’s needs and history should assist in finding the most appropriate provision. Some of the funding currently retained by local authorities for alternative provision would be delegated to schools for this purpose. That is the idea of the trials. More than 50 local authorities have expressed an interest in taking part in the trial and we are finalising plans for it to start this autumn, involving between 15 and 18 local authorities. Officials are discussing the final details with those schools, and we hope and believe that this large trial will enable us to identify and work through all the issues, find solutions and modify our approach should that prove necessary.
Amendment 54 seeks to legislate now for that approach. I am sure that its purpose is to provide an opportunity for this debate. However, our view is that we need first to have discussions with head teachers and other people with know-how in this area and that we should not rush into legislation on this matter. We hope that the trials will start in the autumn and run for two or three years. We do not need legislation for the trials, but having learnt from them we will then legislate if we need to. That is something that my honourable friend Sarah Teather is running with.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
Will the Minister make it clear in the guidance that, if the assessments are done at an early stage as he envisages, they will be made available and the governing body considering a permanent exclusion—and then the review panel at the point of review—will be required to see the assessments that will have recently been done?
Lord Hill of Oareford
In that case, we would expect the panel to ask for such an assessment if it has been made.
We then turn to the amendments that require an automatic trigger to initiate an assessment when a child has been given a certain number of fixed-period exclusions. Whereas I hope that I have set out our thinking on the importance of good early assessment, we are reluctant to set in legislation such an automatic link, tying assessment to a set number of fixed-period exclusions. The approach that we have set out in the Green Paper can achieve the same objective, and multiagency assessments should take account of all special educational needs, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which was the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who is no longer in his place. I will follow up with him his specific points.
We then considered amendments that require certain conditions regarding special educational needs to be met before a pupil could be permanently excluded. For example, the governing body would have to consider a report from the special educational needs co-ordinator, the SENCO, before excluding a child; or a school could not exclude a child with special educational needs without showing that it had made attempts to address those needs.
Governing bodies must take account of relevant information pertaining to the child when considering exclusion. They already have a duty to secure as far as they can that special educational provision is made for those pupils with special education needs, and I will be happy to ensure that future versions of guidance make it explicit that they should take account of information relating to the child’s special educational needs, if any, in this situation. That is currently implicit in the guidance, but in view of the proportion of excluded pupils who have special educational needs, I accept that we should make a more explicit reference in future guidance.
I would hesitate to be so prescriptive as to say that there must be a report from the school’s special educational needs co-ordinator. In many cases, I agree that the SENCO may well be the appropriate source of information, but I would rather limit guidance to the principle that the governing body should take account of information that relates to the child’s special educational needs but allow it some flexibility on the question of from whom that advice should come.
With regard to whether a school should be able to exclude a pupil without demonstrating the attempts that it had made to meet his or her needs, I hope that what I have said will have demonstrated to noble Lords that we are committed to ensuring that children’s needs are assessed early. We would wish governing bodies to consider what their school had done to assist the child, and that should be a factor in their decision.
However, to say that a school could never exclude a child if it had done too little to meet his or her needs would be a step too far. To take an extreme case, if a child whose needs had not been suitably addressed was guilty of a serious assault on another child or a member of staff, exclusion may well be the most appropriate action for the sake of other pupils and staff. We would then want action taken to address that child’s needs so that they could better participate in education, but that would be after the exclusion rather than instead of it.
In terms of the part played by the special educational needs expert in the review panel process, noble Lords will know that we made a commitment in the other place to include provision in the regulations to give parents the right to ask for a special educational needs expert to attend the panel. It will be for the parents to determine whether they believe the SEN expert is required, irrespective of whether the school or local authority has identified any special needs. Given that, I am not convinced that there is a pressing need to include a reference to this in the Bill.
We will ensure that parents are made aware of their right to ask for the presence of such an expert. After the passage of the Bill, we will consult on regulations and guidance, and I have asked officials to consult local authorities, schools, parents’ representatives and others on how we can best ensure that parents are made aware of their rights.
I move on to Amendment 43, spoken to by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The principle that the pupil’s views should be heard during the exclusions process is very much one that I support. More generally, the Government are committed to ensuring that children and young people’s views are listened to and respected. I can confirm that we will work with children’s organisations to revise the current statutory guidance to set out clearly the legal obligations that apply to schools in relation to consultation with pupils.
Through guidance, we have encouraged the involvement, where appropriate, of pupils at all stages of the exclusions process—subject to their age and understanding. This begins at the start of the process. The guidance says that before excluding a pupil, the head teacher should inform him of the reasons for the intended exclusion, the length of the exclusion, if for a fixed period, and give the pupil a chance to have his say.
The section of the guidance that covers appeal panels states that pupils under 18 should be encouraged to attend hearings and speak on their own behalf if they wish to do so, subject to them being able to understand the process. We will need to revise the guidance in the light of the changes to panels proposed in this Bill. I can reassure noble Lords that we will keep similar messages in the revised guidance. I hope that the noble Lord will agree that this guidance does not merely pay lip service to young people’s participation but actively encourages it. This guidance was prepared under the previous Government, but that principle is one that we support.
It is important that a pupil should have the right to his or her say in this way, and we want schools and review panels to listen to them. However, that is rather different from making more formal representations, and we believe that parents should have that more formal role. However, we do not want to rule out further changes in future. We have taken note of the views of those who want to extend children’s rights in this area, and we are willing to consider how such arrangements could work. Noble Lords may have seen in the SEN and disability Green Paper that we are planning to run pilots where children will have a right of appeal to the first-tier tribunal for all tribunal hearings. I ought to make clear the distinction between the trials of the new approach to exclusions and these pilots, which focus not on exclusions but on how young people could appeal directly to the first-tier tribunal on all the issues for which the tribunal is responsible.
The pilots will test in a couple of areas of the country whether this approach can work. They cannot begin until we have modified primary legislation, which would not be until 2012 to 2013 at the earliest. But we will use those trials, assuming that we get the legislative go-ahead, to inform our future policies in these areas.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned an important point about Ofsted. I support the principle behind this amendment that a review panel should be ready to highlight concerns and bring them to the attention of Ofsted or other relevant bodies, but I would not go as far as directing Ofsted to inspect the school. But a review panel would be able to write to Ofsted, or to the Secretary of State, expressing its concerns, and suggesting that an inspection might be useful. I believe that an independent appeal panel could do that now, although I do not know if it has ever happened. I think it would be useful for us to refer to that possibility in guidance so that review panels consider the option of making a reference to Ofsted. I am therefore grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for raising the issue.
Before I finish I would like briefly to speak to government Amendment 60, which is in my name. It replaces the wording of “exclusion appeal panel” with “exclusion review panel” in Section 31A of the Local Government Act 1974. This is a consequential amendment and should have been included in Schedule 1, but was overlooked when the Bill was drafted, for which I apologise.
We have had a broad set of amendments and debate. I hope that I have been able to provide some reassurance generally about our approach and some specific further reassurance, as well as some more information. In the light of that, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Ouseley
I make a small intervention on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Howells. The Minister has not responded to the point that she made on the issue of race and ethnicity. If the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was here now he might be able to confirm the issue to which he referred—the high percentage of 72 per cent of SENs in prison. There is also clear disproportionality associated with that, within the context of colour discrimination, as it affects black young boys in exclusions and in custody, black young boys experiencing stop and search, as well as black young boys’ DNA being on data registers. Those are all contributory factors that lead back into issues of behaviour in schools, which we have to address.
We cannot have a debate and a consideration of these provisions and the subsequent ones without recognising the issue of colour discrimination. It would be helpful if the Minister could say before he concludes what efforts he will make to have discussions with the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, and others, about the arrangements to put together guidance and the provisions dealing with assessments before exclusion, which would be helpful to reduce the disproportionality that exists.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, I, too, support what the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, has said. I feel very sad that three people of culturally diverse backgrounds have had to bring up this point. I should like the Minister to respond to her and for others to be part of this conversation.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Forgive me, my Lords. I meant no discourtesy to the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, and I hope she will understand that. I meant no discourtesy to any noble Lord in my reply. I am grateful to noble Lords for having raised the point and for reminding me that I did not do so. I was responding to the specific points relating to SEN. I obviously accept the point that the noble Lord made about exclusions and disproportionality, and the statistics speak very powerfully. That is precisely the sort of issue that the exclusion trials ought to take into account. Regarding where we have got to on the trials, my understanding is that we want to look at a range of issues concerning exclusions in different parts of the country and in different settings. It would be absolutely right to do that. If it would be helpful, clearly I would be more than happy to speak to the noble Baroness and to bring together some officials who can explain where we are with the trials. We could have a conversation to make sure that these important points are picked up.
Baroness Howells of St Davids
I hope that noble Lords will forgive me as I, too, forgot something. I forgot to say that the Minister sent me a three-page letter the last time I spoke in the debate. I thank him very much for that and I am sharing it with my colleagues.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may ask my noble friend a couple of questions. First, I should be very interested in being included if he is telling people about the trials. The important thing is that they focus on the distillation—on the kids at the end who do not respond at the beginning to whatever is done. They are the ones who are abandoned at the end of the system. They are allotted four hours’ tuition at home but that does not happen and people forget about them. I very much hope that, as is the case with prisons, organisations are given money on the basis of the results that they achieve. We may try that at the back end of some of the trials so that innovative ideas are encouraged in rescuing these children who have proved difficult to educate.
Secondly, am I right in understanding that, when a school is concerned that a pupil may have special educational needs which may be causing problems, it has the absolute right to require and obtain the assessment when it is needed, rather than, as in the current system, waiting for the LEA to decide that it is prepared to do it?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply to my amendment. I am pleased to hear that he is thinking of amending guidance in this way and I thank him.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I think that once more it falls to me to don the mantle of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, albeit I cannot possibly do it justice. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I should like to make just a few points.
I was very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Howells, in particular, for reminding us that children are not just excluded because they are naughty; there are many underlying factors. The noble Baroness, Lady Howells, reminded us that it could be, at worst, racism or, at best, a misunderstanding of the behaviour of certain cultural groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, reminded us that the child might be responding to a terrible trauma in their lives such as bereavement. I remind the Committee that sometimes children behave as though they have been bereaved when their parents split up. A parent has not died but is no longer in the child’s life and the child responds in that way. Therefore, we have to look at the underlying factors, whether they are the ones I have just mentioned or the SEN factors that many noble Lords have referred to.
It is particularly important that parents have confidence in the system of exclusion and the system of appeals. In that respect, I certainly support Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig. Parents should be able to choose their own SEN adviser. Only then will they have real confidence in the advice to the appeals tribunal.
I am grateful to the Minister, as I am sure the noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Rix, would be, for saying that the guidance will be made statutory. I am also grateful to him, following something I said at Second Reading, for making it possible for me to meet Charlie Taylor. He is supervising the pilots where schools retain responsibility, in terms of both the financial bottom line and academic achievement, for where they place a child who might otherwise be excluded. It sounds like a very interesting innovation, which I gather will probably go on for two or three years. I am delighted to hear that the Government have undertaken to implement that sort of arrangement more widely if it proves helpful in preventing children being excluded in an unwarranted and inappropriate way.
Finally, on Amendment 43, I am grateful to the Minister for saying that the guidance will be revised. Will he ensure that children themselves can appeal against exclusion in their own right, as they can now do to SENT? That is, will they be able to appeal against an exclusion to the independent appeals panels in the same way that they can to SENT? Perhaps the Minister will write to me about that. I know it is a fairly new situation, but for me and others it is an important “rights of the child” issue.
On behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, I thank the Minister for all his responses to the debate and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until Monday at 3.30 pm.
House of Lords
Message from His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh
The Lord Speaker
My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that, pursuant to the order of the House, I, together with the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Brabazon of Tara, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, waited upon His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh this morning, with the Message of this House of 8 June, and that His Royal Highness made the following reply:
“My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, I received your kind message of congratulations on my ninetieth birthday with the greatest pleasure. I have derived much satisfaction from the many years that I have been able to help and support the Queen. Few others, if any, have had the satisfaction of witnessing the affection and respect that so many people round the world have shown for the Queen since the beginning of her reign. I acknowledge that the position that I have held has made it possible for me to support and encourage a great many valuable and worthwhile organisations in this country and further afield. It has been a particular pleasure to be associated with so many organisations that have encouraged the development of the younger generation in this country and in the wider world”.
Civil List
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, to return to Her Majesty the thanks of this House for Her Majesty’s most gracious Message, and to assure Her Majesty that this House, always desirous of availing itself of every opportunity to manifest its dutiful attachment to Her Majesty’s Royal Person and Family, will cheerfully concur in all such Measures, as shall be necessary and proper for giving effect to the object of Her Majesty’s Message.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, perhaps a brief word of explanation would be appropriate at this time. Yesterday, the Queen sent a rare gracious Message to both the House of Commons and to this House to initiate parliamentary consideration of the Civil List and other financial support of the Royal Household. In his comprehensive spending review statement last October, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed that the Civil List and separate grants in aid to the Royal Household be abolished and a new, single sovereign grant, linked to a percentage of the revenue from the Crown Estate, be established in their place. That is a question of supply and so one which is primarily for the House of Commons.
The Motion I am moving today replies to the Queen’s Message. It indicates that this House will concur in the provision that the Commons proposes, as with previous such Bills. When the Commons sends us the expected Bill I expect that we will follow that precedent and give the Bill a full Second Reading, but then take its remaining stages formally. I hope that that explains the meaning and the purpose behind the humble Address, which I shall now present to the Lord Speaker.
Banking: Northern Rock
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Turner of Camden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their plans for the future of Northern Rock, in view of its status as a major employer and provider of financial services in the North-East of England.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, on 15 June my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that a sales process for Northern Rock should commence, following a recommendation from UK Financial Investments. Prospective acquirers will be asked to provide a view on the impact of their acquisition on competition. UKFI also expects prospective acquirers to lay out their plans for the company’s headquarters and branches.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I thank the Minister for that response. Since tabling the Question, I have been visited in this House by representatives of the workforce, whose chairman and organiser came to see me. They are still very worried people, although they appreciate the sympathetic response that the Minister gave on 16 June when this question was originally raised. On the other hand, they are very concerned because of the employment situation there and very keen on mutualisation, which they believe would be much better from the point of view of employment and as far as the community is concerned. Would the Government give serious consideration to that?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the Government, through UKFI, will consider all options for the disposal process, including stand-alone remutualisation. However, it is important to recognise that the Chancellor believes that a sales process is most likely to generate the best value for the taxpayer, and that is why that is being explored as the lead option. Of course, the Government are committed to promoting mutuals and we very much welcome bids from mutuals as part of the sales process that is to start.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the staff of Northern Rock have, in the past three and a half years, done a magnificent job to recover the status of the bank? Does he agree that maintaining a headquarters function for the bank in the north-east of England remains important? In that context, could it be a condition of sale that the Northern Rock Foundation, the largest charity in the north of England, should continue to have support from whoever buys the bank in order to maintain the good work of the Northern Rock Foundation?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, first of all, it is right that Northern Rock is now a highly liquid and well capitalised strong bank, which is why UKFI has been able to recommend the start of a sales process to the Treasury. Incidentally, for all the very significant reductions in the number of employees that there have been, the bank still has a footprint of some 75 branches—little changed since before the collapse of the bank. As for its commitment to the foundation, the bank has a signed agreement with the foundation, signed in March 2011, under which Northern Rock plc agrees to donate 1 per cent of pre-tax profits to the foundation under a covenant with an initial expiry date of December 2012. It will be very much in the interest of prospective purchasers to make clear, if they want the support of people in the north-east, what their plans are for the headquarters, for their support for the foundation and for other matters.
Lord Borrie
I wonder whether the noble Lord could show a little more enthusiasm for mutualisation as a most desirable method of organising and purveying financial services. That would give the Government a chance to distance themselves from the sad period of the 1980s, when far too many building societies moved away from mutualisation, with a lot of risky business being pursued thereafter.
Lord Sassoon
I have made clear on this and previous occasions that the Government regard mutualisation as a desirable model. It would be wrong to say that it is the best model, as the noble Lord has suggested, but, indeed, we want to see variety of provision of financial services in this country by organisations with different models, of which mutualisation should be one.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Will the noble Lord explain how we can have mutualisation and the taxpayer get his money back at the same time?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the overarching aim of any sales process, as well as getting a clear exit, is to obtain best value for the taxpayer. There are of course tensions between that objective and certain methods of sale, and that is precisely what the experts conducting the sale will assess.
Lord Myners
Will the Minister confirm that best value will not have been achieved if Northern Rock is sold for less than the assets of the bank shown in its accounts?
Lord Sassoon
No, I will not confirm that to the noble Lord. The best value will be obtained for the taxpayer by conducting an exemplary sales process that explores all the options out there for the bidders. In the light of a transparent and competitive process, the best value will be obtained.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, going back to the question of the Northern Rock Foundation, I am certainly no expert on the sale of banks but I know how important the foundation is in the north-east. I was slightly troubled by what the Minister said about the commitment that has been made so far, because it appears to be a very short date. Could he perhaps be a little more enthusiastic, to use the word used by my noble friend Lord Borrie, about the importance of the foundation and put it more firmly on the agenda when it comes to issues of sale?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am sorry if I cannot work up enough enthusiasm at 11am on a Thursday morning. The first thing to say is that not only has the foundation done good work in the north-east but its footprint covers Cumbria. We must not forget Cumbria. The previous Government agreed that Northern Rock would donate £15 million per annum to the foundation for a three-year period, 2008-10, and that commitment was honoured. Yes, the new agreement has an initial expiry date of December 2012, as I said, but it has the potential for a rolling one-year extension by mutual consent, to be agreed under certain terms. The door is open there, and it will be one of the things that I am sure prospective purchasers will want to take into account.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, in the determination of best value for the taxpayer, how will the Government balance the short-run cash return from the sale with the long-run benefit to the taxpayer of there being a stable and successful mutual?
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord makes a presumption there about the form of sale. We will be guided by the experts who have been appointed to conduct the sale, who will give advice on these matters to the Treasury.
EU: Polish Presidency
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Dykes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what principal subjects they intend to discuss with the government of Poland when they next meet, in view of the start of the Polish European Union Presidency from 1 July.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government engage with the Polish Government at all levels. These meetings are opportunities to discuss a range of issues and occur at both ministerial and official levels. Prior to, and during, the Polish presidency, the Poles have outlined their priorities as being divided into three general themes: European integration as the source of growth; a secure Europe in terms of food, energy and defence; and Europe benefiting from openness.
Lord Dykes
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. In view of the Energy Secretary’s disappointment about the Polish Government’s refusal last Tuesday to accept the 20 per cent target for emissions by 2020, will my noble friend confirm that Poland is willing to accept a compromise solution to this unexpected problem during its presidency period?
Lord Howell of Guildford
We shall have to see how this works out. Obviously, there are a lot of elements in this debate as we move forward to a new energy mix and the energy transition throughout Europe. Poland will play a leading part in that, whether or not it accepts the immediate renewables targets, because it is seeking to change its own economy away from a heavy coal base and a reliance on Russian gas to a more modern mixture of energy developments. That will include renewables and, possibly, the major development of shale gas and other unconventional gas sources.
Lord Tomlinson
Will the Minister confirm that if there is some spare time in his meetings with the Polish presidency he might ask it to explain precisely its budget proposals, which are attracting so much media and political attention? Can he confirm that there are currently no budget proposals other than a seven-year financial perspective; that the 5 per cent increase in the budget that is being talked about is 5 per cent over seven years, the duration of the perspective; and that, in any event, a financial perspective is a ceiling which cannot be exceeded, not a target to be reached?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Obviously this issue will come up in the dialogue that we have with Poland on the budget, which has continued in the past on a number of areas. The proposals for the next multi-annual financial framework are issued today, so it seems pretty pointless to speculate ahead of that. We are focused on areas in which we can co-operate and work together. I take the noble Lord’s point that there are difficult challenges ahead, and we will certainly discuss them with Poland.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware of reports that Poland has initiated direct chartered flights to the northern part of Cyprus? If there are to be discussions, will he ask how Poland has managed this when, in the past seven years, every other country including ours has said that it is illegal to do so? Neither we nor other member states have been able to honour the promise that was given to Turkish Cypriots to end their isolation; I would be interested to hear how Poland has managed to do so.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am not sure that I can tell my noble friend very much more. She raises an issue relating to the Ankara protocols and the question of Turkey’s negotiations on the European Union, which are proceeding although slowly. The problem of northern Cyprus has been, sadly, an obstacle in the way of developments in Turkey’s application to join the European Union, which we of course strongly support. I am afraid that I cannot tell my noble friend more on the detail of what has been decided by the Polish authorities about their own airline flights, but I will write to her if I find any more information.
Lord Richard
Have the Government yet had the opportunity of discussing with the Polish Government the provisions of the European Union Bill, and explaining to them that no less than 56 instances could spark a referendum in this country? If they have done that, could he tell us what their reaction was?
Lord Howell of Guildford
We have certainly discussed the European Union Bill with all our European partners in various ways. We have not raised with them the noble Lord’s proposition, because it is completely inaccurate and does not represent any aspect of that Bill. The whole idea of there being 56 items which could initiate a referendum is complete nonsense. These are 56 veto elements in four or five absolutely key areas, which the noble Lord, as a supporter of the previous Government, believed are important just as the rest of the British people do today.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Will the Polish presidency be looking at reform of the common agricultural policy, which was of course promised to the Blair Government in return for giving up our rebate?
Lord Howell of Guildford
These matters remain under constant discussion. Everyone recognises that the common agricultural policy continues to have its flaws and challenges, given the ways in which it promotes exports out of Europe at great expense to poorer countries and farming communities. We will certainly discuss all these matters on a continuous basis.
Lord Harrison
Will the Minister confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, said, which was confirmed by Commissioner Viviane Reding this morning on the “Today” programme, that the MFF stretching from 2014 to 2020 is a 5 per cent increase over that seven-year period, and should not be understood to be an annual increase?
Lord Howell of Guildford
This is very recent news. Initial reactions have not been favourable in other countries or this one, where we are thinking in terms of austerity in order to promote sound budget discipline and the basis for sound recovery without soaring interest rates and other deterrents. I cannot add more beyond the initial reaction that these things will be looked at very carefully indeed. The spirit of common austerity practices by the European Union in all its parts as well as the member state countries will have to be reflected.
Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, the Republic of Ireland’s interest in rejoining the Commonwealth is a matter for the Irish Government and, of course, for the existing Commonwealth membership.
Lord Rana
I thank the Minister for that Answer. May I take this opportunity of congratulating Her Majesty and the President of Ireland on a very successful royal visit to the Republic of Ireland? In the light of this outstanding success, do the Government agree that it is important to build on the results of the visit in a constructive way so as further to improve relations within these islands and between the two parts of Ireland? In particular, do the Government agree that if Ireland, as an independent republic, was to rejoin the Commonwealth, or have a new association with the Commonwealth, this would be calculated to be of benefit to Ireland, and more particularly greatly improve relations between the divided communities in Ireland?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I agree 100 per cent with the noble Lord’s remarks about the enormously successful state visit, which has no doubt struck a very positive chord and gives great hope to all of us who are familiar with and wish to see ameliorated and put in the past the great problems of Ireland of the past few hundred years. The noble Lord is absolutely on the right track there. However, I have to reiterate that the initiative on which he is questioning me—membership of the Commonwealth—really is a matter for the Irish Government to look at. In many other areas I suspect that the state visit has provided an impetus and a momentum on both sides of the water for new initiatives to bring the Republic of Ireland and all aspects of the United Kingdom still closer together. They are our good friends and we are theirs.
Lord Howe of Aberavon
In encouraging movement in the direction suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Rana, may I remind my noble friend of the very different example of the great success with which the former communist Portuguese colony of Mozambique has become a fully fledged member of the Commonwealth, with great benefit to the Commonwealth as well as to Mozambique?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble and learned friend’s question gives me the opportunity to observe—I imagine that this will come as no surprise to noble Lords—that the Commonwealth club today is one which many people wish to join and be associated with in all sorts of forms. There is no doubt that, as we move into the 21st century, the particular nature of the Commonwealth, with its linkages, close associations, common elements of trust, understanding and friendship and its capacity to expand trade and investment, is the kind of club which many countries want to join. They look at the example of Mozambique and see a new Commonwealth pattern emerging, not necessarily precisely related to the old question of which countries were members of the British Commonwealth or the British Empire. It is a very successful platform for the 21st century and many other countries are queuing up to join it, which is very flattering.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree with me that relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have never been better, that Ireland is our closest trading partner and that the contribution made by Irish people, and people of Irish origin, has been of great benefit to this country and is something to be celebrated?
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that during the peace process I approached the leaders of all the political parties in the Republic of Ireland, all of whom said the same thing—that an application from Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth was unlikely but that if unionists were to request it as part of the peace process it would undoubtedly be deliverable? The unionist parties did not request it so that moment has passed. However, it seems to me that perhaps an application will only follow invitations. Will my noble friend undertake to explore with the Secretary-General and other members of the Commonwealth whether the Irish Republic might be invited as a guest to Commonwealth events, perhaps even the Commonwealth Games, to help move us in a direction whereby it would not have to make an application but would nevertheless be welcomed in?
Lord Howell of Guildford
This is one of the very interesting and exciting approaches that now become possible as our relations have kept improving to their present excellent level. I cannot make any precise promises because, as I said at the beginning, we must expect the signs to come from the Irish Government that that is the way forward, but there is no reason why the Commonwealth Secretariat should not invite any country, including the Republic of Ireland, to be aware of the vast variety of Commonwealth developments, associations and branded activities throughout the globe in which Ireland or any other country may be interested.
Lord Kilclooney
My Lords, does the Minister realise that the peoples in both countries in the island of Ireland—in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland—rejoice at the success of the state visit by Her Majesty the Queen to the Republic of Ireland? Secondly, does he accept that, in the case of Mozambique or, more recently, Southern Sudan, a decision to join the Commonwealth was left to the peoples of those countries, not through any encouragement from the United Kingdom? I speak from long experience of politics in Northern Ireland and relations with the Republic of Ireland. Does the Minister accept that any encouragement from the United Kingdom to the Republic of Ireland to join the Commonwealth would be counterproductive?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Lord speaks with much wisdom and experience on these matters. I hope that something of what he said was reflected in my initial comment that any move of this kind must come from the Irish Government and the Irish people in the first instance. As to other countries seeking to join, of course, the ultimate decision is not in the gift of the British Government, it is in the gift of the Commonwealth as a whole—all 54 members. It is interesting that Southern Sudan, which is just about to be born on 9 July, should express the wish to join. Another country has joined the queue of those interested in joining: Gabon. Other countries want to be associated—they may not qualify as members. Our friends in the Gulf are all extremely interested in observer or associate membership if that can be achieved. Countries far outside the original pattern of Commonwealth membership are also very interested in what is going on in the Commonwealth, because it is one of the most exciting and developing platforms and networks of the 21st century.
Banking: Lloyds and RBS Shares
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Barnett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to transfer some shares of the Lloyds TSB and RBS banks to taxpayers, as suggested by the Deputy Prime Minister.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, UK Financial Investments manages the Government’s shareholding in financial institutions. UKFI’s objective is to dispose of the investments in an orderly and active manner, with an overarching objective of protecting and creating value for the taxpayer. The Treasury and UKFI continue to assess all potential options to realise value for taxpayers through the disposal of these shares.
Lord Barnett
My Lords, there is a well known saying by a famous American tennis player: “You cannot be serious”. Does the noble Lord himself believe what has been said, given that that would achieve nowhere near best value? If you wanted to have an administrative scheme that was absolute nonsense, you could not find a better one. Given that the Government manage potential sales, is the Minister seriously suggesting that the Chancellor is looking at that proposition? If so, what would be the eventual cost in loss of expected revenue in due course from the sale of Lloyds and RBS shares?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, what I said is that we are considering all options for the disposal of the shares in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has asked the Treasury to consider a particular disposal option, and that is what UKFI and the Treasury are doing.
Lord Lawson of Blaby
Will my noble friend tell the Treasury that there is no need to consider this tired old suggestion for long? It was fully considered in 1979 when we embarked on the original privatisation programme and I am sure that his officials will be very pleased to give him all the old papers showing that it bristles with practical difficulties, not least the precise method of allocation, quite apart from the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. Will my noble friend also bear in mind the wise words of that great radical, Thomas Paine:
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly”.
Lord Sassoon
On the one hand, I might say to my noble friend that sometimes the old ideas are the best ones and it is good to dust them off. I recognise that the idea of free distribution of shares is not new but it is perfectly serious. However, the difficulties that my noble friend rightly puts up and some of the questioning from the noble Lod, Lord Barnett, are issues that must be properly considered.
Lord Skidelsky
My Lords, noble Lords will be aware that the Government have promised to set up a green bank with a capital of £3 billion. Does the noble Lord agree that a more constructive version of the Deputy Prime Minister’s suggestion might be to sell the shares in Lloyds TSB and RBS, as convenient, and use part of the cash thus raised to increase the capitalisation of the green bank? If in addition the bank was allowed to borrow, could that not be a powerful instrument for economic recovery and long-term development by mobilising shares for which there is no present business use?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we have been very clear about our plans for capitalising the green investment bank, as the noble Lord says, with £3 billion. I see no particular link between that and the question of disposal of the bank shares.
Lord Peston
My Lords, bearing in mind the immense damage that the Government’s fiscal policy is doing to the economy, is not the explanation of the hare-brained scheme from the leader of the Liberal Democrats simply an attempt by the Government to distract the public’s attention from that damage?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I do not know what constitutes language that is not permissible in this House but I do not accept one iota of that analysis. The reason why we have an enormous monetary stimulus through the interest rates—last night, 10 years were at 3.33 per cent—is precisely because we are sticking to the plan to reduce the deficit. Otherwise nothing else would be possible in terms of growth for the economy. Indeed, one of the potential downsides of handing shares out free is that it would have a negative effect on the public finances, which is one of the issues that must be considered.
Lord Newby
Would the Minister accept that technology has moved on since 1979 and whatever might have been in the papers at the time in terms of doing something then is wholly irrelevant to the costs of doing something today? Can he see the strength of the argument that once the Treasury has its money back, best value for the British people might best be served by giving them some cash in their pockets to decide for themselves the best way of spending the upside of the privatisation of the banks?
Lord Sassoon
Of course I agree with my noble friend that IT has progressed significantly over the past couple of decades, but that does not mean to say that it would be easy to create an IT database of the sort that would be required for this operation. While that is one of the issues to be considered, there are other questions—of distribution, of the impact on the banks’ own funding, of share overhangs and so on. All of these things would have to be looked at.
