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Oral Answers to Questions
(13 years, 6 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, 6 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, 6 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, 6 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, 6 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, 6 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.