Lord Grocott
Does the Minister think that the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals for the banks are better or worse than his proposals for constitutional reform?
Lord Sassoon
My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister is always full of interesting, constructive and important ideas that deserve very serious consideration.
Standing Orders (Public Business)
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Strathclyde
That the standing orders relating to public business be amended as follows:
Localism Bill
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
(c) if the petition is a special-case petition (see section (Petitions: special cases in which holding of referendum is discretionary)), the authority resolves in accordance with section 48 that the referendum should be held.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, we now return to the debates which we had the other evening in Committee on the new extension of community empowerment through the role of referendums. Perhaps I may begin by returning to Tuesday evening and the brief discussion that we had right at the end on the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves. He asked—and I called it a conundrum—why a petition signed by 5 per cent of the people calling for a referendum should prevail over a petition signed by 10 per cent or even 20 per cent against one. At first reaction, and at that late hour, it appeared a complex question. I have since reflected on the issue.
It seems complex because it is founded on what I might describe as a false premise—that is, that having a referendum is in itself the final decision on an issue. It is not. Having a referendum is merely a way of opening the door to obtaining the views of local people. In the particular circumstance described by my noble friend, there is clearly a difference of view among local people; and where a number of people—we think 5 per cent is about right, as we discussed on Tuesday—want to have that view tested in a referendum, we think that they should be allowed to do so.
So my short answer to my noble friend's conundrum is simply this. If 5 per cent want the issue tested in a referendum, then we believe that it should be tested. That is not denying choice to others. They can express their view in the referendum. As I made clear in my response to all this, it is within the defined scheme; and that is that unless there is a petition, the full council must agree to hold a referendum; and where there is a petition, the council must hold it if it meets the appropriate tests on costs, appropriateness, and duplication, which we will discuss in this group. These tests enable local authorities to exercise discretion and not to hold a referendum.
Now I turn to these government amendments, to which I alluded the other evening and which I think greatly help this debate to go forward. Government Amendments 120A, 120D, 120F, 121A, 126G, 128E, 128F, 128G and 129J all deal with the issue of the grounds for an authority to decline to hold a referendum, notwithstanding the receipt of a petition with the requisite number of signatures. These amendments address concerns raised during the passage of the Bill in another place that local referendums could be very costly or otherwise inappropriate. Such concerns were also expressed by the Greater London Authority and Transport for London.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have one amendment in this group—Amendment 128EZA—that I will speak to. I will not speak to Amendment 128A in the group. I spent some time last night and this morning trying to liberate it from the group but failed miserably. I am now degrouping it, and it will come back in the group that starts with Amendment 126A. I hope that that does not cause the Minister too much difficulty.
I thank the Minister for dealing with such seriousness this morning with the question I asked at the very end of our proceedings on Tuesday. It was a cheeky question, but it is nevertheless one that people will ask because it is a fairly obvious cheeky question. I am grateful to him for dealing with it. It does, in many ways, underline some of the things that are wrong with the whole of this provision.
However, I welcome the main substantive amendment that the noble Lord has just introduced in this group—Amendment 128E, on what are known as “special-case petitions”, which are petitions where for various reasons the council will be able to decide not to have a referendum. I think that the phrase “special-case petition” is in some ways symptomatic of some of the things that are wrong with the Bill. What is a special-case petition? I can just imagine somebody spending a lot of time and effort getting a petition together and presenting it to the council for a referendum and one of the council officials ringing the organiser and saying that it had been classified as a special-case petition. The petition organiser will say, “Oh—thank you very much indeed. That sounds good”. The official will say, “No, it’s not. It means that you cannot have a referendum”. It is not a sensible name and I hope that the Government think of a name that actually describes the process and the fact that the petition will not be carried out. It could be called an invalid petition, for example, or something similar.
The proposed new clause on special-case petitions includes the provision:
“The petition is a special-case petition if the proper officer of the authority is of the opinion that the matter to which the referendum question relates has been, or has substantially been, the subject of at least one local or other referendum held—
(a) in the four years ending with the date on which the petition was received by the authority, and
(b) in the area to which the petition relates (whether or not in that area alone)”.
Therefore, there are two qualifying provisions for the authority to be able to say that it will not have the petition. One is that there has been one in the last four years and the other is that it took place in the area to which the petition relates.
I shall speak to an amendment on the second of those. Before I do, however, I have another amendment, which is bound up with some other stuff, that proposes that the period during which there should be a moratorium on holding a new referendum on the same or similar issue should be 10 years, not four. I will not be pressing that heavily when we get to it because at least we have a four-year moratorium here. Nevertheless, it seems to me that four years is not long enough. It will still be quite easy for people to bring back the same thing every four years and it will become very repetitive and they could keep going until they get the right answer.
I speak now to Amendment 128EZA, which would insert the words,
“or part of the area”,
where it reads,
“in the area to which the petition relates”;
so it would read,
“in the area or part of the area to which the petition relates (whether or not in that area alone)”.
It is quite clear that what the Minister has moved means that if there has been a petition in an identical area it qualifies as a special case and if there has been a petition in a bigger area, which includes the area of the petition, it qualifies as a special case. It is not clear what will happen if the new petition is in area larger than the area that previously had the petition. For example, let us imagine that there is a town with four wards. If there was a petition in a ward, and then the petition came along for the county electoral division, which might include two of those wards, the area would be twice as big. All the Minister is proposing at the moment is that it should have been substantially in the same area. I do not know what “substantially” means, except that it is quite clear that if they managed to find an area for a petition that was 10 per cent greater, it would probably qualify as a special case. But does it qualify as a special case if the area is twice or three times as big? What is to prevent people coming back with a steadily larger area if they do not get the result that they want in the first place? They might have a petition for a referendum in a ward, then in two wards, then in a county division that includes three wards, and so on. They might have these petitions every year until they get the result they are after. That is the question underlying this amendment.
While we are on Amendment 128E on special-case petitions, I have two more points. One is about the council tax requirement. I am one of the few people in your Lordships' House who does not understand local government finance in great detail, but I know that there are great experts here. What is meant by the phrase “council tax requirement”? Exactly what that means has a bearing on the meaning of the proposal that the Minister is putting forward in subsection (2), which he explained when he moved the amendment. I will not say anything more on that until I have heard what a council tax requirement means and decide whether I want to pursue it further.
Subsection (4) of the new clause is about not having a referendum if there is a statutory process and that statutory process includes giving members of the public an opportunity to make representations on the matter as well as statutory rights of appeal or to instigate a review. This is extremely welcome. It clearly refers to the planning system. It obviously refers to planning applications. I assume that it applies to local plan making because that includes a whole series of public consultations. It almost certainly applies to all licensing matters, so we are not going to have petitions on whether Joe Bloggs should get a taxi licence or whether a particular shop should get an off-licence licence. Do the Government have any sort of definitive list, or a greater list, of the sort of things that might be caught by this provision, or have they got further than planning and licensing in their thoughts on the matter? It will be extremely helpful if they have an idea of more or less the full list. We can probably never have a completely full list.
I look forward to the Minister’s response to my amendment and to the questions that I have asked.
Lord Avebury
My noble friend remarked on new subsection (4) and the barrier against presenting any petition relating to planning matters. Knowing the strength of feeling against Gypsy sites in most localities in England, we can envisage that if people can conceivably find a way of lodging petitions against anything to do with a proposal for a Gypsy site, they will do so. I was quite relieved to hear what he said, but is it his opinion that new subsection (4) provides adequate safeguards against that kind of petition which would be unnecessary because the protection, if needed, is provided by the planning process?
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am not sure that it is my job to give a definitive view of what the legislation means. Anybody can put forward a petition on anything. When planning applications come in, people often present petitions on planning applications and they are perfectly entitled to do so, whether or not my noble friend and I agree with what is on the petition—that is nothing to do with it. The point is that this is a provision for a petition that triggers a referendum. As I understand it, what the Minister is proposing would prevent a referendum having to be held on a planning application while the planning application is being considered, which would obviously not only be stupid but would cause such huge delays in the planning system that the whole thing would fall apart.
Lord Soley
I am going to intervene very briefly. First, I apologise to the House for not having been involved in this long and very complex Bill before. I am intervening now because I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which met yesterday to look at this Bill. We have a real problem with this incredibly complex Bill, and with many amendments coming forward, in understanding the full implications of some of the sections. I want to refer to some aspects of the report which is out this morning as a result of the meeting we had yesterday. Two of the sections relate both to petitions and hybridity and to referendums. I am not sure that they strictly apply to the Minister’s new clause but they apply in general on the issue of referendums.
In his opening comments the Minister agreed the possibility of a local authority being able to decide whether it wants to hold a referendum, which is fine. However, in paragraph 31 on page 9 of the committee’s report we recommend that regulations under Section 9MG of the 2000 Act, which is added in the Bill—they relate to,
“the conduct of elections and referendums the results of which have significant legal effect”,
and we had quite a discussion on that yesterday—
“should be subject to affirmative procedure”.
I am sure that the Government will consider that in the usual way. Given that we only had an opportunity to look at this yesterday, it is quite difficult to get this in the precise position.
The other thing I wanted to mention, because it affects petitions and hybridity, is the recommendation in paragraph 29 on page 9 of our report, which refers to the hybrid instruments procedure. It says:
“Given the lack of any statutory requirement to consult before making an order under section 9HF, the Committee is concerned that the disapplication of the hybrid instruments procedure—and thereby the opportunity to petition Parliament—leaves inadequate means to ensure private or local interests are taken into account when the power is exercised”.
We wish to draw that power to the attention of the House, as we do in paragraph 32 to the,
“disapplication of the hybrid instruments procedure by paragraph 77 of Schedule 3 to the Bill, so that the House may satisfy itself that there will be suitable alternative procedures in place”.
I do not wish to delay the House with an issue with which I have not been involved and do not have great knowledge about, but we expressed considerable concern yesterday about some of the powers in this Bill. There are others in our report, but the two I have focused on are, first, the conduct and the effect of referendums where they might have a legal impact. There was considerable discussion on what would happen if it went to court on an appeal. The second was this issue of hybridity. That is not directly relevant to what the Minister has just said but it picks up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about petitions. It is an area of which the House needs to be aware and I very much regret that this is all rather rushed from the way the legislation is being put through. My ability to assimilate this enormous Bill in the fewer than 24 hours since the Delegated Powers Committee met yesterday might put me slightly out of the normal amendment procedure, but the two issues have a general impact and I hope that the Minister will take them into account. I know that the Government will respond to the report in the usual way but, speaking as a member of the committee and not on behalf of it, anyone who reads our report—I hope that people will have a chance to look at its main recommendations today even though it is very short notice—will see its considerable importance for this Bill.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, declaring once again my wife’s interest as a councillor and, I suppose, my interest in my wife, I speak with some diffidence in a House awash with experts with experience of local government in one way or another. I am one of the few without that. All that I want is to ask a question for clarification, which picks up on the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves. It is clear that these amendments are intended to deal to some extent with the concerns expressed about planning and licensing. I should like to be absolutely clear. The new clause on petitions and special cases to be inserted under my noble friend the Minister’s amendment refers to a special-case petition. I am shorthanding and if I am getting it wrong, I expect someone will tell me.
The proposed new clause says that if it is substantially the case, people have,
“a statutory right of appeal in respect of the substance of the … decision, or … a statutory right to instigate a review of the substance of the matter or decision”.
From my experience as an MP, my understanding is that if it is your planning application and it is refused, you have a right of appeal. But if you are the neighbour or the neighbourhood who objected to the planning application and it is granted, you have no right of appeal. Does that mean that if you are the neighbour or the neighbourhood and the planning application is granted on planning grounds, you can now instigate a petition and have a referendum on the granted planning application?
Lord True
My Lords, I might try to comment on the important points made by my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree in a moment. It is a complex and important area, on which I expect we will have to have discussions as the Bill proceeds. In the main, I welcome the amendments laid by my noble friends and I am grateful for them in terms of their clarification. I have a number of concerns, which are perhaps not addressed by these proposals.
Since I was in charge of my authority’s finances for some time, it would be alarming if I did not understand the council tax requirement. In my authority the council tax requirement is defined in our budget resolution currently at a little more than £100 million. Therefore, 5 per cent of that sum would be several million pounds. I know that our authority is exceptional in terms of having a heavy requirement on council tax to raise its resources but I do not think that we would find that provision helpful in resisting referendums. I should be grateful if my noble friends would give some consideration to that rather brutal financial reality as the Bill proceeds.
As regards the other elements, the power for a proper officer to determine whether something has substantially been affected and might be the subject of a referendum was a rather localist answer to the points made by my noble friend Lord Greaves. In the light of local circumstances, it is probably reasonable to leave it to the local authority to make that kind of determination and I welcome that wording. Being an arch-localist, I am slightly less fearful of referendums than some other noble Lords in this Committee. Four years may be too long in certain circumstances but I can see nothing in this provision that prevents a local authority from authorising a referendum in less than four years if it wishes to do so. It simply defends the local authority against the vexatious demand to have a referendum more frequently than four years. If I have interpreted it correctly, I would be happy to accept the provision as a welcome offer by the Government and a very useful compromise position.
I have troubled the Committee before on this matter and I am afraid I will trouble it later on it, but I am worried about the way in which this alleged referendum right will operate in those areas of the country that are still subject to regional government—again I declare my interest, as I have done several times in Committee, as leader of a London borough council. This has an inter-relation with the position not in terms of specific, small-scale planning applications, about which my noble friend Lord Newton has raised a point, I believe, but in terms of the planning process determining a planning brief for an area of a borough.
Yesterday I read that the mayor, whom I strongly support and wish to see re-elected, had intervened on a planning proposal by a London borough. I do not wish to comment on that because I do not know the circumstances on either side, but let me give an example with which I am more familiar. There is a strategic site within my borough. For the last year or so, the council has been making strenuous efforts to agree, with local residents, a community brief for that site when it comes up potentially for development. We hope to have that brief adopted by our borough council before too long, subject to a public ballot. It may well be that at a later date, perhaps propelled by a desire for a community infrastructure levy, to promote Crossrail or for some other purpose, another mayor might come along and say, “This is not an appropriate planning brief for this site. We have a regional authority and a regional spatial strategy and we wish to propose a different use for that site”. It might have more housing or less housing on it, more industry or whatever, and that could be put forward. What is the position then of the residents of a London borough in those circumstances, who have laboured to agree a community brief for a large site that may determine the character of that part of their borough? It has been their choice in the spirit of localism for a long period, and then a higher authority, a reasoned authority, says, “No, it is not going to be that way”. Can we have a referendum on that; and, if so, by what mechanism?
I agree with noble Lords who said we do not want to get into having referendums on every planning application; that way lies the road to perdition. However, I believe that there are circumstances such as the one that I have set out where—if we are charting this way towards genuinely giving local people authority over decisions that affect their lives, and the lives of their children in terms of the long-term decisions on the development of a substantial area of a city—it is clear that we must have some mechanism by which people have the right to petition against an authority that is overriding the settled will of the local community. Maybe my noble friends can assure me—not today but perhaps later by correspondence—that there is a mechanism by which my local residents can be insured against the fear of that happening, but I think there are serious potential difficulties. There could be smaller examples. Like my noble friend Lord Greaves, I am not clear on where the boundaries of the statutory right of appeal lie, and the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has obviously raised a point. My residents in this case, with their community brief, would not necessarily have an appeal. What about transport issues or something controversial such as parking? All these things have statutory procedures and provisions for consultation. Where do the bounds lie there? I do not know whether they would be open to petition or not. Again, I do not expect an answer today.
Let me posit another example, a real-life one from another London borough. I was speaking to the leader, who told me that a town centre improvement scheme was proposed by a central London authority after consultation with local residents. The local authority suggested amendments that were supported by the residents in a ballot, but the higher authority, in this case London Buses, came in and said, “No, we don’t agree. We are going to proceed with our original plan”. Do local residents have a chance to petition and say, “Actually, we like our plan rather than the one being proposed by the higher regional authority”? That is a much smaller example than the one of a statutory planning area, but it is a complex area.
I do not seek an answer from my noble friends on these matters today and I do not want them to feel that I am not grateful for the amendments that have been put forward. But there is a serious issue in the Bill in relation to the rights of members of the public living in areas where there is still regional government.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I want to make only three points at this stage of the debate. We are here on the fourth day in Committee on this Bill and I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, with what I have to say is some dismay. I have certainly not had his committee’s report drawn to my attention, so I have not seen it. No doubt it is in the Printed Paper Office nestling among the volumes of other papers for us to pick up. I recognised almost all the papers set out there as things I have already. This is really a question of how the House works. From what the noble Lord said, the committee has made important recommendations, but they will have to be dealt with on Report, once we have had a chance to look at them. I doubt whether amendments could be tabled, debated and approved in the remaining days of the Committee stage. This does seem to be something that the House authorities might like to take note of. I appreciate the difficulty of the committee, faced with this huge Bill from another place. It had its Second Reading and we then moved fairly smartly into the Committee stage. However, this is not a very satisfactory way of proceeding. We ought to have had those recommendations before we started the Committee stage, but we did not, although I understand that it is no fault of the committee.
My second point is that, in welcoming the amendments that have been tabled by my noble friends, I should like to say particularly how much I appreciate the way the Government have listened to the representations made in another place about the question of a petition that might be called for by the Greater London Authority. The suggestion they have come up with, that there needs to be a 1 per cent vote in every London borough before the GLA has to call a referendum, is a wise one. As my noble friends have suggested, it will prevent a fuss in a particular area, one that might arouse considerable public opposition, forcing the GLA to hold a referendum at huge cost—estimated at somewhere between £5 million and £12 million depending on whether it happens on the same day as another election. The Government’s suggestion that a 1 per cent vote in every borough would trigger the obligation to consider whether a referendum should be held therefore seems absolutely right.
My third point arises from representations that I have had—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Best, will be interested in this—from the Local Government Association. Noble Lords may remember that, on the second day of Committee on 23 June, I expressed some dismay that the opportunity had not been taken in the Bill to follow through the general power of competence, which Clause 1 gives to local authorities, by substantially lightening the burden of central direction on them. I said during my brief remarks then that both the London Councils—I declare an interest as a joint president—and the Local Government Association, of which I am a vice-president, had said, “Yes, Patrick, we agree but it would be an entirely different kind of Bill”. I remarked in my speech on the difficulty of trying to amend the Bill to try to remove some of what I see as retaining an over-complex power for central government to tell local authorities what to do and how to behave. Giving a general power of competence requires trusting the local authorities to do things in a sensible way. They are accountable to their local electorate if they do not.
I think that the Local Government Association saw that as a bit of a challenge. It has produced for me a list of amendments designed to return to local authorities the responsibility for deciding when and how to conduct a referendum. That is the good side. Unfortunately, somehow I only received that yesterday afternoon when I was engaged on other business. By the time I was able to turn my attention to the e-mail from the Local Government Association, it was clear that we were already too late. I will make the case that the LGA has decided on and give notice that I may wish to return to these matters on Report.
The LGA makes the point, just as I did on the second day in Committee, that it seems absurd in this day and age that central government should retain such an overwhelming control over how local authorities continue to manage their business. It draws attention in particular to Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Bill and the whole question we have discussed of holding a referendum. The LGA says:
“This section of the Bill is symptomatic of the difficulty Whitehall has had in translating Ministers’ localist ideas into legislation. Instead of freeing local people, and their councils, to decide how best local consultation and challenge should take place, the Bill lays down an extremely prescriptive process, managed from the centre, determining exactly how localism should work on the ground”.
I have every sympathy with that sentiment. My only regret is that, like the report of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, it has come to me rather late. There will be another opportunity and, as I said, I will want to raise the matter again.
I shall want in particular to ask that it should be the local council rather than the Secretary of State who determines the threshold for a petition to trigger a referendum and that the Bill should allow the local council rather the Secretary of State to determine whether a petition or a signature thereon is acceptable—and decide what is a local matter.
That is spelt out in the Bill as something that the Secretary of State has to determine, not the council, which strikes me as being little short of absurd.
I want also to see the local council, rather than the Secretary of State, determine the conduct of its referendum, including choosing the date and deciding how to publicise it, who is eligible to vote, how votes are counted and so on. Are the councils not capable of doing that? There may be some that will fall short but so be it: if we are serious about localism and about pushing decisions down from central government to the local level, we have to trust the local authorities to deal with that. I am much encouraged by seeing nods all round the Chamber and I am only sorry that, because of the late arrival of these suggestions, we are not able to discuss them on specific amendments this afternoon.
I will want to return to this matter. The Local Government Association has now risen to the challenge that I threw out at Second Reading and produced proposals which would involve removing quite large elements from this part of the Bill in order to make sure that it is local councils that decide how they are going to run their own affairs, not the Secretary of State.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I associate myself very much with all three substantive points that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has made. On his last point, I, too, received the briefing from the Local Government Association and was a little puzzled to see that it was dated 20 June but it arrived with me, and indeed with him, yesterday afternoon. The noble Lord is right, but I cannot help recalling a little ruefully that a few years back, I was a council leader and he was the Secretary of State responsible for local government. I wish he had spoken in those terms in those days, but better late than never.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
If my noble friend would allow me, I have already expressed my contrition. I did so at Second Reading, when I mentioned how I failed to persuade the senior officers in a conference of chief executives that the Government were entirely justified. I did not convince them, mainly because I could not convince myself.
Lord Tope
The noble Lord is forgiven: blessed is the sinner that repenteth. He is absolutely right in what he says. I, too, was looking at this briefing—I was in fact in Brussels until this morning and looked at it coming back—which, like the noble Lord, makes the point:
“The most ironic example of this is the power in Clause 44(6) for the Secretary of State to state what constitutes a local matter”.
That is so absurd that it is just laughable. The noble Lord and this briefing are both saying that if we were to do all of this, and I suspect a bit more too, we might have something that could be called a Localism Bill. That is what this is about. If he chooses to return to this at a later stage, we will certainly be sympathetic to that.
My original intention in standing up was on the second point from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and, for once, to congratulate and be thankful to the Government for their amendments on the pan-London referendum. Perhaps I speak as a London taxpayer as well. He made the points, so I will not repeat them, but the proposals are clearly both necessary and very sensible and it is very welcome that we will now have a sensible provision. Should there ever be a pan-London referendum, it will not be called because of some probably serious issue in some part of London that does not apply to the whole of London. By making this provision, such a referendum will truly be on a pan-London issue, as it should be.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I, too, remember the noble Lord in his days as Secretary of State for the Environment. He was also chairman of the inner-city partnership team that met in Newcastle and I remember amusing him once by referring to the city action teams he was intent on imposing in our city, and I think in others, as feral cats. He liked that phrase and I liked what the noble Lord said today, particularly in relation to the Delegated Powers Committee report. It is interesting that it was compiled in such a hurry that the title of the printed document is the “Localsim” Bill report. I do not think that it has any connection with telephony. It is certainly very late and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Soley on managing to master as much of it as he apparently has. I have only just seen it this morning.
I agree with the thrust of the noble Lord’s argument about centralism and too much central prescription. I do not entirely agree that it would be wise and safe to leave some of the structure entirely in the hands of local councils. Most local councils would perform perfectly adequately and properly, but we need to consider that there may be some councils which would choose not to develop a proper procedure and we need to protect the interests of those in those authorities. That, in my view, should not be done by the Government, but the Local Government Association itself should perhaps produce a model against which councils’ performance could be judged. That is the local government family, as it were, assuming responsibility, as opposed to the Secretary of State, and it strikes me that, in this and perhaps other areas, that might be a better way forward.
The noble Lord, Lord True, referred to areas with regional governments. Of course, thanks to the present Government’s “settled determination”, in the phrase of the noble Lord, to abolish all regional structures except that in London—it is only London that is privileged to have a regional body, although it is a privilege that the noble Lord may not be too comfortable with—it is probably right to encourage and facilitate petitions for the kind of issues that the noble Lord referred to, rather than referendums, in the same way that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, answered the question put to him earlier.
Having said all that, I thank and congratulate the Government for responding so constructively to so many of the points that have been raised around these issues. It is very welcome. I particularly celebrate the removal of Clause 47(5), which stipulated that the third ground for determination was,
“that the referendum question related to a matter specified by order by the Secretary of State”.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, I think, tabled an amendment to that effect and the Minister has adopted it, if not him. That is also very welcome.
My last point relates to the strange provision about the cost of a referendum. The noble Lord, Lord True, referred to the figure of around £1 million as representing about 5 per cent of the council tax requirement of his authority. I believe that it is roughly the same—the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, may recall and confirm, or otherwise—in Newcastle. There will be many authorities where 5 per cent is an enormous amount of money. If an authority presented and circulated petitions inscribed in gold leaf on vellum, it would still not reach 5 per cent of most councils’ expenditure. It seems a ridiculous figure. I wonder whether a decimal point has been missed somewhere—the printers have clearly had difficulties with the Bill, as I have already indicated. Five per cent seems extraordinary and I wonder whether any proper estimate has been made—or any estimate at all—by the Government, or those advising them, about what the cost of a referendum, perhaps on a city-wide basis, or district council basis, to take a lower level, would be. It may be that, if we are going to have guidance of this kind, differential provision ought to be made according to the size of the authority; perhaps something on a per capita basis, rather than on a percentage of revenue.
If we are to have a cap, as it were, of a percentage kind, should that relate to an individual referendum, or cumulatively? If there were a large number of referendums in the authority of the noble Lord, Lord True, or in mine, or in any other, one could reach even the high figure. I do not ask the Minister to respond to that thought, which has only just occurred to me—I cannot expect him to answer that—but it might be considered when he looks again, as I hope he will agree to do, at this provision. I welcome the provision; it is right that there should be some consideration of a financial limit by an officer—rather than a member in this case—but the one suggested seems to have little justification and little relationship to reality on the ground.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and I take it as a general welcome for the Government’s amendments. A number of interesting points have been raised which probe again at the boundaries of the referendum principle. Noble Lords are right to point to the balance between the Secretary of State and local authorities, but on examination they will discover that the powers of the Secretary of State are residual powers, usually to modify arrangements as a result of experience, rather than to impose a pattern of governance on local authorities throughout the Bill. However, some forms, some articulation of the form of referendums and suchlike are in legislation, because Parliament exists to ensure that, in the context of a citizen’s relationship with a local authority, there are certain rights. If a referendum is considered to be something which citizens can combine collectively to seek, those rights need to be established in law and it is Parliament’s job to establish them in law. I ask noble Lords to differentiate between the two things.
It was said—in jest, I hope—that the Secretary of State was empowered to decide what was local. If noble Lords had looked at our amendments, they would know that our amendment removes that power from the Secretary of State. My noble friend Lord Jenkin asked whether we can leave it to local authorities to decide when and how to conduct referendums. I have made the point about the protection of the citizen within local government. We could, of course, leave it to local authorities, but localism is about more than empowering local authorities, it is also about empowering people. This part of the Bill enables local people to require a referendum, but contains some sensible safeguards to combat abuse. I hope that my noble friend will be able to see the Government’s position in that context.
I, too, received the Local Government Association briefing asking me to table some amendments and to speak in its support—it is very wide in its mailings. However, that was drawn up before the Government’s amendments were known, so some of its criticisms—it generally welcomed many of the provisions of the Bill in this area—were made without the advantage that we now have of knowing what the Government’s proposals are.
My noble friend Lord Greaves asked whether the Government have a list of things that would be caught. My noble friend Lord True also wondered about this, but said that he hoped local authorities would be empowered to decide what was covered under those statutory applications. Under the approach that we have taken, it would be for councils to decide. We have no list. Amendments in a later group illustrate just how difficult such a list would be to apply. It is up to local authorities to decide what is excluded under the special case provisions.
My noble friend Lord Greaves asked whether a petition would qualify as a special case if it covered a large area. Yes, it would. The council would be able to refuse such a petition under the provisions as drafted. He also asked what “substantially” meant. I can give him only a quasi-legalistic answer: it means more than incidentally. I hope that that helps him in his appreciation of that.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for all that. I have forgotten what I was going to say. What was the first of those three things that the Minister answered?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sorry, the noble Lord is asking me to do his remembering for him. I have enough of a job to remember what I am supposed to be doing myself, if I might say so. Perhaps I may continue.
The noble Lord, Lord Soley, talked about the reports of the Delegated Powers Committee. In fact, some of the points that he made were in an earlier report, published on 16 June. However, there is now another report—indeed, the ink is scarcely dry on it; it is rubbing off on my hands here—about these matters. I reassure the noble Lord that in general terms we take the opinions of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee seriously, and it is likely that we will respond positively to its suggestions and observations. I hope that the committee will accept that.
On the regulations in new Section 9MG about the conduct of referendums for mayoral elections, those referendums are binding, which is why they are rather different from referendums conducted under these provisions, which are not binding on local authorities.
Lord Greaves
The noble Lord is quite right; I remember what it was now. I was so carried out away by the Minister’s rhetoric that it cleared my mind.
The Minister said, rightly, that these decisions should be the responsibility of the local authority if we are to be localist. As he said, though, it clearly says in subsection (4) of his long new amendment about special case petitions that it is a statutory process by which there is a statutory right to appeal or to instigate a review. Surely it is not the job of a local authority to decide what is a statutory matter. A statutory matter is set out in law, so there might be a bit of interpretation to take place but by and large the local authority’s hands would be tied.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
If I remember correctly, my noble friend asked me if the Government had a list of these things. The truth of the matter is that we do not. It will be up to local authorities to determine at the time whether something is caught under this provision.
That brings me on to the whole business of a statutory right of appeal or review. My noble friend Lord Newton asked about this provision. The existence of a right of appeal means that a petition would be a special case petition—it is not relevant who has the right of appeal or review. The Government are satisfied that there is adequate opportunity for all people affected by planning applications to contribute their view. To be clear about this, the Bill does not give a right to a referendum on planning applications.
Lord Beecham
I am grateful to the Minister for that information. Would he consider the issue of a per capita amount rather than this very large limit—not a large percentage, but in cash terms—that would have to be breached in order for there to be reason not to hold a special referendum?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That is a suggestion that we would like to consider. It is the spirit of this Committee that we appreciate approaches that are different from the text of the Bill and might define things better. I am happy to consider that matter and I thank the noble Lord for the idea.
Lord Newton of Braintree
Before my noble friend sits down and the experts start coming in, I welcome the clarity of his statement about planning applications, leaving aside the more complex high-level issues raised by my noble friend Lord True. Thinking back on my time as an MP, I see that it would sometimes have been very pleasing to have been able to point constituents aggrieved by the granting of an application in the direction of a petition. Looking at it objectively, though, I am bound to say that the whole area of the application of planning policy would turn into a nightmare world, so I very much welcome the clarity of what has been said.
Lord Soley
I again apologise. I would not normally come back on this issue, but it is very important. The job of the Members of this House and of the House of Commons is to hold the Executive to account. I had a note put into my hands a few moments ago from Hansard saying:
“Please may we have sight of the report you quoted from”.
The note then says in brackets:
“(The copy from the Printed Paper Office finishes on page 8 with section 25)”.
Of course, I was quoting from clauses after that. I picked up the papers just before Questions finished. This means that anybody else who came into the House for this debate this morning probably would not have got a copy of that report; here I am grateful for the comments and support of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. It is hard to hold the Executive to account if Members cannot get a copy of a report which is regarded as important by the House in all cases.
Having handed the note in—which is I why I was not in my place when the Minister referred to me, as I was trying to get it—it has now gone, and they are now going around looking for another report. It is deeply unsatisfactory. One reason the Government are getting into problems in a number of areas is that business management is failing. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, and other Members on that side of the House who have been familiar with managing government business in previous years will know precisely what I mean by this.
I emphasise that, like all members of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I am aware of the sort of Bills we will have to look at in advance. When you get something like this, you make yourself aware of the basics but do not get down to the detail until you are close to the date of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee meeting and when you are in that meeting. You have to go into the small print to get it in order and so it is very difficult to speak to it the following day when the report has not been available to any Members of the House except those who were fortunate enough to get a copy before I picked up what must have been one of the last ones. That is deeply unsatisfactory. The Government should take this very seriously.
I know that the Government take seriously the reports of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Indeed, since I have been a member, most of our recommendations have been accepted. This Minister, most notably, has been very good on this as well. However, we are looking at how the Executive are held to account by the House. To have a situation develop where a particularly complicated and large Bill like this is before the House and an important report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is not readily available must cause concern. You cannot even refer to it. Obviously, I knew what the arguments were because I was in the committee meeting yesterday, but it is not satisfactory and I think a number of Members know it. Although I welcome the Minister’s comments that he will be taking on board the committee’s report, that is like saying, “We hope that we will be able to meet the committee’s concerns” when it might be too late after that until we get to Third Reading.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I assure the noble Lord that the Executive—or the Government—have no control at all over the conduct of House committees. I make no criticism of either the committee or the House authorities. I am grateful that we have indeed had the observations of the report on the Bill. It is a pity that they are last minute, and I was not aware that copies were not available. I picked one up as I came in. I had a hasty look at it; we did not have very long before we started.
We should be careful. We obviously need as a House to have these matters properly examined and scrutinised and to ensure that noble Lords are aware of them. I hope that I have helped the Committee by saying that our attitude is to take these reports seriously. I hope that noble Lords will appreciate that commitment.
I did not mention my noble friend’s amendment. Our government amendments take care of the issue which he raised in his amendment.
News Corporation/BSkyB Merger
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat as a Statement the Answer to an Urgent Question given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the other place.
“Mr Speaker, earlier today I placed a Written Statement before the House outlining the next steps in my consideration of the potential merger between News Corporation and BSkyB. In this I explained that I have published the results of the consultation on the undertakings in lieu offered by News Corp together with the subsequent advice I have received from Ofcom and the OFT.
As I outlined, the consultation did not produce any information which caused Ofcom or the OFT to change its earlier advice to me. I could have decided to accept the original undertakings. However, a number of constructive changes have been suggested and, as a result, I am today publishing a revised, more robust, set of undertakings and will be consulting on them until midday on Friday 8 July.
Significantly these changes strengthen further the arrangements for editorial independence and business viability of the new spun-off Sky News. In my view, they provide a further layer of very important safeguards. As amended, I believe that these undertakings will remedy, mitigate or prevent the threats to plurality which were identified at the start of this process. If, after this next consultation process, nothing arises which changes this view, I propose to accept the undertakings in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission. Before coming to this view, though, I will of course seek once again the advice of the independent external regulators”.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I do not think that its content has come as a surprise to anyone in your Lordships' Chamber. What has come as a surprise is the fact that, knowing the degree of interest in this subject in both Houses and among the wider public, the Secretary of State has tried to slip this decision out rather than coming to the other place to make a proper Oral Statement.
This is the continuation of a rather sad state of affairs. The initial delay supposedly arose from the need for a consultation on the Secretary of State's in-principle decision. As the Minister made clear at the time:
“I am opening a consultation period, during which time all interested parties will be able to express their views on the undertakings. Once I have considered representations, I will reach a decision on whether I still believe that the undertakings should be accepted”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/3/11; col. 519.]
I am curious to know what responses were received to that consultation. For example, did the Secretary of State take into account the views of the public, who, after all, have a keen interest in maintaining diverse news sources? If so, what is the Minister's response to the fact that a recent poll showed that 64 per cent of the public are opposed to the merger because they think that it will give News Corp too much power? Or did the Secretary of State take into account the submissions made from the Alliance of Media Organisations, representing most of the media household names, including BT, Guardian Media, Associated Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, Northcliffe Media and the Telegraph group, all of which wrote to oppose the merger? They argued, among other things, that Newco would not be independent but would be economically dependent on News Corporation; that there are insufficient safeguards for editorial independence; and that the proposals put too much power in the hands of the Culture Secretary rather than independent regulators. Can the Minister confirm whether these views have been taken into account? It appears, on the face of it, that the only organisation which remains enthusiastically in favour of the merger is News Corp itself.
There is a fault line at the very heart of the process which the Secretary of State has adopted for the consultation, because by narrowing down the debate to the content of the undertakings originally offered up by News Corp it neatly sidesteps the much wider concerns about plurality which still exist but which the Secretary of State chose to ignore when he made the decision not to refer the whole issue to the Competition Commission, which he could have done quite legitimately and which would have been the correct course of action pursued by these Benches in these circumstances.
This decision is taking place against a backdrop of outstanding legal cases arising from the phone-hacking scandal, and other noble Lords may wish to comment on that. Of course, the current police investigation must pursue its course to enable those responsible to be brought to justice. However, it undoubtedly brings into question whether this is the right time, when so many questions still hang over the ethical principles underlying News Corp, to give it so much additional media power in this country. I very much hope that the Minister will support our call for an independent inquiry into press standards once the investigations are complete.
I have a number of specific questions for the Minister. First, the new deadline for the latest consultation is 8 July. That is an eight-day consultation. In the previous consultation the media organisations in particular protested that there was insufficient time for them to formulate a detailed response. What chance have they got on this occasion, and how can the Minister be serious about conducting a proper consultation in such a short period?
Secondly, given the further consultation taking place, when does the Minister intend to bring the matter back to the House to enable a full debate to take place? Thirdly, to enable a full debate to take place, will the Government give a commitment to publish not only the latest undertakings but the full independent legal advice on all aspects of the acquisition which the Government have received? Fourthly, is the Minister now able to state categorically that the financial and editorial independence of Newco has been prescribed in such a way that there cannot be a seepage of influence or control back to the main News Corp board? Finally, can the Minister give an assurance that the shareholder register for Newco will be published so that there is full transparency regarding the ownership of that company?
This is not a great day for media plurality or British journalism. I foresee that in years to come there will be cause for many people who believe in open democratic debate to rue the day that we allowed so much power and influence to be centralised in one media organisation. I do not know what it would take to persuade the Secretary of State to carry out one of the Government’s infamous U-turns, but on this issue I can assure the Minister that it would be widely welcomed across both Houses and among the wider public.
Baroness Rawlings
In answer to the noble Baroness’s first question, I think it is a bit rough to say that there was surprise. There was no surprise as there has been ultimate transparency: at every stage of this discussion, debate and decision-taking the Secretary of State has published every single document relating to his meetings. The 2002 Act, which was passed by the noble Baroness’s Government, gave authority to the elected Secretary of State to take these decisions. Hacking, which is a very serious problem, will no doubt come up in further questions, so I will leave it for now and try—as the noble Baroness has asked so many questions—to answer her other points. As for coming back to the House, that, of course, is the responsibility of the usual channels.
On 3 March the Secretary of State informed the House that, based on advice he had received from the Office of Fair Trading and Ofcom, he was minded to accept the undertakings offered by News Corp in lieu of a reference to the Competition Commission. As the Enterprise Act 2002 requires, he published these undertakings for public consultation which ended on 21 March.
The noble Baroness asked about the representations. The Secretary of State received more than 40,000 representations to this consultation, including a very large number of near-identical responses as a result of internet campaigns. The summaries of the main responses are on the DCMS website. He met representatives from Trinity Mirror, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph Media Group, Associated News and Media and Slaughter and May on 24 March, and met Avaaz on 15 April. Notes of these meetings will be published at the end of the process. The substantive points have been carefully considered by the Secretary of State, advised by the independent regulators. Regarding the public values, Sky will have less power than it has at the moment and will be cross-promoting for stability in financial areas.
Lord Fowler
My Lords, this was intended as a Written Statement. It was only when two PNQs—one in this House and one in the Commons—were tabled that we had the Statement that we have just heard. Will my noble friend tell the Secretary of State that it would have been much better to have freely volunteered an Oral Statement in both Houses? That would have been much more convenient for Parliament. This is an important decision but, frankly, we are now being presented with a done deal. Therefore, I have two questions. First, would a British company be allowed to take full control of an American media company, or is it not the case that we are limited to a maximum stake of 20 or 25 per cent? What are the Government doing to break down that barrier? Secondly, is it not clear that we have a position today in which too much market power over the British media is being exercised by one company? I hope that the Government recognise that very many people in this country regard this concentration of power as unacceptable. I urge the Government, even at this very late stage, to review and strengthen the rules on media plurality.
Baroness Rawlings
I thank my noble friend Lord Fowler for his questions, and I will of course relay his concerns to the Secretary of State. As I said in reading out the Statement, this is still an ongoing situation. We have until midday on 8 July before any final decision is taken. This has been going on since last summer and there have rightly been many consultations. The Secretary of State has published all papers relating to every meeting on the subject. With regard to a British company taking control of a United States company, I will have to write to my noble friend on those details.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
Does my noble friend the Minister recall that in 2002 the Labour Government denied that we needed a general plurality test on media ownership and that it was only because of the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, my noble friend Lord McNally and others, that the plurality test was eventually included in that Act? Given recent events and controversy surrounding the acquisition of BSkyB and the fact that in March the Secretary of State said that the existing check on media plurality “may not be as robust as it should be”, and ahead of the upcoming and very important communications Bill, is it not time that the Government set up an independent commission to look at the issue of plurality in order to ensure that, in future, we have a robust mechanism for dealing with threats to media plurality?
Baroness Rawlings
I thank my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter for that question. She is absolutely right that plurality is one of the major concerns at the heart of this. During the consultation period a number of issues were raised that were not material to the issue of media plurality. A number of respondents raised competition issues, which were dealt with by the European Commission, but the Secretary of State said today in the other place that he would be looking further at various areas of plurality. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that point. I add to my response to my noble friend Lord Fowler: the previous Administration removed foreign ownership restrictions, which is why foreign companies can buy UK media companies.
Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords, does the noble Baroness really believe that the public will benefit from the proposed merger? How? Why? Is it not clear that the Secretary of State has been too easily influenced by the power of the Murdoch empire?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, raises an important point, which covers the independence of News Corporation. The undertakings provided by News Corporation provide a stronger degree of independence for Sky than the original provisions for the Times. Those safeguards operate at a number of levels and, taken together, should make certain the editorial independence of Sky News. In particular, to cover concerns expressed by the noble Lord, News Corporation will remain a minority owner. The new company will have a majority of independent directors and be independently chaired. At least one independent director must have senior editorial or journalistic experience, and the company's articles of association explicitly contain the principle of editorial independence and integrity in news reporting. There will be a corporate governance and editorial committee to make certain that there is compliance with those requirements, which will also have a majority of independent directors and be independently chaired. The Secretary of State feels that, with those new, binding words, he is and the public should be totally satisfied.
Lord Inglewood
The noble Lord suggests that this is a done deal. My noble friend’s remarks suggest that the Secretary of State will consider additional material in the week of consultation that remains. Can my noble friend explain what issues will need to be substantiated in such submissions to persuade the Secretary of State to change his mind?
Baroness Rawlings
Under the law, a minimum of seven days’ further consultation is required. The Secretary of State will be receiving suggestions or ideas for changes that people feel necessary to present to him; then he will take the decision. He is in a quasi-judicial situation, and he will take the decision wisely, I am sure.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, has the Secretary of State already taken into account the fact that, as we have already heard, 64 per cent of the population is opposed to the proposals? Has he already taken that into account and rejected it? That is what it looks like, which does not seem to be paying much attention to public opinion.
Baroness Rawlings
I am sure that he has taken the 64 per cent into account, the details of which I have not got in my brief, but I will write to the noble Baroness with the results of the poll—there are many different polls and I am not sure whether they all come out at 64 per cent.
Lord Prescott
My Lords, this is not simply an issue about the plurality of the media. It is about the credibility of the person who is purchasing BSkyB. First, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and say that it was terrible to hear on Radio 4 a report on what the Minister was putting out in a Written Statement today, when this House should have been given a proper Statement on what is clearly a very controversial issue.
My concern is about the company to which we are now considering that ownership should be given—whether it is a done deal or not, I shall wait to see, but I suspect that it is. That is an indication of the Government’s change since 3 March. They have listened to the consultation; they have made proposals; and, yes, there are some changes. That is not the only change that has taken place since 3 March, when a Statement was made to this House about the purchase of BSkyB. Many other things have changed, not least the admission now that it was not a single rogue operator. Other reporters have been arrested who were working for the Murdoch press who were committing these criminal acts. Also, we know that a chief executive has now admitted that she was paying—the Murdoch press was paying—the police for information. That is the company that we are now considering should have control of a major media organisation.
On top of that, Mr Murdoch himself, in settling a case with Sienna Miller, has now admitted—he has not only apologised for what they were doing—that they did not provide all the information. Withholding information is a criminal act under our laws as well. That is the man, Mr Murdoch himself, who said, “We were not robust enough in our inquiries in providing the information”. The provision of information was to the police in the early stages, and the police came to the wrong conclusions. In those circumstances, the man we are talking about who is bidding for this deal, for which we have had the Statement today—do you want to get in?
Lord De Mauley
I respectfully advise the noble Lord that Oral Statements are the occasion for brief comments and questions.
Lord Prescott
I will be smacked on the hand if necessary, but I will say what I have to say. What I shall say is that the case of the apology is now an important issue. He is the man who is purchasing. He admits that they have committed criminal acts. In those circumstances, that is a consideration.
Plurality is a minor part. The credibility of the person who is purchasing is an essential issue for us. I cannot help but feel that this decision came shortly after the Prime Minister met Mr Murdoch. A few days later, we get the decision. Of course, I cannot say that anything happened there, but we have a decision, a change and a commitment.
Is the Minister aware that all those things have gone on? Are there not issues about due process to be considered in the company? Are the Government now prepared to have a public inquiry? Are they prepared, as I have constantly asked, not to do anything until the criminal inquiries have been completed?
My final point, just before I finish, is that what I found alarming in the settlement of the Sienna Miller case is that the agreement was not to say everything in court but to tell Miller after, in private. That is about what other criminal acts have gone on. There is no exposure in that. Our courts are not considering all that has gone on. This man, to my mind, is not a fit and proper person to be purchasing such an organisation, and I hope that we will come back to have a debate followed by a public inquiry.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, as I have said once or twice before from this Dispatch Box and to the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, we take hacking very seriously. It is a serious crime and no company is above the law. The Secretary of State has taken the view that News Corp has offered serious undertakings and has discussed them in good faith. Hacking, as I said, is a serious matter but it has been around for a very long time. That does not make it any better but this is not the first case of hacking, and perhaps they are not the only people hacking. We have had four Questions and several debates on this in your Lordships’ House, but the hacking aspect is not part of today’s Statement. As I said once before, it is a criminal case and one that the Home Office is looking at.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the Written Ministerial Statement, which has been placed in the Public Paper Office, contains an interesting paragraph, which states:
“Some respondents also argued that News Corp could not be relied upon to abide by the requirements set out in the undertakings, citing previous guarantees and assurances given by News in the past”.
Would the Minister outline what those previous guarantees were, what assurances were given in the past in relation to other matters by News Corp and whether it is correct that those guarantees and assurances have not been abided by? I recall seeing in a publication—I cannot remember which—a suggestion that an independent chair was appointed for a period but that after a certain amount of time, perhaps some years, that position lapsed.
In that context, I ask the Minister to enlighten us with more detail on the passage in the Written Ministerial Statement on “Editorial Independence”, which refers to,
“the definition of independent directors”,
and to a requirement for meetings of the board about editorial or journalistic matters, or of corporate governance of editorial committees, to be quorate only if
“an Independent Director with senior editorial and/or journalistic expertise is present”.
Can the Minister tell us how many members would be on those boards and committees, to give an indication whether the independent director would be a lone voice among many or few? Above all, would it be possible for the company to change its articles of association, and if so, when? In other words, for how long would those undertakings be legally enforceable?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, the editorial independence is of paramount importance. A number of changes have now been made to the undertakings to strengthen further the arrangements for independence, which I will read out:
“Sky News’ Articles of Association set out the definition of independent directors; Meetings of the board of Sky News about editorial or journalistic matters will only be quorate if an Independent Director with senior editorial and/or journalistic expertise is present. Similar arrangements apply to the corporate governance and editorial committee. This is a response to representations that these arrangements could be undermined if this Director was often unavailable for meetings for whatever reason”—
the majority of directors are independent, so there is no voice in the wilderness.
“The change will ensure that Sky News organises its business so as to ensure that there is always appropriate senior editorial and/or journalistic expertise at relevant meetings. The appointment of a Monitoring Trustee whose main role is to ensure that News Corp complies with the undertakings and make sure that News Corp does not do anything ‘that would prevent Newco [i.e. the spun off Sky News] being placed in an overall position of editorial, governance, commercial and financial independence in which it will contribute to plurality as Sky News did prior to the Transaction’”.
I will write to the noble Lord about the number of directors.
Baroness Kingsmill
My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can give some assurances about the financial viability of Sky News following this proposed spin-off, if you like, as an independent. Without the backing of a large media organisation, one wonders how long it can possibly last. It does not make any money as an organisation as part of News Corp, so how long is it likely to survive? We need this as part of the news plurality in the UK. Perhaps the Minister can give us a little information on that one.
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Baroness brings up a very important point. The carriage and brand licensing agreements are an important part of this process. The Secretary of State will only accept the undertakings once he has approved these agreements. These documents have been reviewed in great detail by the Office of Fair Trading, Ofcom and external lawyers. We believe that their independent, expert advice provides confidence that undertakings in key agreements are robust. They have concluded that the drafts of the carriage agreement and the brand licensing agreement are now fully consistent with the proposed undertakings.
In addition, the OFT confirms that the terms of the carriage agreement and the brand licensing agreement mean that Sky News will be practicably and financially viable for the lifetime of the carriage agreement, which I believe is 10 years. There is a need for 80 per cent of votes to change the articles. News Corp must vote against changes for so long as they have less than 50 per cent of the shares. The Secretary of State has made it clear throughout that we are committed to maintaining the free and independent press for which this country is famous and proud. The Secretary of State has sought and published independent advice throughout this process. He has listened carefully to the points made in the consultation and amended the undertakings where appropriate. He is fully aware of the importance of the financial side of this. He has also gone for maximum transparency while taking reasonable account of commercial confidentiality considerations. He continues to believe that if he allows this deal to proceed, Sky News will be able to continue its high quality output and will have greater protections for its operational and editorial independence than those that exist today.
Female Genital Mutilation
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Rendell of Babergh
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase public awareness of female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom and to bring prosecutions under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords that Back-Bench contributions to the debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, are limited to four minutes.
Baroness Rendell of Babergh
My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as a patron of the National Clinical Group against female genital mutilation and as a participant and narrator in the DVD made by that group.
Female genital mutilation is an African practice, common to many of the countries of Africa since time immemorial—not Muslim or tied to any particular religious faith, but cultural and often tribal. It began to take place in this country when immigrants from Somalia and Sudan, as well as Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone began coming to live in the United Kingdom. FGM was brought here but did not diminish in its countries of origin where, in Somalia, for instance, 100 per cent of the female population has suffered this procedure. In parts of that country death from loss of blood and infection is as high as 10 per cent. FORWARD, the Foundation for Women’s Health Research and Development, puts the figure of women at risk from FGM each year as 3 million in Africa alone. When we see on our televisions mothers and children in drought-stricken Somalia at starvation point, suffering the effects of famine, we should remember that these women will all have been mutilated, and some crippled by mutilation.
In some communities the practice is embedded in coming-of-age rituals, sometimes for entry into women’s secret societies. In spite of the intense pain caused by performing surgery by an untrained person without use of anaesthetic or sterile instruments, and in spite of this operation permanently denying them pleasure in sexual intercourse and making childbirth more painful and hazardous than it would otherwise be, girls themselves may desire to undergo it as a result of social pressure from peers and family. Those who have not undergone it may not be allowed to milk the cows or go to certain parts of the farm. Such women believe that they can never become a real wife, and parents are convinced that they are doing the best for their daughters in insisting on it, having a good marriage in view. In parts of northern Kenya young men will not marry an uncircumcised girl. FGM is thought to make a girl clean and beautiful and to preserve virginity. In fact, it is unhygienic and damaging to fertility, leading to infection, bladder disease and fistula.
As I have said, FGM was brought here 40 years ago and more; a practice which in African countries was, and is, so common that talking about it was no more necessary than discussing the age-old preparation of certain kinds of food or some system of making clothes. This was the way it was done, so women who came here saw no need to speak of a practice that was accepted and taken for granted. It became, and still is, a secret. It is this secrecy in families and communities, not to mention contact with the outside world, which has made changing the attitude of immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants so difficult and near-impossible. People will not speak of it. They will not talk to their non-African neighbours about it, still less to doctors or the police. It is only when a woman becomes pregnant that her FGM is discovered and a doctor or midwife asks, “Where did you have this done?”.
They want to know because performing it is against the law in the United Kingdom. The Female Circumcision Act was passed in 1985 and superseded by the Female Genital Mutilation Act in 2003. This later Act makes taking a female person out of this country for FGM to be performed abroad punishable by a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment. Yet FORWARD estimates that 24,000 women are at risk of FGM in the UK and over 66,000 live with its results in England and Wales, figures which may be grossly underestimated since the data were based on the 2001 census.
Although the police are intent upon bringing a prosecution—it is hoped for more its deterrent effect than as punishment—no prosecution has yet taken place, the secrecy factor being in great part responsible for this failure. Girls who can be heard in north London talking to their friends about being “cut” as initiation into a kind of community membership will say that FGM was performed on them as babies or before they came to the United Kingdom. Women presenting themselves at ante-natal clinics may well say the same and midwives are naturally wary of inquiring too closely into this highly sensitive and delicate cultural area.
The public at large know little about FGM and many of those who have heard it called female circumcision believe it to have some connection with male circumcision and be therapeutic or a mere formality. I have told those who have asked me what it really is and my explanation has been received with horror and in some cases, “I don't want to know”. But I believe that the more people who know the details of this practice the better; that they know that some victims—the word is not an exaggeration—are babies of three months or even newborns; many are infants and five year-olds.
Obviously, because of its nature, it cannot be the subject of a widely advertised and well illustrated campaign of the kind that alerts the public to the dangers of, say, heart disease, prostate disease and many forms of cancer. Does the Minister believe that such widespread advertising of what FGM is and what remedies are possible—I am thinking of reversals—could be achieved and might be effective?
Reversals are now being performed and they are of enormous benefit to mutilated women. Parts of the excised genitalia cannot, of course, be restored. No surgeon, however skilful, can do that, but reversal is of great benefit to women, restoring ease in urination and establishing straightforward menstrual periods. Most of all, perhaps, it ensures easier childbirth and less danger to mother and child.
I am constantly asked by those who know what FGM is, why, if it happens in the UK, there have been no prosecutions eight years after the passing of the Act. It is not for want of trying that the police have so far been able to bring no prosecutions, against either practitioners carrying out FGM here, or those taking a child abroad for mutilation to be performed in a country less aware of its dangers. The police are anxious to prosecute, as much to provide a deterrent as to punish the perpetrator. They would be much assisted by public awareness. It would be particularly valuable in the struggle against FGM if teachers, especially in primary schools, were to be on the watch for female children who tell them that they are being taken to the country of their parents' origin for a holiday or to visit family in Somalia, for instance, Nigeria or the Côte d'Ivoire.
The Metropolitan Police, in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Kids' Taskforce, have made a film to raise awareness of the issue which will be launched next Monday at the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Kennington. The National Clinical Group against female genital mutilation has had worldwide success and benefited a large number of women with its DVD showing a surgical reversal being performed. I understand, too, that there are films being made, often by schoolchildren, all over this country. Do the Government support the making of such films showing the pain and suffering caused by FGM and exposing the superstitious beliefs which help it to remain an ongoing custom? There are 16 specialist FGM clinics in England, 10 of them in London. Unfortunately, many are at risk of closure due to funding and staff cuts. Does the Minister agree that it is essential these clinics remain open? Again, does she agree that encouraging teachers to be aware of what is a very real danger to young girls can be of help to the police in bringing perhaps the single prosecution which would be such a major deterrent and factor in putting an end to this practice in the United Kingdom?
Lord Sheikh
My Lords, I am thankful to the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell of Babergh, for giving us this opportunity to discuss and raise the awareness of female genital mutilation. We all hear harrowing stories of unthinkable cruelty to women around the world, but female genital mutilation has to be one of the most disturbing and dangerous practices still very much ongoing. As we all know, it is not just confined to faraway lands, but sadly is extremely prevalent and commonly happening right here in the UK. Sadder still is that not only women but girls and baby girls even less than 12 months are also subjected to this most grave act of violence. I have heard many depressing estimations of the amount of women it is affecting worldwide, and just in the UK the numbers are in excess of 20,000. The World Health Organisation suggests that the figures worldwide are between 100 million and 140 million.
I was brought up in Africa and feel strongly about this awful practice. Noble Lords perhaps will be aware that the perpetrators of these barbaric acts often choose summer holidays to carry out this practice. The reason for subjecting young girls to female genital mutilation at this particular time is thought to be that the girls are given time to heal during the summer months. This avoids arousing suspicions from teachers and peers when they resume their studies in the autumn.
Female genital mutilation can be life-threatening; it is a traumatic experience and can cause a host of illnesses. It has come to my attention that communities in Bristol have come together since 2008 to raise awareness of female genital mutilation and to mark their zero tolerance of it. The campaign is highly commendable. However, does the Minister agree that the time has come to launch a nationwide campaign highlighting the dangers of this practice?
It is a sorry state of affairs that there have been no prosecutions under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The Act was intended to protect females from this practice, but unfortunately it has failed to do so. A barrier to prosecution appears to be a fear of reprisals from the perpetrators of this crime. There is also consternation on the part of the victims by their communities if they speak to the relevant authorities about their ordeal. I ask the Minister why there have been no prosecutions under the Act. Furthermore, will my noble friend explain what more can be done to investigate and undertake prosecutions under the legislation?
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women. Will the Minister tell your Lordships’ House how we are involved with this group and whether we are currently working with it on any projects connected with the issues that we are discussing in this debate?
The perpetrators of this most harrowing and dangerous act are brainwashing their victims, and in many cases the girls may be subjected to compulsion. The activities are kept underground and the communities involved keep silent about them. We must meet this challenge with vigour and determination. An Act is in force and I am confident that the Government appreciate the seriousness of the problems and intend to protect vulnerable women and girls. I look forward to hearing the Minister's ideas and updates on progress.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton
I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate and for once again raising the issue of FGM. I start by declaring an interest as patron of FORWARD, the Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development. As my noble friend said, two pieces of legislation made FGM illegal, but the question has to be: why have there been no prosecutions? We need to examine the legislation again. Perhaps there have been no prosecutions because the law is applicable only to UK citizens and UK permanent residents; perhaps because the law makes it difficult to prosecute perpetrators as it does not protect temporary residents; or perhaps because, as a recent case review demonstrated, there is a lack of co-ordination, awareness and information-sharing among key professionals.
In February, the Government published practice guidelines aimed as a resource for front-line professionals, but they did not include a plan for disseminating the guidelines to key professionals such as police officers, teachers and social workers. To truly raise awareness we must create an environment of positive change, protective policies, the generation and sharing of knowledge, and the forging of strategic partnerships with policy-makers, statutory bodies and civil society organisations. That procedure was on its way in the form of the cross-government FGM co-ordinator, but the post was abolished by the Government in March this year, leaving individual departments to take on the responsibilities. This makes it even more essential for the Government to set out a clear, comprehensive and long-term strategy for tackling FGM. Will the Minister say whether such a strategy is being proposed, and how it will be financed and co-ordinated across government? The loss of this post is compounded by the fact that many organisations working to eliminate FGM are struggling to survive through lack of financial support, leading to closures—most notably that of the internationally recognised African Well Women's Service.
There are 66,000 women in the UK who live with the consequences of FGM, and 24,000 girls are at risk. The consequences can vary from short-term health implications to serious problems in pregnancy and childbirth and serious psychological damage. An important piece of peer research carried out earlier this year showed that type 4 FGM, known as sunna, which includes pricking, piercing or incision, is widely and erroneously accepted because it does not carry the same health risks as other forms of FGM. This is a significant barrier to elimination.
The research also identified that although the majority of cases happen to young children, there is a wider age range of girls being subject to FGM, including in their late teens and early 20s, and that FGM is not discussed even within practising communities so there are differing and contradictory views between the generations about its prevalence. These barriers clearly identify that projects and language must become more adept, dealing with FGM not only as a health issue but also as one of child protection, gender and human rights. To do that there must be greater awareness raising, greater participation and engagement of key communities, including diaspora communities, funding to support existing outreach programmes, the provision of sustainable specialist health and support services, long-term investment and an FGM action plan.
In conclusion, FGM is not only a dangerous and life-threatening practice but a gross violation of the human rights of girls and women. Everything possible should be done to eliminate the practice and ensure that the perpetrators face the consequences of the law.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, for this debate. Only this week we received a bulletin from the End Violence Against Women coalition, which estimates that 15,000 to 20,000 girls under 15 could be at high risk of FGM. No civilised country can find justification on any ground whatever for even a single woman to undergo this vile practice.
This subject causes revulsion. Women, and in particular young girls, deserve the support of all those who care about their rights and freedoms, which we cherish and yet are denied to some who are part of our community. I am afraid the FGM Act of 2003 seems not to have been effective. So if the law is ineffective, what else should we be doing? First, let us destroy the argument that this is a religious ritual or practice. I do not know of any religion that prescribes mutilation. There are perpetrators who advance the argument that FGM protects virginity, ensures marriageability and contains sexuality. It does nothing of the sort. We now have to make a clear statement that those who have chosen to be part of our multicultural society should be in no doubt that the law is designed to protect victims, and that perpetrators will have no place to hide.
We all strive hard to make a reality of children's rights. The Government support the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Let us examine what this entails. Article 2 provides the right to equality, irrespective of sex. Article 19.1 provides protection to children from all forms of mental and physical violence and maltreatment. Article 24.1 is designed to provide the highest standard of health. We can add to this the important provision under Article 24.3 to take effective and appropriate measures to abolish traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children, and Article 37(a) which specifies freedom from torture, cruel or inhuman or degrading treatment. I have cited this convention to remind the Government that we have an obligation to protect children. We need to know why the law has been ineffective and should look at international practices to see how other countries have handled this matter.
I ask my noble friend to inquire how the matter of FGM is addressed by our Children’s Commissioner, and what guidance the Minister is giving in respect of this problem. We need answers to the following questions. What guidance is given to social workers regarding registration and action in relation to this practice? What common code of conduct is there for all healthcare professionals regarding FGM? What programme of public education is undertaken for refugees who arrive here from certain countries where such practices are prevalent? Do we publish information in other languages so that refugees and others are aware of the law in the United Kingdom? What training and guidance is provided to teachers and students, making them aware of FGM and the law? What financial and other support is available for women’s groups and advocacy groups? These groups are vital as a catalyst for opening discussions and breaking the taboo around FGM. What impact will the police cuts have and are there plans to ring-fence some of the funds so the activities are not downgraded?
We need answers since the law has failed to provide and the problem will not go away until we build the confidence of women and children to come forward with the cases.
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I am participating in this debate for two reasons. First, I want to take the opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, both for instigating the debate and for her untiring work to develop awareness of FGM, to support the many groups working to get it stopped and to support the doctors who do the reversal surgery. Secondly, I want to take the opportunity to mention very briefly—and I must stress that I am no expert on the subject—what I learnt in Kenya during my stay as a volunteer, arranged by Voluntary Service Overseas, with the Coalition on Violence Against Women, an experience which I hope has some relevance in the UK. I participated in the programme the coalition is involved with in the rural areas to persuade whole communities that the time has come to stop this practice. Kenyan law makes it clear that FGM is unlawful. It is illegal under the Children Act 2001 and official figures show the numbers dropping considerably since 2001, although some commentators think all that has happened is that it is now being done in secret.
In Masai communities, with which I was involved, young girls are traditionally circumcised amid great ceremony in preparation for a hoped-for marriage. To avoid this, some girls, who dream of a different life for themselves, run away to safe houses where they are looked after. I visited a school in a rural area which a number of these girls attended. They were being clothed, fed and educated with money raised by various sources from the coalition as their parents would no longer support them. They seemed very determined to avoid the circumcision ceremony and early marriage and to stay on at school. However, the pressure on them to give up and go home was enormous, so I heard. Their parents were telling them, “You will never get married. What will become of you?”. Their peer group was saying, “I had it done. I got lots of presents. Now I am going to get married”. The girls I met were very brave and defiant—standing there in their hand-me-down clothes—and very admirable. Their lives were very difficult.
The Coalition on Violence Against Women also organised educational efforts in the villages, spearheaded by men, to spread the word that men would be better off with educated wives who had not been circumcised. While the law is essential and it is imperative that it is clear that this practice is outside the law, it is education of men and wider opportunities for girls that will in the end make it no longer culturally accepted. I was impressed with the Government’s multiagency practice guidelines and I thank the Library for providing me with these. Can I ask the Minister whether they are widely known and distributed? Since we are expecting people to resist a powerful traditional force, how far are the Government able to support civil society groups, which can support women and their mothers who want to resist this and to have a very different life?
Lord Parekh
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell of Babergh, for introducing this debate and for pursuing this issue for as long as I can remember—for as long as I have been in your Lordships’ House.
We all know that female genital mutilation is a horrendous practice. In this country I am told that at the moment there are 74,000 first-generation immigrant African women who have undergone it. A research paper published a few years ago tells us that in any given year between 3,000 and 4,000 girls are subjected to FGM. Obviously, it is a cultural practice and, like all cultural practices, it is sustained by a personal belief that it is right and by social pressure. How do you tackle a practice based on deeply held personal belief and constantly reinforced by the pressures of others? I want to emphasise this point because, although the law is important, we should bear in mind how deeply seated in the consciousness of this community this practice is.
Some years ago when I was writing about this, I spoke on the subject at a conference. A fairly distinguished academic from Nigeria came up to me and said, “Don’t sound off. I have undergone this practice recently, after the birth of my last child”. I asked why, at the age of 35, she had done it. She said, “To remind myself that from now onwards I am a mother and not a woman”. When I asked whether this was common, she said it was fairly common in certain circles. In certain parts of Africa it is not uncommon for widows to go through this voluntarily and it happens in many groups of immigrants in Europe and the United States as well.
It horrifies us to think that adult, highly intelligent, university professors and doctors want to go through this, but they do. I want us to recognise that ordinary men and women from these communities have got into the habit of pursuing this practice on their children. The question is how we put an end to it. I want to suggest some things based on my own research and experience in dealing with practices of this kind—although not exactly this—in India and other parts of the world.
Law is important because it sets the tone of society, but there have to be strong and rigorously pursued prosecutions. I am really disappointed that there have been no prosecutions of the same kind that we had in relation to honour killings or forced marriages. We need to take communities into confidence. There are many men and women in those communities who are appalled by this and they ought to be involved in suggesting ways for it to be tackled. It is also important that social pressure is exerted because everyone thinks other people are doing it. Communities should be collectively persuaded to pass resolutions and to say openly why they would not do this and why they would not allow this.
It is also important to bear in mind that we should not be concentrating only on women. This practice takes place because it is part of the patriarchal system and, more importantly, men want it. I do not have the time to go through all this but if you were to ask in whose interest this is being done—women obviously do not enjoy it—I am told that men enjoy it and it is their way of regulating women’s sexuality and behaviour. Therefore, unless we persuade men and boys to recognise that this does not deliver what they think it does, we will not be able to get very far.
It is also important to be able to identify girls at risk fairly well in advance. We know generally that nearly 70 per cent of the girls are between the ages of five and eight and we ought to be able to indentify them and make sure that they are well protected.
Lord Chidgey
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue today. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has said, it is estimated that between 100 million and 140 million African women and girls have undergone FGM, violating their human rights and compromising their health. Each year a further 3 million are at risk in Africa alone.
FGM is not only taking place in Africa, as many noble Lords have pointed out. International migration has increased the number of girls and women living in the African diaspora who have undergone FGM or who are at risk from the practice. It is difficult to confirm its prevalence in Europe but the European Parliament estimates that as many as half a million women in Europe are suffering the consequences of FGM.
FGM is increasingly becoming a European problem. Among many communities the practice is seen as an important tradition, often bound up with religion, which makes eradication more difficult. Nevertheless, it may well be possible to think in terms of eradication sooner than is thought. The examples given by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, give us a signpost to the way forward.
Parliamentarians are the custodians of democracy and human rights. They have a responsibility through political will and commitment to support the elimination of violence against women in general and, in Africa, FGM in particular in the interests of society as a whole. The Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa, which is known as AWEPA, of which I am an advisory board member, UNICEF and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, have pledged to co-operate in the implementation of a joint programme for ending FGM. This is recognised as the privileged instrument within the UN for human rights-based social change. The objective is to accelerate social change in favour of human rights, and to increase the rate of abandonment of FGM in the 17 African countries considered a priority.
Across Europe and Africa, AWEPA has agreed to organise parliamentary action to abandon the practice of FGM. Three target countries were identified—Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal—out of the 17 where the practice is most widespread. An analysis of the relevant legal provisions in each country is being made, and the leeway afforded to parliamentarians as power brokers is being quantified and identified. An analysis is being made in relation to each Government's executive branches and their relevant parliamentary committees as well as to civil society organisations and, not least, women's rights groups. In parallel and in partnership with the Pan-African Parliament and with input from UNICEF and UNFPA, the joint programme is developing a parliamentary handbook in which the UN agencies’ policy expertise in the area of FGM combines with knowledge of the parliamentary processes in each country. The handbook is being promoted by parliamentary champions in all three countries through the networks of national bookshops. The issue of FGM is closely linked to the attainment of UN MDG3, promoting gender equality and empowerment for women, and MDG5, improving maternal health. The overall objective of AWEPA's programme is the abandonment of the practice of FGM in Africa and Europe by 2015.
FGM cannot and will not be abandoned in this country until it is first ended in Africa. Laws alone will not end the practice, but parliaments can lead the way in bringing about the societal change needed. At the very least, we should find room in DfID’s maternal health budget to support this UNICEF project. Norway, Italy, Ireland and Australia have already made generous contributions to the programme. A further £20 million is all that it will take to fund the five-year programme and see the first target country free from FGM. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments on whether DfID will come across and stump up.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, this is undoubtedly a human rights issue of a very serious kind. The practice continues despite the criminalising of the process both here and back in most of the countries where it is widespread. I want to reiterate what my noble friend Lord Parekh said: it is very clear what the purpose is. It is about preparing women for marriage. My experience is that it is not often performed on babies nowadays; it is performed on girls, usually prepubescent girls between the ages of eight and 12, and it is done because there is still, if not child marriage, the betrothal of girls when they are still that young.
The idea is to keep women chaste, to remove their opportunity for sexual pleasure and to remove concerns that women with a clitoris will somehow be more promiscuous. Not all circumcision involves the removal of the clitoris, but for most women, it involves the stitching of their vagina and labia. Sometimes it even involves the removal of the labia. In Africa, I have heard practitioners and older men and women claim that it makes girls less wild, more placid and therefore exactly marriageable material.
I have gone to Africa with the charity SafeHands for Mothers and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, I have heard the testimony of women and men and seen how traumatised women are having gone through that experience, especially if you talk to girls who have escaped the possibility or who have just undergone female genital mutilation. I have visited hospitals in north London to see photographs taken of the damaged and mutilated vaginas of women who attend hospital because they are pregnant. Obstetricians have to give them guidance on what to expect in labour and tell them that they will have to have an episiotomy in order to give birth. After giving birth, the women beg those same doctors to stitch them up the way they were in order to please their husbands. Doctors have to explain to women that they will play no part in that practice, but they know that those women return to them with a second pregnancy, and their vagina has been restitched. We have to ask ourselves how that is coming about. Doctors in this country are satisfied that women in the communities here perform these practices.
In Africa, I have heard doctors saying that a practice current there is the performance of symbolic cutting where there is no removal of the clitoris and it is simply, they insist, a small nick that answers the community’s cultural demand for the continuation of the practice. I hope that those in authority, in the medical profession and in the police are making it clear that a medical practitioner performing even the small nick will not be endured in this country and that prosecution will ensue. It must contravene the belief that we should do no harm.
I want to hear from the Minister about what is being done about reaching general practitioners, doctors in private practice and cosmetic surgeons to find out whether things are being done to women who want their vaginas restitched after birth. I want to hear what efforts we are making to breach the silence on this issue and whether we are doing enough in our outreach to the communities.
Finally, an absence of prosecutions is usually an indicator that there is something not happening, so I thank my noble friend Lady Rendell for keeping this matter before the House, and I hope that we will see greater activity on this issue.
Baroness Tonge
Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, on instigating this excellent debate. I hesitate to use the word “interesting”, but the horrific extent to which this practice still goes on is interesting. Most points have been made, so I have been slashing, cutting and pasting my speech furiously during the debate so that I do not repeat too many points.
The All-Party Group on Population, Development and Reproduction Health, which I now chair, has produced two reports that are extremely relevant. The first was way back in 2000. It was specifically on female genital mutilation and covered most of the points that have been made in this debate and, indeed, reiterated a lot of the experience that noble Lords have told us about today. The second was the 2009 report on maternal morbidity Better off Dead?—that was my title. Both reports highlighted the global human rights violations of FGM, which affects about 130 million women and girls worldwide, 500,000 in Europe and an estimated 66,000 in England and Wales. These women and girls are brutally mutilated and that has long-term physical and mental consequences. Their future reproductive health is violated in the most brutal and disgusting way.
If we had time, I would like to have a debate on the origins of this practice and a debate on the origins of male circumcision too, which is very interesting. It is being questioned in some circles nowadays. It is said that it started as a public health measure to stop irritation and infection when men did not wear Y-fronts. Women certainly did not have underwear. Is it conceivable that back in the mists of time, it was in some way seen as a healthy or hygienic practice? I do not know, but we all know how it is interpreted nowadays and we have heard from many noble Lords that it is, in a sense, to control women. Both practices are in my view violations of the rights of the child. They are against the human rights of children, who are unable to give their consent, and the practices should stop.
Some of us may have heard recently that a brave teacher in Bristol has encouraged a group of girls in her care from different cultural backgrounds who have experience of FGM to make a film called “Silent Scream”, to which I draw the attention of the House. It has its premiere at the Watershed Cinema in the centre of Bristol tonight; it will then go online. I am glad of the opportunity to publicise it. However, this teacher has received little support, with parents and colleagues condemning her for allowing the girls to make the film. I ask the Minister what the Government will be doing to encourage teachers to do this sort of activity and make these sorts of films with their pupils.
I have just a few more questions before I finish. Why has not a single prosecution taken place in this country, compared to the 50 prosecutions that have taken place in France? Where are the support services for girls who have undergone this procedure? Currently there are only 16 such facilities in the UK. What will happen under GP commissioning—who will be responsible for this? What training is being organised for teachers and the police? Where are the statistics on FGM and why are they not collected? Lastly, why has the cross-government FGM co-ordinator post been abolished? I hope that the Minister can answer these questions.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, welcome the initiative of my noble friend Lady Rendell in instituting this debate and for championing this issue for many years. We owe her a great debt. As in previous debates, the picture painted by noble Lords today is of the extensive nature of this dreadful practice in many countries, including our own. As noble Lords have commented, the Female Genital Mutilation Act was introduced in 2003, but there have been no prosecutions since it was brought in. As my noble friend Lady Rendell said, clearly there are police forces who would wish to prosecute but so far the evidence has not come forward.
I ask the Minister to respond to the point raised just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, as to the reason for there being no prosecutions at all, and whether we can learn anything from other countries such as France, if indeed they have been able to find ways to prosecute? It would be very interesting to know whether her department has been able to undertake some research into the experience of other countries.
My noble friend Lady Gould wondered if the law needed revisiting and made a number of suggestions for improving the law. Will the Minister very kindly consider those proposals?
My noble friend Lady Rendell suggested a public awareness campaign. Will the Government support this, including, as she said, films showing the pain and suffering caused by this dreadful practice? In her opening remarks, my noble friend mentioned a DVD that she supported. I have seen it—it is very telling. Will the Minister give support to such initiatives and to the initiative mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, by a schoolteacher in Bristol? It was very concerning to hear that, far from being supported, she had come in for criticism. This is extremely disappointing.
Fantastic work is being done in clinics. Can the Minister assure me that a way will be found within the new health service structure to ensure that those clinics continue to be funded and supported? The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, raised the issue of police funding. We know that one of the consequences of cuts to police funding has been the closure of specialist units. There is a real problem with prosecutions—will the Minister consider whether there is a need for some kind of regional or national unit to gather expertise to advise police forces generally? The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, also mentioned the role of the Children’s Commissioner. Will she consider that, as well as his suggestion about the need for education for refugees?
I also ask the Minister to respond to my noble friend Lady Kennedy about practitioners in this country because it is clear from what we said that there are some who are involved in these practices. My noble friend’s analysis of the causes was very helpful.
Picking up a point made by my noble friend Lord Parekh, what work are the Government doing in relation to UK communities, particularly men and boys in those communities? The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, mentioned the Kenyan experience. It would be helpful if we could establish whether the work being done there would be relevant to the UK. I also pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, about DfID programmes, which I thought was very important indeed.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Gould asked whether the Government would develop a long-term strategy. I ask the Minister to consider that very carefully indeed. The reinstatement of an FGM co-ordinator post in Whitehall would be an important signal of the Government’s concern and commitment in this area.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I join all noble Lords in paying tribute to the dedication of the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, to this cause and her widely respected work towards the elimination of female genital mutilation. The noble Baroness illustrated so vividly the horrors of this practice and I hope that I will have time to respond to the noble Baroness and other noble Lords’ questions. If time does not permit, I will write to noble Lords.
This debate is absolutely crucial for women and girls across the world. Female genital mutilation is a form of child abuse which this Government are committed to eradicating. Similarly, the UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has clearly denounced the practice of FGM in its general recommendation No. 14 on female circumcision. The UN General Assembly’s resolution of January 2002 on traditional or customary practices affecting the health of women and girls called upon all states to ratify or accede to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to adopt national measures to prohibit harmful traditional practices such as FGM.
We have to protect girls from this abuse and ensure that all those living with the consequences of FGM are given the care and support they deserve and so badly need. Front-line professionals who have responsibilities to safeguard children and protect adults from the abuses associated with FGM play a vital role in identifying children and young women who are at risk or who have been subjected to FGM. It is unlikely that any single agency will be able to meet the multiple needs of someone affected by FGM and therefore it demands a multiagency response.
Similarly, the coalition Government have recognised the need for a joined-up approach to tackle FGM and this method has been successful in drawing together, co-ordinating and driving work from a number of government departments. We are trying to raise awareness of this barbaric practice and have made progress. However, our key focus is prevention and we have undertaken considerable work in the past year across and between nine government departments to advance efforts to prevent and tackle FGM in the UK and around the world. In February, the Government launched multiagency practice guidelines on female genital mutilation for front-line professionals such as teachers, GPs and nurses. The guidelines aim to raise awareness of FGM, highlight the risks of the practice and set out clearly the steps that should be taken to safeguard children and women from this abuse. This is a key step towards ensuring that professionals are able and confident to intervene to protect girls at risk.
We know that FGM causes significant harm to the physical and mental health of girls in many ways, which many noble Lords have raised today, and increases the risk of life threatening complications during childbirth for both the mother and baby. There are 15 specialist clinics in the NHS which treat women and girls who have been subjected to FGM. These clinics all have trained and culturally sensitive staff who offer a range of healthcare services for women and girls, including the commonly called “reversal” surgery. A clinic based in the Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London sees more than 300 clients per year and carries out between two and three reversals of FGM per week. It may surprise noble Lords—although I suspect it does not from listening to the contributions—that 30 to 40 per cent of those clients are British nationals.
The Royal College of Midwives has identified FGM as a key issue to its members and is conducting a survey of midwives to understand more about the numbers of women being seen by health services and the training needs of health staff. The results will be used by the Royal College of Midwives to input into national strategies and plans, and to provide better support to midwives by way of providing information and appropriate educational resources. We applaud this and other such initiatives.
Communications about FGM are key to bringing the issue to people’s attention. More than 40,000 leaflets and posters have been circulated to schools, health services, charities and community groups around the country. This is not the only method we are using to raise awareness and we know that it is not an end in itself but a foundation on which to build. Guidance has also been issued to British embassies and high commissions to protect British girls and women at risk of FGM overseas. We must be clear that the long-term and systematic eradication of FGM in the UK will require practising communities to abandon the practice themselves.
Through the regular government-chaired female genital mutilation forum, we will work with the well established network of FGM civil society organisations to co-ordinate activities and input into government policy-making as well as to examine how we can support and facilitate their engagement with practising communities in the UK. We have reached out to work with a range of charities and civil society partners active in this area. Their wealth of experience has been absolutely crucial in shaping our work and we thank them for their input and for sharing their expertise with us. It has been an excellent example of partnership working that we are keen to continue going forward.
Looking forward, we will continue to examine how FGM can best be included in existing statutory training for professionals, and to offer other areas of specific, tailored training to the relevant agencies, both of which are key to the prevention and tackling of female genital mutilation. There have also been some successful initiatives from the police. The Metropolitan Police’s Project Azure work at Heathrow, which speaks to families potentially taking the girls overseas for FGM, has strengthened our last line of defence for these girls.
The noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, referred to the interesting work being done with the Metropolitan Police at the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Vauxhall, which was approached to take part in a female genital mutilation film project. In further illustrating the project, it was decided to hand the film production over to a group of young people to decide how this sensitive subject should be presented to their peers. The school’s well-being group was thought to be the ideal place for the project. The group included girls from Eritrea and Somalia, two of whom had already been “cut” and who shared their experiences and knowledge with group members. One pupil revealed that her father had refused to allow her to be cut despite her mother being keen for her to have FGM. The film should be ready for delivery to schools in September. I think that it will be a very powerful tool in a crucially important area, for we know that the education and safeguarding sectors play a vital role in identifying and intervening when girls are suspected of being at risk of FGM. I think that the idea of directly involving children, including those who have already sadly experienced the horror of FGM, is a brave and innovative idea.
We need to tackle this issue at its root. By reaching out to children directly, we can hope to change the mindset of our future generations to ensure that when these girls become mothers they will abandon the practice for good. While FGM needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner by all parts of society, change must come from the communities which carry out this practice, and we commend and applaud communities which have taken a strong stance on this issue. Internationally, we recognise that FGM is a serious problem and the Government’s aid programme is committed to empowering women and girls, including preventing violence against women and girls, including FGM where appropriate.
The Government will support sensitive measures to counter all forms of gender-based violence internationally and will support measures to eliminate FGM indirectly through their core funding of the key UN agencies that address FGM—namely, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organisation—as well as supporting NGOs which focus on tackling FGM. Closer to home, we will also work with other EU member states and EU institutions to examine how and where the EU can add value to global efforts to tackle FGM.
The Government are frustrated by the lack of prosecutions in the 25 years that female genital mutilation has been illegal in the UK but the success of the legislation cannot be measured only by the number of prosecutions. We hear anecdotally that the legislation has been a deterrent, stopping families from proceeding with their plans to have FGM performed on their daughters.
Legislation alone cannot eliminate the practice altogether. Families and communities need to take ownership of the issue and must help to stop committing this terrible crime. Prosecution after the fact, although desirable, does not relieve the victim of a lifetime of pain and discomfort. We want to prevent FGM from happening in the first place. Despite the lack of prosecutions, the Act is intended to deter this unacceptable practice and anecdotal evidence suggests that it has had some deterrent effect. The Act has also provided an impetus for outreach work with the practising communities and has been widely used to raise awareness among the police, judiciary, health professionals, social services departments and education sector so that FGM is treated with the seriousness that it deserves.
Research suggests that the most likely barrier to prosecution is the pressure from the family or wider community that leads to cases going unreported. Victims may be too young and vulnerable or too afraid to report offences to the police or to give evidence in court. Family and community pressure can make it very difficult for girls to come forward to notify the police about what has happened to them. We recognise that more needs to be done.
The Crown Prosecution Service will shortly issue new guidelines for prosecutors on FGM to ensure that the CPS is able to prosecute cases of female genital mutilation that satisfy the evidential and public interest tests within the Code for Crown Prosecutors. Together with police training, we hope that every case of FGM can be investigated and, if it meets the relevant evidential and public interest tests, prosecuted to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. We hope that the publication of these guidelines will be the first step towards a successful prosecution in the UK really to press home the point that we will not tolerate the unacceptable abuse of girls and women in this way.
I can see from the clock that I will run out of time. I made a heap of notes and I now undertake to write to noble Lords. I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, for initiating this debate. I hope that it is noted and goes some way to ensuring that this important issue remains on the agenda in order that girls and women are protected and this unacceptable form of abuse is eliminated for good. As always, this subject highlights the expertise and the passion for which this House is known and respected across the globe.
Localism Bill
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, I would just say that in the Library are a number of documents which have been laid for the attention of the Committee.
Clause 42 : Duty to hold local referendum
Amendment 120B
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, in moving Amendment 120B, I shall speak also to the other eight amendments in this group, which are in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lord Tope, who will arrive in a minute, I hope.
Although we have debated only two groups of amendments so far, we have made quite a lot of progress in discussing the issues around the proposals for referendums. These amendments address the question of who can call referendums under the provisions of this chapter. We approached the question of referendums with some scepticism—that has become obvious. Nevertheless, we understand that there is a localist case for referendums regardless of whether referendums themselves are a suitable part of local democracy. The case was made well by the noble Lord, Lord True, before the lunch break. We are troubled by referendums not just because they present various practical dangers and difficulties, which we talked about last Thursday and this morning, but because of the question of whether local democracy should be plebiscitary or deliberative. The problem with referendums is that they demand a yes or no answer to questions that very often require a great deal of careful discussion and deliberation and are not answerable in a yes/no sort of way; they are answerable in a much more complex way that requires amendment, mediation and compromise between different interests in the community. This is at the heart of the question of who should call referendums.
This suite of amendments would delete those parts of the Bill that allow referendums to be called by a small number of elected councillors. It would also delete the provision that an elected mayor, whether in London or elsewhere, could call a referendum. It would also, perhaps for different reasons, delete the provisions that allow a council itself to call a referendum. I will take those points in order.
In our view, the provision that allows a small number of elected members to call a referendum in their wards is open to a great deal of misuse and abuse. In particular, if,
“one or more members of the authority can make a request”—
in the words of the Bill—then the,
“member for an electoral area”,
or,
“a majority of the members”,
in a multi-member area can call a referendum. It is not clear whether councillors for adjoining wards could join together and jointly call for the same referendum in two or more wards. I put that question to the Minister.
Last Thursday we discussed the danger—so I will not go into it in great detail now—of councillors using referendums in their wards as a tool for re-election, calling a referendum on a populist issue on the same day as they are due to face the electors. An equally dangerous prospect is rivalry within a ward, if perhaps two out of three councillors called a referendum in order to do down the election campaign of a colleague of a different party. A further problem is that wards do not necessarily, and very often do not, match communities.
For all these reasons, many of us find undesirable the possibility that a small number of councillors—one, two or three—can call a referendum in their part of the borough and, as long as it fits the provisions of the Bill, the council will not be able to stop it. The arguments apply equally to elected mayors, who could quite easily call populist referendums to coincide with their own re-election or to boost their popularity. There seems no reason why a mayor should call a referendum about issues that relate to the mayor’s powers because the mayor can address them without a referendum.
As far as the resolution of the council is concerned, these provisions seem unnecessary. Councillors can call referendums at the moment under their existing general powers, and presumably they will continue to be able to do so. They are also able to make arrangements appropriate to the particular referendum that they might want to call. We were given an example in the King’s Lynn area where a referendum called by the district council cost £80,000. It resulted in an overwhelming majority one way, and then the county council ignored it. The argument for not having a referendum on the basis of the resolution of the council is that it is not necessary, and the council can do it anyway without being constrained by the detailed rules and regulations in this Bill.
My final point is that the Bill suggests that referendums can take place within a ward or an electoral division or they can take place in a whole area. However, if you think about towns such as Keighley, which is a clearly separate town within the city of Bradford, why should it not be able to have a referendum, if we are going to have referendums, in a clear community like that? In the case of Burnley, Padiham is a clearly separate town in the Burnley district, but it consists of two wards and bits of other wards; so why should it not be able to have a referendum in the natural community rather than the artificial wards? I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I endorse most of what the noble Lord has suggested. In particular I entirely concur with his view that the provision for council members to requisition a referendum is apt to lead to mischief and is unnecessary. It is open to the whole council to choose to have a referendum if it wishes. Perhaps the Minister would confirm that it would even be the case in a mayoral council, that the council as a whole could pass a resolution for a referendum. However, to extend that principle to individual members is unnecessary and likely to be a source of considerable nuisance as well as expense. I hope that the Minister will feel, on reflection, that that particular part of the Bill can be safely abandoned without prejudice to the rights of the public at large.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I may have misunderstood, but regarding this business about local councils calling for referendums, I thought the Minister said previously that,
“following a request from a member, a referendum may not be held unless the full council has resolved that it be held”.—[Official Report, 28/6/11; col. 1746.]
I therefore thought that we had moved on from that argument.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for tabling these amendments. I should reassure him that councils in neighbouring wards can get together to hold a referendum covering a community. I cannot help the way that warding is done. Generally speaking, we have to have building blocks in local government and the ward system is the one that is used, but under the provisions of the Bill it would be possible to hold a referendum that just addressed the interests of Keighley or Burnley, which he illustrated.
Perhaps I can address the implications of the amendments and say why I will resist them. Amendments 120B, 120C, 126ZZA, 128QA, 128R, 128VA and 128W would remove the provisions that would allow councillors to call for local referendums and councils to pass a resolution to hold a referendum. These amendments would have the effect that if an authority were keen to hold a referendum on a local matter, it would not be able to use the powers to hold a formal referendum conferred by the Bill and would only be able to use the rather informal powers contained in Section 116 of the Local Government Act 2003. We accept that local authorities have the power to hold advisory polls under Section 116, but those polls are limited to the council’s services or its expenditure on such services and are therefore not as far-reaching as the provisions in the Bill.
We want to enable councils to hold referendums on any issue of local importance. We believe that as leaders in their areas, it is right for them to be able to do so. It is open to a council under the provisions to hold a referendum on any matter. However, any decision must be taken within the parameters of administrative law. It would need to be a rational decision with reasoned grounds for it. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, these provisions apply also to mayoral councils. Clearly it would not be rational to hold a referendum on a matter about which no practical decision would be possible by those who were able to take the decision. For example, a decision on whether the country should invest in a programme—the illustration that I have here is rather far-fetched, to send a person to Mars; I am not sure who the drafters of this text had in mind—would not be a rational subject for a referendum by a local authority. Further, the local authority would need to consider very carefully the holding of a referendum on a matter over which it, its partner authorities or the people of the locality had little or no influence. It is not rational for the authority to incur the cost of a referendum which can serve no possible purpose.
I do not see any great advantage in denying authorities access to the referendum framework that we are setting up under this Bill if they want to use it. Nothing in the provisions that my noble friend seeks to omit imposes any obligations on authorities, so I urge him to withdraw the amendment and to support the localism that they promote.
Some of these amendments, Amendments 129K and 129L, refer to the mayor as a member, and I am grateful to my noble friend for bringing them forward. They would remove elected mayors from the definition of “member”, meaning that they could not use the power in Clause 45 to call for a referendum in the area of the council that they have been elected to lead. In fact, this may not be such a great hardship for elected mayors, since they could initiate a referendum by seeking a resolution of the authority under Clause 50. I accept the point made through Amendment 129L—to remove the Mayor for London from the provisions set out in Clause 58(2)—and we will want to consider these points carefully with a view to returning to them at a later stage. I thank my noble friend for submitting those amendments.
With the explanations which I have given in support of the Bill’s provisions, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tope
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Unless I missed it, I do not think that he addressed the particular concerns referred to by both noble Lords, which is what happens with split wards. What would happen to a three-member ward where two are from one party and the third is from another? In my own borough, one-third of the wards are in that position, so it is a significant point. A long time ago I was an opposition councillor, and I would suspect that in the run-up to the council elections, which in London is only a one-in-four-year opportunity, it would be almost irresistible for two opposition councillors seeking to oust their third, unwelcome friend from another party, to seek to trigger a referendum, if only to force the majority party to turn it down shortly before the election. I am sure that that is not what the Government have in mind. I speak with the confidence that none of the opposition councillors in my borough will ever read Hansard and know that I am saying this, but I suspect that this is a tactic that may well enter the minds of some. It is not what the Government intend. I therefore wonder whether we ought not to think a bit more about tightening the provisions to prevent what I must not call frivolous campaigning, but very opportunistic opposition campaigning, by whichever party, because I am sure that, in opposition, we would all do it. Perhaps we should consider that point.
Lord True
I apologise to my noble friend for missing his opening remarks. I referred to this on an earlier amendment so I will not labour the point, but I agree strongly with the points made by my noble friend Lord Tope. In these circumstances the councillor power needs further examination, and I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to consider that. On the question of area and ward boundaries which my noble friend referred to, the reality is that, in many cases, as real localism emerges, people will choose areas that do not coincide with the boundaries of wards. We as an authority accept that we are defining areas in terms of what local people have chosen as their communities. Indeed, the most recent referendum held in our authority did not follow ward boundaries but community boundaries, and people participated in it enthusiastically. I do not want to press my noble friend further on the point, but the language of the “electoral area” used in the Bill, whether at this point or elsewhere, could create serious obstacles to the actual implementation of localism in the way that communities would choose. I hope that my noble friend will consider that further.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I cannot quite understand where we are, which is why I got up before. Earlier this week I moved Amendments 125 and 126, which provided that a councillor could not call for a referendum unless he had a petition signed by 5 per cent of the electorate. I have before me the Hansard report where the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said:
“I believe that the safeguard we have in place—that, following a request from a member, a referendum may not be held unless the full council has resolved that it be held”.—[Official Report, 28/6/11; col. 1746.]
Surely that is the check. I admit that it is far better than the one we proposed, which was getting 5 per cent of the vote.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Indeed I can confirm that, and I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, because both he and my noble friend Lord Cathcart asked me about it. I will repeat what I said: councillors may call for a referendum, but it will go ahead only if the full council decides that it should. However, the points raised by my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord True need some consideration. The Bill makes no reference to a political party. It does not even talk about controlling councils or membership of groups because that is not the principle on which this piece of drafting was done, and indeed my noble friend Lord True will understand that sometimes it is difficult to provide definitions in legislation. I have explained that our building block is the ward system.
We are going to go on to talk about neighbourhood planning in the future, and it will be useful to consider this debate in the light of that. Meanwhile, we will consider the point made about the risks that could be involved. However, my noble friend Lord Cathcart has kindly given me an opportunity to explain that the whole council has to approve whether a referendum at the bid of an individual councillor or group of councillors should go ahead.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in this short debate and for what the Minister has said. While the question of a council being able to call a referendum under these provisions seems unnecessary and more in the way of detailed prescription, I understand that it is not a significant issue. The one significant issue that has come out of the debate is the question of whether individual members should be able to call referendums in their own wards. I just want to take the Committee through what the Bill says.
Clause 45 is about a request for a referendum by members. It says that a request complies with this section if a member for a ward—or, if it is a multi-member ward, a majority of members for that ward or division—asks for that referendum. That is subject to Clause 46(2):
“The principal local authority must determine whether it is appropriate to hold a local referendum in response to the petition or request”.
That is the point that the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, made. But Clause 47, which we will come onto in some detail in the later group, clearly says in subsection (1):
“A principal local authority may only determine that it is not appropriate to hold a local referendum in response to a petition or request”—
and that request is a member request—
“on one or more of the following grounds”.
The way in which the local authority, the council, treats a member request as far as grounds for determination—that is, deciding whether it can go ahead—is exactly the same as if a petition is received. We will discuss some of the stuff in Clause 47 a little later but the point is that, if it complies, the council does not have any discretion. It still has to make a formal decision but that decision is whether it complies. If it does, the referendum goes ahead. In an absolute way, the case made by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, is not what it says in the Bill. If I am wrong, this is a crucial issue that needs to be settled and sorted out.
On that basis, and the basis that more discussion has to take place about member-requested referendums, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hanham
“(ba) where the principal local authority is the Greater London Authority, it is duly signed—(i) by the required percentage of local government electors in each London borough, and(ii) by the required percentage of local government electors in the area of the Common Council of the City of London,”
Baroness Hanham
(a) where the principal local authority is not the Greater London Authority, the petition does not comply with subsection (1)(b), or(b) where the principal local authority is the Greater London Authority, the petition complies with neither or only one of paragraphs (b) and (ba) of subsection (1).”
Lord Rennard
“( ) In order to comply with this section a petition must be validated by the Electoral Registration Officer or Officers for the relevant area as follows—
(a) that the name of each person on the petition is that of a local government elector who is registered at the address stated on the petition, and(b) that the signature of each person on the petition corresponds to that on the electoral registration form signed by that person.”
Lord Rennard
My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves. I shall speak also to Amendment 129A, Amendment 129H and Amendment 188 within this group. Amendment 120G simply requires that the electoral registration officer should check that the signature of the person on one of these petitions requesting a referendum is the signature of that person on the register. Amendment 129A says that they must be on the register, not just entitled to be on the register. That is an important issue of clarification. Amendment 129H says that they must be on the register on the date that they sign. Amendment 188 says that this process cannot really start effectively and properly until we have individual voter registration, so that we have on the register the signatures of the people signing these things and those can be checked against it.
On Tuesday, we listened to many discussions about how many signatures should be required to trigger a request for a referendum of this nature. Apart from the arguments over whether it should be 5, 10, 15 or 25 per cent, it is of considerable importance that, if we are collecting any signatures demanding that such a referendum be held, we know that the people signing petitions are on the electoral register, on it on the relevant day and that their signature on the petition matches what is recorded by the electoral registration officer. That is as will be the case in future for all voters with individual voter registration but is at present the case only with postal voters. At the moment, people sign nomination forms for elections but it is not possible to check their signatures. There are so few signatures required on a nomination form that it is possible quickly to make enough inquiries to see whether those signatures really are the signatures of those people nominating a candidate. However, if in future we are going to trigger perhaps expensive referendums requiring dozens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of signatures, we must have a process for checking that they are genuinely the signatures of local electors. There will be nothing to check that these signatures are really the signatures of those people until we have individual voter registration in place. We will have it before the next general election campaign. Otherwise, there will be accusations that small groups of people may be able to fill in the forms with different signatures from names that they simply find on the register. There will be no effective way of checking that they really are the electors that they are supposed to be.
I have often argued in this House that we need greater security in our election process. We do not really know how much abuse there is of the election process. If more people knew how easy it would be to cheat on some of our election rules, there would perhaps be much more cheating in elections. The previous Government moved and this Government are moving to tighten up our electoral processes as a safeguard against potential fraud. We should have proper safeguards against fraud in relation to these petitions.
For example, there have been a lot of problems with the Electoral Commission dealing with donations made to political parties from people on or perhaps not on the electoral register. One of these amendments makes plain that you should be on the electoral register if you are signing this petition—not simply that you should be entitled to be on it. This principle was a matter of significant debate when we considered the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It was clearly the view of this House, the other place and the Government that if you make a donation to a political party as an individual you should definitely be on the register—not simply able to claim that you are entitled to be on it, had not gone on it and had been missed out. The same principle should apply for these petitions.
Finally, in these various provisions considering how referendums may be triggered, what consultation has there been with the Electoral Commission about such matters? I beg to move.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, before we consider the implications of these amendments, it is important to remember that we are not actually talking about voting in the referendum itself but about the petition. It is the view of the Government that it is up to a local authority to determine the validity of any referendum that is presented to it.
Amendment 120G would introduce a new layer of bureaucracy requiring that an electoral registration officer must validate each petition to check the names, addresses and signatures of each person who signs a petition. This potentially places a significant burden on the ERO and could lead to delays in the holding of a referendum. An authority will clearly be able to check signatures on the petitions if there is a serious thought that it might be filled with forgeries but it must be for the local authority to decide how it wishes to do so. The authority may consider it unnecessary to verify every signature before it can determine whether the petition is a valid expression of local opinion. Those authorities that wish to devote their time and resources to check each signature may do so. The Government’s view is that most will take a sensible approach. There is no need to impose this extra burden.
It would also be impossible for local authorities to comply with the amendment at present. As my noble friend Lord Rennard admitted, our voter registration does not require the signatures of each elector on the voter registration form, only a signature from one member of the household. As such, local authorities do not hold the signatures of each individual voter, as this amendment would require. My noble friends may have sought to address this point through Amendment 188, which provides that the whole chapter on local referendums cannot be commenced until universal voter registration has been introduced. This would delay commencement of the local referendums regime and thus delay giving local people the mechanism to make their voice heard on issues that matter most to them. I do not believe that is the thinking of the coalition.
Amendment 129A suggests a drafting change to the definition of who would be entitled to vote in a local referendum, probing why we have used the form of words that are currently in Clause 54(1). The answer is somewhat technical: there are some categories of people who are local government electors but who are not entitled to vote in a local election; for example if they are in prison.
Amendment 129H would restrict the category of person who can sign a petition calling for a referendum to those who are registered by a particular date specified in the petition. This is just the sort of procedural technicality that certain lawyers would love to seize on to challenge the validity of a referendum. There really is no need for it. It would implicitly give rise to an obligation on all petitioners to include such a date expressly.
I therefore hope that with these assurances the amendment will be withdrawn. There is no requirement for a signature as part of our plans for individual voter registration because that would prevent registration by phone or e-mail, for example, which may be included in those proposals. With those considerations, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification of government thinking on these issues, which I might cheekily paraphrase as saying, “Whatever high standards we have for policing our democratic elections, those should not apply in relation to the gathering of petitions that may require these referendums”. I might ask him for a little further clarification on the issue of being on the register or entitled to be on the register, given that he cited specifically the case of prisoners. Those who are in prison are not able to vote in elections. Is he suggesting perhaps that they should be entitled to sign these petitions? That thinking seems a little muddled, if that is perhaps the case. I continue to have reservations about whether petitions that may be costly to the public purse should be triggered without more safeguards than the Bill currently provides. On that note, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
(iii) a parish.”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this simple amendment would allow a referendum to take place in the area of a parish council which did not coincide with ward boundaries of either the county council electoral divisions or a district or borough ward. This amendment is not about a parish council conducting a referendum or about the existing provision for parish polls. There is an amendment about those matters later on. It suggests that there may well be circumstances—in my view, there are lots of circumstances—where, if there are to be local referendums, a parish is the appropriate area for the referendum to take place.
There are many examples of where parishes are grouped together to form ward boundaries for principal councils yet those parishes are often more natural communities than are the wards themselves. That is why parishes are as they are, whereas wards are arbitrary and have to be within a certain size. Therefore, very often, wards do not reflect one natural community. They might reflect a series of natural communities or slice communities in two—that very often happens.
Where parishes consist of a village or a small town it is often the case that they are the appropriate unit to hold a referendum if that is what people want and that provision exists. By definition, parishes will consist of one or more polling districts, which exist in order to be able to hold parish council elections. I therefore suggest that even if the referendum applies to a principal council, at whatever level, it ought to be possible to call a referendum within a parish area, rather than what may be a much more cumbersome and inappropriate ward boundary area. I beg to move.
Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will doubtless have expected that the words “parish council” might cause this particular old pike to rise from the depths. I see where he is coming from, although I initially felt that this could loosely be reclassified as “Son of Clause 56 stand part”. I appreciate that he has made a distinction which prevents me from pressing that in particular. I will leave most of my comments for the question on Clause 56, because there is a generic process about parishes and how they fit into the thing.
I am a little concerned about inserting the principle regarding parish into something that relates to principal authorities. I question whether it rightly sits there, bearing in mind that the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State can make a separate set of provisions for parish councils. It seems to me that there are very good reasons for that, because we have to be rather careful about what template we are using for the purposes of referendums, so I question whether the insertion of the reference to a parish here is the right one, unless the intention is to eliminate Clause 56 altogether.
Lord True
My Lords, on this point there is of course a fundamental difference between how parishes are viewed inside and outside urban areas. I understand all the misgivings as far as rural parishes are concerned and do not wish to follow along that line, but it would perhaps not be wise to add my noble friend's suggestion to the Bill. I point out that in the recent referendum in my own authority which I referred to, the area chosen for it was in fact the boundary of a parish because that ran across more than one ward. It is not right to write that into statute but it reinforces the point that I and other noble Lords made earlier: that some power to enable local authorities to define an area, which might or might not be a parish, would be a useful broad, localist and permissive power. I would not favour writing it into the Bill in this way but it may be one of the instruments and measures that a local authority ought to be allowed to choose other than a ward.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I have a particular interest in this amendment because parishes in many rural communities are far more relevant than local authority or council boundaries. They are not only historic but often relate to particular communities in a way that local authority wards do not, certainly in my part of the country. That is because wards are driven by numbers, not by community. This seems a good and proper issue to raise. There is of course already the power for parishes to call their own referendums, so the query might be whether this is necessary because, if a community wanted it, one might argue that there is provision for it already.
However, the legislation here is making reference to particular issues relating to local authorities. Frankly, I therefore see more relevance to allowing a power in relation to a parish as a community than to having specific reference to the electoral division for the primary local authority. I would hope that the Minister can respond positively to the principle here, whatever the means might be to achieve it.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I think that I can respond positively. I say to my noble friend and namesake that I do not know how big Goss Moor is, but Holbeach has a population of some 8,500 people in one parish. Some parishes are remarkably large and other parishes are remarkably small, so it is very difficult. One size, or system, fitting all is very difficult. There are provisions, of course, for a local referendum, or parish poll, under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972, to which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, has referred.
The amendment would include parishes in the definition of a “relevant area” as that applies to a principal local authority. We do not think that this is appropriate, particularly because we are looking at how we might look at referendums at parish level in legislation within the Bill and as a result of a consultative process, as I said before. Indeed, I mentioned to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that I foresaw his organisation being very much involved in this consultative process.
Our approach to local referendums is to enable referendums on local matters at the relevant council area, but for the issue at hand. If it is a district council matter, or a matter over which the district council has influence, the referendum can be held at the district council level, whether it be across one or more wards of the district, or the entire area of the district council, but it is the district council that is the triggering authority for this poll, other than having a parish poll. If it is a parish matter, we believe that a parish poll is the most appropriate method. We will discuss our intended approach to parish council referendums later, and I can assure noble Lords that the parish sector will be fully catered for. We want to see a modernised and proportionate local referendums regime for parishes, on which we will fully consult. I hope, therefore, that with these assurances my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
My difficulty is that I do not know what that regime might be, or even what the Government are talking about. Whether the Minister will give a little more information when we touch briefly on Clause 56 later, I do not know, but I will not talk about that now.
Let me just give one example. In the parish of Laneshaw Bridge, which is in Pendle in the ward of Boulsworth, a huge issue that has split the village is the question of whether the village school should be very considerably expanded to take in a much larger area than the village. The village was split. Nobody knows what the majority opinion in the village is; what we know is that there were campaigning groups on both sides. Yet a referendum within Boulsworth ward relating to that issue—which would be a classic and typical example of a referendum—would be irrelevant, because the village is only one fifth or so of the entire ward. The rest of the ward consists of another much larger village, another couple of larger villages in a different parish, in which I live, and part of the town of Colne. Having the referendum in that arbitrary area would be irrelevant to knowing what the people of Laneshaw Bridge think.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
I strongly support my noble friend on this. The issue is not whether the matter is one which lies with the local authority or with the parish—that is readily understood and, if it lies with the parish, the parish poll would suffice—but it may well be a matter which lies for decision with the local authority but only affects a small community. It is the nature of rural local authority wards that they often cover a number of communities, many of which would not be affected by the issue at hand, even though it is the local authority that is the decision taker. That is the issue that was not really responded to earlier.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to my noble friend for making the point more strongly and better than I did. There is clearly an issue here and it is clearly one that will continue to be discussed. We look forward with interest to seeing the Government’s proposals for parishes, but the continuation of the point made by my noble friend Lord Taylor is: who pays for the referendum? If it is a district, county or unitary issue, surely that authority should pay for the referendum and the cost of it should not fall upon the parish council, which may well have a view on the matter and be involved in the discussions, but is not responsible in any way for the issue before the referendum. That is a very important matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made the point that there is possible provision in the Bill for local authorities to define appropriate local areas which are not co-incident with ward boundaries. It seems to me that a provision that they should be one polling district or a collection of polling districts is one that ought to be looked at by the Government, because polling districts, by their very nature, already have the machinery in place for elections, yet polling districts in most wards are smaller than the wards of which they form part. I put that suggestion to the Government and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“(1A) Subject to subsection (2), “the required percentage” in section 43(1)(ba) means 1%.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Rennard
“Offence of paying for signatures
(1) A person commits an offence if the person makes a payment—
(a) to any person to carry out the collection of signatures on a petition under this section, or(b) to any person to organise any other persons to carry out the collection of signatures on a petition under this section.(2) A person who is guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”
Lord Rennard
My Lords, this amendment addresses another issue of serious concern regarding the potential for abuse in this system. My noble friend Lord Greaves will deal with other aspects of abuse in other amendments in this group, but Amendment 124E deals with the ban that I believe is required on paying people to collect petition signatures to try to trigger these referendums. I am concerned about this potential for abuse because big money interests may be able to use and abuse the petition and referendum systems in order to gain undue influence in an unfair way and subvert other democratic safeguards.
I have seen the way in which this happens from time to time in the United States, where what they call “initiatives” are rather more common than perhaps they are in this country where we would call them referendums. I have seen examples, which I have been given by lobbying organisations, where a big company has decided that it wants to build something and make a lot of money from doing so, but it understands that the relevant local authority might consider, even if there is a desirable benefit to the community, that it is not a priority for that community to build such a project. Rather than try to persuade the local authority that that is what it should do, the company hires people to go around canvassing door to door and in shopping centres and persuading them to sign petitions. I know from my own experience of campaigning over many years that sometimes it is not hard to get a lot of people to sign something if you are quite a persuasive person. These lobbying companies hire persuasive canvassers to go door to door in areas with a lot of people, persuading them to sign sufficient petitions to get an initiative.
When the initiative then has to be agreed to because there is seen to be public demand for it, and not to agree to that public demand would be seen to be a problem for the local authority, then the moneyed interests hire the lobbying company to run direct mail campaigns and adverts in the local paper, persuading people that this is what should be voted for. When the initiative is successful, those interests benefit significantly in a commercial sense from something that has not really been proven in a democratic way to be the desire of local people, but where money has paid for the collection of petition signatures and has been very decisive in determining the outcome of the ballot. That is not at all the intention of the Government with this sort of process, but it could open up the democratic system to that sort of abuse. For those reasons, I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
I will speak to Amendments 129B and 129C, which are in this group. They refer to Clause 54, which refers to regulations about voting in, and the conduct of, referendums. Clause 54(6) states clearly:
“Regulations under this section may not include provision … about the limitation of expenditure in connection with a referendum … for the questioning of the result of a referendum by a court or tribunal”,
or,
“creating criminal offences”.
The question here is: does that mean that established and understood election law, in these areas and in others, will not apply in the case of a local referendum? Will normal election law not apply? What redress does anyone have if it is believed that someone is rigging the referendum if there is a considerable degree of personation taking place—despite the complacency that there still is in many quarters, quite a bit of old-fashioned personation goes on at polling stations in some parts of the country—or the rigging of postal votes, which takes place on a frequent basis in some parts of the country and in any case is perfectly easy to do? If the system is that there is no criminal or other redress against this happening, the odds are that where some people think that the question behind the referendum is very important that this sort of thing will continue.
If there are freestanding referendums, that may simply be a matter for the referendum. However, it is quite clear that, for reasons of cost, where referendums are taking place councils will do their best to make sure that they do so at the same time as elections—probably on the first Thursday in May, whenever the local elections are taking place or European elections in June and so on. Under those circumstances, if I read the provisions of Clause 54 correctly, rules will apply to the election campaigns but some of them will not apply to the referendum campaigns taking place alongside them. Given what we all believe will happen— that in some cases referendums will be organised to assist election campaigning—the distinction between the two may not be all that obvious.
If I were campaigning in a local election and there was a referendum going on at the same time, I might well include reference to the referendum and what I thought people should do—both for and against it—in my election literature. Indeed, this happened on a large scale among all the parties during the AV campaign, but less so with the Labour Party because it could not make up its mind whether it was in favour or against. It happened on a large scale with the Conservative Party and to some extent among the Liberal Democrats. Leaflets were put out saying, “Vote for Joe Bloggs and, by the way, vote”—yes or no—“in the referendum campaign”. Or it was the other way around: leaflets went out which were 90 per cent “vote no” in the referendum campaign, and also “Vote for your local Conservative candidate”. I compliment their skill in doing that; it won them a lot of seats.
It is going to happen, certainly at local level. So what about rules like election law, such as the need for imprints on leaflets? Will that apply to referendum material? What about the rules about payment of canvassers? My noble friend Lord Rennard referred to the possible payment of canvassers for collecting petition signatures, but what about paying canvassers to go around and persuade people to vote one way or the other in a referendum, which is illegal in elections? What about offences relating to what you can and cannot do at the counting of the votes? What about offences relating to intimidation of voters? Particularly where there are joint elections, common sense suggests that there should be common rules. The provision in Clause 54 suggests that there should not. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what it means and whether it needs some amendment before the Bill completes its passage through this House.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made a point in moving the amendment about the payment to individuals collecting signatures. I would be slightly concerned that he, as an able organiser in the Liberal Democrats, may fall foul of such an amendment if he was paying employees of the party to undertake political activity that may include support for a referendum. I would hate to think that he may end up in jail as a consequence, so perhaps he could clarify the position.
Lord Rennard
Briefly, no problem seems to occur in elections. The paid staff of parties, as the noble Lord will well know, take part in elections, but it has never been considered an activity of paid canvassing. The activity of a large organisation like a big business deciding it wants to get something through and employing people specifically to sign the petition would be of a rather different order.
Lord True
My Lords, I fear that I rather agree with the noble Lord opposite. There is always a risk in creating a new criminal offence—or a new offence in any case. I hope that my noble friend will resist the amendment of my noble friends. The example of a local newspaper—“Tear off a strip, sign our petition”— which might be delivered by paid delivery potentially gets one into quite difficult areas. The paid deliverer could actually be deemed to be collecting signatures for a petition.
There might be a perfectly innocent occasion where somebody says to a child or young person, “Come along and help me collect some signatures, and we’ll buy you what you have been wanting for some time”. That is a perfectly normal kind of thing that goes on in family life, not just in politics. I understand the concerns of my noble friend Lord Rennard about big business, as he puts it, but we may be creating another regulatory hammer if we went down this road. It would not be helpful and might have unintended consequences.
So far as the other amendments are concerned, my noble friend can obviously answer for the Front Bench. I do not want to go into my views on the Electoral Commission as that would detain us for too long, but at least Clause 54(7) states:
“Before making any regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must consult the Electoral Commission”.
I would have thought that the Electoral Commission was capable of giving the Secretary of State advice on the kind of matters that my noble friend Lord Greaves has raised.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, as a preliminary point I refer again to the issue raised this morning with regard to the Delegated Powers Committee, because Clause 54 gives the Secretary of State the right to make regulations. Given what he indicated this morning, I assume that the Minister is inclined to adopt the position of the Delegated Powers Committee; namely, that these regulations should be subject to affirmative resolution. I certainly hope that that would be the case. He nods assent, for which I am grateful.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, touched on an interesting issue when he talked about paying people to requisition a referendum. I do not know of a precise precedent but certainly an analogous situation arose not too long ago in Greater Manchester, where a large commercial concern, Peel Holdings, was, among others, very hostile to the notion of a congestion charging scheme for Greater Manchester. It launched a campaign in the metropolitan borough of Bury to call for a mayoral referendum in the hope and assumption that an anti-congestion charge mayor of whatever political affiliation would be elected, and because in the great scheme of things a single authority in Greater Manchester—only one authority—could veto the whole scheme, that would be sufficient to jettison this scheme, which the company felt was against its interests.
I understand that the company invested a considerable amount of time, energy and cash in securing the signatures to enable a referendum to be held. It was held and there was a low turnout—I recall that something like 11 per cent or so of people voted in the referendum for the holding of a mayoral election, which then took place. Happily, from my perspective, an equally small proportion of the electorate turned out to vote against having a mayor. That is an indication of the dangers that might arise if there was no restriction on what commercial interests might get up to in the context of securing local petitions. Of course, the difference is that that referendum was binding and other referendums would not be; nevertheless, there is a real danger in that regard. However, I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord True, has said—one must be careful about creating new offences. Although the matter is certainly worth exploring, I do not rush to an immediate view that creating another offence of this kind is necessarily the answer. Having said that, I find it difficult to think of a better solution, so one might have to have recourse to that.
I have an amendment in this group, the number of which escapes me, which relates to Clause 54(7) about the making of regulations, and would require the Secretary of State to consult not only the Electoral Commission but the Local Government Association as well. I hope that the Minister will accede to that. It seems sensible to me to involve the LGA in matters of this kind. However, I do not understand some of the provisions that Clause 54 makes for regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. This goes back to some of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, yesterday. Clause 54(4) states:
“Regulations under this section may make provision about—
(a) when, where and how voting in a local referendum is to take place;
(b) how the votes cast in a local referendum are to be counted”.
A simple assimilation of electoral law, in so far as that prescribes these matters, would surely be sufficient. The notion that detail of that kind needs to be made the subject of a Secretary of State’s regulation strikes me as absurd. On the other hand, if there are to be regulations, I do not quite follow the position of the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Greaves, and, for all I know, his colleagues on the Lib Dem part of the government Benches, who wish to take out of subsection (6) regulations,
“about the limitation of expenditure … for the questioning of the result of a referendum by a court or tribunal”,
or for
“creating criminal offences”.
Those strike me—provided that we have the affirmative procedure—as matters that should or certainly could be included.
Lord Greaves
I may have misread the Bill, but my understanding is that the Bill states that they cannot be part of the regulations.
Lord Beecham
I beg the noble Lord’s pardon: that is right. I withdraw my last remarks and accept the noble Lord’s amendments to my comments. However, whatever we have in the regulatory framework, the key thing is that the minimum should be prescribed and that whatever is prescribed should be done in conjunction with the Local Government Association and subject to affirmative resolution.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, perhaps I may start by saying that the Government are inclined, as I indicated, to accept the concept of affirmative resolution for the regulations. I can also say that the inclination of the Government is for a light touch in this area. We have already seen that there are tensions between a rigorous procedure for the collection of names and the necessary legal restrictions placed on the conduct of elections. The difference between the two is that a referendum is not mandatory, it merely advises a local authority and it is therefore not unreasonable to say that it may be covered by a lighter touch than an election whose outcome is definitive, where the problems to which noble Lords have referred apply. I have spent a lifetime in active party politics, and I know how important it is to try to create a proper framework. I was grateful to both my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for pointing out the problems that could arise if we tried to set up regulations that criminalised activities in collecting petition names, and the like.
Amendment 129E creates a criminal offence, and Amendment 129C broadens the Secretary of State’s regulating powers to allow the regulations to provide for referendum results to be questioned in court. The creation of criminal offences is simply unnecessary for a regime that is, effectively, non-binding.
One problem that the coalition is trying to deal with is the profusion of unnecessary criminal offences on the statute book. I suggest that the incurring of expenditure to pay someone to campaign to collect signatures falls well below the hurdle that needs to be cleared before persons should be at risk of receiving a criminal record.
I have not examined the situation fully, but my first impression was that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, might well be right, because the reason why it is possible to pay people to work in elections is that their fees are part of the election expenses. It could create problems if they were also involved in a referendum.
Amendment 129B expands the scope of the Secretary of State's power to make regulations on the conduct of referendums to include regulations about the limitation of expenditure in connection with a referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right about what the Bill states on that. We will be discussing the wider issues about publicity arrangements for referendums in a later group.
Clause 46(6)(b) distinguishes between the procedural regulations that may be made in respect of local referendums which are not binding and those which may be made in respect of binding referendums, such as whether to have an elected mayor. We intend that local referendums should be more light touch, given their non-binding nature. The intention behind the amendments may be to limit restrictions on authorities in connection with the question. In fact, the equivalent provision in regulations for binding referendums is used to impose spending limits on petition organisers and those opposing petitions, and they are invariably accompanied by criminal offences for breaching spending limits. We are not convinced that such requirements are necessary for this scheme of non-binding referendums.
We will discuss publication arrangements in a later group and our intentions on that issue. In the mean time, Amendment 129E, which, in hindsight may have been better grouped with Amendment 129D, seems to have little practical effect. It would remove the words “of the referendum” from Clause 55(8). These words may be considered unnecessary but they do not cause any harm and to a small degree remove any doubt that may exist. I cannot say that I am convinced that it is worth making the amendment.
The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, would insert a statutory requirement to consult the Local Government Association in making regulations about voting in, and the conduct of, local referendums. The Electoral Commission is expressly included in the Bill as it is standard practice in all such electoral matters. I neglected to say in reply to the previous debate that we are consulting the Electoral Commission. However, I can assure noble Lords that we intend to consult widely before making regulations, which will include local government associations. I hope that noble Lords will see these non-binding referenda becoming a very different category from ordinary electoral law and I hope that with these assurances, my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Before my noble friend decides whether or not to divide the House, I should say that these are extremely important matters and we do not believe that the Government have given them the importance that they merit. Whether we like it or not they are all about the possibility for graft and corruption—perhaps not at the same level as for an election itself, but nevertheless graft and corruption over an important matter. If they are not important matters, why are we spending all this money having these referendums?
I just want to make two very brief points. First, within electoral law for elections there is a clear and well understood distinction between paying canvassers and paying people for doing other things, such as delivering leaflets, manning committee rooms, or whatever. You can pay helpers in elections but you are not allowed to pay canvassers. There is a growing area between the two but the distinction is well understood and by and large adhered to.
My second point, which is more fundamental, is the point I made about joint campaigns. It is inconceivable that there will not be joint campaigns of trying to get someone to vote for or against a referendum and an election campaign at the same time, with joint literature, posters and other things that money is spent on. Unless the regulations referring to the referendum are similar to those referring to the election, it will drive a coach and horses through the limits on election expenditure. There must be the same rules for the same two things if people are campaigning for the two things together in the same place at the same time. That is common sense otherwise it is a recipe for a huge amount of misunderstanding and chaos, and as I said, driving a coach and horses through some of the local election rules, not least on the limits on expenditure. That question needs a bit more thought by the Government.
Lord Newton of Braintree
Before anybody says anything else, may I pick up on something which my noble friend Lord Greaves said? I understand that it has not been raised, even though I admit that I have not been here throughout the debate. My question has been illustrated in what my noble friend was saying: what is the position of the party agent in all this? That question has not been specifically addressed. It appears that a lot of these referendum campaigns will be organised by political parties. What is the position then of the party agent who is paid? Who is regarded as paying him? If any member of the association or the Labour Party or whatever is regarded as paying the agent, then it seems to me that if the agent does anything to encourage or assist, he is in danger of falling foul of this clause. What is the answer?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think the agent would be in danger of falling foul of this amendment, not this clause. That is an important distinction. The noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Collins of Highbury, join my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree in pointing out the difficulties of the heavy hand of regulation.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, perhaps there is not an easy answer to the question just posed by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, but the point is well made that there are grey areas and some difficulties. When we are looking at this petition process and these referendum issues, we have to look rather more carefully than we have done up to now at how we avoid abuse within the system. From my noble friend Lord Greaves and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, we have heard some genuine concerns about how the system could be open to abuse. We have also heard from the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Collins, that there is no appetite for what might be considered to be further regulation or offences.
The position from these Benches, and why we are testing out these issues, is not that we want more regulation and more offences, but rather that we want some of the safeguards which properly apply in elections, to avoid abuse of the electoral system and, perhaps, situations in which people could say that pound notes can buy more influence than people’s votes. That is a fundamental principle of democracy. We try to have fair rules in elections; they are not perfect and are often grey. Many of us are trying to work to improve them, but we try to have some rules to make sure there is a balance in funding and safeguards to avoid people cheating. Some of those rules and regulations are important in elections and they should also be considered as relevant and necessary in the petition process and for these referendums.
I do not think we have necessarily got quite right the model of what we should do, on which basis I am happy to withdraw the amendment. However, all of us who are concerned must look further at this issue and consult further, as suggested in the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on advice that may come to us from the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Association.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
“(6) Before determining whether it is appropriate to hold a local referendum under subsection (2), the principal local authority must notify—
(a) any person who is named in the petition or request,(b) any person who is the owner or occupier of any land to which the petition or request relates, and(c) any other person whom the authority considers to have an interest which is likely to be affected by any steps that the authority may take to give effect to the result of the referendum.”
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I am happy we should also discuss my Amendments 128EA and 129CA. So far in this discussion of referendums we have tended to see it almost in a bilateral way between the public, who might petition and support a referendum, and the local authority, which might be disposed to agree to hold a referendum and have to deal with the results. These amendments are concerned with the third party: a person or company whose activities may have been the cause of suggesting that there should be a referendum. Putting it briefly, they should be involved in some way in the process, being consulted at the different stages and having the opportunity to have their say. This is what these three amendments are about.
When we come to it later, the Bill is perfectly clear on how and why a referendum might be held. It is also clear that it would not be binding on the local authority, but the processes are not as clear as they should be. I will take the example of an airport. I have had the advantage of consulting the company that runs Gatwick Airport, but the issue could apply to similar projects and institutions around the country. Of course, if the proposal is of the major kind that comes within the purview of the Infrastructure Planning Commission, or the MIPU that will take its place under the Bill, there is a separate procedure: I will not touch on that.
In the case of airports, the level for application of the processes of the IPC is if a development would involve more than 10 million passengers a year. That is a pretty big hurdle. A great deal of what goes on—this may apply to power stations or even reservoirs, but will certainly encompass airports—including a great deal of the ongoing development that falls below that limit, will therefore have to be considered by the local authority.
I am not referring now to the question of planning, which we will deal with later when we debate the next clause. The question is whether a project may be put forward that has aroused opposition and may therefore provoke a referendum. Gatwick Airport is a good example because it exemplifies exactly what might be expected. Gatwick is the UK's second largest airport. As I have learnt in the course of my discussions, it has the busiest single runway in the world. That is an astonishing fact, but it is what I am told. The airport serves 200 destinations in 90 countries, with around 33 million passengers a year. The airport recently had a change of ownership. The new owners are very busy developing the airport so that its potential can be properly utilised for the benefit not only of the local economy but of the country as a whole. The airport provides around 25,000 jobs on campus and another 13,000 across the region. It generates a very large amount of wealth, as noble Lords may imagine.
The airport does not operate in a vacuum. It is surrounded by local communities and is close to a number of towns. The owners are very conscious of the need to be responsible developers and to take account of local opinion. They have always done that and I suspect that the new management are doing it rather better than their predecessors. Therefore, we are talking about how to achieve a balance between the very desirable objective in the Bill of giving local residents a bigger say in what happens in the areas in which they live, and giving investors the confidence that is necessary if they are going to develop their business. That is the issue. Hitherto we have been talking about the first aspect: the question of how local communities can have a say. The second, of course, is what these amendments are intended to address.
One should remember that a commercial institution like Gatwick Airport often has to work to extremely tight timetables. It has to raise finance and have regard to its regulator. An economically regulated airport such as Gatwick can face severe financial penalties if the targets set by the regulator are not met. Investors need the certainty that there will be no potential obstacles to meeting those timetables so they can be reasonably sure of avoiding the penalties.
How is this new system going to be applied to them? How are you going to deal with this? The purpose of my amendments, as I said at the beginning, is to provide the clarity which the Bill does not have at the moment. They would provide for a transparent consultation between a local authority and an affected third party—in this case the company running the airport—which might be named in a local referendum as to whether it is appropriate that a referendum should be held at all. Further, if a referendum is to be called that relates to it, it should be notified.
Finally, Amendment 129CA would ensure that a named third party—in this case the manager of the airport or it might be any of the other investors with ongoing development requirements—should be consulted before the local authority chooses whether to give effect to the result at all. We have already discussed that the referendum is not binding: it is a decision the local authority would have to take. All the clause asks is that the affected third party should have an opportunity to have a say and that the local authority should have regard to any representations.
It might be said that these things are so automatic they ought to happen already. I am sure that is not always the case. People can sometimes plough ahead. It may be an unpopular development. I have not been told, but I suspect that around major airports there are communities deeply hostile to what goes on there; it would not surprise me in the least. I used to live near Stansted Airport and, as we have all seen, the opposition to the expansion has been immense. There has been intense opposition. Every airport will have that but they need to be reasonably sure that the managers and the developers can have a proper opportunity to have their say and for their views to be taken into account.
That is what these three amendments do. They provide a level of safeguard against what one might call the unintended consequences of what is otherwise a desirable development. It is people having more of a say about what happens in their own areas. When I questioned the people from the airport they told me firmly, “We agree it is right and proper that local people should be able to express their views on issues specific to their area”. I come back to the point that it is a question of holding the balance. My amendments simply intend to provide reasonable procedures which would enable a better chance with the local authority holding the balance as it should. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, the first amendment is an unnecessary addition to the responsibilities of local authorities. On the kind of issue the noble Lord has addressed, such as a very controversial issue like an airport or major development, it is inconceivable that a prospective developer would be unaware of a petition doing the rounds. On the other hand paragraph (b) of Amendment 126ZA says,
“any person who is the owner or occupier of any land to which the petition or request relates”.
I can think immediately of situations in my own ward where we have empty properties about which there is considerable concern. There might well be petitions coming to the local authority to do something about them but very often it is impossible to know who the owner of the property is or how to contact the owner. Again, that would create a significant burden and, with the best possible motive, it is overegging the responsibilities of the authority.
Baroness Valentine
I declare an interest as chief executive of London First, which includes businesses that may be affected by the provisions in this Bill.
I support these amendments as I consider them to be in the spirit of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, gives a useful example in Gatwick Airport, but there is a wide range of third parties that may be affected by any referendum. When decisions are being taken, those impacted by them should be notified and consulted openly. It is right that local authorities consult those potentially affected about whether it is appropriate to hold a referendum at all, as well notifying them if it were to happen and consulting on what steps are taken afterwards. Referenda should be a positive tool and, to that end, they should be well considered and thoughtfully implemented if they are to have the best possible impact on communities. I hope the Minister agrees.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I had not expected to speak on this amendment, but I think the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, raises a very valid point. I live within what is known as the Gatwick Diamond economic area, so I know very well what he is referring to. I know of situations where, for instance, residential development takes place near to industrial premises through normal course of development and re-use. Gatwick Diamond, along with many other areas, is now a 24/7 operation. It is near enough to coastal ports for large lorries to be coming along and near enough to all sorts of aviation-related and other downstream industries.
Local residents may not much like 44-tonne lorries coming along in the wee small hours of the morning. I can quite see that, but it is not fanciful at all to suppose that they might not wish to procure a cessation via triggering a referendum with a view to protecting what they see as their interests. Nor is it a planning-only issue because it may relate to a whole raft of regulatory functions for which local authorities and other bodies have responsibility. While I cannot vouch that the wording that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, uses is cohesive, I think there needs to be some regard for the economic consequences of what is being sought by a referendum. It seems that a referendum can be formulated on quite a narrow premise. If that is the case, it is quite possible for it to concern things of a much broader spectrum. It is worthy of consideration by the Minister.
Lord Beecham
Does the noble Lord not agree that in matters of the significance and complexity to which he and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, have referred, a referendum is probably the least effective way, in terms of time, of drawing the matter to the attention of the local authority? There are ways of doing that through petitions or by addressing local councillors through the local media that would be much quicker and more likely to have an effect than the necessarily rather cumbersome processes that would be involved in a referendum. In those circumstances, therefore, is there perhaps less urgency and potency in the noble Lord’s amendment than might otherwise have been the case?
The Earl of Lytton
In response to the very wise comments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, it may well be a cumbersome way of doing it but the point is that we do not yet know what the precise trigger is going to be, or the subject matter. The provisions of the Bill cover a very large spectrum of possibilities and we are effectively empowering the Secretary of State to make orders. It is legitimate to lay down a marker as to what the parameters might be—I suspect that is all the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is doing at the moment—and just to sound a word of warning. It is timely in that context.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am going to speak in support of what my noble friend Lord Beecham said. It is the mention of airports that I cannot resist, of course, because we have one in Luton. I know how important it is to the local community and what a generator of jobs it is. In many ways, airports are the organisations least likely to need the measure that the noble Lord proposes because they have consultative committees anyway so there is automatically a wide engagement with the community. The principle of somebody who is potentially on the receiving end of a referendum or a petition knowing about that and the local authority having to make a decision to engage with them seems to be entirely reasonable. What we are balking at is that the specific amendment is a little too prescriptive and takes us too far down an unfortunate path. However, we are all well aware of the challenges that airports in particular face.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend but tempted again I have been—on this occasion just to show how even-handed I am—to join in a little bit with the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord McKenzie, with due apologies to my noble friend Lord Jenkin. It is the third arm of this that worries me most. It says,
“any other person whom the authority considers to have an interest which is likely to be affected by any steps that the authority may take to give effect to the result of the referendum”.
It is not just airports. Major commercial developments, for example, have effects over a wide area. Leaving aside Stansted, about which I know a good deal, and which would certainly be said to have effects over 30, 40, 50 or 100 or more miles, Lakeside at Thurrock has had effects on shopping centres all over Essex. It is unimaginable that the local authority would really have to consult the people of Thurrock, Chelmsford, Colchester, Braintree and Brentwood—to name the Secretary of State’s constituency and indeed that of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. We need some caution before going down the path scripted in this amendment. That is all I would say. There may be merit in the purpose but the wording needs very careful consideration.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I have been rather eager to stand because I feel that this gets to the nub of the issue. I am not entirely sure whether my noble friend Lord Jenkin, who has presented these amendments, is the same noble Lord who just the other day was urging me to trust local people to run these affairs. Localism is the name of the Bill; localism is what it is about. I urge him to read his own speech in Hansard to realise why it is that the Government do not want to bind this policy up. If any organisation of significance feels that it is vulnerable to popular opinion and is so out of touch with local opinion that it is not able to realise that a referendum is being carried on which might affect its interests, it deserves all the expression of popular opinion that may come its way. I am sorry to be so frank but I am motivated by the nature of this argument.
I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, was in the Chamber when I introduced government amendments earlier today which excluded planning applications from the referendum process. That is very important to understand in this context.
Baroness Valentine
I was aware that the noble Lord had introduced the amendments and I am delighted that he did.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am most grateful. I take on board what the noble Baroness said but noble Lords opposite and my noble friend Lord Newton have made it clear that this process should not be so burdensome that it kills off the very expression of local opinion that we want to generate.
As regards the amendments tabled by my noble friend, I share his concerns that no person should find himself featuring in a referendum without an opportunity to make representations on the matter. But that I am sure is in the nature of these things and the dialogue within local communities. I understand that my noble friend is using the word “person” in the strictly legal sense of meaning company and corporate activity. In my estimation, it would be a rare case, as I have said, that a referendum will in practice concern a situation where people are totally unaware of the issues that are subject to a referendum.
Similarly, in deciding whether to give effect to a referendum result, the local authority will have regard to the need to balance the views of all interested groups. It will have regard to the economic interests of the area as perceived by it as a local authority and as elected representatives. To take such decisions is what local government has to do all the time. If there was any doubt that it would be appropriate for authorities to consult people directly affected by referendums, I hope that what I have said will dispel that. We believe that the amendments are unnecessary burdens on authorities and I hope that my noble friend will not press them.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
I am grateful to all those who have expressed their views so frankly on this group of amendments. Of course, this is intended primarily to raise the issue and there have been a number of quite forceful responses. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for their support. Nevertheless, in response to my noble friend on the Front Bench, I feel myself in a sense wanting to say touché. Of course, I am not seeking to impose centrally or to tell local authorities the details of how they should do this. But it is part of the function of central government to protect local communities and ratepayers against possible abuse of processes by local government. One would always say that. But it does not need the great mass of legislation in this Bill.
Having said that, I am sure that those who have advised me on this will study the issue carefully and will decide whether it will be necessary to come back to this on Report. We will have quite a lot and it may be that this will not achieve enough support at that stage but we will look at it. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have been listening to the wonderful words of the Minister about how important it is that local government should not be encumbered by lots of detailed rules and regulations and thinking that at least we are on the same wavelength. Tongue in cheek, I wonder if he will take a pristine copy of the Bill home with him this weekend, and a nice big red pen, and annotate the Bill in appropriate ways to strike out a large number of the detailed regulations and the 140-odd provisions for yet more detailed regulations for local authorities, and hand it to a civil servant next week and say, “This is your job for a week; get rid of it”. I live in hope.
I move Amendment 126A and the seven amendments in my name and that of my noble friend that are set out in this group together with Amendment 128A, as I announced earlier. There is a useful Labour amendment in the group but I will let the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, speak to it.
Clause 47 is an important clause because it sets out the grounds on which the council should make its decision when it receives a petition or indeed a request from a member about whether a referendum takes place or not. This is not a trivial decision. We have heard that referendums across London might cost many millions of pounds; but for any big councils in big cities, we are talking about millions of pounds. Even for smaller councils, it can be an important item in their budget, or one that is not in their budget, which nevertheless they have to find a way of covering. In the present financial circumstances this might well mean cutting other useful services.
This is a list. Whenever we put forward lists, we are always told by the Government to be very careful because, if we put things in the list, they are in, and if we do not put them in the list, people might think they are not in. In this case, we know that they are not in because Clause 47(1) says:
“A principal local authority may only determine”—
I emphasise “only determine”—
“that it is not appropriate to hold a local referendum in response to a petition or request on one or more of the following grounds”.
The list in Clause 47 is extremely important because it ties the hands of the local authority. It does not say to it, as the Minister has pointed out, that if it is in the list, it cannot have a referendum; however, it provides grounds by which a referendum can be refused. Regardless of whether we agree with referendums, I think that everybody agrees that we do not want a proliferation of them. We do not want dozens of referendums taking place all over the place. We want them held on important and useful things.
These grounds are vital. Amendment 126A refers to the first ground. It is a probing amendment to find out what the words mean. Clause 47(2) says:
“The first ground is that the authority thinks that action taken to promote or oppose the referendum question is likely to lead to contravention of an enactment or a rule of law”.
When I read this, I thought, “What does it mean?”. The phrase,
“action taken to promote or oppose the referendum question”,
refers to something happening during the referendum campaign. It is not about the question itself—what the effect would be of carrying out what the referendum wants brought about; it is about action taken during the campaign which,
“is likely to lead to contravention of an enactment or a rule of law”.
I can only think that this refers to the possibility of public disorder of some sort. Will the Minister say what the Government think it refers to? It is very difficult to see how this could be made to stick if it was challenged, because how would you know that the referendum question would be likely to lead to an unruly campaign? Alternatively, what else does it refer to? If it refers to a referendum question that is, for example, overtly racist, it would be easy to reject it, but the chance of getting such a referendum question is very small indeed. Racists who want to use a referendum to promote their cause are going to be more careful about how they word the question. So this is a probing amendment to find out what it means.
Amendments 126B and 126C challenge the word “influence”, and again are probing amendments. We suggest that this should be brought in more tightly to a council’s powers; that is, the things it can do. Even the general power of competence might be very wide. It is difficult to think of things that people might want to hold a referendum on but over which the council does not have some sort of influence. I suppose that a referendum about the melting of the Arctic ice cap might be thought out of order, but even then it might be tied to the council’s climate change policies, so it is difficult to think of areas where the council has absolutely no influence. Some clarification of what the influence of a council is, in this sense, would be helpful.
Amendment 126D refers to subsection (4)(b):
“a principal local authority or a partner authority has an influence over a matter if the authority can affect that matter by the exercise of any of its general or particular functions”.
That is very wide indeed, and I assume that it includes the new general power of competence. Is that true, because it means that it does go very wide? Amendment 126E seeks to insert a new subsection:
“The third ground is that the action requested by the question is unlawful or discriminatory, or would contravene the authority’s codes relating to equality of treatment or its financial regulations”.
Other noble Lords may think of other things that should be included, but this is clear. Surely it should be laid down that if the action requested by the petition and the referendum question is actually unlawful or clearly discriminatory against an ethnic group, the disabled, men, women or anyone else, and would contravene all the codes an authority has on equality of treatment, or if the council could not do something because of its financial regulations, then it should be able to be thrown out without question. Indeed, anything which it would be impossible for the council to do but is being asked for in a referendum should be more clearly set out.
I turn to Amendment 126F. However, as the Minister has already moved an amendment today, this amendment is not needed, and we are grateful for that. Amendment 126H refers to the grounds set out in the Bill. At the moment they do not seem to be sufficiently wide. A council ought to be able to refuse a referendum if it judges that it concerns a trivial matter and spending money on it would simply not be worth the candle. Similarly, if the council or someone else is doing something anyway, the referendum would be a waste of time because the decision has been made. The Government have already moved an amendment to deal with repetition which provides that another referendum on the same subject cannot take place for four years. That, too, is extremely welcome. Our definition of “disproportionate” is that the cost of holding a referendum is excessive when bearing in mind the cost of carrying out the proposal in question. If a council is being asked to spend £80,000 to hold a referendum when to do what the referendum is asking for would cost only £15,000, it is a pointless waste, whether or not the council wishes to do it.
Finally, we suggest that the fifth ground for the decision is that it is not appropriate because what is being asked for is the allocation of a disproportionate level of resource in one area when it is absolutely clear to the council that it is either not practical due to financial constraints or it would be unfair; that is, it would be possible but it would mean taking resources from existing schemes and services to put into a particular scheme or service that was being requested by an area in a way that would not be equitable across the authority. Knowing that before the referendum takes place, the authority can show that it is not financially viable and that holding a referendum would be a waste of everybody’s time and money.
These amendments may not be perfect but the criteria that the Government are putting forward at the moment in this clause are not sufficient to give a council enough flexibility to carry out the kind of localist decision-making that the Minister talked about not long ago—on a common-sense basis, without holding referendums which will simply waste a lot of time and money and not achieve anything. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
I will speak to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, but also to my own Amendment 126CA, which would include on page 40, line 18, under grounds for determination in Clause 47, a definition of “local” which means that an issue can be,
“determined to be so by the principal local authority”.
In other words, in addition to the conditions for what is local, it gives the authority the power to determine an issue of locality.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has come forward with a mixed bag of amendments here. First, I will address his last proposition on the cost of the project relative to the cost of a referendum—or, indeed, the question of equity. That is Amendment 128A, to which he referred, on the deployment of extra resources in part of an authority’s area. I am not quite with the noble Lord on this. Actually, a petition for a referendum is an opportunity to debate an issue that might be of significance to that part of an authority’s area. Incidentally, I am not sure whether the amendment could extend to the whole of an authority’s area or just part, and if so how that part is to be defined, except perhaps by the petitioners.
If there is such an issue, it is proper that it should be debated. Initially, no doubt, those promoting the referendum would be invited by the council to explain their position and the council would respond. That is a sensible way of proceeding. If they then wished to proceed to a referendum they should not be prevented from doing so. That is an opportunity, certainly for the residents or petitioners to make their case but also for the authority to exercise some leadership and explain what it is doing and the constraints within which it operates. It can make that clear not only for the purposes of the particular referendum but as a matter of general interest to the area as a whole. We all face these decisions about priorities all the time. They are perhaps insufficiently acknowledged or understood by the electorate. If referendums are a way to bring home some of these truths, particularly as they are non-binding, I would not want to resist them taking place.
The noble Lord’s amendments include a reference to the question of influence as opposed to power. He cites the issue of the melting ice cap, implying that that is not a matter of local interest. The noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, is not in his place today, but if he were he might say that the residents of Norfolk have good reason to fear the melting of the ice cap. Saving the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, that issue might not be specifically related to the ice cap, but climate change and its impact on a community might well be a matter over which an authority has some influence and which it is relevant to ask it to look at. Influence would surely include a power, whereas the other way round it would not necessarily be the case. I would have thought that influence is actually a better way of looking at that issue.
I want to refer to one other amendment that the noble Lord spoke to. It is Amendment 128D, on the disproportionate cost of the referendum,
“bearing in mind the cost of carrying out the proposal in … question”.
Again that raises a difficulty, as a matter might be of considerable significance to people but not involve much cost. There might be, let us say, a traffic issue or something of that kind which might be felt to be of great importance in an area. The referendum might be more costly than the exercise of dealing with the issue but I would not like it to be precluded simply on those grounds. Again, I hope that the very process of getting to the point of a referendum might facilitate the resolution of matters. As I indicated in an intervention on the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, there are other methods. Given that this will be on the statute book, it seems wrong to define too narrowly the situation in which it might be used. This might be an example of going a little too far to restrict the right, so I would not support the noble Lord on that amendment.
Lord True
My Lords, I would also like to warn against this. Although I have some sympathy with some of the amendments spoken to by my noble friend, I think that Amendment 128A could cause great difficulties. As is emerging in this Committee, I am rather more enthusiastic about or tolerant of referendums than my noble friend perhaps appears to be. The reality is that when local authorities are being forced to restrain their spending, as they are at the moment—in our case £30 million was taken out of the budget—the last line,
“taking into account the resources available to the authority”,
would mean that, at a time of contraction, a local authority would effectively be able to say no to any referendum on the general basis that, “We can't afford what you're asking for”. That could be used by some authorities simply to say, “We can't do any of it, so bye-bye”.
Equally, it would be quite difficult to resist calls for referendums, per contra—if ever that day comes; I do not expect to see it in the foreseeable future—when there are more resources coming into local authorities. I would be nervous about that and I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. Let us say, for example, that a community wished to see its local school expand but it was not possible at that time. Why would it not be reasonable for them to put their case forward in a referendum and put a marker down for some time in the future? I could not follow my noble friend on that amendment.
I think that Amendment 126CA, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and states,
“determined to be so by the principal local authority”,
is also in this group. I must tell my noble friend that I have some sympathy with this amendment as it emerged in earlier discussions. This is linked to the power that we discussed for individual councillors or pairs of councillors to launch referendums. Unless the local authority is able to determine what is a local matter to that authority, we could perversely be creating a situation where, for example, in its standing orders the local authority forbids discussion of the wars, perils and plagues around the world and yet a member of the council who wishes to have that matter discussed could use the referendum power to say, “Let’s have a referendum on this subject”. They might get some support and it could be a way of getting round it.
Again in the cause of localism, it should be open to the local authority to determine in every respect the way in which matters to be discussed impact on it, either directly or indirectly through a referendum. It should be left to the local authority at least to be able to have enough influence to align the mechanisms with a simple, coherent definition of what is a local matter. Apart from my liking for localism, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, may have at least a useful argument there.
Lord Lucas
I would add that Amendment 128D also gives authorities a complete get-out: they simply say that they are already considering the matter, and that is it.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
This has been a useful debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for opening it, but even more grateful to my noble friend Lord True and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for their contributions. They recognised that there are difficulties in seeking to restrict the use of referenda too far. For example, Amendments 126A and 126E would replace the generic reference to,
“action taken to promote or oppose a referendum question leading to a contravention of an enactment or rule of law”.
I suspect that my noble friend Lord Greaves is presenting this as a probing amendment to find out what this is about and what sorts of enactments are considered unlawful. Clearly, no local authority could be obliged to consider through a referendum something which is unlawful. I hope that I can reassure my noble friend that the provision as drafted achieves the result that he requires. The Equality Act 2010, for example, is clearly “an enactment”. The way in which Clause 47(2) is drafted actually caters for all the sorts of things that we would all want to catch and leaves no space for mischievous attempts to get round the protection, such as by phrasing a question cleverly so that it is not “the action requested” that would be unlawful, but the campaign surrounding the referendum.
The second ground that my noble friend mentioned was that the matter was not a local one over which the local authority has influence. My noble friend wanted to know what influence was and what would be the effect of replacing the word “influence” with the word “power”. Amendment 126D removes Clause 47(4)(b), which contains the definition of “influence”. We can appreciate the intention behind these amendments; nobody wants councils to be forced to hold irrelevant referendums and we have seen how the unconstrained power for electors to force parish polls has sometimes been misused by particular lobby groups to force polls on matters that are far removed from the remit of parish councils. However, if my noble friend is asking whether “influence” in Clause 47(4)(b) includes the general power of competence, I would say that indeed it does.
I do not believe that the alternative drafting suggested by noble Lords improves on what is in the Bill. When one considers the impact of Clause 1, one needs to be quite cautious about referring to situations where local authorities have “power” in future. I hope that noble Lords will accept my assurance that the formulation in Clause 47 is framed broadly enough to differentiate the circumstances where there is a manifestly inappropriate attempt to abuse the referendum system from one where there is an issue of local importance in which the local authority has a genuine role. My noble friend has acknowledged that his amendment is unnecessary in the light of the government amendment.
Amendments 126H and 128D seek to expand the fourth ground to give local authorities greater scope to reject a petition. We accept that there is a case for giving councils the flexibility to reject repetitive petitions or requests for referendums, and I hope that my noble friend will accept that the proposals set out in the government amendments that I outlined earlier will meet his concerns. I contend that the arrangements in those amendments offer a better solution to what we all hope will not in fact become a problem in practice. The key to deterring frivolous calls for a referendum is to have in place a robust system for dealing with such things.
I am not sure that my noble friend is right. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, grasped the point that cost is not the proper equation to be taken into account in judging whether a council should be able to refuse a referendum. Something may be extremely important to a local community that may involve little expenditure in terms of its implementation but would have a great impact on people’s lives, and it is perfectly proper that that should be a subject for a referendum if the local authority feels that that is correct. So long as we get the framework right, and I believe that we have, there will be no point in anyone attempting to abuse the system and so they may not bother.
On Amendment 128A again, I agree with my noble friend Lord True. As he has said, that amendment would enable any referendum to be refused. I cannot see that that is the purpose of the legislation, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Greaves will reflect on that.
Amendment 126CA of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, seeks to provide that a local matter will be a matter determined to be so by the local authority. We agree that it is for local authorities to determine whether or not it is appropriate to hold a local referendum. Our provisions give local authorities discretion to do that, subject to certain safeguards that we have discussed today. I am therefore not convinced that this amendment either is necessary or would make any practical difference, given the wording of Clause 47(3), which refers to whether the local authority,
“thinks that the matter to which the referendum question relates is not a local matter”.
So, that phrasing is already there. I hope that, given these assurances, the amendment will be withdrawn.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I will think carefully about whether to withdraw it. Clearly I am not going to win on some of the amendments in the group, such as Amendments 128A and 128D, and it may well be that the clear majority view in the Committee is right. However, this has been a useful discussion and I thank noble Lords who have taken part.
The Minister said, and I think I quote him accurately, “So long as we get the framework right, then it’ll all be okay”. However, we are talking here about some of the framework, and you cannot rely on local authorities to get the framework right unless the legislation is right.
There are two areas that require more thought. The first and by far the most important concerns things that are illegal or contrary to council codes of conduct. The Minister said, rightly, that no council would want to carry out actions as the result of a referendum, or indeed to carry out a referendum, calling for things that were not legal. However, I think that what words say in legislation is important. As I read the proposal, and as I said when I was moving the amendment, the unlawful thing set out there is not the request in the referendum question—not what the question is calling for—and it is not the outcome of the referendum if it were successful; rather, it is the campaign, or action taken to promote or oppose the question in the referendum. That must mean what happens during the referendum campaign, not what happens after people have voted and the consequences that occur if the council decides to go ahead with a proposal as the result of a referendum being passed. There is a real difference there. Perhaps the Minister can tell me why I have got it wrong.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I may have misunderstood my noble friend. I have listened to what he is saying, and there is no way that any campaign of any description can be based on illegal acts. I hope that I have not misunderstood my noble friend. If I have, perhaps he might have a word with me and explain where I have gone wrong. Not only is it not possible for a referendum to be put that demands a council to perform illegally, it is clearly wrong for campaigners to offend against the law in the nature of the campaign or statements that they make in seeking to petition for a referendum.
Lord Greaves
The Minister is absolutely right. The law is the law, and if people break the law, they break the law. My point is that, as I read the legislation, the illegality refers to the likelihood of people breaking the law during the election campaign as a ground for refusing to have a referendum. Although I tabled an amendment to remove that, it was a probing amendment and I am not suggesting that it should be removed. I am suggesting that it should be made absolutely clear that the ground for refusing to have a referendum is that what is being asked for as the outcome of the referendum is not legal. I cannot understand why that should not happen. That is different from the conduct of the campaign, but I am happy to discuss this informally with the Minister.
Briefly, the Government should think about the “trivial” point. This clause currently refers to questions which are “vexatious or abusive”, wording which comes from the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 in relation to petitions. That Act is being repealed, and we will probably have the same debate over that.
A council ought to be able to reject a petition for a referendum on the grounds that the issues in it simply are not worth the candle—that they are “trivial”, or whatever wording the Government would come up with; that they are de minimis in some way. Perhaps the Government will reflect on that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hanham
Lord Lucas
“( ) The fifth ground is that the referendum question includes or relates to planning matters.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the Minister has got ahead of us on this with Amendment 128E being debated rather earlier today, but I do not see that Amendment 128E covers the cases that interest me. Perhaps, if I am wrong about that, my noble friend can explain. I am principally interested in the way in which allowing planning matters in under a referendum would make a mess of the provisions for neighbourhood planning. We have extensive provision there for referenda and there should not be a cross-cutting system which allows that process, which is difficult and expensive enough to organise anyway, to be upset by people running competing referendums, or in other ways trying to upset the decision once it has been made.
My noble friend’s amendment looks at the granting of planning permission. I am much more interested in the creation of a neighbourhood plan. Subsection (4)(b) of the government amendment refers to,
“a statutory right of appeal in respect of the substance of the matter or decision”,
on the part of persons adversely affected. In other words, it is saying that this provision does not apply if there is no third-party right of appeal, which I think there is not in a lot of planning permissions. I view the scope of subsection (4) of Amendment 128E as being very limited compared with the sort of exclusions that I would like to see. As all planning is dealt with very satisfactorily in the neighbourhood planning section, it should not be allowed in the local referendum section in any form. I beg to move.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, as I explained to the Minister earlier today, I think that Amendment 128E has largely covered my amendment. However, like all amendments, there was a supplementary purpose lurking behind it, which was to try to probe the wider interaction between the facility of referendums generally, especially in their cumulative effect—the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who is not in his place at the moment, touched on that a few minutes ago—and the wider family of the statutory functions of local authorities. It is instructive to note Amendment 128C relating to transport.
I have lost count of the number of times that the burdens on local authorities on the one hand and the need to get at the authentic voice of people on the other have been referred to in this part of the Bill. We are considering the effects for a democratically elected representative body whose functions might not work terribly well, or be effectively discharged, if a referendum is imposed. The Bill cannot be all things to all men. We have to have a balance between vox populi on the one hand and the effective administration of local government on the other. That balance needs to be explained.
I hope that the Minister will be able to elaborate on some of these points, but I certainly think that there is an issue here, which was touched on in earlier debates in Committee. We need to be clear to what extent people within a community should engage with the representative and democratic processes of those who are set up to represent those community interests as opposed to reaching for some bypassing measure in the form of a referendum.
Lord Best
My Lords, Amendment 128B is in my name. I do not think that we have given the Government enough credit for the amendment that we heard of earlier today, because that seemed to me to satisfy, if not entirely—I want to dwell on that—a good deal of the misgivings that we have had about referendums applying to the world of planning. We now have an amendment that will mean that planning applications are taken out of the reach of petitions and referendums. That is an enormous difference from where we were yesterday. I want to place on record my appreciation to the Government for taking that forward. It means that another laboriously prepared speech of mine is now redundant, but the amendment is extremely welcome.
Our hesitations about where we have got to are as follows. We understand that discretion is there for local authorities not to go ahead with referendums if there is a statutory process that gives members of the public opportunities to make representations and a statutory right of appeal or of investigation through a review. However, although that clearly applies to individual planning applications—great stuff—does that apply to all of the processes of preparing local development plans? I think that it must cover the preparation of the local development frameworks. If it did not cover the local authority preparing its local development plan, that would be disastrous. Throughout local government, we are already way behind in getting those local development frameworks undertaken. The abolition of regional spatial strategies means that we will be in limbo if local authorities do not have their own local development plans. We must get on with that. It would be incredibly difficult for the Government to pursue their growth agenda and do the good things that they want to do in terms of the development of renewable energy and the development of new homes if the threat of referendums was hanging over the creation of local development plans.
Beyond that, there are supplementary planning documents. They may not have the full panoply of examination in public and independent inspection in all cases. For removal of doubt, it would be better to have an amendment such as that in my name or in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that takes the whole of the planning scene out of the referendum process. If we cannot, can we at least have firm reassurance that the process of producing local development plans, with the supplementary elements that go with them—the whole of that process—will be excluded by this excellent amendment?
Lord True
My Lords, I am sorry to strike a discordant note, but I strongly disagree with aspects of the remarks of my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Best, in relation to parts of the planning system. We discussed this briefly earlier, and I will not reiterate my remarks then.
My noble friend Lord Taylor undertook to write to me about referendums where a London borough, in the case I gave, may have set up an indicative planning brief but the higher, regional authority intervened with an alternative proposal. I think it is entirely justifiable—indeed, desirable—that there should be a referendum in those cases. It would be most unfortunate if the legislation ruled out such an eventuality. It would disfranchise people on some of the most basic and fundamental issues that affect their lives and the nature of how their community develops.
I certainly could not support an amendment ranging as widely as that of my noble friend Lord Lucas. “Planning matters” is wording far too widely cast. Of course I agree with the point established in Committee; I think that most noble Lords agreed that we do not want to encourage referendums on individual planning applications. I also have very grave doubt about how far we should cast it in relation to local development plans and frameworks.
We have a local development framework at the moment, which it is clear that the public do not find satisfactory. As neighbourhood planning develops, a referendum might well be desired by people or wished for by the council. That is a useful device in an age of localism in involving people in such fundamental issues.
I hope that my noble friend will resist casting that constriction on the right of people to be heard on the neighbourhood and place in which they live. Nothing to my mind is more fundamental in the 21st century to the role of a local authority than the spirit of place. People’s opportunity to express their view about the nature of their place in terms of the broad planning framework under which they live in their communities seems to be absolutely vital. It would send a hard and difficult message if the Committee were to constrict that opportunity in the way suggested by the noble Lord.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I hope that you will forgive me for intervening as I did not speak on Second Reading. Under this heading, I wonder whether the Minister can clarify whether there is an exemption on petitioning and on moving to have a referendum on car-parking charges. I discovered that my area in London recently increased car-parking fines to £130—a phenomenal increase. I gather that many of these increases are taking place in different locations on similar scales around the country. I wonder whether this will provide the opportunity for the citizen to petition against those, or indeed move for a referendum.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendments, and say that we are with the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Lucas, on this. It is an opportunity for the Government to set out quite broadly their view on the exclusion, not only for particular planning applications but for the broader role of planning briefs and everything that goes with the planning process. Like the noble Lord, Lord Best, I think that we should congratulate the Government on their earlier concessions. That has helped our deliberations to move on a lot.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that of course it must be right that people have the opportunity to engage and influence their neighbourhood and place. That is just what the neighbourhood planning provisions in the Bill are designed to do, with a referendum attached to that. We have some amendments coming now suggesting that there should be earlier consultation in the process of those engaged in developing plans, so we are with you on that. That is within the structure of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made an important point about LDFs. We need to get on with that as so many of them are not yet completed. We have a lacuna, with regional spatial strategies going before many of these plans were in place, and the data associated with all of those are in danger of disappearing. We propose to deal with that by transition arrangements but that is a debate for another day, if not another week at the rate we are going. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to clarify, as far as they are able, the scope of the exemption around planning as that is hugely important.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity as it was a key area and the decision to table the amendments has helped to move the Bill forward. I am, however, in a less than satisfactory situation in the sense that we can see that a number of factors now come into play. The definition of planning appeals, an appeal process, and the rest of it means that it will require some further thought to see what the implications are. It is clear that a referendum on planning applications can be ruled out, but indicative planning and the like with consultative processes are a matter that we need to consider, as well as how exactly they might be brought into this process. My noble friend Lord True carefully articulated the importance of making sure that the public voice in these matters is not stifled. We accept that, but on the other hand we do not want the whole referendum process to be totally absorbed on planning matters.
I promised my noble friend Lord True that I would write to him. Indeed, I will write to all noble Lords and place a copy in the Library of our position on this issue, so that it is quite clear. However, I do not from this Dispatch Box want to give an on-the-hoof answer which may mislead noble Lords in this regard; I do not think that helps to take the debate forward and I apologise.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
We appreciate what the Minister has said because we are likely to get into planning issues next week—maybe on Tuesday at some stage, or maybe not even till Thursday. It would really help our deliberations if by then the Government had been able to focus more specifically on these issues, and perhaps we could have some reassurance on that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank the noble Lord for assisting me. Knitting it into the neighbourhood planning proposals is clearly going to be important as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, was worried not so much about his car-parking charges as the fines when he did not pay them, if I heard him correctly. At any rate, perhaps one may lead to the other. Our amendments put in place a framework for councils to decide to refuse a referendum in certain cases. The issues raised by noble Lords clearly illustrate how difficult it would be to compile a list. This is why we have adopted our approach in our recommendations generally about how councils may determine particular referendum petitions.
Lord True
May I briefly assist the Committee and perhaps my noble friend if I made it clear that Clause 47(6), whether we like the word “vexatious” or not, helps to guard against some of the fears of my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Best? If there were a case where hundreds and thousands of people had been involved in indicative planning and the process of planning, clearly a referendum that then came along from a group would potentially be vexatious. A local authority could resist that. Maybe “vexatious” is not the right word, but what concerns me is the case that I cited of a regional body, London, interfering with a lower body where there has been no effective consultation, it was a choice between two visions of the future and there has not been adequate public involvement. It might in those cases not be vexatious to have a referendum. It might be illuminating and that is the difference. Perhaps in considering this, my noble friend might want to look at the application of Clause 47(6) and how that would bite on these potential powers.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Again my noble friend makes a valuable contribution and points out how complex this is going to be in terms of definition. I would like to thank him for his contribution and my noble friend Lord Lucas for tabling the original amendment which has given rise to this debate. I hope I can persuade him to withdraw it, but I think the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, wants to come back.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I am grateful to the noble Lord for helping me to differentiate between charges and fines. I was indeed referring to fines and, as somebody asked me which was the borough, I say that it was Wandsworth. It has the lowest council tax in the country, but some of the highest fines and charges. Was he saying to me that, in his view, an attempt to have a referendum in that area would probably be ruled out?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I can say to the noble Lord that the first indication I had about the correct response had a simple two-letter word: no—that it would not be possible. However, I sought further elaboration and gained a slightly more elaborate response, though the short answer is probably correct—that this would not be a subject on which a local referendum could be held.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, that is a pity. I hope that my noble friend, as he is in letter-writing mood, will let the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and me know why this could not be the subject of a referendum. It is one of the main ways in which local authorities choose to beat their residents about the head—one of the main reasons why the residents of Richmond are now happy to have my noble friend Lord True there rather than the previous incumbent. It seems to be very much the sort of thing that local referendums should be about. However, I am sure that my noble friend will be able to give us some comfort on that—or at least point out where in the Bill is the clause that stops us having referendums on this issue, so that we can take it out on Report.
As to what we were supposed to be talking about, I am very grateful to my noble friend for offering to write. It is a very complicated area and not one where I profess any expertise: I was mainly concerned that we were producing something that would cut across the bit of the Bill which really interests me, namely neighbourhood planning and how it works. My noble friend and other noble Lords—including my noble friend Lord True—have raised many subjects to which I will be very interested to read the answers. My particular worry is that proposed new subsection (4)(b)(i) in Amendment 128E seems to suggest that this is a matter in which injured and adversely affected persons have a right of appeal. In the case of most planning applications, one can consider oneself adversely affected if one has to look at an ugly monstrosity across the street, yet one does not have the right to appeal because there is no third-party right of appeal. I am concerned that the wording of the amendment does not exempt most planning applications, but I am sure that the Minister will cover that in his reply.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, U-turns are allowed nowadays in politics, are they not? I will correct an answer that I gave. I misread the answer that I was given to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, about a referendum. Councils could not refuse to hold a referendum on car-parking charges: the referendum would need to be held.
Lord Lucas
I want to just stand here and feel happy for a bit, but I will beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Petitions: special cases in which holding of referendum is discretionary
(1) Where a principal local authority has under section 46 made a determination that it is appropriate to hold a local referendum in response to a petition, the authority (if it has not already done so) must cause the petition to be—
(a) considered for the purposes of subsection (2) by its chief finance officer, and(b) considered for the purposes of subsections (3) and (4) by the proper officer.(2) The petition is a special-case petition if the authority’s chief finance officer estimates that the cost of holding a local referendum in response to the petition would be more than 5% of the amount last calculated by the authority before it received the petition as its council tax requirement for the financial year in which the petition was received by it.
(3) The petition is a special-case petition if the proper officer of the authority is of the opinion that the matter to which the referendum question relates has been, or has substantially been, the subject of at least one local or other referendum held—
(a) in the four years ending with the date on which the petition was received by the authority, and(b) in the area to which the petition relates (whether or not in that area alone). (4) The petition is a special-case petition if the proper officer of the authority is of the opinion that—
(a) there is a statutory process and it is the case, or is substantially the case, that the process involves giving—(i) members of the public, or(ii) members of a section of the public,an opportunity to make representations in relation to the matter, and(b) it is the case, or is substantially the case, that persons adversely affected by the matter or a decision made in relation to it have—(i) a statutory right of appeal in respect of the substance of the matter or decision, or(ii) a statutory right to instigate a review of the substance of the matter or decision.(5) A person is not to be taken as having a right within subsection (4)(b)(i) or (ii) as a result of being able to—
(a) make an application for judicial review,(b) make a complaint under Part 3 of the Local Government Act 1974 to a Local Commissioner, or(c) make a complaint to a housing ombudsman under a scheme approved for the purposes of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1996.(6) In this section—
“council tax requirement”, in relation to the Greater London Authority and a year, means the aggregate of—
(a) the component council tax requirement for the year for the London Assembly, and(b) the component council tax requirement for the year for the Mayor of London;“chief finance officer”, in relation to a principal local authority, means the officer having responsibility, for the purposes of—
(a) section 151 of the Local Government Act 1972,(b) section 6 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, or(c) section 127(2) of the Greater London Authority Act 1999,for the administration of the authority’s financial affairs;
“the referendum question” has the meaning given by section 47(7);
“statutory” means provided for by an Act or an instrument made under an Act.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
(b) the petition is not a special-case petition,”
“(3A) Subsection (3B) applies if—
(a) the determination is that it is appropriate to hold the referendum, and(b) the petition is a special-case petition.(3B) The proper officer of the authority must—
(a) if the authority is not the Greater London Authority, arrange for a meeting of the authority to decide on a resolution that the referendum should be held, or(b) if the authority is the Greater London Authority, arrange for the authority to decide on a resolution that the referendum should be held.(3C) The arrangements under subsection (3B)(a) or (b) must be such as to enable the decision concerned to be made as soon as is reasonably practicable after—
(a) the determination is made, or(b) if later, the officer concerned came to be of the opinion as a result of which the petition is a special-case petition.(3D) If the authority—
(a) is not the Greater London Authority and resolves at the meeting mentioned in subsection (3B)(a) that the referendum should be held, or(b) is the Greater London Authority and resolves that the referendum should be held,it must make arrangements for the referendum to take place in accordance with sections 51 to 54.”
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, in moving the amendment I will say how nice it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, in his place. The noble Lord could have his referendum on parking charges and the council would meet the cost of the referendum by increasing the charges even more. Who knows what unintended consequences may occur? I will now speak to the amendment before the Whips start glowering at me.
Amendment 128H is about the publicity that a principal local authority has to give to a determination that it is not appropriate to hold a referendum. Clause 48(4) states:
“If the determination is that it is not appropriate to hold the referendum … the notification must give the reasons for the determination, and … subject to subsection (5), the authority must publish those reasons when it publishes the determination”.
That all seems fine. But then subsection (5) says a quite extraordinary thing:
“A principal local authority is not obliged to publish those reasons if it thinks that in all the circumstances it would be inappropriate to do so”.
I cannot think of any circumstances in which it would not be appropriate to publish the reasons why the local authority has decided not to hold the referendum when it gets a petition which otherwise matches all the necessary conditions.
The grounds for determination are set out in Clause 47 which we have been discussing at some length and they are fairly clear—they would be even clearer if some of my amendments were passed. Even so, the Bill is going to include a clear statement of the reasons why a council can decide not to have a referendum even though it gets a petition.
Amendment 128Q is exactly the same wording in relation to a request for a referendum from a member. Whether it has to tell the member the reasons why it is not going to have the referendum the member is asking for, I am not quite sure, but it seems quite extraordinary that this is the case. It takes me back to my very early days in local government, which are far too long ago, when the council I was on—and no doubt many others—used to publish a minute for a decision that said something like, “That the action now mentioned be carried out by the officer now named”.
That sort of thing does not happen any more. My understanding is that local authorities are now under a general obligation to state the reasons for all the decisions they make and publish. That is certainly what the local authorities I know all do and I think that is now required. If a decision can be made not to hold a referendum without having to say why, then if the people asking for the referendum are rich enough it is a recipe for lining the pockets of a lot of lawyers. If they are not rich enough they will just get very angry and the whole process will be undermined.
I am challenging similar provisions in Amendments 129D and 129CAA which cover what a local authority does after a referendum and the action it decides to take. Again, it is suggested that if no action is taken then the authority has to publish the decision. In this case what the Bill says is right: the authority has to publish the decision and the reasons why if it decides not to do anything about a referendum that has been carried by a majority of people voting and calls for action. However, it does not have to say anything at all if it decides to carry out what the referendum wants or it decides partly to carry out what the referendum wants or to do something slightly different which might achieve some of the same objectives.
It seems to me that whatever the decision is on the basis of the referendum that has taken place, the local authority ought to make a clear statement of what it is going to do in response to the referendum, the decision of the referendum and give the reasons why. In this case, I suspect it is that the people drafting this have not thought through it 100 per cent. I would have thought the Government could have redrafted this part without any real problems. The first two, where it clearly says that you do not have to say why you are rejecting it, are clearly wrong and must be challenged.
Amendment 128J is the other amendment in this group and takes us back to some discussions we had on the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act when it was going through this House on the question of identification of the organiser of a petition. It was all very unsatisfactory when that Bill came to this House. We got it right. This is less unsatisfactory but it is still not quite right. Clause 48(6) states:
“In this Chapter ‘petition organiser’, in relation to a petition, means—
(a) the person designated in the petition as the person with whom the authority may deal in relation to the petition”.
It is possible that a petition will come in and the person is not actually designated in the petition but the person identifies themselves as the organiser, they turn up and hand it in, they have a covering letter that they have signed or something like that. Amendment 128J suggests a slightly better wording. Instead of,
“designated in the petition”
it suggests,
“notified when the petition is delivered to the authority”.
All the authority needs to do is to ask who the person in charge of the petition is. It might be the first name on the list; it might be the person who has simply signed the covering letter; it might simply be the person who turns up at the council offices or hands it to the mayor, or whatever they do, and identifies themselves as the organiser. The subsection just needs to be clarified a little. I beg to move.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, some noble Lords may think that my one question for the Minister might have sat more easily with amendments in previous groups, but I hope they will indulge me because then I had to be in the Education Bill Committee, to which I shall shortly have to return. My question can loosely be attached to this group of amendments.
The problem that has been brought to my attention is that when local authorities are bound to publicise and take the outcomes of referendums into account in decision-making, it could result in them being pressured by local communities into disregarding welfare issues and the rights of Gypsies, Travellers and others. We know that there is form on this. Local communities have had that kind of attitude. My question for the Minister is: is there any safeguard to deter that?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Perhaps I may help the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. She may not be aware that one of the government amendments makes it clear that planning applications—it is often under planning applications that these matters arise—are excluded from the provisions for referendums. The noble Baroness will remember that we had a brief exchange about this earlier. The whole business of provision for Traveller populations is subject to direction and regulations as far as local authorities are concerned, so it is an area in which local authorities are obliged to act properly. It is also an offence for people to campaign on these issues in a way that breaks the law. I hope that the noble Baroness is content on that matter.
The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, require the council at all times to publish its reasons for such a determination. We believe that the vast majority of local authorities—in fact, almost without exception—will publish their reasons for such a determination. They want local people to know why their petition or the request from their councillor was not considered appropriate. However, removing the discretion not to publish those reasons could mean that the council is required to publish details that may be confidential or otherwise inappropriate. For example, the petition could relate to an individual for whom it would cause further embarrassment to publish details of the petition or breach their human rights. In such a case, the authority would be able to report that the petition had been rejected but without any further detail.
Lord Beecham
Why could the local authority not say that it is not elaborating because of confidentiality or the Human Rights Act? Why should it not make that clear in those circumstances?
Lord Tope
My Lords, that is exactly my point. I thought that the Minister had just given the reason which the local authority would give in those circumstances for not accepting it. If I remember rightly, the question asked by my noble friend Lord Greaves was, “What are these exceptional circumstances?”. The example that has just been given is not one of them because the local authority would give the reason which the Minister has just given us.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Perhaps in continuing to respond to this set of amendments the answer might become clearer. The noble Lord went on to suggest that with the words “designated in the petition” and in seeking to get a particular person named as the petition organiser, it would be reasonable to expect that a petition will usually make clear who an organiser is and that in most cases the organiser will welcome being the contact point for the petition. However, it is possible that a petition could fail to specify the organiser and we expect authorities to act reasonably in seeking to identify who might take on that responsibility. Little is added to this clause by imposing a requirement on anyone to provide a notification. Where the petition is clear, the person identified will be the organiser; where it is unclear, the discretion in Clause 48(6)(b) enables an authority to decide who appears to be carrying out the role of organiser. My reaction in considering this amendment is rather overshadowed by my political campaigning background. I have explained the difference between electoral processes and the petition process, but I see what my noble friend is driving at. If there is ambiguity in this matter, I am prepared to look at this again.
I am not convinced that Amendments 129CAA and 129D are necessary. It is reasonable to expect that if a council or partner authority decides to give effect to a referendum they will tell people about how they have listened and acted on their views or that local people will notice it anyway. However, the provision in Clause 55 is important in that it ensures that where partner bodies decide not to give effect to a referendum result, local people are made aware of the reasons why. I hope that that explains that. Sometimes giving the reason for the rejection can give the game away; for example, it could identify that an individual had a criminal conviction. This is another reason why it might be essential to have discretion in the Bill. However, given the contributions made by noble Lords, we will look at this and see if the wordings do reflect exactly what it is the Committee would wish to see in the Bill.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I suspect that as he was speaking he was remembering many of the things that I am only too well aware of in the reality of petitioning. On the question of the exceptional circumstances, if they were reasons of a confidential nature I imagine that the local authority would use the words that they use now when they are going into confidential session as the reason for not pursuing the Bill. These are not major points that will hold up the Bill but we should look at them to see whether there can be better wording. If there really are exceptional circumstances that the local authority is unable to state—and I am bound to say that I cannot think what that might be, because if something is of a confidential nature then that would be the reason—then we should say what they would be. I cannot think that there are any that cannot be covered by the appropriate form of words.
Amendment 128H, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves and refers to “designated in the petition”, once again reminds me of the happy hours we spent on the local democracy Bill and all that that legislation prescribed on petitions. I recall that my noble friend brought in some petitions to his council, which did not look like petitions to Parliament in any sense. We all know that they are not usually neat and tidy, with the petition organiser’s name at the top. Again, this is not a major point. My noble friend has suggested an alternative wording which I think would meet it very well. However, the term “designated in the petition” does not meet it. Most of the petitions to my council that I have seen—and I suspect that the Minister has had similar experience—do not designate anyone in the petition itself. It just does not work that way. Therefore, a rather simpler, looser way would serve the point much better and save people getting into an unnecessary tangle.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for the support from my noble friend and others, and for the fairly emollient response from my noble friend the Minister. The first point that I was going to make has just been made by my noble friend. Councils deal with decisions all the time—for example, not giving licences to people because they have criminal convictions. Sufficient reasons are given for those decisions without going over the top and hauling them out into the open and putting them in the local stocks, which we have in my town. I cannot think of any decisions minuted by my council in the past two decades for which the reasons have not been set out. People are perfectly capable of writing decisions that are appropriate in the circumstances.
However, I cannot quite understand how criminal convictions will come into this. I suppose that the petition organiser might turn out to be a complete rogue, but why should that invalidate a petition that was otherwise perfectly valid, especially as the Minister said earlier that people in prison should be able—it is slightly extraordinary—to sign these petitions even though they cannot vote? I cannot see why a person should not be able to organise a petition in his community simply because he has criminal convictions. The petition itself is hardly likely to reveal people’s criminal convictions. Is it? I do not know.
I am grateful for what the Minister said. I think that we will have a few more chats about this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
(a) if the authority is not the Greater London Authority, arrange for a meeting of the authority to decide on a resolution that the referendum should be held, or(b) if the authority is the Greater London Authority, arrange for the authority”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, government Amendment 129G makes a change to Clause 57. The purpose is to make it clear that the,
“function of passing of a resolution”,
in this chapter is, in the case of the Greater London Authority, a joint function of the mayor and the Assembly, and that the function is to be discharged in the same way as the Greater London Authority discharges any other functions that are specified as the joint responsibility of the mayor and the Assembly.
Government Amendment 128K removes the requirement for the Greater London Authority to hold a meeting to decide on a resolution to hold a referendum. It reflects the constitutional arrangements of the authority, which does not hold joint meetings of the mayor and the Assembly and will instead enable appropriate arrangements to be made for the mayor and the Assembly to come to a decision about whether to hold a referendum.
Government Amendments 128N and 128P make consequential changes to Clause 49(3), again removing the requirement for the Greater London Authority to hold a meeting. I hope that noble Lords will agree that this clarification is helpful and I urge them to accept these amendments.
In this group we have some amendments from my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Rennard. Amendment 128L seeks to make it clear that a resolution to hold a referendum may be taken at the next ordinary meeting of the authority following determination that it is appropriate to hold a referendum. Amendment 128M in consequence removes Clause 49(3), which requires a meeting to discuss a resolution to be held as soon as practicable. These amendments assume that the wording of Clause 49(2) currently requires a meeting to be specifically convened for the purpose of resolving whether to hold a referendum. I can assure noble Lords that that is not our intention. We believe that the inclusion of the word “for” in Clause 49(2) makes it clear that a meeting must not be specifically convened but that the issue may be added to the agenda of any meeting of the full council. I will listen to the debate of my noble friend and then perhaps I can respond to his proposal.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have two amendments in the group, Amendments 128L and 128M. Amendment 128L says “arrange a meeting”, and Amendment 128M says,
“as soon as is reasonably practicable after the determination is made”.
Clearly, if it is two and a half months until the next full council meeting of that authority,
“as soon as is reasonably practicable”,
could be taken to mean that the meeting has to be called more quickly than that. I am perfectly happy to accept the assurances that the Minister has already given. I was just concerned about the cost of these referendums to local authorities. The cost of organising an extra meeting of the full council is not cheap for any authority, especially for a small one where the cost is a larger proportion of its budget. It is not a trivial expense. If the Minister is putting that assurance on the record, then my amendments have achieved their purpose.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank my noble friend for that observation. It is a matter of the precision of the language, and the key phrase is,
“the proper officer of the authority must arrange for a meeting”,
to be held. Had the phrase been that the proper officer “must arrange a meeting”, it would have been clear that a meeting must be specifically arranged. We believe that the wording in the Bill is clear. If it proves not to be the case, we are prepared to reconsider it. However, we believe that the meaning is clear. I would be grateful if my noble friend would withdraw his amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
(a) is not the Greater London Authority and resolves at the meeting mentioned in subsection (2)(a) that the referendum should be held, or(b) is the Greater London Authority and resolves”
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the amendments in this group need not detain us for long. They have been tabled to probe the appropriateness of the word “misleading” as the criterion a local authority can use to change the wording of a referendum question. It must consult the people who have put forward the petition before doing so, but I am not sure that the word “misleading” covers everything. For example, an authority might want to improve the grammar of a question. As my noble friend Lord Tope said, petitions to councils even for something as important as a referendum are not necessarily written in the most appropriate phrases. If more felicitous wording can be introduced, it may be an improvement, but I am not sure whether that would make the question any more or less misleading. There may be inappropriate words in the question, which the council thinks are slang or rude, but once they are removed the petition remains perfectly valid.
More substantively, a question might be asking for action from the wrong people. It might ask the council to do something which it cannot do, but the council might be able to do other things. I am trying to think of an example. There is a gap in the railway line between Colne and Skipton on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border, and a campaign called SELRAP is working to have it reinstated. Noble Lords might have had communications from the group because it is vigorous in pursuing its case with everybody. I am not sure whether I should declare an interest as a patron of SELRAP since I am talking about it, but I was bullied into it. A petition might ask Pendle or Craven council, or even Lancashire or North Yorkshire county council, to reinstate the railway line. Regrettably, that is not within the power of any of those local authorities. On the other hand, it is within their power to provide funds to SELRAP and to push the process of assessing proposals for the reinstatement of the line further along the road. The GRIP process is a series of steps that all cost money, and the authority could contribute towards it.
A petition might come in asking any of the councils to put in a new railway line, but it would be rejected on the grounds that it had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, the councils could ask for a differently worded petition so that SELRAP could be funded to undertake the next batch of work necessary to get Network Rail, the Government and everyone else to pay attention. Alternatively, it might be a county council matter but the petition is sent to the district council, or vice versa. Those are helpful changes, and I do not think the word “misleading” describes them.
Amendments 128T and 128V were meant to probe the question of holding the referendum on the same day as elections, and whether that is a good or a bad thing. We have discussed this in some detail so it is not necessary to pursue it any further. Amendment 128U looks at how quickly a referendum has to take place once a council determines that it should be held. If it is generally thought that in order to save money and for general convenience, a referendum should be held on the same day as an election, and that election is due within 12 months, the amendment would make it possible, at the discretion of the council, to delay the referendum for up to 12 months rather than only up to the six months provided for in the Bill. In most cases referendums brought forward during the summer and autumn would have to be freestanding and would therefore cost perhaps three times as much. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Gould of Potternewton)
My Lords, the amendment proposed is:
“Page 42, line 10, leave out subsections (3) to (5)”.
Lord True
I apologise for that, my Lords. I was dazzled by the sun and by my noble friend’s arguments. I do not want to speak to all the amendments in the group, although I have quite a bit of sympathy for them. However, Clause 52(3) is far too restrictive, so again I want to be more permissive than my noble friend. I really do not see what business it is of the Government to come in and say that a local referendum is to be delayed until the date of an election or another referendum. If it is an urgent question relating to a matter of concern that might involve a small number of people in a borough, it need not be that expensive. Why cannot the local authority just get on with it and use its own discretion? Clause 52(1), (2) and (5) seems perfectly reasonable, but could my noble friend just leave the rest to the local authority to determine?
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord might look at Clause 52(4), which seems to give the relevant discretion.
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord will become very familiar with that sort of drafting in the course of discussions on this Bill and others.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
First, I heard what my noble friend said about the word “misleading” in the Bill and will reflect on whether that might be improved in some way. I hope that he welcomes the general principle that the authority should be able to make sure that the question being put is relevant and accurately reflects the situation, in relationship with the petition organiser. The last thing that one wants is a matter of semantics, where the petition organiser has to go back and get all the names and addresses again. This gives a necessary flexibility. I hope that my noble friend will be able to withdraw that amendment.
My noble friend indicated that he will withdraw Amendments 128T and 128V. Amendment 128U would require the local authority to hold a referendum on the same day as an election or other referendum within the next 12 months. Our provision currently requires that the referendum will be held on the same day as a referendum or election in the next six months. As I have already said, we believe that the provision in Clause 52(3) as drafted is sensible and practical. Councils may not know 12 months in advance whether a poll will be triggered. Generally, local people will want a referendum to be held as soon as practicable. The amendment proposed by my noble friend would tend towards delaying it. We are sympathetic to my noble friend Lord True’s general approach of leaving this to the local authorities to manage at their discretion. We do not consider this amendment necessary. If there are good reasons to delay a referendum for more than six months then the council can do so.
I hope that with the assurances I have given, and in particular the agreement to look again at the word “misleading”, that my noble friend will feel free to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful for that and will certainly do so on that assurance. I clearly put these down as probing amendments. On the timing, having listened to the discussion I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, that it ought to be down to the local authority. If they want to call a referendum immediately, they ought to be able to do so. It may well be an issue that will be dead in 12 months anyway. On the other hand, the wording ought not to preclude having the referendum on the same day as the next round of elections, as far as fixed elections are concerned—general elections now appear to be fixed but we will see—so long as they are not more than 12 months away. It may well be that some authorities that do not elect their council every year will not have an election within 12 months. Those that do ought to be able to have it on that day if that is what they think best on the principles set out by the noble Lord, Lord True. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this amendment probes the material about the referendum and the question published by the local authority holding the referendum. Clause 53(4) says:
“Subject to subsection (5), the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of, material that is designed to encourage support for or opposition to the question to be asked in the referendum”,
while Clause 53(5) says this applies only to referendums which are,
“held in response to a petition”,
from the public, “or a request” from a member or members of the authority and that the authority can,
“incur only such expenditure as is reasonable”,
whatever that may mean.
I am moving this amendment to take out those two subsections as a means of probing how they will work and what they mean. I have also put down Amendments 128Y and 128Z, which say that if the local authority produces material in support and/or opposition to the question, it has to do so in a fair and balanced way. It has to give,
“equal prominence to the arguments”,
on each side. That mirrors what happens in national referendums, where the Government, or the Electoral Commission on behalf of the Government, publish statements which say, “On the one hand, vote yes; on the other hand, vote no”. They put a fair and balanced argument. In this new world of local referendums, it is not clear to me whether local authorities are going to be able to churn out publicity on one side only, or to be strongly in favour of one side and against the other, and whether that is intended or desirable. This is a very important question that needs careful bottoming.
My understanding is that the Electoral Commission has expressed some concern about this and believes that there should be balance, although I was looking for the stuff that I think I have had from it before this debate and I could not find it. I cannot quote exactly what it is saying but it would be interesting to have a definitive view from the Electoral Commission on this matter, certainly before we get to Report. It is fairly obvious that this is an important matter and that there may be different views on it, but our view is that a council ought to be putting out fair and balanced publicity, if it wishes to put out publicity at all. It ought to have the option not to spend any more money than it is already and to keep out of the argument altogether. The Bill suggests that it can because it says:
“the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of”,
with the clear implication there that it does not have to if it does not want to.
Particularly where a referendum is tied in heavily with the local political argument and where referendums and local elections get intertwined, as I think will be inevitable, it will be dangerous for local authorities to get involved on one side of an argument. The political party running a local authority may strongly be on one side with the party in opposition, which might be ready to take over if it wins enough seats, on the other. For the local authority to weigh in with public money in those circumstances seems to me to be wrong in principle. I am not saying that people should not campaign; people should campaign, but they should go out and organise their own campaigns.
Amendment 128AA seeks to put some controls on expenditure on this kind of publicity in a referendum on which the local authority spends its own money. It seeks to harden up the word “reasonable” by saying that it has to be approved by a meeting of the council. The meeting of the council that determines that a referendum should take place should also decide whether the local authority spends any money on it and how much; it should set a budget for it, because, in any case, this will be all be money outside the council’s agreed budget. I assume that councils will not put contingency sums in their budget in case they have referendums. They will all be hoping that they do not have any, from that point of view. They will not want to put the council tax up or cut other services at budget time in order to put money aside for referendums, so I assume they will not do that and therefore it may well need a supplementary vote by the full council anyway, if it is a full-scale referendum and is costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Where is it going to come from? The council will have to decide, so it would be part of that.
I would put forward Amendment 128AA only on the basis that the council was going to be even-handed. The council being able to vote sums of money to one side in a highly politically contentious question is a very dangerous way forward. This is put forward as genuinely probing, to find out what the Government’s views are, but it is also a considerable concern that might need a bit more thought before Report.
Lord True
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, wishes to speak briefly: I, too, will speak briefly. I do not think that this is a matter that we can resolve in this Committee. It is important and perhaps in the period up to Report we may see some guidance and thoughts as to how the Government, the Electoral Commission and others see it developing. There is a difference between a national referendum about an unresolved policy question and certain circumstances of local referendums. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, is no longer in his place; he has rushed out to organise a referendum against the parking-charge policy of his own council. In those circumstances it is surely reasonable for the council to defend its policy against the proposition that is put on the other side, so I do not think that we can be absolutist on this matter. I do not favour the extensive spending of public money, but I hope that my noble friend, as we discuss these things over the next few weeks, will not rule out and disarm councils—elected representatives—from putting their case in referendums.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I echo the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord True. This is difficult territory. The Bill as it stands contains a provision that,
“enables the authority to incur only such expenditure as is reasonable”.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already indicated that it is not at all clear what “reasonable” might be, but I put it another way: if expenditure is unreasonable, then, of course, it can be challenged by the usual audit processes. I think that that is sufficient safeguard in that respect. What is more complicated is the question of equal prominence. Amendment 128AA states that the decision is only to,
“be exercised following a resolution authorising the maximum amount to be spent”.
This raises some difficult issues. On the equal-prominence argument, who is to provide the case for the petitioners—for those who are seeking the referendum? It can hardly be suggested that the local authority should provide their case for them. There will be cases in which there is a well resourced, articulate group of people who can produce a substantial case. If, on the other hand, it is a community group, or some organisation which produces a three-line question for a referendum, it may not be able to do that. Is the council then constrained to reply to the three-line referendum with a three-line response? That would not be reasonable. The equal-prominence test is very difficult to operate in practice.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, the debate has shown that this is a complex and sensitive area. We would certainly not want councils to be innocent bystanders when important local issues were being debated. I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling these amendments because at least they give us an opportunity to check whether the words in the Bill reflect what we want out of this process. I suspect that not just the Electoral Commission but the LGA itself will want to reflect on this area. Currently, any publicity published by an authority will have to be in accordance with the code of recommended practice on local authority publicity, which means that it has to be even-handed and responsible. It is necessary for the recommended practice to allow local authorities to put their case in a proper fashion. Generally, authorities are restrained from publishing any publicity material relating to a referendum question on issues such as whether to adopt executive arrangements. The scope of local referendums, however, is such that there is the possibility of questions being put which could have significant impact on communities. We believe that it is right that councils should be able to play a part in the process when the referendum has been triggered by a petition or request. Referendums such as have been proposed by my noble friend unnecessarily restrict the position of local councils.
The arrangements for authorities to control expenditure are already set out in Clause 53, coupled with an authority’s wider duty to have regard to the code of recommended practice on local authority publicity. They are adequate to ensure that excessive amounts of public money are not spent on publicity material for referendums. I hope that these explanations and assurances persuade my noble friend that he can withdraw his amendment. This is an area where local authorities are likely to want to satisfy themselves that the arrangements as set out in the Bill meet their need to protect community interests as they see them. With that, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to noble Lords for the discussion. It is an indication of the complexity of the issue that I have agreed with most of the things that most noble Lords have said on all sides; it is in no circumstances straightforward. As I hope I said, I moved the amendment to probe and, in order to probe, I proposed something quite different from what was in the Bill. There are good arguments on both sides. I firmly believe that local authorities, faced with what they might think of as a hostile referendum question, should be able to put their point of view forward and, if it is a complex question, should be able to explain it.
It is quite possible, of course, that the local authority will be in favour of the referendum question, in which case it is not clear why they should spend any money at all. Perhaps they think that the people organising it are incompetent and will not do it very well. Who knows? One can imagine lots of different circumstances.
I am firmly of the countervailing view that local authorities ought not to be able to get involved in promoting referendum campaigns which are effectively being put forward by parties or party-political candidates—or any candidate in local elections—for political purposes. That would be quite wrong and quite contrary to the present code of publicity. It is difficult to see how to draw up regulations which cater for both the extreme circumstances of a hostile referendum which the authority thinks would seriously wreck its strategy and policies in key areas and, on the other hand—
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Does the noble Lord have a view on whether local authorities should be able to campaign on council tax referendums, which are in a sense political because the policy is effectively decided by elected councillors? Would he support the right of councils to be able to campaign in those?
Lord Greaves
Yes, I would. Although it is important that local authorities should not get involved in party-political campaigning, the present code of conduct on local authority publicity is too restrictive. Local authorities ought to be able to campaign in a general way more easily and widely than they can at the moment if they believe that what they are campaigning for is in the interests of the people that they serve and represent. However, that is a wider issue. We have the code as it is and I do not think that there is any prospect of it being changed much in the near future. However, it will be very difficult to find satisfactory wording that stops local authorities intervening in elections and political matters, but allows them to defend their well thought-out and agreed policies and strategies against hostile attack. This matter has to be further discussed and considered and the various organisations involved, including the LGA and the Electoral Commission, have to be involved in that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, on Tuesday, when we discussed whether 5 per cent was the appropriate figure to call referendums, I went through all the levels of local government right down to the parish level. I was rather crestfallen when my noble friend Lord Taylor dismissed my arguments by saying,
“I should emphasise that the Bill's provisions in this area do not provide for referendums relating to parish councils, which are not part of the Bill. We will have an opportunity later to discuss parish councils”.—[Official Report, 28/6/11; col. 1744.]
With hindsight, I may have got rather ahead of myself on Tuesday. Therefore, I welcome the opportunity to discuss parish councils now. I will not repeat the remarks that I made on Tuesday, but will the Minister take into account what I said then when the Government consider this clause? Five per cent of electors in my noble friend’s parish in Holbeach might seem all right, but that is not appropriate in a parish with only 200 electors, which means that only 10 people would be required to call a referendum—that is far too low. In my parish in Norfolk, with only 50-odd electors, the 5 per cent figure would mean that three people could call a referendum. Perhaps different percentages could be applied according to size. If 5 per cent is appropriate for Holbeach, perhaps 20 per cent for a parish with only 200 electors—that is, 40 people—might be the right figure.
I presume that when this clause refers to parish councils, that includes parish meetings. Will the Minister please confirm this?
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the purpose of this stand part debate and of Amendment 129F is to have an exploratory discussion to probe the Government about their intentions with regard to parishes. Is what is in the Bill to be taken at face value in that the Government realise that they have to think about how referendums will interact with parish and town councils, and inevitably therefore consider the relationship between the existing legislation for parish polls and the new provisions for referendums, which are altogether more complex and involved?
The provisions for parish polls are really very simple. A very small number of people can turn up to a parish meeting—what used to be called the ratepayers’ meeting when people paid rates—and requisition a parish poll. The parish poll is a referendum of all the local government electors in the parish, but it is often on a fairly small scale. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is run as a normal election, with all the polling stations open, except that the polling hours are from 4 pm to, I think, 9 pm—the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will correct me if that is wrong—so there are restricted polling hours.
Lord Greaves
It is something like that. I do not think that it was extended to 10 pm; it might be only until 8 pm; I am not sure.
In my experience of parish polls, there is sometimes agreement between the council concerned and the district council or borough council, which has to organise the polls from its normal election process, not to have all the polling stations open. I am aware of a smallish town which has six or seven polling stations. They have a parish poll and they opened only one of the polling stations in the town centre on the grounds that it did not cost them as much. That flexibility is available, and it is an altogether simpler process. Of course, it is open to abuse because of the small number of people who can requisition a parish poll. Even if the Government are keeping provision for parish polls, I would think that, as part of the review, they will consider how the referendum provisions will impact on parishes.
There are now a lot more much bigger parishes than there ever used to be. A lot of places which, before 1974, were urban districts or small boroughs, have now become town councils. If you have an electorate of 18,000 or 22,000, or even more, having 10 people able to turn up at a parish meeting and only a small number of those being able to requisition a poll is nonsense. The parish poll provision is there for small, rural parishes, and the world is, in many places, not like that any more.
Have the Government any firm plans for what they will do or is it all provision in case they want to do something in the future? If they have firm plans, can they tell us what they will be before Report? The Bill’s provision about possible central government funding for referendums in parishes, organised by parish councils, is interesting, but I cannot believe that it is serious. It would leave it open for referendums to be organised in parishes on a large scale without any financial implication locally. The more that we discuss this in Committee, the more I come to the view that the number of referendums which will take place is probably a great deal less than some of us feared when we started looking at this, simply because of the financial problems.
We saw in the AV referendum that the no campaign campaigned heavily on the cost of the referendum itself—as though that was a logical reason to vote no, although the spending was already taking place. That was a very effective way of campaigning, and I am coming to the view that local referendums will meet a huge amount of opposition simply on the basis of cost. When people go around trying to organise them, once the cost and the implications for the council budget are revealed, a lot of them will not go ahead.
That is just musing about the future. The more that the Government can tell us about their proposals for parishes now, the better. I make it absolutely clear that I am in no circumstances trying to abolish parish polls. I am probing the Government's intentions.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I welcome the amendment in so far as it opens up an opportunity to make a contribution on this point. I fundamentally support the Bill’s provisions to provide for the Secretary of State to make specific provision for parish council referendums. There are many reasons for that, of which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will be aware. I am sorry that I cannot elaborate on the question of the times of day and the hours when certain things relating to parish polls might take place. I am afraid that I am only the humble president of the National Association of Local Councils and not a fully paid-up clerk of one of the more go-getting parish councils. Noble Lords will have to suffer second best on this occasion.
As I said on Second Reading, parish councils are not a homogenous institution. They are so highly variable in size and many other ways that it is difficult to think of a standardised approach. I suspect that this is very much work in progress in terms of discussions going on with the department on how to deal with this rather difficult issue because of the problem of trying to make one size fit all. Not only are there differences in size of electorate but their budgets, capacity, degree of training and even their expertise differ widely, even within a particular size category.
My purpose was to flag up some of the things that the Secretary of State might need to consider. As I say, I am aware of ongoing discussions and I certainly do not want to be in any way prescriptive. In the parish council, being the smallest unit of local government, there must be a proper balance between engagement with representative democracy and the referendum facility. That is likely to be exacerbated in future because, as localism brings the involvement of parish councils with a larger range of things that may have been dealt with traditionally by principal authorities, the opportunities for things to be called into question will inevitably increase. We must have robust systems to guard against that. It is also the case that that can add to the risk of people wanting to reach for the referendum solution. It is beginning to look like a question of how many bites of this not very large cherry in some places is to be provided for the public.
I will not labour the point about the engagement with the democratic and representative function of parish councils. The burdens of referendums on parish councils are by and large disproportionately high. I mentioned that in a previous Committee sitting and gave an example. Currently, the trigger for a parish poll under paragraph 18 of Schedule 12 to the Local Government Act 1972 is by common consent too low. But that is no argument for removing it altogether. I was very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, say that that was not his intention. I look forward to something better than that provision in the Local Government Act coming forward at a later stage, but I do not know whether discussions will have proceeded that far ahead. There is a need to prevent the parish being hijacked by the referendum provision. To that end triggers must be in some way relevant to the issue and possibly to the parish size. I cannot go further than that because we are dealing with tiny parish councils on the one hand and some very large town councils on the other, some of which have budgets that would exceed principal authority sizes.
There has to be a genuine local interest. I was very pleased when, some time ago, one of the smaller political movements tried to hijack the process for national political aims. I seem to recall it was something to do with the European Union and it was ruled out of order. Quite right too, because what should a small parish be doing with something concerning the European Union? Small parishes in particular are vulnerable, if we are not careful, to these sorts of pressures.
In addition, there needs to be protection for referendums cutting across other issues that have to be dealt with—the other powers and functions. I mentioned this earlier in connection with principal authorities. The same thing needs to be built in; not necessarily on exactly the same model, but in essence something similar. There needs to be a cost benefit out of all this, not for it to be completely disproportionate in the manner that I explained when I addressed this issue at our last Committee sitting.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this is an important area. The Bill that addresses localism must indeed address the issue of parish councils, the most local form of government. In providing for referendums in this Bill, the Government have said that they will be consulting about the way they take place. I am grateful for the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton; and perhaps I can make amends to my noble friend Lord Cathcart for my dismissive ways with his previous contributions on this subject.
I value the contributions made by both noble Earls because I consider parish councils to be important. My noble friend Lord Greaves has an amendment in this group, Amendment 129F, which we can consider at the same time. It relates to parishes where electors have long enjoyed the power to demand a local referendum or parish poll under the Local Government Act 1972. It removes the power of local government electors to demand a parish poll. However, as my noble friend says, he has no intention of anticipating that this amendment might achieve that objective until replacement facilities are in place.
We know that a poll must be organised if the chairman consents, or if it is demanded by 10 or one-third of the electors present at the meeting, whichever is the lesser figure. So the triggers for parish polls can be quite small. None the less, I understand the concerns expressed about the varying size of parishes and this is a matter that will be considered by the review that the Secretary of State has put in train. This, along with whether parish provisions apply to parish meetings as well as parish councils, are all part and parcel of the mix. We will see if there is pressure to bring this in and if it is possible within the review that the Bill provides.
I agree that the current parish poll rules need reform, but accepting the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would remove the provisions without replacing them with anything. We want a modernised and proportionate referendum regime for the parish sector and we propose to create this with regulations under Clause 56, which empowers the Secretary of State to apply the scheme to parish councils with such modifications as may be necessary. The effect of the clause would be to allow the replacement of the existing archaic parish poll regime with a modernised local referendum regime tailored to the particular circumstances of parish councils. While we seek to retain this important element of direct democracy that has been enjoyed for years by voters in parish areas, we want to modernise the existing regime and make it fit for purpose in the modern world.
Before making any regulations, we will consult widely on the reforms that people want. We will consult on whether all or some of the referendum provisions in the Bill should apply and on whether the ability of electors to demand a poll at a parish meeting should be retained; and, if it is, on what the threshold should be. Decisions on the appropriate modernised regime for parishes will be taken following the consultation, and subsequent regulations will be subject to affirmative resolution, giving noble Lords the opportunity to ensure that the replacement regime is better than the existing provisions. I hope that the assurances I have given will allow noble Lords to accept that Clause 56 should form part of the Bill.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
““special-case petition” has the meaning given by section (Petitions: special cases in which holding of referendum is discretionary).”
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I will speak to this clause on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and will address some of the principles that stand behind it. In practice, the clause continues a capping regime. Councils will not want to risk losing a referendum because there will be a significant rebilling cost. Clause 59, and Schedules 5 and 6, create a duty for a billing authority to determine, in line with principles set out by the Secretary of State, whether a proposed council tax increase is excessive. Authorities will be required to hold a local referendum on the proposed rise if it is deemed to be excessive.
The difficulty is that it should be for local people to determine whether they find a proposed council tax increase excessive rather than for the Secretary of State to decide what constitutes excessive. Local people should trigger the referendum, not the Secretary of State. Therefore, there is a strong case for saying that amendments to the Bill should be introduced that would limit the Secretary of State's power to determine what constitutes an excessive rate of council tax and would give that power instead to local people under proposals elsewhere in the Bill for holding local referendums so that they can decide what constitutes an excessive rate of council tax.
Secondly, councils, rather than the Secretary of State, ought to be able to decide when a referendum will be held and to decide the arrangements for it. We should also delete powers for the Secretary of State to make non-specific regulations on matters such as the question to be asked in the referendum, the allowable publicity accompanying that referendum and how votes are to be counted. We have already discussed the percentage levels required to trigger a referendum and it seems to me that this is an example of where we do not need to have the Secretary of State interfering with what local people could perfectly well handle for themselves.
There are two issues that I feel concerned about and I have raised them at previous stages of the Bill. When a billing authority is determining whether a council tax proposal is excessive it might be appropriate for a referendum to be held on whether the council tax level and increase proposed is deemed by some to be too small. True localism should mean that local people have the right to hold a referendum on whether the council tax might be raised higher than the level that the Secretary of State deems to be excessive. I do not propose that one should have a higher rate—simply that if you really want to implement localism it should lie within the power of local people to make that decision.
There is a further complication to this. Under the Bill, referendums can be held within electoral areas within a council area. It is inevitable that referendums will be held on issues that might require additional expenditure to be made within that area. It might be unreasonable to expect the whole of the council area to fund the additional increase. The increase could be for a specific local facility that might otherwise close down, such as a swimming pool that people would like to preserve that requires additional cash. At the moment parish councils have certain powers to raise additional money. We could see referendums being held to save local facilities such as the swimming pool where local people might be willing to pay for the facility and would wish a referendum to be held on generating the necessary resource.
This seems to strike at the very heart of localism. Ultimately, if we permit referendums to be held within one or more electoral areas of a council, logically those people should be allowed, as those who have a parish council are allowed, to vote to spend additional money. I speak from my perspective as a member of Newcastle City Council. Half of my ward has a parish council, which has the power to raise additional money, and the other half does not and is not able to raise additional money. That is a complication that will become very important.
The broader issue in terms of Clause 59 is whether it is for the Secretary of State to decide to hold a referendum or whether it is for local people to use the facilities that exist to generate that referendum.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we should thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for introducing this clause stand part debate and for his very clear exposition of localism and what it means in terms of council tax. I agree with him that the provisions in the Bill amount to a capping regime. I am sure the Government will argue that local people do determine what is excessive if they support a referendum. That is a very narrow interpretation of the Bill. This is capping by another name.
We also have to acknowledge that successive Governments have reserved the right to limit increases in domestic taxation when they have been judged to be excessive. We certainly did as a Government, and I believe that the Conservative Government did. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is culpable as well. There are arguments about whether that is important for the overall management of the economy.
When the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, introduced his first amendment in our proceedings, he talked about localism being decisions being taken at the lowest possible level, but he acknowledged that there is a wider dimension that has to be taken into account in some instances. The impact assessment for the Bill—
Lord Greaves
I think I said “underpinning a minimum level of service”. I certainly would not apply it to council tax.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Indeed. I was not suggesting that the noble Lord would have judged council tax to be one of those things, but I think there is an argument that it is. The impact assessment reminds us that some 36 authorities have been capped under legislation that this Bill will replace—I think that is since the power was first used in 2004-05—and 16 of those were subject to in-year designation and had to redo their calculations. Indeed, the architecture of the Secretary of State setting principles with the opportunity to look at different categories of authorities has been imported from the existing capping regime.
We feel constrained in denying the Government powers which effectively amount to capping powers and their right to influence levels of taxation in the broader interests of the management of the economy, anti-poverty strategies, et cetera because the reality is that each year the Secretary of State will set the benchmark for council tax increases and it is probably right that few councils will run the gauntlet of a referendum, given the costs and consequences of an adverse outcome. The impact assessment estimates the cost of a council tax referendum to be between £85,000 and £300,000. Should a referendum not be successful, the administrative consequences could be convoluted, with year-end refunds or credits against future liabilities and the possibility for people to ask for an in-year refund, so the systems and costs involved in those choices could be significant.
We are coming on to discuss the powers that the Secretary of State has taken for himself in framing how the referendum question is to be put and the constraints around expenditure. According to the impact assessment, the authority will not be able to campaign for its proposed council tax level. Given the debate we have just had about the authority’s role in referendums, perhaps the Minister will confirm that an authority cannot campaign for the council tax increase that it thinks is appropriate. Of course, we might expect the cards to be stacked against those proposing the increase. Councils are facing unprecedented dilemmas at present with budgets severely constrained and with front-end loading because the coalition Government’s approach to the deficit is to cut too far and too fast. The system will have to cope with the challenges of the localisation of non-domestic rates. If this is to happen, will not local councils be forced to look to that as a source of extra income before running the risks of referendums that would increase council tax? I am not sure that that would be good news for the business community, but perhaps the Minister will tell us—I know these things are embryonic at the moment—whether there will be equivalent capping-type regimes for a localised, non-domestic rate and, if not, what the likely impact of having these effective capping powers on council tax increases might be for the NNDR.
One of the other issues that arise from this in making an assessment about whether council tax levels are fair is how council tax rebate is going to work in the future. The Government are localising council tax rebate. Not only are they cutting 10 per cent off it in aggregate, but it seems as if it is going to be left to local authorities to make individual judgments about the scheme that they want to introduce and maintain. That runs contrary to giving powers to government to manage these things centrally, and is an added complication.
For the present, we will focus our efforts on trying to improve the provisions in the Bill rather than to do away with them, but we are mindful of the strong localist argument for not having these powers at all.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shipley for giving me the opportunity to promote the principle of council tax referendums. We have several interesting amendments to debate later on, including some government ones.
Clause 59 gives effect to Schedule 5, which inserts a new Chapter 4ZA into the Local Government Finance Act 1992. This enables local electors to approve or veto excessive council tax increases in a referendum. It also gives effect to Schedule 6, which removes the Secretary of State’s powers to cap council tax in England and makes consequential amendments to various Acts as a result of the provisions for council tax referendums. The clause will ensure that excessive council tax increases occur only where they have a clear mandate from local people. This is in contrast to capping, where Ministers take the decisions and local people have no say at all. It will strengthen local democracy and ensure councils are more accountable to their electorates, but it will allow the electorate to vote for increased expenditure if they want it.
A set of principles defined by the Secretary of State will be used by authorities to determine whether their council tax increases are excessive. These principles must be submitted in a report to the House of Commons for its approval. A comparison of basic amounts of council tax could be the only principle, but the Secretary of State can include other principles as he sees fit. It is necessary for the excessiveness principles to be determined by the Secretary of State with the approval of the House of Commons.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, touched upon the wider economic issues of council tax expenditure. It would be impractical and excessive to require a referendum for every single council tax increase. The flexibility allows for different sets of principles for different categories of local authorities. For example, principles relating specifically to town and parish councils could ensure that the great majority of councils—indeed, all but large, high-spending parish councils—would not be required to hold referendums. The report for the House of Commons must be laid before the date on which the local government finance report for the year is approved. Authorities will therefore know, when setting their council tax, whether or not they have exceeded the principles, so they will go into this process with their eyes open.
Where an authority determines that its council tax is excessive, it will normally hold a referendum no later than the first Thursday in May—the usual date of local elections. However, the Secretary of State can specify a different date by order, such as to allow the referendum to be held on the same day as local government elections if this date is not the first Thursday in May. Entitlement to vote in the referendum is based on the register of local government electors and entitlement to vote in local government elections for a particular area.
Where an authority sets an excessive council tax increase, it must also make substitute calculations to determine a basic amount of council tax which does not exceed the excessiveness principles. The substitute calculations would take effect in the event that the authority’s increase is rejected in a referendum or the authority fails to hold a referendum by the required date. The Secretary of State may make regulations concerning the conduct of referendums, which would include such matters as the wording of the question to be asked in the referendum, the publicity to be given and expenditure limits. There are obvious reasons why this may be necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether authorities can campaign for the proposed increase in council tax. No, it is intended that they cannot. They must put the facts to the electorate and leave them to decide but individual councillors will be free to campaign.
The Secretary of State will have the power to direct that the council tax referendum provisions should not apply. The power could be exercised only where it appears to the Secretary of State that unless the authority is allowed to increase its tax excessively, the authority will be unable to discharge its functions in an effective manner or be unable to meet its financial obligations. This is a reserve power and the expectation is that this would be used only in exceptional circumstances, such as where the High Court has exercised its powers to appoint a receiver where an authority has failed to service its debt within a set time period.
This clause is long and detailed but it is not as complicated as capping legislation, which has such concepts as budget requirement, designation, nomination, designation after nomination and vice versa, notional budget capping as well as actual capping and so on. And I have not got the foggiest clue what that is about. It replaces all that with a simple concept; namely, that local people and not Ministers should take the decision to approve or veto excessive council tax increases.
Sadly, council tax has more than doubled since 1997. If councils want to set excessive council tax increases—that is, those that exceed the norm—in future they will have to prove their case to the electorate. I urge that Clause 59 should stand part of the Bill.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I touched on non-domestic rates and localisation, and how that regime would sit alongside the regime proposed in the Bill. In particular, I should like to know whether there would be equivalent capping powers on the business rate because that has ramifications for council tax levels as well.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, that is a weensy bit technical for me. Some amendments deal with non-domestic rates. If the noble Lord’s point does not get covered, I will of course write to him.
Lord Greaves
The Minister mentioned parish and town councils. I think he said that only a small number would be caught by the referendum provisions and that there would be those which are very large and would have large levels of spending. He is nodding so I remember correctly. What sort of scale does he expect this to be? Would it be three or four, half a dozen, or 30 or 40? The Government must have some idea.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord has asked an important question. There will be provisions to ensure that small parish councils do not get caught by these provisions. They will be for only the larger authorities. I am sure that we will either get to a suitable amendment or I can write to the noble Lord and other members of the Committee with full details of how that important issue is addressed.